What Lies Beneath

Chapter 14

The too-sweet scent closed round her, but she tried to ignore it and went towards the scarf. In the corner of her eye she could see the chair where the man had been sitting, and she could see the stick on the ground nearby. Next to it was a soft dark cloth, lying in thick folds. Determinedly not looking at anything, Ella bent down to get her scarf, but doing so brought the bottom of the chair into her line of vision. It was then that she realized, with a jolt of new fear, that the man was still here. He was sitting in the chair, silent, not moving.

Ella’s heart seemed to cartwheel up into her mouth, but she reached for the scarf because if she was very quick she could run outside before he could catch her.

Look at him before you run away, said a horrid voice in her mind. Just one glance, then you’ll see what he’s really like… No! thought Ella. No, I mustn’t do that.

But the whole world seemed to have slowed down and her legs were filled with lead like in a nightmare, and she could not move. The dreadful thing was that she really wanted to look at the man, to see him properly, instead of as the shadow he had been in the church.

Already it was easier to see through the dimness. She could make out a big marbly fireplace on the left of the chair, and rugs and tables. There was a door on the other side of the room, which was partly open, and Ella could see a big hall beyond it with pillars and a wide staircase. Should she run out that way? Would it be easier? No, she did not know who else might be in the house. She would go back over the lawn, the way she had come in. She would not look at the man, not even for a second, and in a minute her legs would start to move again. But again the evil little voice said, Before you run away, look at him… You know you want to…

Ella turned her head, and looked straight at the still silent figure. The music swelled maddeningly back and forth and a dreadful sick horror swept over her, because the figure in the chair was staring back at her; it had wide-open eyes that did not blink, and the mouth had fallen open. Hands in their dark gloves dangled down over the chair’s sides.

Ella was absolutely frozen with terror and although she tried to look away she could not. The figure stared and stared at nothing, and Ella stared back. Her mind was whirling with fear and confusion, but she knew why the curtains had been shut and why the thick veil had covered the face earlier. It was a face you would want to cover all the time – a dreadful face, crusted with sores and scabs, the open mouth even showing scabs inside it.

But it was not the man from St Anselm’s. The person in the chair – the person who had raised the stick and called her mother ‘Ford’ in that sneering way – was a woman, a very thin, very old lady, wearing an old-fashioned black frock that went down to her ankles and shawls of thick lace wound round her neck and over the top of her head.

Ella was very frightened indeed, but she managed to say, a bit croakily, ‘I’m sorry to come in without asking, but I left my scarf behind.’

The woman was still not moving and this time, instead of forcing her unwilling legs to run from the room as fast as possible, Ella found she had taken a shaky step nearer to the woman.

‘I need the scarf for school, you see.’ Nothing. Perhaps Mum had been wrong and a doctor was needed after all. Ella said, ‘Um – are you all right?’ She had no idea what to call the woman. At school they called the teachers ‘miss’, but it didn’t seem quite right to call this woman ‘miss’.

The woman still did not move. She did not even seem to hear or realize Ella was there. She must be unconscious, knocked out from when Ella’s mother bounded forward to knock the stick away from her. Only – did your eyes stay open and staring if you were unconscious? And wouldn’t Mum have fetched a doctor to her, no matter how much they should not have been here? Not if she knew the woman was dead, said Ella’s mind. Dead people had their eyes open like this. Clem had seen his grandmother after she died, he had talked about it for days, saying how dead people stared at nothing for ever and you had to close their eyes.

Ella was not going to try closing this old woman’s eyes, but she was becoming terribly afraid that the woman really was dead. Nobody who was living would sit like this, not speaking or moving, not trying to cover up that terrible face…

It was then that, with a teeth-wincing scrape, the music suddenly stopped.

Ella spun round. Standing just inside the room, the light behind him, was the figure of a man. All Ella could see was a dark outline, with a long coat, the collar turned up, but she saw that one hand was still resting on the gramophone on its small table. She could not see his face but she could see it was turned towards her and there was no mistaking him. This really was the man from St Anselm’s. He was here in the room with her.

Ella gasped and it was as if the sound of her gasp released the frozen terror and she was finally able to move. She tumbled across the room and out into the clean sweet evening. As she ran across the lawn she risked a quick glance over her shoulder to see if he was coming after her. No, it was all right. She ran as fast as she could towards the side entrance, out through the little latched door, and along the lane to Mordwich stile, where her mother was waiting. She looked back twice more but the lane was deserted, and Ella reached the stile safely. There were pains in her chest from running so hard, but she did not care. She sank down on the grass, sobbing and shaking, but after a moment managed to gabble out to her mother that she had got the scarf and the hankie, and please could they go straight home.

Neither of them spoke on the way back to their cottage, but as they crossed Mordwich Meadow, Ella risked a glance at her mother. You killed that woman, she thought. I had my eyes shut when you did it because I was frightened so I didn’t see you do it, but I heard it. I know what happened.

It was then that the really scary thought came into her mind.

The man had been in the house all the time. He would have heard the shouting between the old woman and Ella’s mother. Had he been standing in that big cold-looking hall, watching? If so, he too would know what had happened.

They had their cocoa and biscuits, and Mum began to look a bit better and to stop speaking slurrily.

They washed up the cups as they always did – Ella’s mother said it was slovenly to leave dirty china in the sink overnight – and as they were putting them away, she said, ‘Ella, when you went back for your scarf, what did you see in that room? I know it was dark in there, but did you see anything at all?’

