Woman Who Spoke to Spirits Read online

  The muttering degenerates into a low rumble.

  Lily looks at Felix, who has turned to go.

  He waits for some sort of protest, but it is not forthcoming. All she says is, ‘Be careful.’

  A little under an hour later he is back.

  He goes into the outer office and slumps into his chair. He closes his eyes. He senses Lily, coming to stand beside him. He says dully, ‘He wasn’t there and there’s no sign of Albertina.’

  FIFTEEN

  In the morning, Lily is in the office very early.

  She has barely slept. She lay awake until well after midnight – more like one or even two o’clock – and just as she was at last beginning to feel drowsy and thinking she might actually drop off, the front door opened with a scrape and a clatter, closed with a resounding bang and the Little Ballerina’s elephantine tread in her diver’s boots went echoing down the passage to the lavatory, where shortly afterwards the roar of the flush began and seemed to go on for ever. Then came the crash, crash, crash as she made her way upstairs to the first floor, followed by the opening and even louder closing of her own door and the pattering to and fro as she went about the interminable process of preparing for bed. As if all that were not enough for Lily’s frayed nerves, the Little Ballerina was humming, loudly and totally tunelessly, what appeared to be one of the better-known melodies from Sleeping Beauty, a rough approximation of the same little phrase over, over, over and over again.

  And Lily, losing her patience and her temper at last, banged on the floor with the heel of her boot and yelled, ‘SHUT UP!’

  To her surprise, it worked.

  Now, though, the all but sleepless night is catching up with her, and she feels scratchy-eyed and fraught, as well as desperately anxious about Albertina Stibbins. She and Felix managed to come up with one or two ideas about what they should do next last night before he left, but, thinking about them now, they seem petty and ineffectual.

  Lily hopes very much that Felix will arrive with good news. He promised to call at the police station on his way in, and who’s to say the constable, or the sergeant, won’t greet him with the cheerful tidings that Albertina is safe and well and restored to her loving husband? Failing that – and Lily has to admit she is not over-optimistic – then perhaps Felix will have some better ideas as to how to go about looking for her.

  Lily admits to herself that she has none whatsoever.

  The street door opens and closes, and she hears his step in the hall.

  Why doesn’t he come bounding in like he always does?

  He crosses the hall and comes in through the open door to the outer office.

  ‘Is there any—’ she begins.

  She stops, for she has caught sight of his face.

  Felix is holding a rolled-up newspaper as if he would prefer it to be a machete. Unfurling it – he has been clutching it so tightly that it resists being smoothed out – he flings it down before her on his desk.

  ‘Look at this!’ he shouts, the suddenness and the volume combining to make her jump violently.

  She looks.

  And the awful words fill her mind.

  PEER’S SON’S SUICIDE! shouts the headline.

  And, below, in slightly smaller print: SON AND HEIR OF LORD BERWICK FOUND HANGING IN OUTBUILDING ON FAMILY ESTATE.

  Struck dumb, Lily reads on.

  The body of the Honourable Julian Willoughby, only son of Lord Berwick, was found early yesterday morning at the rear of a disused stable block by a groom hunting for a lost hound, the story begins. He was hanging by the neck from a beam and the state of the corpse suggested he had been dead for some time. According to local sources, he had come down to the family estate, Willowdene, the day before to dine with his parents and stay overnight in his childhood home. It is believed that a matter of grave import was on his mind and that he discussed it over dinner with his father. There are reports of heated words, and the young man was observed to fling himself out of the dining room, upsetting a tray of crystal glassware and a brandy decanter. Asked to comment upon what had upset his only son, Lord Berwick said merely that it was a private matter. Our social correspondent, however, is able to report that of late the Honourable Julian Willoughby has been seen about town in the company of an actress, Miss Violetta da Rosa, at present preparing for a starring role in Miss Sanderson’s Fortune, the new production at the Glass Slipper Theatre off Drury Lane; Miss da Rosa has been playing the ingenue lead for many years and is beloved of theatre-goers both in London and the provinces.

