Whispers in the Dark (24 page)

“No. . .” I began, but she had already gone. She was back half a minute later with Ted in tow. He was the hall porter, a tall man in his fifties with an enormous ginger-colored mustache. Smiling, he bent down to me.

“Well, miss, I understand you’re determined to go visiting tonight.”

I nodded.

"Who is it you have to see?”

I hesitated.

“M-Mrs. Manners,” I stammered. "She lives in . . .” He straightened, the smile slipping from his face. “I know well enough, miss.” He looked around at the manageress, who had come back out with him. They exchanged glances, then she turned to me.

“What business can you have with her, miss?” “She’s . . . my aunt,” I lied. “I promised my mother I’d visit her when I got here.”

She looked hard at me, then back at Ted.

“Well, there’s no help for it, then, if she’s the lass’s aunt. See she finds her way there safely, Ted. And be sure to set a time to fetch her safe back again.”

Outside, it was bitterly cold. The pavements were treacherous, and Ted took me by the arm, helping me through the half-frozen snow. Our breath got tangled in the occasional light of the gas lamps on the main street, disappearing a moment afterward in the dark. The wind was as hard and cutting as ever.

"She’s not really your aunt, is she, miss?” he asked me as we turned a corner out of the wind.

“How . . . ?”

“You’re not a natural liar, miss, if you don’t mind my saying so. And I’ve heard it said that Mrs. Manners has no living relatives. Not that that would matter to her, I suppose.”

I stared ahead and kept walking.

“Is it someone close to you?”

“Someone?”

“That you want to speak to. They say she speaks with the dead.”

There was a long silence between us, and only the snow falling.

“My brother,” I said. "My brother Arthur.”

“I see. Has he been dead long?”

“I. . . I don’t know,” I mumbled. "It’s what I need to find out. Perhaps he isn’t dead at all. I don’t know.”

We had turned another corner. Picked out by a street lamp, the name of the street we had entered was visible: Copper Chase. The snow and the silence, and Ted the only living creature anywhere within sight or hearing.

“Number nine, miss. Part of St. James’s Terrace.” It was a shabby-respectable street of two-story houses along one side. On the other, the dark shape of St. James’s Church rose into the night like a cliff, hard against the winter sky.

“You know the house?”

“Most Morpeth knows the house, miss. And most stays well away. It doesn’t do to meddle with the dead.”

"I shan’t be meddling.”

He hesitated, glancing around at me.

“No,” he said. “I don’t suppose you will.”

We stopped outside a house that seemed a little better kept than the rest.

“This is it,” said Ted. “I’ll leave you here and make my way back. Do you think you’ll be finished by nine o’clock?”

Finished? It was as though I was visiting the dentist’s or the dressmaker’s. What I meant to begin that night would never be finished.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m sure nine o’clock will be fine.”

He touched his cap and made to leave, then, turning back, eyed me narrowly in the little light that came from a lamp on the other side of the street.

“Be sure to wait for me, miss, whatever happens. I wouldn’t want you to have to walk back to the hotel in the dark.”

Touching his cap a second time, he set off the way we had come, his footsteps deadened by the crisp snow. I saw his dark figure pass the first streetlight, then he turned the corner and I was alone.

There was a light above the door. I stood for a long time, hesitating in spite of the cold and my fear of the darkness around me. Finally I plucked up the courage to reach for the bellpull.

A bell jangled in the distance, at the end of a long passage, it seemed. Minutes passed. Behind me the wind sounded, plaintive and restless. I shivered and pulled my collar about my neck. There was a sound of footsteps and the door opened to reveal a middle-aged woman in a maid’s uniform.

“Yes, miss? Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for . . . Mrs. Manners. Is this her house?”

“Yes, miss. But I’m afraid Mrs. Manners is not seeing anyone tonight. Are you interested in a communication?”

“Comm—no, I . . . That is, I need to see her urgently.”

“Come back tomorrow, miss. There’s a gathering at eight o’clock. You’ll be most welcome. But not tonight.”

“It’s essential I see her. Tell her . . .” I thought desperately of what to say, of how to get past this obstacle. “Tell her a friend of Caroline Ayrton’s is here. That I need to see her tonight. That I am in very grave trouble.”

