The Whispering House (5 page)

Chapter Eight

Green Leaves

“I
NEED TO TALK
to you,” she muttered urgently to Sam when he arrived in class that morning.

“Go on then.”

“Not now, later. Can we have lunch together?”

“Sure.” He looked puzzled. “Is something wrong?”

“Only in my head.” Her voice was grim, and he looked at her curiously but said no more.

When lunchtime came, they took their trays to the back of the cafeteria, where there was a table that most people avoided because it had wobbly legs and was in a draft from a side door, but where they had the advantage of being able to talk undisturbed.

“Well?” asked Sam after sitting down and winding spaghetti around his fork. “What's the problem?”

Hannah looked down at her own plate and pushed it away. “It's Maisie Holt,” she said quietly. “I think I'm having her dreams.”

Sam's fork drooped, allowing the spaghetti to slowly unwind and slither back to his plate. “What are you talking about?”

She sighed and took a deep breath. This wasn't going to be easy. “The dreams started about a week after we moved in. Then suddenly they stopped. That's why I didn't bother telling you before. Only on Friday night I had another one. And another last night.”

She glanced up, but Sam wasn't looking at her. He was winding another forkful. So she went on.

“I'm lying on my back in some kind of wood or forest, because there are green leaves everywhere. Ash leaves, with the sun shining on them. And somewhere there's a fire lit. I can't see it, but I can hear it. And there's somebody with me. It has this weird smile.”

“It?”

“What?”

“It. You said ‘it.' Why not ‘they'?”

“Because . . . because it looked exactly like that doll! Okay, okay, I know what you're going to say,” she went on defensively. “That I dreamed about it because we'd found the doll a couple of days before and it was probably still on my mind, but that doesn't explain how I came to dream about that face
before
we found it. I tried to tell myself it was just imagination, but the fact is I saw it, Sam. It was with me in the wood!”

Sam, having successfully negotiated the laden fork to his mouth, chewed thoughtfully for a few moments. Then he swallowed.

“Is that it?”

“No. Not quite. Last night, there was another person. They were walking toward me, holding a cup. But when I took the cup, I didn't drink from it. I just threw it away.”

“Was it a nightmare?” he asked after she seemed to have finished.

Hannah thought about it. “No,” she said, frowning. “At least, not at the time. It was only after I'd woken up that I was scared, like it had
been
a nightmare. Does that make sense?”

“Mmm. Kind of. What makes you think they're not your own dreams?”

“Because last night, after I'd woken up, I saw things in the room . . . old-fashioned things, which weren't there. Except they were there and they weren't old, they were quite new, and . . . they were familiar, as if . . .” She paused as her voice shook. “As if I was seeing them through somebody else's eyes!”

“How do you know you were awake when you saw them, and not still dreaming?”

“Because I'd already woken up. My eyes were open. I was still shaking!”

“Or maybe you only dreamed you'd woken up. Isn't that a bit more likely?”

She sighed and shook her head. “I don't know. Those things seemed so real. I could have touched them.” Then she remembered that when she'd tried to pick up the glass, her hand had simply knocked over the lamp. Perhaps Sam was right after all.

“There's something else.” She reached into a plastic bag on her lap and produced the book of fairy tales.

Sam put down his fork and took the book from her. He spent some minutes turning the pages. When he came to the illustrations, he looked searchingly at them. Then he gave the book back and picked up his fork.

“I suppose you're saying that this kid Maisie read these stories, or maybe had them read to her, at bedtime, with her doll beside her, and they gave her the same nightmares you're having now?”

“It's possible, isn't it?”

“And she would have looked at, or been shown, the pictures?”

“Of course.”

“Right, then. These leaves you see. The ash leaves. Could you draw them? Were they that clear?”

“I . . . I think so. Yes.”

Sam picked up a paper napkin from her tray, found a stub of pencil in his pocket, and put both on the table in front of her. “Here, try it.”

She closed her eyes for a few moments. Then she opened them and pulled the napkin toward her. The drawing took only a few seconds. She turned it around, and he stared at it hard before glancing through the book's illustrations, one by one.

“Nope,” he said at last, shaking his head. “I don't see anything here to connect your leaves with this book.”