  Oh, the cruelty of that little dig, thinks Lily. Playing the ingenue lead for many years; the journalist who came up with that might just as well have said Violetta was getting on in years and considerably older than her young suitor …

  But she knows she is concentrating on the sharp and unkind little details when it is the terrible whole picture that she should be absorbing.

  She forces herself to go on.

  Although Miss da Rosa was said to be too distraught for comment yesterday, friends of the actress report that marriage between her and young Julian was a likely and happily anticipated event. It is left to the reader’s own conjecture as to what Lord Berwick might have had to say on the matter, and it cannot be assumed with any degree of certainty that his son’s dreadful deed in taking his own life comes in reaction to a possible refusal on the part of Lord Berwick to countenance Miss da Rosa as a daughter-in-law and the future Lady Berwick.

  The present holder of that august title is—

  Lily stops reading.

  She forces herself to look up and meet Felix’s furious eyes. She would like to tell herself that his fierce anger is at the journalist and his horrible story, but she doesn’t believe it.

  Gathering her courage, she says quietly, ‘Go on, then.’

  He raises his eyebrows. ‘Go on?’

  ‘You are bursting to tell me this is all my fault; that I should have told Lord Berwick that Violetta da Rosa was a woman of exemplary reputation with not a single thing in her past that could possibly make her unsuitable as a wife for his son. You want to say that I was wrong not to emphasize how hard she has worked all her life, what a fine and reliable actress she has always been. You think I should have advised him to let Julian go ahead with his wedding plans, and give his son his blessing!’

  She too feels her temper rising. She stands up, swinging round the desk towards Felix until she is standing right in front of him. ‘In short, you believe I should have fudged the truth; lied, not to put too fine a point on it! Dear God, Felix –’ the words explode out of her and she has called him by his Christian name without thinking – ‘you have no idea what I’ve had to do to get the World’s End Bureau established as a viable business! You don’t know what my life was like before, what happened to me in India—’ But she cannot bear even to think about that and she shuts off the sentence long before it has come to its end. ‘This means so much to me, and I have to succeed, I have to! If I begin altering the facts, amending the truth so as not to hurt people and to save them suffering, what is that going to do to our reputation? Can you really see men and women who want to be told the stark facts bothering even to ask a bureau with a reputation for lying to work for them?’ She is panting now, trying to draw a deep breath and feeling her stays cutting painfully into her ribs. ‘If you can –’ she is shouting now – ‘then you’re a bigger fool than I think you are!’

  ‘A fool, am I?’ he shouts back. His face is scarlet with fury. ‘It’s foolish, then, is it, to care about a young man driven to suicide? To feel remorse and grief because it didn’t have to happen?’

  ‘YES IT IS!’ Lily screams. ‘We have to tell people the truth, and that’s just what we did! There wasn’t a word of a lie in the report I presented to Lord Berwick! If he chose to forbid Julian to marry Violetta, and if Julian couldn’t take the disappointment, if he was too feeble to envisage life without her, then it’s his—’

  But she hears inside her head what she is about to sa
y and she knows she can’t.

  And with a nasty smile, Felix finishes the thought for her: ‘It’s his own fault for not being as strong as you?’

  She can hardly believe she’s heard right. Yes, she was about to say it was a failing within Julian that led him to take his own life, but just in time she stopped herself.

  But that Felix believes she is strong … Oh, that is astonishing.

  He is still looking at her, and she doesn’t like what she sees in his face.

  Before he can speak she gets in first. ‘I can’t be in the same room with you,’ she says very coldly. ‘Furthermore, if this dreadful news has shown up the irreconcilable differences between us that I fear it has done, then I shall have to consider carefully whether you have a future with the World’s End Bureau.’