The maid seemed to hesitate.

“Wait here, miss. What name did you say again?”

“Caroline Ayrton. Say I am a friend of Miss Ayrton’s.”

She closed the door. Time passed, and I began to fear that I was truly unwelcome and that Mrs. Manners had told the maid to leave me on the doorstep until the cold drove me away. But the door finally opened again and I was ushered into the hall.

I had been expecting something fairly dramatic, though I cannot remember exactly what—thick velvet curtains, marble statuettes, paintings of Oriental deities. perhaps. But the hall was quite plain, an ordinary hallway in an ordinary English house. It was brightly lit and quite airy.

The maid led me into a parlor on the left. A woman was waiting for me in an armchair to the left of the fire. She stood as I came in.

“Mrs. Manners, this is the young lady who asked to see you.”

"Very good, Florence. You can go back to the kitchen. If I need you again, I’ll ring.”

She returned her attention to me.

“Please,” she said, “take a seat.”

I noticed that she had not asked me to remove my coat. She was an even greater surprise than her house had been. A small woman in her early fifties, I guessed, petite, soberly dressed without being drab, her hair fixed in quite a modern style. She must have caught me staring.

“Not what you expected?”

"I . . .” I shook my head, reddening.

“I’m not what most people expect.”

She sat down facing me and remained with her eyes fixed on my face for a minute or more.

“I know no one called Caroline Ayrton,” she said at last.

“I think . . .” I hesitated.

“Yes?”

“I think you may have known her mother, Antonia Ayrton.”

There was a brief silence.

“I rather thought you might say something like that. Antonia Ayrton. Yes, I know her. But I have not seen her in a good many years.”

“Caroline was her daughter.”

“Yes. So you said. You say you were a friend of this Caroline.”

"I am Antonia’s cousin,” I said. “I have come today from Barras Hall.”

She frowned. I saw her take a sharp breath. When she spoke, her voice had altered.

“I see. You live there?”

“Not any longer. But I have been there for about two months.”

“Yes. I begin to understand why you have come to me. Well, I think you have told me enough. Please don’t think me rude, but I must ask you to leave. There is nothing I can do for you. I'm sorry, but that is the truth.”

“Please, I can’t leave. You haven’t let me tell you why I’ve come. You’re the only person who can help me. My brother is dead. I believe he was murdered. You have to help me speak with him.”

“No!” Her voice was suddenly high-pitched. She took several breaths quickly and seemed to grow calm. “I’m sorry. But that would not be . . . advisable.”

“You’re frightened,” I said. “What is it? What are you frightened of?”

“Of you,” she said. She hesitated. “Of the Ayrtons. Of Barras Hall. I will have nothing to do with that family. Or that place.”

“Then you know something about what goes on there.”

“You really should go.”

“I can’t go,” I said. “I have no one else to turn to.”

“Miss Ayrton . . .”

“My name is Metcalf. Charlotte Metcalf.”

“Very well, Miss Metcalf. You must try to understand. I am a very ordinary woman with . . . curious gifts. I did not set myself up here as a medium by choice. When my late husband died, I was barely thirty years of age. I was stricken by grief, for we had only been married a few years and I loved him very much. I . . . attempted to speak with him. And he answered me. After that, I began to find myself. .. open to certain impressions. I am not wealthy, but I have a private income from my husband’s estate. For over twenty years now I have opened my house for visits from the bereaved. I take no payment, I benefit in no material fashion from my work.

“Very ordinary people come to me. There is a seance once a week, on two other evenings I am available for private callers, and from time to time I see people by special appointment. They come from quite far away: Newcastle, Gateshead, even Sunderland. There are many from Berwick and the border country.

“What I deal with here is ordinary death. The spirits who come to this house are benign. They leave no startling messages, just words of comfort for those whom they have left behind. Do you understand me? This is no place for the disturbed. Whatever you have seen or heard at Barras Hall, I wish to make it no business of mine.”

“They killed my brother,” I said. “I am certain they killed Caroline. And before her, others, many others. And I know they mean to do away with me.”

