The Ghost Writer (36 page)

P
ASSING
C
ORAM'S
F
IELDS PLAYGROUND, BREATHING DIESEL
and cut grass and the dusty farmyard smell of the miniature zoo, I found myself wondering whether Alice would want to have children now that she was healed. Neither of us had ever raised the question. I felt certain I didn't, and probably shouldn't, but supposing she did ... what would we tell them? 'Your grandmother? Oh, she murdered her sister; the police never caught her.' No: I would lie to them, as my mother had lied to me.

In fact the best thing I could do for everyone involved—for the living, at least—would be to walk down Doughty Street, which I was now approaching, to Gray's Inn and along to Bedford Row, and return the keys to Mr Grierstone's secretary. Because I still didn't know, for certain, that my mother
had
murdered Anne. And so long as I didn't discover anything more, I need never know. Already I could almost believe that the whispering had been a drunken nightmare. 'Miss Jessel' would fade from the sheet of butcher's paper on the library table. Tell Miss Hamish I had searched the house thoroughly and found nothing at all.

Only I would have to go back once more because Anne's diary was still on the library table. Along with the planchette and the messages and half a bottle of Braveheart. And a bit of a mess on the chesterfield.

I could whisk the butcher's paper off the table and crumple it without looking. Clean up, lock up, restore Anne's diary to its hiding-place, and take the keys straight back to the office. The shutters were open; the ghost would not walk in daylight. I hailed a cab, changed my mind as it pulled up, and told the driver to take me to the Family Records Centre instead. First set my mind at rest about Hugh Montfort. I realised, as we hurtled along Calthorpe Street, that I didn't know his middle name, and that it would have been better to start by searching
The Times
in the British Library for an engagement notice, but then if I didn't find one I'd have to come back here anyway. Besides, it wasn't a common name; and anyway why was I doing this search at all? At four in the morning it had seemed overwhelmingly urgent to prove the whispering voice wrong. Now it just seemed mad.

The doors were opening as I came up the front steps. A small eager crowd surged in ahead of me and dispersed among the registers, leaving me alone with Deaths 1945 to 1955. All I wanted was not to find anything.

Nothing for the second half of 1949. Or the first, second or third quarters of 1950. But in the register of deaths for Oct.–Dec. 1950, I found my own name.

Montfort, Gerard Hugh Infant District of Westminster

Filly killed us all, one by one. You too. She killed you too, Gerard, you just don't know it yet.

I filled out the form for Gerard Hugh Montfort, Infant, with the sensation of ordering my own death certificate. By express, £24 for a guaranteed twenty-four-hour turn-around; they might have it by late afternoon. Then I went over to Births, where I found him in the second quarter of 1950, also District of Westminster.

There was no entry in Marriages for either Phyllis May Hatherley or a Hugh Montfort. No Hugh Montfort in Deaths either; I searched both registers all the way through to the end of 1963, the year my mother married Graham John Freeman in Mawson.

Under her maiden name, it struck me as I was leaving the registry, prompting a sudden crystal-clear memory of my mothers drawn, anxious smile, already middle-aged in the wedding photograph on the mantelpiece in Mawson. And then of the picture I had found in the study, my amazingly youthful mother with an infant on her knee. Gerard Hugh Montfort, Infant. Deceased.

From an internet café I wrote to Alice, telling her what I had just discovered, in the spirit of a castaway consigning a message to a bottle.

I
SPENT THE REST OF THE DAY IN
H
UMANITIES
R
EADING
Room Two in the British Library searching
The Times
on microfilm, first for an engagement notice for Anne Hatherley and Hugh Montfort, which I didn't find, and then from 1 October 1950 for any mention of Gerard Hugh Montfort, Infant, Deceased. After twenty minutes of that, I realised I was wasting time: the death certificate would give me an exact date. I went back to 6 October 1949, the day of Iris Hatherley's death, and began working through the home news pages, looking for any small item—it would have to be small, as neither Hatherley nor Montfort appeared in Palmer's Index. When my shoulder began to ache, I went out onto the gallery and leaned over the sheer precipitous drop to the marble concourse far below, thinking how little it would matter if I slipped over the edge.

