The Whispering House (16 page)

Chapter Thirty-Three

Maisie's Secret

T
HE QUESTION CAME LIKE
a dousing of cold water, for a moment threatening to wash away their carefully constructed theory as if it were a sand castle about to be toppled by the advancing tide.

Hannah forced herself to think of that monstrous creature, which, even after more than a hundred years, still had had the stench of evil clinging to it. She saw again those wild, staring eyes, the disfiguring brown stains on the body, the white dress that had been a copy of Maisie's own. And then she remembered something her mother had said on first seeing that dress. Something that had seemed trivial at the time.

“These holes are way too big for the buttons. That's unusual. Victorian sewing is usually so neat.”

What did that mean? That the doll's dress had been changed by somebody who wasn't very good at sewing? Or by someone who was just learning how to sew? Like a child, for example. A child who had carefully embroidered a handkerchief for her mother.

Again she heard her own mother's words.

“I suspect she had a certain amount of help with this. It's pretty impressive for a nine-year-old!”

Of course. Her aunt would have helped her to sew the handkerchief, patiently showing her the stitches, correcting her when she went wrong. But the doll had been different. That had been altered in secret. She had had no help there.

And finally Hannah thought of Laetitia, who, with selfless devotion, had carefully concealed those little treasures so that Maisie would never find them and know that her mother hadn't wanted them. But it wasn't Laetitia's love that Maisie had needed. So she had rejected it, thrown it back, like the cup in her dream, with all the careless cruelty of childhood suffering, and set about her diabolical little scheme.

Now that they knew all the rest, it was so obvious.

“It was Maisie,” she said, shivering. “Maisie did it!”

Sam said nothing, but she could see from his face that he knew she was right.

One by one, all the layers of deception and misconstruction were being stripped away, leaving only the stark, dismal truth. The story might be old and forgotten, but like the hidden paper, it had always been there.

“There's just one thing,” he said wearily. “It's not important, and I don't suppose we're ever going to find out now, but . . . those bruises on the doll. If Maisie wanted to make them look like her own bruises, why didn't she try to make them more realistic—more random?”

And now at last, ridiculously, Hannah found herself close to tears. “I forgot! Inspector Bean told me what they were, but I didn't bother about it at the time because I was only thinking about the hair. Those brown marks on the body weren't ever supposed to be bruises. They're iodine. Maisie must have taken the pins out when she realized her mother wasn't taking any notice of them, but the holes they left showed her that she'd been unkind to her doll, and she wanted to make it better. Iodine's an antiseptic. You see,” she whispered, trying to control her trembling voice, “she was only a
little
girl.”

Sam looked at her somberly for a few moments, then got up and left the room. He returned a few seconds later with a paper towel. “Here.”

“Thanks.” She took it and blew her nose.

“You know,” he said, sitting down next to her on the sofa, “I have a feeling that you were meant to find those things—the doll, the box, the paints, the book of fairy tales. Without them, you couldn't make sense of what the house was trying to tell you.”

“You think it was this
house
that was trying to tell me? Why not Maisie? And come to that, why not
us
? We've solved this together, haven't we?”

“The house helped us uncover the
story
,” he said slowly. “That's always been there, waiting for someone who'd take enough trouble to find out the truth. But . . .” He hesitated, not wanting to burden her with more than she could take just then. “I think that the
messages
were from Maisie herself, and they were meant for you.”

Hannah looked bleakly at him. Then she rubbed her eyes. “You may be right, but . . . I'm sorry, I can't think about it anymore tonight.”

Sam got up and walked to the window, drawing the curtain aside a little. “The sky's cleared. It's a fine night.” He looked at his watch. “And it's almost one a.m. We may as well try and get some sleep.”

They both knew that sleeping on the upper floor was out of the question that night. Instead, Hannah fetched a spare blanket from the linen closet and they lay down on the sofa, foot to foot. Soon she heard Sam's quiet snoring.

But in spite of her exhaustion, Hannah couldn't sleep. She heard the clock strike two, then three. Sometime between four and five, a thin light began to creep around the edges of the drawn curtains, and not long after that the birds started singing. She lay there, listening to them, watching the light gradually change from pale to gold as the new day dawned.

At last she gave up, slid off the sofa, and padded to the window. Pulling the curtain aside a few inches, she looked out. The climbing sun had now turned the sky from gold to a soft, shimmering turquoise, and the leaves, still wet from last night's rain, shone like bright jewels. She opened the window and leaned out, breathing the cool, fresh air. She stayed there for a few minutes; then a faint sound made her turn her head. She listened. It was a very soft tapping noise. Puzzled, she closed the window, crossed the room, and went into the hall, but the tapping had stopped now. She opened the front door and looked out. Nobody was there.

And then she heard it again, a little louder this time. A gentle but insistent knocking, coming, she now realized, not from the front but from the back of the house.

She frowned. Had Mom forgotten to take a key with her, and was she back now, trying to get in?

