Chalice of Darkness, page 11
Saul was extremely pleased with the way his plan was working out.
Once he had made sure about Agnes keeping watch on Maude he had written to Maude’s aunt. He had couched his letter in very careful terms, and Miss Grout had replied promptly. Her letter was exactly what Saul had hoped.
‘I am sorry to hear that Maude’s mental state is causing you concern,’ wrote Hilda Grout. ‘In reply to your (most tactfully phrased) question, I cannot say there was ever any actual mental instability in that side of the family. I hope you know that if there had been I would have made you aware of it. I do know, though, that Maude’s mother was much given to extravagant moods, which I always believed could have been a precursor to something more sinister.
‘As to your invitation to come to Vallow Hall without Maude knowing, I would be very willing to do so. My present situation, living with my elderly cousin, is not proving very satisfactory, and, of course, Maude’s inheritance went with her when she married, so my means are slender. A prolonged stay in your lovely house would be most welcome – especially if it transpires that Maude needs a degree of control. I believe I could be of help with that. There are certain things that have to be nipped in the bud if they are not to end in actual restraint becoming necessary. We will hope that does not happen.
‘I do feel it will be necessary for you to have an older woman on hand over the coming months, especially if difficult decisions lie ahead.’
It was signed with respectful affection.
‘Dear Miss Grout,’ wrote Saul, in his reply. ‘Since my original letter, matters appear to have taken a more distressing turn. You indicated that you would be prepared to come to Vallow, and I wonder if you could now do so immediately. If you are able to travel here this coming Friday I will ensure that you are met at Vallow Halt. I do not care to write any details in this letter, but I shall be able to explain it all to you when you arrive.
‘There is a train which reaches the Halt at eleven o’clock. If convenient, I will arrange for a seat for you. It is a most reliable service, and I know from my own small travels that the first-class carriages on this line are comfortable.
‘With kind regards, I am yours, affectionately and hopefully, Saul Vallow.’
He was not worried that Miss Grout would refuse. His only real concern was that Maude would not go out to Bastle House on the day. If she did not, Hilda Grout could be absorbed into the household in such a way that Maude could not protest, but it would mean bringing Agnes back to Vallow Hall, and starting all over again with a new plan. But Saul did not think Maude would be able to resist the opportunity he had contrived. He did not think she had yet seen the house given to her, and she would be curious about it. Anyone would.
He was right. As soon as she thought he would be safely on the train, the whoring little bitch went out. Saul, waiting in the concealment of the thick shrubbery that grew against Vallow’s walls, thought she looked quite jaunty as she went along towards the meadow path and the old stile. It was obvious that she had no idea she was walking into a trap.
As Maude went along Candle Lane it was a sharp, cold day and mist was clinging to the trees.
She was apprehensive, but she was also very curious. She was finally going to see the house that had fascinated her since she came to Vallow Hall – the dark, lonely old place that had started to creep into her dreams. She would be confronting those dreams today – and the chalice would be left in a place where its malevolence could not reach her.
But this was such an absurd thought to have in the bright wintry morning, that she thought, instead, how Bastle House was Eddy’s gift to her, and how Declan Kendal and Connor O’Kane – also the unknown Aiden Fitzglen who had witnessed the document – had worked together to make her the owner. That felt friendly and reassuring – almost as if they were walking alongside her this morning.
She approached the stile, grateful that she had seen no one so far, and climbed over it. Aunt Hilda would have been shocked at such an unseemly display of petticoats, but Maude did not see that a brief flurry of petticoats was so very shocking, and in any case Aunt Hilda was miles away. Older people in Vallow called this the Styl, from an almost-forgotten Scottish word. Maude liked this; she liked finding links to the past, and hearing old words and names still being used.
Here was the narrow woodland path that fringed the little wood on her right. She kept to the shelter of the trees in case anyone did happen to be around. It was not a very long walk, and now, ahead of her, was Bastle House itself, stark and forbidding against the sky. Seen close to, it had a very slight sense of distortion, as if the walls had not been built at exactly the right angle. Or, thought Maude, slowing her steps and staring at it, as if something deep inside it might have slipped at some time in the past, wrenching it out of true. And then she thought that perhaps this was a memory from the nightmares, because houses were not built with that distortion.
There were no windows near the ground – Maude thought this would be to make it difficult for enemies to break in – but there were several about a third of the way up – narrow, watchful windows. At the centre was a door, approached by a short flight of stone steps. That’s the main way in, thought Maude, but to be sure she walked all the way round. The ground was uneven, and here and there were hoofmarks where cattle must have wandered out here, or perhaps huddled close to the walls for shelter from the weather. Weeds had grown up, hiding parts of the walls. But they did not hide the door that was set low into the thick walls – so low that it was partly below the level of the ground, meaning you would have to kneel down and almost crawl to get through it. That will lead into the bastle itself, thought Maude, repressing a shiver. But in the same moment she heard, from across the fields, the distant chimes of the church clock – eleven o’clock – and the normality of this pulled her back into the ordinary world.