At 3.30 I rang the FRC; the certificates hadn't arrived and wouldn't until Monday morning. I decided to carry on for another hour—the mechanical concentration at least kept me from thinking about Gerard Hugh Montfort, Infant—then have something to eat and go up to the house for the last time. There would still be plenty of daylight left.

Back at the microfilm reader, I remembered something from Miss Hamish's letter: Pitt the Elder—Edward Nichol Pitt of 18 Whetstone Park, Solicitor—had advertised repeatedly for news of Anne. Whom he had last seen on 26 October 1949. I might as well know exactly how his advertisement had read. Starting at the end of November, I began scrolling through the personal columns, day by day. And in the column for 16 December 1949 I found

Would anyone knowing the whereabouts of Hugh Ross Montfort, late of 44 Endsleigh Gardens WC1, please communicate with Pitt & Co. Solicitors of 18 Whetstone Park Holborn.

The same advertisement appeared twice more, at fortnightly intervals. I went on through February and March, expecting any moment to see a parallel advertisement for Anne. I had worked up a steady rhythm by now, picking up the columns in fast forward, five days a minute, six minutes to the month. At the end of June I stopped to check Miss Hamish's letter. Mr Pitt had been anxious when she went to see him in February 1950. 'He alerted the police, and advertised repeatedly. Surely he wouldn't have waited another four months. I was working fast but carefully, checking each date to be sure I didn't miss any; I knew I wouldn't have missed even one advertisement. I went all the way through to December, but I didn't find one.

L
IGHT FROM THE STAINED GLASS FLOWERS FELL LIKE
splashes of blood across the drawing-room, spilling from chairs and sofas into the darker red of the carpet, around the fireplace, in great elongated streaks along the wall towards the dining-room. Ten to seven on yet another improbably perfect evening. I carried my bag of cleaning materials on through to the library and set to work.

Scrubbing at the stains beneath the chesterfield reminded me of childhood humiliations in Mawson, things that happened while you were asleep, but were still your fault. I felt very strange indeed: something akin to the disembodied sensation of severe jet lag, as if my physical and emotional selves had parted company altogether, but my mind seemed perfectly clear. At the moment—when not brooding on the disappearances of Anne and Hugh—it was simply refusing to accept that the whispering voice could have been anything other than a nightmare.

So far I had kept well clear of the planchette: from where I knelt I could just see the vertical stub of pencil, above the edge of the table. The sight induced a mental logjam: I
know
I didn't write those messages; it
couldn't
have moved by itself; the messages
did
appear; no one else could have written them., round and round, jumbled together with thoughts of Alice, and missing persons, and Staplefield, and Gerard Hugh Montfort, Infant, deceased in the borough of Westminster. My half-brother, you could say, except that I had only been born because he had died. I was his ghost; or he was mine, I couldn't quite decide.

I packed away the cleaning things and stood up, looking around the alcoves at the thousands of volumes I had scarcely begun to examine. When Miss 'Hamish died, Ferrier's Close would presumably go to some distant Hamish relative. The library would be sold and dispersed, the house bought by some commodities broker, or converted into luxury flats. Judging from the agents' windows along Hampstead High Street, it would fetch several million pounds as it stood.

T
HIS COULD HAVE BEEN MY INHERITANCE,
SAID A SMALL REBEL
lious voice. I recalled my fantasy of taking tea with Miss Hamish on the terrace at Staplefield, its sweeping lawns and formal gardens ranged before us. Which had once been the view from here, I thought, staring at the undergrowth encroaching on the dry, desolate courtyard, the wreck of the pavilion beyond.
I feel, young man, that you are the rightful heir to all this
... She had actually said something like that, in her letter. Yes: 'I am an old woman, and must think about my own will as well as fulfilling my duty to the estate.'

I sat down at the table—as far as possible from the planchette—and re-read, yet again, her account of her visit to Pitt the Elder in February 1950. By then he had already placed three advertisements seeking news of Hugh. Anne had last been seen in Mr Pitt's office on 26 October 1949. How could Miss Hamish possibly not have known that Hugh Montfort had also disappeared, at almost exactly the same time? The disappearances
must
have been linked; the police would have been working on that assumption.