Leaving the front door on the latch, Hannah opened the little gate at the side of the house and stepped through. The overgrown lawn, drenched by the storm, looked even more neglected now, but that wasn't what made Hannah blink suddenly in surprise. It was the bench. She had come around the side of the house now and could see it clearly. There was something lying on the wooden slats. Something white and rectangular. Drawing closer, she could see now that it was her sketch pad, with a pencil lying neatly beside it. She stared in astonishment. Why was it here? If it had been out all night, it would be ruined. Slowly she walked toward the bench. But when she reached it and picked up the sketch pad, she found that it was quite dry. It must have been put there since last night. But by whom? She was about to take it back inside when something made her turn toward the house.

Just below the steps, in front of the tall windows, stood a little girl in a long white dress with a frilled hem and a blue sash.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Drawing Out

B
UT THE BRIGHT, SMILING
confidence of that long-ago September day was all gone now. Instead, Maisie stood with her hands clasped in front of her and her head bent submissively, in the attitude of a penitent.

Later, looking back on that moment, Hannah could never quite explain to herself why she had felt no fear. It was as though, in the soft dawn of the midsummer morning, within the shadow of the old house, she knew instinctively that no harm could come to either of them. The story was nearly over. The wicked witches, the bad fairies, the evil stepmothers had vanished with the night, and now all that remained was for her was to provide a happy ending. So she sat down on the bench, picked up the sketchbook, and began to draw.

The lines flowed easily, just as they had once before, but this time it was as though the house, in providing the background, were giving its blessing to a child who had suffered so much and in turn caused suffering within its walls. The sketch took perhaps ten minutes, and when Hannah had finished, she knew that it was a true likeness, for the truth was told now, and would never need telling again. When she at last laid the book aside and looked up, Maisie wasn't there anymore.

If there had been any lingering doubt in her mind, it evaporated the moment she opened the front door of Cowleigh Lodge and stepped into the hall. The atmosphere hadn't changed so much as disappeared. Those walls had nothing to hide—the rooms held no dark secrets. It was simply a house, badly in need of repair.

There was just one more thing to do. Running lightly up the stairs, she pushed open the door of her bedroom, stepped inside, and forced herself to look once more at the deadly ash leaves. But now the pattern looked only forlorn, shabby, its terror faded in the early-morning light, like the memory of a bad dream. Looking away at last, she leafed through her sketchbook until she found the first drawing of Maisie—the one that had started it all. Skirting the chaos on the floor, she walked over to the dressing table, took the calendar page from the mirror, and holding it together with the drawing, tore them both into tiny shreds. Then she walked over to the window and scattered the pieces on the grass below. The rain and the wind would do the rest.

Down in the living room, Sam was still dead to the world and snoring lightly. For a moment she considered waking him to tell him what had happened, but then decided to wait. There was no hurry. Yawning, she lay down on the sofa, and just before falling asleep, she noticed that Toby was back on the hearth rug.

She woke just before eleven, to the smell of coffee and frying bacon and the sound of voices coming from the kitchen. Her mother must have returned and was chatting with Sam. For a few moments Hannah lay there drowsily, listening to them. Then she sat up. Surely she could hear more than just two people? There was someone else there with them. Someone whose voice was just as familiar but . . . it couldn't be. Could it? She got up, padded across the hall, and stuck her head through the kitchen doorway.

And there was her father, calmly seated at the kitchen table opposite Sam and her mother, sipping coffee just as if he'd never been away.

“Dad!”

Mr. Price hastily put down his cup just as a delighted Hannah hurled herself on him. He grinned and hugged her. “Hello, Sleeping Beauty. How are you?”

“How long have you been here?” she demanded. “Why are you back now? And why didn't you wake me sooner?”

“To answer in order,” he replied, smiling and gently pushing her into a chair, “we got back about an hour ago, the person I was standing in for recovered in time to take over the last week of the tour, and we didn't wake you because Sam said you'd had a bad night.”

“Did you know about this, Mom? Is that why you—”

“Certainly not!” protested her mother. “I'd only just left your aunt's house when I got a call to say that Dad was at the airport. He hadn't let us know beforehand, just in case the flight was delayed or canceled at the last minute. It was sheer chance that I happened to be near enough to pick him up.”

Hannah stopped asking questions and watched contentedly as her mother laid a plateful of eggs and bacon in front of her. She suddenly felt ravenous. As she tucked in, Dad started to tell them about his trip, interrupted from time to time by his wife asking if all American women really were beautifully dressed and groomed all the time and Sam wanting to know if it was true that the policemen invariably brandished guns and were prepared to shoot on sight. Both seemed disappointed to discover that the country wasn't all they'd been led to believe from the movies.

“And now,” said Dad, “perhaps you'd care to tell me what you and your mother have been doing to this house? I leave you on your own for a month and get back to a wreck!” His tone was joking, but there was genuine puzzlement in his eyes.