  Then she goes out into the hall, picks up her light jacket, puts on her hat and climbs into her boots. She collects her little bag from its hook, makes sure her keys are inside and, opening the door, steps out into the street. The temptation to slam the door very hard is all but irresistible, and she only just manages not to.

  She flies out of Hob’s Court and emerges onto World’s End Passage, turning to her right without even thinking about it and towards the Embankment and the river.

  She walks as swiftly as she can to Battersea Bridge, climbing the steps and striding out until she is at a spot midstream, where she stops, leaning her forearms on the rail and catching her breath.

  She feels awful.

  The Honourable Julian Willoughby is dead. He has hanged himself in a disused stable on his ancestral estate. Poor Little Jack Horner, forever in his corner, his dreamy-eyed plan to make a wife and a titled Lady out of a glamorous actress a little past her prime, and with an illegitimate daughter into the bargain, blown to pieces. Suddenly Lily wonders if there is anyone to comfort Violetta, and immediately thinks, of course there is, there’s Billy.

  It all seems unspeakably tragic.

  We – I – should have done better, Lily realizes.

  And then there’s Albertina Stibbins, she thinks wildly, whose deeply anxious husband appealed to the World’s End Bureau for help because he didn’t feel he could protect her alone, and now she’s missing, and God knows what has happened to her – what’s happening to her even as I stand here above the great surge of the river – and so that’s a failure too, and now I’ve had the most dreadful row with Felix, who might be quite wrong in his passionate declaration that I shouldn’t have told Lord Berwick the bald truth about Violetta but dressed it up and hidden it behind mitigating circumstances and a general approval of Julian’s would-be bride, but, even if he was wrong, had a perfect right to express his opinion – and to criticize me – and now I’ve told him he may not have a job with my Bureau any more and oh I don’t want him to go!

  Her thoughts swirl up with a force that feels like a whirlwind and then abruptly subside, leaving her weak and shaky.

  She goes on standing there, quite still now.

  Presently she thinks, what should I do now? Go back? But Felix will be there and I am not ready to confront him yet.

  You are not ready to admit to him that he may be right, says her conscience censoriously.

  Where else could she go? Who else can she seek out?

  And it dawns on her, as she watches the Thames flow powerfully past beneath her, that she has nobody.

  She lets the dismal realization sink in.

  Before it can depress her totally, she makes up her mind. When troubled, work has long been her motto. It served her when she lost her father and was abandoned by her flighty mother, far too preoccupied with trying to make her lover marry her before her pregnancy showed to spare a thought for her grieving daughter. Then Lily had thrown herself with renewed determination into her studies, first with Aunt Eliza, then at Miss Heale’s School. The same motto served her when, struggling with the demands of her five years’ training with St Walburga’s Nursing Service, the pangs of homesickness for the pharmacy in Hob’s Court and the beloved people who lived there became too much to bear. It served her in India, when news of the deaths of her grandparents reached her and she was so far away that there was not a hope of getting home for the funerals. It served her when The Incident shocked her to her very core and ended the career and the life she loved.

  Well, it can damned well serve me now, Lily thinks.

  Work.

  What, then, should she do?

  Felix – oh, Felix! – failed yesterday in his attempts to see the Reverend Jellicote. And surely he had good reason to seek the man out, for at best he may be able to help in the search for Albertina and at worse—

  But she can’t bring herself to think about at worse.

  Felix didn’t find James Jellicote. Well, Lily will see what she can do.

  She turns towards the south and strides off the bridge.

  But on the way to St Cyprian’s she finds herself walking along Parkside Road.

  The door to Albertina and Ernest’s house is ajar …

  She walks up the little path and pushes it wider, calling out, ‘Mr Stibbins? Are you there? Is there—’

  She had been just about to say, Is there any news? Just in time she remembers she is Maud Garrett, and has no way of knowing that Albertina has gone missing.