“But look at the stories! You must have read them before. What do almost all of them have in common? A wood! And in that wood is something scary. Something that means harm to the child!”

“What are you afraid of, exactly? More dreams?”

Hannah looked bleakly at her untouched plate. “Yes.”

“You think the next thing that's going to appear is the big bad wolf? The wicked fairy?”

If it was an attempt to make her lighten up, it failed.

“It's not just the dreams.”

“What else?”

“The doll. It . . . I don't know, it feels
wrong
somehow.”

He grinned. “So would you feel if you'd had a load of pins stuck in you.”

“But Maisie
died
, Sam,” persisted Hannah. “She died a few months after getting that book.”

Sam swallowed his last mouthful and laid the fork carefully on the plate. He looked up. “Okay, I give in. What you need to do now is try to find out
how
she died. You never know—there could be someone who knows something about the history of that house. But right now, I think you should eat some lunch.”

Chapter Nine

Lucky Break

I
T WAS ALL VERY
well for Sam to airily issue advice, thought Hannah, but how exactly was she going to find out anything about the death of a child after so much time had gone by? Unless that death had been suspicious, there would be no newspaper reports to look back on, and in any case, with exams approaching she couldn't afford to go investigating anything that didn't have to do with schoolwork.

Besides, over the next week the weather improved. The days were sunnier, the nights lost their close heaviness, and she slept well. For the time being, at least, there was no recurrence of the dreams.

And then, one evening toward the end of the following week, something rather unexpected happened.

She had gone to the local grocery store to buy lettuce to go with dinner and had just put it down on the counter when the woman serving looked at her curiously.

“Are you the one who's moved into Cowleigh Lodge?”

“That's right.”

“Everything okay, is it?” The woman rang up the lettuce on the register.

“Fine, thanks.”

“Staying long?”

“Just for a few months, probably.”

The woman raised her eyebrows. “That'll be a first, then.”

“A first? How d'you mean?” Hannah looked puzzled.

“First time I've known anyone to stay beyond the end of June. Long as I've been here, that place has lain empty through July and August. Then new folk move in around September.”

“D'you know why?”

“Roof's in a bad state, could be one reason.” The woman stuffed the lettuce into a paper bag and held out her hand. “People always seem to move out after a spell of wet weather. They should get it fixed. Sixty pence, please.”

Hannah handed over the money. Then an idea occurred to her. She glanced behind her to check there wasn't a queue, but there was only an old man propped against the counter reading a newspaper. She turned back. “I don't suppose you know anything . . . anything about the history of that house, do you?”

“History?” The woman looked baffled. “It's Victorian, if that's what you mean. Same as all the other houses in that road.”

“Yes. Yes, of course. Well, thanks anyway.” Hannah picked up the lettuce and was about to leave when the old man leaning against the counter looked up from his newspaper.

“You could try asking Eileen Grocott,” he said.

“What, old Mrs. Grocott down in Laurel Drive?” The woman leaned over the counter to straighten some newspapers. “What'll she know about it, Jim?”

“Her grandmother used to work up at Cowleigh Lodge. Way back.”

“How far back?” Hannah felt a little stab of excitement.

“Well . . .” The old man sucked his teeth thoughtfully. “Eileen must be close on a hundred now, I'd think, but her gran was just a young girl when she was in service up there. . . .” He shook his head. “You work it out.”

Hannah was bad at math, but even she could calculate that if the old lady had been born in, say, 1915, her grandmother might have been born around fifty years earlier, which could well have made her a young girl at roughly the time Maisie had died. “D'you think I could go and see her?” she asked. “Would she talk to me?”

The old man shrugged. “You could try. Number three, Laurel Drive. Down by the gas station. Lives with her daughter. Mrs. Wilson's her name, but she's a widow now, so it's just the two of them there.”

Hannah thanked him and left the shop. Walking home, she could hardly believe her luck. Sam had said she should find out about the history of the house, and the opportunity had fallen into her lap! Now that the dreams seemed to be a thing of the past, the thought of finding out more about Maisie Holt didn't feel frightening anymore, just intriguing. Today was Thursday. If she went to the house on Saturday morning, with luck someone would be in.