Hannah looked at Sam, who shrugged and turned to Mrs. Price. She smiled nervously and got up to refill the coffeepot.

Mr. Price noted the evasion, but he didn't pursue it just then. Instead he cleared his throat and said, “Oh, well, I don't suppose it matters much, because we'll only be here for a couple more days.”

“What?” Hannah paused in the act of helping herself to more eggs and bacon.

“I was telling your mother in the car. Apparently our house wasn't in quite such a dire state as that surveyor seemed to think. It didn't need underpinning—only reinforcing. The work was finished last week, and we can move back as soon as we like.”

“You mean we're going home?”

“Of course. What is there to keep us here?”

It wasn't meant to be a question, but the house, if not her father, seemed to require an answer. “Nothing,” she said softly. “Nothing at all.”

Sam looked at her. Then he laid down his knife and fork, glanced casually at his watch, and stood up. “I'd better be going. You'll have stuff to talk about.”

Hannah followed him to the hall, closing the kitchen door behind them. When they reached the front door, he paused. “It's all over, isn't it? Maisie . . . she's gone?”

Despite the upward inflection of his voice, this wasn't a question either, and Hannah knew it.

“Yes. She's gone.”

“Are you going to tell me how?”

“Remember you said that this all started because I'd drawn her into my life?”

He nodded.

“Well, this morning, I drew her out.”

She waited for him to ask more, but, oddly, he didn't. It was as if, on that magical morning, he, like her, understood that some things were better not explained but simply accepted, and that having accompanied her on her journey toward the truth, his part in the story had ended. The final pages had always been meant for her alone.

“See you, then.” He grinned and left.

Later that day, while Mom prepared a special celebratory evening meal in the kitchen, Hannah found herself alone with her father in the living room.

“D'you want to sit down for a moment?” Dad pointed to a chair, and Hannah noticed that he was holding what looked like a copy of their rental agreement.

She lowered herself anxiously onto the edge of the seat. “I suppose you're worried about all the damage. Will they make us pay for redecorating?”

Her father drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the arm of his chair, and Hannah began to think he hadn't heard her.

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“I said, will we have to pay for the damage to the house?”

“What? Oh. No. I shouldn't imagine so. Tell me . . .” His voice was casual. “Have you been okay here? No, um, problems?”

“Other than all this?” She waved a hand to indicate the sorry state of the house.

“Other than all that.”

Hannah decided to lie. Under the circumstances, it seemed not only the simplest but the kindest thing to do. “No problems,” she said, crossing her fingers and smiling brightly. “Why do you ask?”

He frowned. “Only that, from my point of view, there's something rather odd.”

“Oh? What?”

“Well, I found this place through an ad in the local paper, as you may remember.”

“Yes.”

“And you may also remember your mother saying that the rent seemed very low for a house in this neighborhood?”

“Yes.” Hannah began to feel uneasy. “Was there some mistake? Are we going to have to pay a lot more?”

“Not exactly. You see, when Mom called me to say she was worried about the way the house seemed to be deteriorating, I called the real estate agency.”

“And?”

“Not only did they not know who I was, they had absolutely no record of any agreement to rent this house at all. According to them, the place is uninhabitable owing to the state of the roof.”

Dad looked straight at her now, and Hannah felt a prickling sensation at the base of her spine. “But . . . you got the key, with that letter.” She pointed to the document on the arm of the chair. “If the agency didn't send them, then who did?”

“That's just what they'd like to know. It's odd, isn't it? If it didn't seem so utterly impossible, I'd almost have said that it wasn't so much that we found this house as that the house found
us
. What do you think?”

But Hannah was saved from having to say what she thought by the appearance of her mother, telling them that dinner was ready.

There was just one other unusual occurrence that day, and this was witnessed by the two Misses Pettifer, who, returning rather later than usual from an evening playing string quartets at the house of a friend, decided to take a shortcut across John's Field.

The fair was winding down now, but there were still one or two people about, and as they passed the bumper cars, the loud, brash music made them wince and quicken their step.

Then, suddenly, one of them stopped and stared. Two cars were hurtling wildly around the ring, their occupants shouting and hooting in glee.

“What is the matter, Dorothy?” asked her sister impatiently. “Do come along!”

Reluctantly Dorothy turned away and continued walking, but every so often she glanced back. “Did you see them, Hilda?”

“Who?”

“Those two people in the cars. A young boy with red hair, and a . . . a rather large man.” She giggled nervously. “Just for a moment, I could have sworn that the man was none other than our dear bishop!”

“Don't be absurd,” said Hilda sternly. “You know perfectly well you need new glasses.”

Nevertheless, when her sister wasn't looking, Hilda stole a quick glance at the brightly lit ring and blinked. Twice. “Impossible,” she muttered to herself, and shook her head. “It's these long evenings making the light play tricks.” Determinedly squaring her shoulders, she walked on.

In her opinion, it was a thoroughly odd time of year.