She went back to the front of the house and up the stone steps to the main door. The steps were worn in the centre – that would be from all the people who must have gone up and down them over the years – perhaps over the centuries. She glanced about her to make sure no one was around, then reached into the portmanteau for the keys.
As she slid the largest of the keys into the lock she was expecting it to resist, but it did not. The lock scraped a bit, but then it turned perfectly smoothly.
Maude took a deep breath and pushed the door open.
TEN
As the door swung inwards, Maude had the impression that something deep within the old house stirred, as if shadows that had been lying quietly in the corners had looked up. That would just be the sudden ingress of light and air from outside disturbing the dimness, though. Or would it? Supposing tramps or vagrants had got in, and were hiding in those shadows, watching her? But surely there would have been signs of anyone having broken in – damage to windows or doors – and there were no such signs at all.
She lit one of the candles, and wedged it inside the lantern. It sent a warm glow across the darkness, and there in front of her was the room she had known she would see. Exactly as Saul’s books had described. A long room stretching across the entire width of the house, with a wide old hearth and a stone chimney breast that went up to the ceiling and had little recesses on each side. There was a long table at the centre, incredibly still covered with a crimson chenille cloth, with chairs drawn up to it. A tall dresser stood against the wall. Thick dust lay everywhere, as if something had draped a veil over the entire house.
Maude set the lantern on the dresser, then lit two more candles from it and placed one on the table and the other on the dresser. The oak of the dresser was slightly faded on one side from where sunlight came in through one of the narrow windows, and Connor O’Kane’s words to Dr Kendal when they were photographing the chalice in Chauntry School came unexpectedly to her.
‘I noticed you particularly positioned the chalice in the strongest light you could find,’ Connor had said.
She opened the portmanteau, took the chalice from its box, and placed it on the dresser, where it would stand in the gentle sunshine. And now could she go home? No, of course she could not. To banish the nightmares altogether, she needed to look into all the rooms. In any case, this was her house. She would look at it properly.
Two doors opened off this room, one on each side of the fireplace. The left-hand one showed an inner, much smaller sitting room, and the room on the right had a big range, and a deep old sink, with a grisly looking copper cauldron crouching in a corner. Shallow stone steps led deeper down into the bowels of the house. Maude looked at them, then took a firmer hold on the lantern, and went cautiously down. The shadows seemed to press in more closely, but she reminded herself that she was descending to a lower level, and that there were no windows, so she was going down into a darkness – no, she would not think that, it sounded like the words of the legend Declan Kendal had quoted. Something about being dragged into a darkness, it had been.
At the foot of the steps was a kind of half-cellar. In one corner was an ancient pump, and there was a smell of stagnant water. Maude thought if ever she did – or was able to – sell this house, or even – wild idea – live in it herself, an entire army of workmen would be needed to make it habitable. Eddy, did you give me an asset or a liability, she wondered, which was an ungrateful thought to entertain.
She moved the lantern around slowly, praying not to see or hear any small scuttling movements in the corners, because there would almost certainly be rats in a place like this, but as long as she did not actually see any …
There were scuttlings, though – as if now that the old house had been disturbed, its very timbers and stones were waking and wanting to inspect this intruder. Maude stood still, listening, but thinking that if anything moved it was only timbers expanding in the air caused by the opening of doors. She moved the lantern again, and saw at last what she had known would be here. The trapdoor. The lid of the bastle itself.
That’s where the real darkness is, thought Maude. She tilted the light slightly, and its glow picked up something lying near to the trapdoor’s edge – something very small, but something that caught the light. Maude took a step nearer, but her senses were already tumbling and the shadows seemed to be crawling towards her, like goblin fingers reaching out.
She did not need to bend down to pick up this tiny object that shone amidst the dust and she did not even need to wonder what it was – she knew already, because it, and its fellow, normally lay in her own jewellery box on her dressing table.
The object that lay on the dusty floor was one of the pearl earrings Aunt Hilda had given her on the occasion of her betrothal to Saul, and which Maude had worn on her wedding day.
As Maude stared at the earring, fear was flooding her mind, because there was only one explanation for its presence here. She must have been to this house before – and to this subterranean room. But when? And why? The memory of the nightmares came at her at once, but they had only been dreams, hadn’t they? Hadn’t they …?
Those flashes of familiarity could be explained by her having read the books in Saul’s study – the descriptions and illustrations of bastle houses had been very clear. But that did not explain the earring.
Moving slowly, as if afraid of someone hearing, she put the lantern on the ground, where its light fell across the squared shape of the trapdoor. It was not a very large trapdoor – perhaps four feet square – and sunk into it was a thick bar, clearly intended for lifting it. It showed up small marks in the dust and grime around the edges of the bar, as well. Finger marks, thought Maude. Marks your fingertips would leave if you grasped a very dusty surface. Had she knelt on the ground and reached for the trapdoor, and were those finger marks her own?
Her mind shuddered away from lifting the trapdoor, but of their own volition her hands were already reaching for it, grasping the bar. I’m lifting the lid on the darkness, thought Maude, fighting a rising panic. But I don’t have to do it, I really don’t. Except that I do have to do it, because I must find out why that earring is here.
