The Whispering: A Haunted House Mystery(80)

‘Leonora,’ he cried. ‘Please – oh, please …’

Edreich was looking about him, almost as if he might be seeking some way of preventing what was about to happen, but the other three soldiers were already raising their rifles. Then – and this is the part that grips at my vitals like steel fingers – they fixed the bayonets to the rifles’ muzzles. It seemed Hauptfeldwebel Barth intended to carry out Niemeyer’s orders to the last tortuous letter. Bayoneting. That had been the brutal sentence on Stephen, and I could not believe they would do it. But they were already tying him to a tree trunk, binding him tightly with a length of rope. He was sobbing and struggling, and I tensed my muscles, ready to bound forward. But it was already too late. The soldiers lined up, the bayonets tilted, and the order was rapped out. The men ran at the imprisoned figure. I heard the clash of bayonets, and I heard someone shouting. Then a single gunshot rang out.

The shocking thing – the thing that will remain with me all my life – was that the soldiers seemed not have heard the gunshot, and they continued with their grisly work. But Stephen was already dead. He had sagged against the tree, and something that was black in the moonlight ran down his face from his forehead.

From where I stood, I saw Hugbert Edreich very quietly and stealthily put a pistol back into the holder at his belt.

And now I am writing this in the long drawing-room of Fosse House, and my mind is scalded with the pity of it, and with pain and remorse. But within the anguish that I did not save Stephen is one tiny shred of comfort. He did not have to suffer the agony of being bayoneted. That single gunshot fired by Hugbert Edreich was done as an act of mercy – I know it was, I know it as surely as if Edreich had told me so. At the end, unable to save him, he gave Stephen a quick, clean death.

But even now I can spare only a small part of my mind for Stephen, for Leonora is filling my thoughts. I have no idea where she is. What I do know, though, is that the indistinct figure I saw running into the walled garden – the figure Stephen called to and followed – was not Leonora. It could not have been. Leonora could not run so swiftly and smoothly. She had a club foot, and she could not run at all …

Nell pushed away the remaining pages and went, almost blindly, to stand at the window, not looking at Michael, not looking at anything. When Michael went to her she turned away from him – the first time she had ever done so. She was not crying, but there was a dreadful blankness in her eyes, and Michael waited, not wanting to intrude, understanding that she was struggling with a deep, confused emotion.

At last, Nell looked at him. In a tight, desperate voice, she said, ‘The figure they saw— The figure Stephen followed into the walled garden— Iskander was right to say it wasn’t Leonora. What was it Booth Gilmore said about time bleeding backwards?’

‘That’s just a mad theory,’ said Michael uneasily.

‘But it’s not, is it? Because I was the figure they saw. Stephen followed me into the walled garden – he thought I was Leonora. If he hadn’t done that, he wouldn’t have been caught. He wouldn’t have died. I led him there – I led him straight into the hands of those murderers.’

Michael said, very forcefully, ‘Yes, he would have died – that was inevitable. The soldiers wouldn’t have waited very long, you know. When night fell, they would have broken into the house and dragged him out. It’s what they tried to do the first time, only they saw—’ He stopped, the words of Hugbert Edreich’s letter in his mind.

I saw him open the curtains in a downstairs room and look out, Hugbert had written. There was a lamp shining in the room, and we all saw him … But who had they seen? thought Michael. I was the one who opened the curtains to look out of that window … There was a lamp shining from the desk behind me …

He thought he might tell Nell about this later, but for the moment, he said, ‘My dear love, you don’t believe that stuff about time bleeding backwards any more than I do. Stephen was never going to get away from those men – it was nothing to do with what you did or didn’t do. And it might sound weird, but I’m inclined to be glad that Hugbert Edreich had the – the guts and the humanity to do what he did.’

This time when he put out his hand, Nell came into his arms, and clung to him. She was still not crying, but her eyes were dark and blurred with emotion. Michael felt something twist at his heart. ‘I can’t bear seeing you like this,’ he said.

‘Drama queen,’ she said, managing a smile. ‘Sorry. I think I’m glad Hugbert did it, too. I suppose he saw it was impossible to fight the other three soldiers – they were armed. But he wanted to save Stephen from the bayoneting.’ She thought for a moment then, in a voice much more like her normal one, said, ‘It even gives some logic to what Hugbert’s wife said. She said he never spoke of what happened that night— But he had those nightmares, when he dreamed he was walking towards the house. When he thought Stephen came out to meet him. That was his guilt, wasn’t it?’

‘I think,’ said Michael, ‘that Hugbert came to reasonable terms with his guilt. He had done what he genuinely believed was the right thing. Let’s think he had a fairly happy life – or as happy as any of us can expect.’

‘You’re getting awfully philosophical, aren’t you? Shall we finish Iskander’s statement?’

‘Can you cope with it?’