  She stands just inside the door, irresolute. She can smell something that is familiar … Yes. It’s the scent she thought was sandalwood, and she detected it in the porch at St Cyprian’s. James Jellicote must be here, she thinks, he’ll know about Albertina, of course he will, and he’ll have come round to offer his support and his help, and he and Ernest will be in the back parlour sharing a pot of tea and the vicar will be suggesting they say a prayer to ask God to keep Albertina safe until she can be restored to her home and her loving husband.

  Of course Mr Jellicote isn’t responsible for Albertina’s disappearance!

  For a moment or two, she believes it.

  ‘Mr Stibbins?’ Lily calls again. ‘Mr Jellicote?’

  No answer.

  She advances into the hall. The spicy, woody smell intensifies. The door on the right to the seance room is closed, as is the one to the room just beyond it. Ernest’s study, she recalls, with the desk and the bookshelves and the bookends with the mythological figures.

  A shadowy little passage leads on to the rear of the house. So convinced is Lily by her mental image of the desperately worried husband and the kindly minister who has come to help him sitting sipping at their cups of tea that she follows the course of the passage, into the dimness.

  Here is the kitchen, with the scullery leading off it. Kitchen sink, dresser with cheerful blue and white plates, a table, chairs.

  Empty chairs, and no sign of tea.

  Another door is tucked away beneath the stairs, which rise up on Lily’s left. The door is open, just a crack, and the scent of sandalwood seems to be coming from whatever cupboard, or room, lies beyond.

  She walks over to it on tiptoe. She pushes it further open. Stone steps lead steeply down into the fragrant cellar below. It is utterly dark down there, but an oil lamp hangs on a hook beside the door, vestas in their case on a little shelf beside it. Lily takes out a vesta and strikes it on the side of the case, then puts the flame to the lamp’s wick. Very carefully, holding the lamp with one hand and the other on the wall to steady herself, she descends.

  The cellar is quite small: a stone-floored space some two paces by three, containing shelves on one wall on which there are a meat safe, a bottle of milk, a covered plate of cheese and a muslin-wrapped slab of butter, three bottles of stout set on the floor below the bottom shelf. It’s cold down there, Lily realizes, and, like everyone lucky enough to have a cellar, Albertina and Ernest use it to keep perishable food fresh and beer cold.

  She jumps down off the bottom step and stands on the stone floor. There is a neat pile of boxes against the wall to her right, and she is just wondering why the cellar doesn’t extend for the whole width of the house – it’s quite cle
ar that it doesn’t – when there is movement in the shadows and before Lily’s amazed and frightened eyes the boxes begin to come towards her. And with a shrill meow, the small cat that must have been hiding on top of them leaps down and, flicking its neat little body round Lily’s ankles, flies away up the steps.

  The boxes must have been stuck together, she thinks frantically, for as they were disturbed by the little cat’s movements they didn’t topple over one by one but fell as a single mass. Straight onto the floor, so that she has to jump back. They all seem to be empty.

  In the space against which the boxes stood she can make out the wall, featureless, blank.

  Lily steps round the boxes and looks at it. She taps it. It sounds just like a wall should. She taps again, then curls her hand into a fist and hits it.

  And she hears, very faintly, a soft moan.

  Now she is acting with no thought except to find a way in. She feels all round the wall, left edge, right edge, as high as she can reach. And there is a brick that is recessed slightly and that moves when she hits it. She finds a corner, feeling a fingernail break as she does so, and pulls it out. There is, as she knew there would be, a handle behind the brick. She turns it, a catch is released, and that portion of the wall reveals itself to be a door. She opens it and steps inside the concealed space beyond.

  She has no idea what to expect. She is in a dream now, and the strong scents in the cellar are intensifying powerfully as the hidden door opens. Is it a drug? she wonders. Do they keep something dangerous hidden in there, well away from nosy visitors so that nobody gets hurt?

  But I am getting hurt …

  For her head is pounding as painfully as if a sudden migraine has struck.

  Her eyes take in what is before her but the images mean nothing to her brain. She steps further into the hidden cellar, trying to force herself to think. Think.