At first she thought the trapdoor was stuck, and there was a brief, guilty relief, because after all she was not going to be able to open up this dark vault. Then she pulled on it again, and there was a creaking sound as if ancient bones were struggling into life. The door came up – a couple of inches at first, so that a rim of blackness showed all around the edges, and then suddenly crashed all the way back, clanging loudly on the ground. The sound reverberated through the small room, and echoed through the old house. Tiny clouds of dust billowed upwards, clouding her vision, then settled back down.
For a moment there was only the black square of the now-open underground space, then Maude pushed the lantern closer to the open cellar.
Into its smeary light, almost as if it had reared up accusingly, was the face of a woman – the eyes wide and staring, the lips stretched in a dreadful silent scream. One hand was flung upwards, as if it had been clinging to the underside of the trapdoor, and had only been wrenched free by the trapdoor crashing back on to the floor. The other hand was gripping an iron rung jutting out from the wall. Maude saw with sick horror that the hand reaching up was bruised and bloodied, the nails half torn away. She dared to push the lantern a little nearer, using the tip of one foot to do so, and now the light fell deeper into the cellar, showing up iron rungs driven into the wall – like a rough-and-ready ladder. The woman must have climbed up those rungs until she reached the hatch, then she had clung to the topmost rung with one hand, while beating frantically on the underside of the trapdoor with the other. Had she screamed for help as she did so, praying for someone to hear and rescue her? Yes, of course she had. You had only to see those dreadful stretched-wide lips to know that.
And when the trapdoor crashed back, she had still been clutching the underside of the trapdoor so that when Maude opened it, it had pulled her a little way out of the cellar opening. She could not have moved of her own volition, because she was dead. Maude had never seen a dead person, but there could be no doubt. The woman’s eyes were fixed in a dreadful stare, and her skin was the cold grey colour and texture of a slab of stone. She had been down there, imprisoned in the underground room, its lid slammed firmly down on her. She had tried to push it up, though – that bruised and torn hand was mute evidence. But it had been no use, and she had died down there, alone in the darkness.
Maude backed away from the yawning square of blackness, wrapping her arms around her body as if to keep in some vestige of warmth, shaking so badly she thought she might fall apart. But she could not take her eyes from what was framed in the open hatch. And even like that – even with that terrible sightless stare and that frozen scream – she recognized the woman.
It was Agnes.
Every nerve in Maude’s body was screaming at her to go back up the stone steps at once, to run all the way back to Vallow Hall and pretend this had never happened, because no one would ever know …
She could not do it. Her mind was spinning with confusion and terror, and time seemed to have slipped its moorings, but gradually she was aware that the lantern’s light had burned down, and the stone room was growing darker. The world had shrunk to this dreadful place, with the fixed dead stare of Agnes from the open cellar, and the sight of Agnes’s hand raw and torn from trying to beat her way out.
Overhead the house seemed to be coming alive. The little scuttlings and creaks Maude had heard earlier were forming into recognizable sounds. Creak-creak … Creak-creak … At first she thought she was imagining them, then suddenly she knew she was not. Someone was walking around overhead. Maude cowered back against the wall. Someone was up there. If she went up those steps she would meet whoever it was. There was no other way she could get out of this dreadful room.
The footsteps were in the upper scullery now, and she pressed back against the wall even more, as if by doing so she could be absorbed into it and be invisible. Then the light shifted, and a dark shape appeared at the head of the steps. It stood for a moment, then it began to descend the steps, and Maude saw that it was not just one person – there were two outlines. Two people who had come in here, and who would find her with Agnes’s body. And her earring, still lying in the dust.
Then Saul’s voice said, ‘Maude?’ He came all the way down the steps and stood in front of her, looking down at her. Behind him was a thin, bony figure, the lips shut in the familiar rat-trap line. Aunt Hilda.
The stone room, with the flickering lantern light sending macabre shadows writhing across the walls and the deeper shadows reaching out their long fingers, folded completely around her.
Saul saw, the minute he looked down into the cellar, that his plan had succeeded. He was not surprised. He had taken great care with everything, and it had paid off, because here was Maude, in the grisly stone room, the damning earring lying in the light of a lantern for Miss Grout to see.
Maude had apparently fainted, which was rather annoying, since it might mean she would have to be carried back to Vallow Hall. The important thing, though, was that what Saul thought of as the second part of his plan had worked.
The first part had been Agnes, of course. It had been laughably easy to get her out to Bastle House – he had only to tell her he had found out that the mistress was going to meet the prince there on Friday, and she had leapt at the idea of helping to catch them out. She had found it all perfectly plausible – hadn’t she seen for herself the document making the mistress owner of Bastle House? When Saul said he needed what was called an independent witness to a meeting between Maude and the prince, Agnes said at once that she would do whatever was needed. Yes, certainly she understood that he could not be the witness himself, being what they called an interested party. The prince deserved to be taught a lesson, the whoring libertine that he was, known in some of the sleaziest of London’s clubs.