I was at that moment quite truly at my wit’s end. My nerves, already ragged, seemed to snap. Everything crowded in on me at once, and I burst into tears, dark, stinging tears of hopelessness.

The next thing I remember was Mrs. Manners cradling me in her arms, hushing me, telling me to calm myself. I think she had witnessed her share of tears in that little parlor. By weeping, I had suddenly become part of her normal world, and she was able to respond to me as to any of her visitors.

When I had calmed down a little, she brought me a glass of brandy and made me take a sip.

“I think you’d better tell me a little more about yourself,” she said.

“You’ll help me?”

She frowned.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

The room in which the seances were held was at the rear of the house. Mrs. Manners led me there. She seemed a little nervous, as though uncertain of what she might be tampering with. I think she knew a great deal about Barras Hall, much more than I myself had guessed. Antonia must have given a lot away, either in conversation or indirectly in the course of the mediumistic sessions they had had together. And if there was ever talk about ghosts in Morpeth or the surrounding district, it was certain to find its way to the ears of Mrs. Manners.

She told her woman to see that we were not disturbed.

“Please,” she said, “make yourself comfortable in that chair.”

I sat down in a soft chair with a high back. The room was very plain and almost unfurnished. It had none of the heavy drapery or sickly ornamentation our modern minds associate so readily with the parlors of late Victorian or Edwardian mediums. There was nowhere to hide a bell or a plaster hand or a bag of ectoplasm. Gaslights on wall brackets gave the only illumination. A single plaque on one wall served for the only decoration:
Thou, God, Seest Me
, it read. A large circular table without a cloth was the focus for the week’s communal seance. A freshly lit Tire burned in the grate.

Mrs. Manners sat down quietly beside me.

“Charlotte,” she said, "before we start, let me explain what will happen. I shall sit facing you with your hands in mine. You will be the channel through which I hope to make contact with your brother. I do not make use of spirit guides or other fancy devices you may have read or heard about. What takes place happens as a result of my sensitivity. It, in turn, is charged by your love and need. Do you understand me? You are to concentrate with all your strength of mind on your brother. On his face, his voice, his little ways. Is he still clear enough in your mind for you to do that?”

I did not hesitate.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “It’s as if I last saw him only yesterday.”

“Good. Very good. But remember that he may have changed considerably since you last met. His experiences on this earth will have altered him beyond a doubt. And his death will have produced even greater changes.”

“Do you mean I may not recognize him?”

She shook her head.

“No, not that. If he comes, you will know him, have no fear of that. He may try to speak to you, using my voice. You may possibly feel him touching you. And he may—though I stress that this is most unlikely—he may try to reveal himself to you. In a sort of physical image. You must not expect this to happen, but consider it a bonus if it does. Do not expect an appearance to take the form of a popular phantom. He will not wear a winding-sheet or carry chains. You may see just his face or his face and shoulders, or, just possibly, his entire body as it was last in life.”

She paused and took one of my hands.

“Are you frightened?”

I nodded.

“That is only natural. But if your brother does come, you must know that there is nothing to be frightened of.”

“Will I be able to speak to him?”

“Yes. He may not answer all your questions. The dead keep their own counsel, and I believe they are subject to higher powers that permit them to lift the veil only slightly. There are things about the next world that we are not permitted to know on this plane. If your brother seems reticent, you must not press him. Otherwise he may be snatched away, and it will prove impossible after that to bring him back.”

“What about my mother and father? Will Arthur be with them?”

She nodded.

“Very likely. But let us concentrate on him for the moment.”

She halted. I noticed that she bit her lower lip, like someone having second thoughts about an undertaking they are about to embark on.

“Charlotte, I have tried to explain to you what it is you are about to face. But it would be most unfair of me if I did not also tell you that there may be very great danger in this enterprise for both of us. The dead themselves are not a cause for any alarm. They bring us peace, not fear. But. . . sometimes things are stirred up that were better left alone. Hatreds. Resentments. A need for revenge. What we are about to do may touch upon ail that. You have already had a glimpse of the darker side. If it shows any sign at all of invading our circle tonight, you must let me break the circle. Do you understand? I will not put either one of us in jeopardy. Is that clear?”