It was much later that evening when it struck her that something the shop woman had said didn't seem to quite add up. If the problem with Cowleigh Lodge was just a leaking roof, why would that be worse in June than at any other time of year? Then she dismissed it. It was odd, certainly, but probably not important.

Chapter Ten

Mrs. Grocott

A
T THREE O'CLOCK ON
Friday afternoon, the school entrance hall was full of people planning things to do together on the weekend. Most people, anyway. Hannah noticed that Bruce Myers was standing by himself near the front door. She was gathering the courage to go and speak to him when Sam came careering down the corridor, expertly dribbling a piece of balled-up paper like a soccer ball. It landed neatly at Hannah's feet and he grinned at her. “What are you doing this weekend?”

“Well, tomorrow morning I'm going to visit someone who might be able to fill me in on what happened to Maisie Holt.”

“Cool! Can I come?”

Hannah bit her lip. “It might be better if you didn't.” Introducing Sam unexpectedly to what must by now be a very frail old lady didn't seem like a good idea. The shock might kill her. “Tell you what, though,” she said, seeing the disappointed expression on his face. “Why don't you come over to my house after lunch? Then I can tell you what I've found out.”

“Okay.” He seemed satisfied with the compromise, and they parted at the school gates.

By the time she woke up on Saturday morning, Hannah felt a lot less confident about the approaching visit. For all she knew, Mrs. Grocott could be bed-ridden or suffering from dementia by now, and even if she wasn't, how would her daughter react to a complete stranger knocking on her door and demanding information?

But now that the opportunity was there, she couldn't simply ignore it, so after breakfast she set off through the village until she came to the gas station on the main road. Laurel Drive was a small street just beyond it, lined with about a dozen modern bungalows. When Hannah got to number three, she stood on the doorstep for a moment or so, nervously rehearsing what she was going to say. Then she rang the bell.

A tall, bony woman with tightly waved gray hair and glasses with dark red frames opened the door. She wore brown slacks, a fawn cardigan, and a pair of bedroom slippers.

“Mrs. Wilson?”

“Yes?”

“I'm Hannah Price. My family has rented Cowleigh Lodge for a few months, and I was told that there was a Mrs. Grocott living here who might be able to tell me something about the history of the house.”

“That's Mother,” said the woman, her face brightening now that she realized Hannah wasn't trying to sell her anything. “Her gran used to be a nursery maid up at Cowleigh Lodge.”

“Is she in?”

“Mother, you mean? Oh, she's in, all right. Doesn't go out much now. Was it something in particular you wanted to know about the house?”

“Not really,” said Hannah, trying to sound casual. “I just thought it would be fun to find out something about the people who'd lived there.”

“Oh, well, you may be lucky. She can't always recall what she's had for breakfast, but she can often tell you all sorts of things that happened eighty years back! Come in, anyhow. My name's Pat, by the way.”

Hannah followed her into a small, cluttered living room that seemed to be all curtains and cushions and rugs. A sofa and two armchairs were arranged in front of an electric heater, and in one of the armchairs sat a very old lady, covered in so many shawls and blankets that she looked like part of the upholstery. Her eyes were closed and her breathing came in short rasps.

“Mother!” Pat Wilson put a hand on her shoulder and shook it gently.

The old woman's eyes opened, but they looked cloudy and unfocused. It was hard to tell how much she could see.

“There's a young lady to see you. She wants to know about Cowleigh Lodge.”

Mrs. Grocott's jaw worked up and down rhythmically, as if she were chewing something. “Have I had my dinner?” she asked.

“It's not dinnertime yet; you've only just had your breakfast,” replied her daughter patiently. She turned to Hannah. “We get this all the time. Doesn't necessarily mean you won't get anything else, if you're prepared to wait. Sometimes it's just a question of saying the right word—something that jogs her memory.” She leaned forward and raised her voice slightly.

“Cowleigh Lodge, Mother! Where your gran was nursery maid. She talked to you about what went on up there, didn't she?”

“Yes,” said the old lady unexpectedly. Then she looked away. Apparently that was all they were going to get. Meanwhile, Mrs. Wilson drew up a chair for Hannah so that she could sit closer. Hannah thanked her, sat down, and leaned forward. “Mrs. Grocott, did she say anything about the family who lived there? Their name was Holt.”

