Whispers in the Dark (20 page)

She had gone on down through the woods, along a little track that led, I knew, to the folly. I dared not hurry for fear of making too much noise, but I thought that if I stuck to the path, I was bound to stumble on her. And by now I was convinced that the folly itself was her destination.

In fact, I was mistaken. Between a clump of trees some five hundred yards before the building, I caught a glimmer of light. Approaching it, I saw Antonia in a small clearing, quite visible on account of the whiteness of her dress. I crept around the side of the clearing until I came to a tall holly bush, and from this vantage point I began to watch her.

She was kneeling on the ground, her head bent, weeping softly. Just in front of her lay a moss-covered mound that seemed unpleasantly similar in size and shape to the unmarked graves I had seen near James Ayrton’s tomb that afternoon. I knew it could not be her daughter Caroline’s grave, for I had seen that, clearly marked, in the little churchyard. But as I watched her a suspicion lodged itself in my mind, a suspicion that by degrees grew to near certainty. She had brought a bunch of winter flowers with her and was arranging them at the head of the grave, and I thought I heard her murmur more than once the name Simon: her fiance’s name, which she had let slip inadvertently. He had not gone abroad after all, but had died and been buried here in a secret grave at Barras Hall. Died or . . . I dared not formulate the thought that now entered my head.

She remained by the grave, intermittently weeping and conversing in whispers with her dead lover—if that was, indeed, who lay buried there. At last, with a great sigh that might have torn my heart had it not been for my own fears, she raised herself from the ground and set off back to the house. I waited until I was sure she was indoors, then retraced my steps through the moonlight. I did not cross the lawn, but skirted the garden with my heart in my mouth.

I kept to my bed the following morning, saying I had a cold. Antonia visited me after lunch. She was wearing outdoor clothes and showed no signs of the intense emotion she had suffered the night before.

“You don’t seem too bad,” she said. “You’ll be down to dinner, I hope. Anthony and I are off to Morpeth this afternoon. I mean to get some things in for your birthday. It will be a small affair with just a few friends, but I mean it to be a happy day for you.”

Shortly afterward, I saw Hutton getting the carriage horse from the stable. Slipping from my room, I made my way to the front of the house, where I could look out on the main driveway. A few minutes later Hutton appeared, leading the horse, which had been harnessed to a victoria. Anthony and Antonia emerged from the front door and seated themselves in the carriage. I watched them drive quickly away and disappear around a bend in the drive.

I was almost alone. Hepple spent most of her time between lunch and supper cleaning and scrubbing in the scullery. Mrs. Johnson, I knew, often took the chance most days of having a little sleep once the lunch things had been cleared away. Today was unlikely to be an exception. I waited in the corridor near her room until I heard her come upstairs and go inside. For the next few hours I would have the run of the house.

My object was to carry out a thorough search of Anthony’s study, for I suspected that there must be papers that would answer some of the questions now perplexing me. Provided he and Antonia did not return unexpectedly, I was confident of getting away with my snooping unobserved. My only misgiving lay in the fact that the study windows overlooked not the front but the rear of the house. I had some time, but it would not be wise to linger.

The study door was unlocked. I closed it behind me and stepped briskly across to the window. With the curtains drawn back halfway, I had enough light to carry out my search. The walls were lined with tall mahogany bookcases Filled with leather-bound volumes, the majority of which appeared, on First inspection, to be legal works. A deep armchair had been drawn close to the fireplace, and beside it was a low table on which various newspapers and popular magazines lay scattered.

My interest was immediately drawn, however, by a large secretaire against the wall opposite the fireplace. The lid had been closed, and when I tried to pull it open, it turned out to be locked. I had expected as much and had come prepared. My workhouse education stood me in good stead for once. One of my friends there, a girl called Mary Pearce, had shown me how to pick a lock— something she had learned from her father. More than once we had gone together on expeditions to the kitchens late at night, gaining entry through a locked door and then picking the lock on one of the pantries. We never took enough to draw attention to our pilfering, but the extra rations had helped us both through some very hard times. Now I meant to put my skills to more serious use.

The lock on the desk was not particularly difficult. I used a bent hairpin as a skeleton key, and it took me only five or six attempts to get the lid open. Inside, I found a jumble of papers and a row of small drawers and pigeonholes. Systematically I began to go through these, taking the papers out and reading through them in strict order so I could replace them afterward without betraying that they had been disturbed.

One drawer contained nothing but bills. My cousin, it appeared, did business quite widely, for there were invoices here for goods from as far away as London and Brighton. They were mostly for small amounts, representing accounts for household items or equipment used on the estate. A few were for much larger sums, for coal or raw materials or transportation, relating, it seemed, to business transactions carried out at a number of localities and suggesting a range of commercial activities the nature of which I could only guess at.

In the pigeonholes I found yet more bills, various items of stationery, and assorted handbills advertising a wide variety of goods and services, many of them dating back twenty years or more. A second drawer held receipts. In a third I found bundles of letters, arranged more or less in alphabetical order.

I knew there would not possibly be time for me to read through these in full, but I went through them one at a time, taking mental note of the names of Anthony’s correspondents and where they lived. Most of them were business letters, the contents of which appeared technical. There was a little pile of letters sent by their mother, from her house in Morpeth, and a bundle addressed to their father.

At the very bottom, quite apart from all of these, I found a single letter, still in its envelope, addressed to both Anthony and Antonia. Something about the writing seemed familiar. I opened it. It was about a page in length, written in a careful hand on fine paper with an embossed letterhead. The address was that of my old home in Gosforth. The signature at the bottom was my mother’s. This was the letter she had written to my cousins after my father’s death. The letter which Antonia had denied ever receiving, whose loss she had regretted with tears in her eyes. Of which Anthony had said it was a tragedy that it had not reached them, for if it had, our lives might have been different.