'Phyllis would never accept a penny from me,' Anne had said. Not in anger but very despondently'. As if she'd tried to persuade Phyllis, and failed. Extraordinarily generous, especially if she already knew that Phyllis was pregnant by Hugh. Which could well have been the reason for Hugh's disappearance: fleeing his responsibilities. Just as it could have been Phyllis who got Mr Pitt to place those advertisements; he was the family lawyer, after all. But again Miss Hamish would surely have known about it.

And if Anne thought Phyllis should have her share in spite of everything, why not will it to her anyway and let time decide? Leaving an entire estate to an outsider, even 'my dearest and most trusted friend Abigail Valerie Hamish' was a huge decision for a girl of twenty-one. Maybe Anne just couldn't bear to admit—even to herself—that she
hadn't
forgiven Phyllis.

Nothing about Miss Hamish's letter suggested confusion, or failing memory.

Except that she wasn't once mentioned in Anne's diary. And on Miss Hamish's own account, Anne had written just three short notes to her dearest and most trusted friend during those last crucial weeks of her life. Why hadn't she, at the very least, written to say, Dear Abby, I'm going to leave everything to you? The lawyer would certainly have asked. 'How do you know this young woman will accept your bequest? What is to happen if she doesn't? Who is to inherit if Abigail Hamish dies before you do?'

'My dearest and most trusted friend Abigail Valerie Hamish'. They had shared the same initials. Abigail Valerie Hamish. Anne Victoria Hatherley. That was how they'd met, of course. The alphabetically minded schoolmistress who believed in order in all things.

I was reading with a pencil in my hand, as I often did when concentrating. Now I saw that I had been doodling variations on the two names at the foot of Miss Hamish's page: AVH ANNE VICTORIA HATHERLEY ABIGAIL VALERIE HAMISH MISS A V HATHERLEY MISS A V HAMISH

The last set of letters rearranged themselves into

MISS HAVISHAM

I almost laughed. Great expectations, indeed. A two-million pound bequest, courtesy of Miss Hamish-Havisham? This message comes to you direct from your subconscious.

Like 'Miss Jessel'? And the whispering from the gallery?

That was a dream.

But how had it—the whispering voice in the dream—known about Gerard Hugh Montfort, Infant? That had come as a complete, paralysing shock.

Coincidence. The register entry interpreted the dream, not the other way round.

You've seen the scratches in the cupboard. You know all about that,
the voice had whispered. But I didn't. I glanced up at the gallery. Though it was still almost full daylight outside, shadows were gathering in the alcoves.

There was one other possibility. Apart from a choice between ghosts and hallucinations. Miss Havisham. Hamish. Ridiculous, of course. But at least rationally ridiculous, unlike escaped subconscious minds writing messages on butcher's paper.

Purely for argument's sake: she could have lied about the stroke. She had access to keys. She knew the house. She might have seen the black thread. And as the sole beneficiary of Anne Hatherley's will, she even had a motive for murder.

Ridiculous, nonetheless. Aside from everything else, she could have had Anne declared legally dead after seven years, taken possession of the estate, and either moved into Ferrier's Close or sold it.

Unless she was afraid the process might spark a fresh investigation into Anne's disappearance. Such as a more thorough search of the house and grounds.

Which Miss Hamish had kept unoccupied and overgrown for fifty years.

Ridiculous all the same, because if Miss Hamish had murdered Anne, she Would never have answered my advertisement. Let alone given me the keys to the house. Besides, Miss Hamish couldn't have answered my second question, or whispered those words from the gallery, because I hadn't told her about Alice. So not only ridiculous, but impossible.

Unless Miss Jessel and Miss Havisham had joined forces.

Alice is so beautiful, we all love her.

Terminal paranoia beckoning. Time to leave. I picked up Anne's diary, again with my eyes averted from the planchette at the other end of the table, and headed for the front stairs.

T
HOUGH SUNLIGHT WAS FILTERING IN THROUGH THE TREES
above the stairwell windows, I could not help glancing over my shoulder every time a board creaked. I realised as I approached the second-floor landing that I couldn't even recall what I was doing here. But if I turned back now, I might lose my nerve altogether; and I still had to get the downstairs shutters closed and make my way out of the house by torchlight. Forcing myself not to tiptoe—or run—I moved swiftly across the landing and into Anne's room.