Mrs. Grocott turned her head and seemed to notice Hannah for the first time. “Do I know you?”

Hannah shook her head. “I've just moved here. I'm living at Cowleigh Lodge.” She began to feel they were going around in circles. Somehow she needed to find the right words. On an impulse, she took the old lady's hand. “A little girl lived there. Her name was Maisie. Maisie Holt.”

Whether it was the pressure of her hand or the name, or a combination of both, she couldn't tell, but suddenly Mrs. Grocott's eyes opened wider, and a shrewd intelligence could be seen lurking behind the cloudy film.

“She died, poor child.”

“Do you know how she died?” Hannah felt a sudden twinge of excitement.

“She was ill,” replied the old lady, as if this were explanation enough.

“What was wrong with her?”

“My mouth's dry,” she complained, turning toward her daughter.

“I'll get you a cup of tea. I expect you'd like one too, wouldn't you, dear?”

“Thank you.” Hannah didn't want tea, but it seemed a good way of keeping the conversation going long enough to get as much information as she could.

“What was wrong with Maisie?” she repeated.

Mrs. Grocott was quiet for a few seconds, and then a word shot out of her mouth like a pellet.

“Stomach.”

“Stomach?”

“Terrible cramps she had. And vomiting. Poor little mite.”

Hannah raised her eyebrows. So maybe Sam had been right about appendicitis after all. That would fit.

Then a thought occurred to her. “Your grandmother was a nursery maid. Does that mean she nursed Maisie when she was ill?”

Mrs. Grocott's mouth pursed in a frown. “Nursery maid was more like maid than nurse. Besides, she wasn't much more than a child herself. Changing linen was her job. That, and fetching fresh water for washing the little girl. Up and down those stairs day and night, she was. There was no bathroom then, see? Water had to be brought in a pitcher and poured into a basin. Besides, there was that other one.”

“Which other one?”

But now her wrinkled eyelids were drooping. That last speech seemed to have worn the old lady out.

Mrs. Wilson appeared with a tray and three teacups. She glanced at her mother, then put the tray down.

“We'll just leave her for five minutes,” she said. “Then I'll wake her. She dozes all the time. You may still be lucky.”

But the sound of the teacups had already woken Mrs. Grocott. She opened her eyes, sat up in the chair, and took the cup from her daughter. It rattled alarmingly in the saucer as her hands shook, but she managed to raise it to her lips and drank noisily. When she put the cup down, her eyes were focused once more.

Hannah waited a few seconds, then asked the question again. “You said there was someone else. Someone else who nursed Maisie when she was ill?”

“Well, of course! There was Miss Holt, wasn't there?” Mrs. Grocott's voice sounded stronger now, even slightly indignant, as though Hannah hadn't been paying attention. The tea seemed to have revived her and sharpened her brain.

“Do you mean Mrs. Holt?” asked Hannah. “Maisie's mother?”

“
Miss
Holt,” repeated the old lady severely. “Captain Holt's sister. She lived with them as a kind of governess to Maisie, on account of never having got married herself. And not surprising, Gran used to say. She was a difficult woman.”

“How was she difficult?” asked Hannah, sensing something interesting here.

“Always finding fault. Interfering with the way the house was run. Not that it was her place to say.” Mrs. Grocott sniffed disapprovingly. “When Maisie got ill, she insisted on taking over the nursing of her. Even prepared her meals for her. Cook was so put out about it, she near gave notice, I'm told!
And
Miss Holt wanted to move the child in with her—I believe she got her way over that right at the end.”

“You mean Maisie didn't die in the little room at the back of the house?”

“No. She died in Miss Holt's room. That was when all the talk started.”

At first Hannah was so relieved to find that Maisie hadn't died in the room she herself slept in that she didn't take in the second part of this. Then it dawned on her that Mrs. Grocott had just said something significant.

“What talk?”

“Talk among the other servants. They didn't like Miss Holt.”

“But Miss Holt wasn't a servant. She was Maisie's aunt.”

“She acted as governess. Taught the child her lessons and that. She was a clever woman, I believe, but those who had no husbands and no money were second-class citizens in those days—not like now. Whatever she thought of herself, the servants knew she was one of them. Besides, she was Captain Holt's sister, not his wife's, and the two of them never got along.”