My hand shook as I replaced my mother’s letter and closed the drawer. I wanted to shout and scream and call them liars to their faces. I wanted to go into a corner by myself and weep over their betrayal. But I did neither. I just continued searching, knowing that somewhere in here I would find more answers.

There were more letters in the next drawer. Among them was a bundle in identical blue envelopes, all unopened, with their stamps unfranked. I did not have to open them to guess their identity: these were the letters I had written to Annie and my other friends. At first I could not understand Anthony’s motive in withholding them like this. How could it possibly benefit him not to post them? It was unlikely that they would suddenly receive a flood of unwelcome visitors as a result. And then, with a stab of fear, I thought I understood after all: if no one had heard from me, no one would know I was at Barras Hall. I might as well be dead, for all anyone outside knew.

In the same drawer I came across a letter in a cheap envelope, bearing a Chester-le-Street postmark, and dated about three weeks earlier. It had been addressed to me:
Miss Charlotte, at the house of Mr. and Mrs. Ayrton, Esq., near byKirkwhelpington, Northumberland
. I opened it and drew out a sheet of rough writing paper on both sides of which Annie had written, describing events at the Lincotts’ following my disappearance, and telling me that a new girl had been found a day or two later. She looked forward to receiving news of me. And she hoped I had found Arthur and great happiness. Even this simple letter from an old friend had been kept out of my hands.

Alongside it I discovered Endicott’s letters to Anthony, the ones he had read to me at the dinner table when recounting their mutual efforts to track down my brother. As I glanced through them I felt a little comforted by their reassurances and by the optimism they expressed that Arthur might soon be found. Perhaps, I thought, they might still find him in time for my birthday. What a present that would be!

Thinking to the future and the possibility that I might yet have to leave Barras Hall, I took a couple of the letters. I had no clear plan, but I rather thought they would serve as a sort of introduction for me to Endicott himself. The first one bore his London address, the later one just the heading “Newcastle” alongside the date.

I glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was still only about half past two: there would be enough light to read by for a little while yet, and I was sure I would be done before a lamp grew necessary. I continued searching through the desk, knowing I might not Find another opportunity like this.

A large drawer on the bottom contained a small chest of polished wood chased with brass. It was a moment’s work to pick the lock. Inside were bundles of legal papers tied together with pink ribbon. I undid them carefully and read through them, Finding nothing I could make much sense of until I came to a thick roll of what appeared to be shares in various companies. They meant very little to me, of course, for I had no proper conception of what stocks and shares involved. But the names of several of the companies did mean something.

Here were large quantities of holdings in the United Alkali Company, the firm which had forced all its Tyneside rivals, my father’s company included, to close. Next to these were papers showing that Anthony had held stock in Tennant’s, Allhuser’s, and in large quantities, Newcastle Alkali and Chemical, my father’s firm. There were also documents showing stock holdings in the Tyne Electrical Company, my father’s short-lived attempt to rescue his fortunes.

After my father’s death, my mother had spoken a great deal about stocks and shares, but everything she said had gone over my head. Even now I could extract no meaning from any of the papers in my cousin’s desk. But it seemed a great coincidence that they should be here at all. And I wondered how it was that Anthony, if he had been so closely connected at one time to my father’s business enterprises, should have expressed his ignorance of his bankruptcy and death.

Before I left the study, I made two other discoveries that, after their fashion, set all the others at nothing. These, if you like, were my only accidental discoveries, though even now I rather like to think my hand was guided. As I was closing the lid of the desk I noticed that beneath it, the Ayrton arms had been carved, the shield held, as on James Ayrton’s tomb, by the figures of two hooded men. In my curiosity, I touched the figures, first one, then the other. As I did so I noticed that they seemed not to be quite firm. Returning my hands to them together, I pulled on them as though testing their solidity, and as I did so I observed a small panel open in the bottom of the desk.

I reached inside and drew out a folder bound with ribbon. The light was fading now, and I knew I should be gone, but the very secrecy with which it was invested made the folder irresistibly interesting to me. I carried it to the low table on which Anthony had strewn his newspapers and untied the ribbon.

Inside were dozens of newspaper cuttings, many of them yellow with age. Someone had written on them the name of the paper and the date of the issue from which they had been extracted. They came mainly from journals of local origin: the
Berwick Journal
and
North Northumbrian News
, the
Alnwick and County Gazette
, the
Hexham Courant
, the
Tyne Mercury
, and others. As I read them it was as though the frost now gathering on the grass and stones outside had entered me instead. It was then, I think, that a true consciousness of my situation was wakened in me and I became aware of the horror of my position.

One after another, the pieces in my hand—short, and expressed in the stilted language of the provincial journalist of the last century—chronicled a series of unconnected yet almost identical events. The disappearance over a period of ninety or more years of children and adolescents from farms or villages in a wide radius around Barras Hall. These were for the most part poor children, and little was reported beyond the fact that they had gone missing and that the proper authorities had been involved. From time to time there would be speculation as to their whereabouts. And in a number of cases, children from wealthier families would disappear, leading to more exhaustive and prolonged inquiries.

But—unless the cuttings assembled in that file were unusually selective—it seemed that in no instance was the errant child ever brought home or a body discovered. It was as though they had all disappeared into thin air.

Reaching inside the opening a second time, I drew out a small notebook, very old, bound in stiff leather that had rotted in places. Inside, I found scribbled notes in an old-fashioned hand. The name on the flyleaf was James Ayrton.

At that moment there was a sound of wheels on gravel. I rammed the cuttings back into the file and the file into its hiding place, sliding the panel back firmly. The little journal I slipped into my dress. By the time my cousins entered, I was well on my way back to my room. It was rapidly growing dark outside. But the true darkness was within me now.