Hannah felt a moment's pity for Miss Holt, who seemed to have been liked by no one.

“What was all the talk about? After Maisie died?”

But the eyes had begun to cloud over again. The jaw hung loose, and Hannah watched helplessly as the old lady seemed to slip away into a light doze.

She heard the door click and looked up to see Mrs. Wilson coming in. Hannah hadn't even noticed her leaving the room, but now she reappeared, holding something.

“I knew I'd find it if I looked hard enough.” After shifting the teacups to one side and wiping a space with a tissue, she laid a brownish photograph on the table. It was mounted on stiff card and showed a group of six people posed on some steps at the back of what was still recognizable as Cowleigh Lodge. All were female—two were seated, wearing long skirts and light-colored blouses with high necks and full sleeves, and four were standing. Two of these wore black dresses with white aprons; a third had a lighter-colored dress with an apron but no cap.

But it was the sixth person who immediately caught Hannah's attention. This was a slender little girl of about nine or ten, in a knee-length white dress with a deep-frilled hem and broad sash. A cloud of dark hair fell loose to her shoulders, drawn back from a high forehead above widely spaced, intelligent eyes. Her nose was small and straight and her mouth full, the gently curving lips slightly parted—and cradled in her arms was a doll. A doll with fair curly hair.

“That's Maisie, isn't it?” Hannah's voice was excited. “And this must be the doll we found in the attic! It's got dark hair now, but this blond stuff's still underneath.”

Mrs. Wilson raised her eyebrows. “You don't say! Still there after all that time? Well, well . . . who'd have thought it? Anyhow, you're right, this is Maisie, of course. Pretty little thing, wasn't she? And a little angel, by all accounts. Mind you, people always say that about a child that's died, don't they?”

“Angel,” muttered a voice from the armchair.

“You with us again, Mother?” Pat Wilson smiled encouragingly. “I was just saying that Maisie was a good little girl, wasn't she?”

There was no reply. Her daughter turned back to the photograph. “And this one here”—she pointed to one of the standing figures wearing a cap—“is my great-grandmother.”

Her voice had a note of pride, and Hannah dutifully dragged her gaze away from Maisie to the young girl, about fourteen or so, who stood with her feet together and her hands folded demurely in front of her. She regarded the camera with a wary expression, as though at any minute she expected it to explode.

“Then this would have been the housemaid,” continued Mrs. Wilson, pointing to the other capped girl, “and this one here was the cook. She's not wearing a cap, to show she's senior to the maids.”

Hannah frowned. “It seems like a lot of servants for quite a small house. It's hardly big enough for me and my parents!”

“Don't forget you've got a bathroom now. That would have been a bedroom in those days. And there's an attic, isn't there? That's where my great-grandmother slept, with the housemaid here. People didn't have so many possessions in those days, and they expected to sleep two to a room, often.”

Hannah thought of the grimy, cobweb-filled loft and tried to imagine it as a neat, plainly furnished bedroom shared by two young girls not much older than herself, perhaps. Would they have whispered and giggled as they lay in bed, gossiping about what went on in the rest of the house?

She stared at the photograph, and for the first time properly noticed the two seated figures. “Is one of these Maisie's mother?'

“That's her.” Mrs. Wilson pointed to a pretty, dark-haired woman who, unlike the others, wasn't looking at the camera at all. She seemed abstracted, as if the photographer had caught her when she wasn't ready and was thinking about something else.

“Angela,” said Mrs. Grocott unexpectedly.

“What's that, Mother? Mrs. Holt's name wasn't Angela.” She shook her head. “Getting confused now. Not surprising.”

“She looks just like Maisie,” said Hannah. “Mrs. Holt, I mean.”

Pat Wilson frowned and seemed about to say something, but then appeared to change her mind. She pointed to the second figure. “And this one's Miss Holt.”

“Maisie's aunt?”

“That's right. No oil painting, was she? No wonder she never found a husband!”

Miss Holt had a narrow, pinched face, thick black eyebrows, a long, pointed nose, and a jutting chin. In between, her mouth had an expression of angry disapproval. It was hard to see how this woman could possibly have been the aunt of that pretty child, but quite easy to see why she might have been unpopular.