Ella thought about saying she had not seen anything, but somehow the words came out before she knew it. ‘I saw the old woman sitting in the chair,’ she said.

‘Ah. I thought you might.’

‘I’m not absolutely sure, but I think she was dead.’

Her mother took so long to answer this that Ella began to think she was not going to say anything at all. But she sat down at the little scrubbed-top table, gesturing to Ella to sit down with her. ‘Yes, she was dead,’ she said. ‘She was very old and very bitter and unhappy. She fell back and knocked her head on the mantelpiece. She was ill anyway – she had been for years and she might have died any day at all.’ She reached out to take Ella’s hand, which was not something she often did. ‘I didn’t kill her,’ she said. ‘Was that what you were thinking? It was an accident.’

Ella said she knew that, of course.

But I don’t know it, she thought, not really. Because before I closed my eyes I saw your face, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget how you looked.

Mum was saying, ‘But the worry now is that if anyone were to hear about what happened – that we were in the house with her when she died… People aren’t always kind, Ella, and a lot of people in Upper Bramley – and all the villages – have been very unkind to me. One day, when you’re older, you might understand. When I was young they used to call me cruel names.’

Barrack Room Brenda, thought Ella, still not speaking. I’ve heard that one at school more than once.

‘What I’m trying to say is that if people heard, they’d believe the worst of me.’

‘They’d think you killed that woman.’

‘Yes. D’you know what happens to people who kill?’

‘Um, well, prison, I s’pose.’

‘Yes,’ said Mum slowly. ‘Yes, that’s right. Prison. For a very long time. Years and years.’

‘What would happen to me?’

Mum took even longer to answer this. Then she said, ‘There’s only you and me, you see. We haven’t got any family you could live with. I’m afraid you’d be put in a children’s home.’

‘Like Bramley Gate?’

‘Yes. Probably it would actually be Bramley Gate.’

‘Oh,’ said Ella blankly. She had seen the Bramley Gate children sometimes. When they went anywhere they walked in what was called a crocodile, led by a cross-looking woman who had a face like granite. They were silent and they all looked sad, and they wore horrid scratchy-looking grey uniforms, with their hair cut in ugly pudding-basin styles. Sometimes a group of them had to come to Ella’s school for an exam and the boys mimicked them behind their backs. The girls said they looked like ragbags and told each other they would die if they had to go round looking like that. Remembering all this, Ella knew she would hate being in Bramley Gate more than anything in the world. She would hate Mum being in prison, as well, of course – she reminded herself how bad that would be – but she did not think she could bear living in Bramley Gate.

There was something else, as well. If Mum went to prison everyone would know. They would point to Ella and say, ‘That’s the daughter of that murderer. That’s Brenda Ford’s girl – Barrack Room Brenda, they used to call her.’ And they would tell each other it would be better to steer clear of Ella Ford. ‘Because you know what they say: like mother like daughter.’

And Ella would grow up with no life and no friends, permanently dressed like a ragbag, sneered at and made fun of… She dragged her attention back to what Mum was saying – something about being sure no one had seen them that evening.

‘No one saw us go into Cadence Manor and no one saw us come out,’ she was saying. ‘So there’s no reason why anyone will ever know the truth.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Ella obediently.

Lying in bed, later that night, she thought: but someone does know. The man from the church knows. He was in the house all the time – he must have heard the shouting. What if he tells people he saw it all, that he saw Mum lunge forward, her fists raised? Would people believe that? Ella thought they would believe a grown-up – especially someone from Cadence Manor – rather than a little girl from a cottage.

Was there a way she could make sure he never told anyone?

It was about a week after that terrible evening that Ella’s mother showed her a piece in the newspaper – the Bramley Advertiser it was called. It had local news in it, photographs of people getting married and stories about people in the villages, and lists of babies born or people who had died.

On one of the pages was a smudgy photograph of a lady with a severe expression and a long elaborate gown, standing outside a house that Ella recognized at once. It was Cadence Manor, only it was not Cadence Manor as it was now, but years and years ago when it had been tidy and nice, with lots of people living there. The newspaper said the lady in the photo was Lady Cadence – Serena Cadence – shown in her heyday and in the heyday of the Cadence family. Ella looked up the word ‘heyday’ in her school dictionary and it meant a time of great success or happiness.

The paper also said Serena Cadence had died at the family home, where she had lived a retired life for many years because of suffering from a long and debilitating illness. The long illness must be the marks on her face; Ella shuddered, remembering them. What kind of illness gave you marks like that? She looked up the word ‘debilitating’ as well. It meant something that made you very weak. But Lady Cadence had not been so weak she could not scream and threaten people with her walking stick.

The newspaper said there would be a private funeral service but also a public memorial service at St Michael’s church, and told readers how Lady Cadence had been a lovely and gracious lady who had lived through stirring times and led a full and interesting life.

‘Did she do that?’ said Ella. ‘Live through stirring times?’

‘I suppose so,’ said her mother, her eyes on the smudgy photograph. ‘She lived through two world wars, although she did so in extreme comfort while the rest of us struggled and scraped to put food on the table.’ Ella heard the vicious note in her mother’s voice, and she was so worried that Mum’s face would take on the snarly look again that she mumbled it was very interesting and thank you for showing her the article.

The article had not told the truth, though. Ella knew that, and she supposed her mother knew it as well. But the newspaper people would not be able to write that Serena Cadence had been a vicious old woman who called people bad names and frightened them half to death.

The really strange thing, though, was that the newspaper said Lady Cadence had died from her long and debilitating illness. It did not say she had died because someone had dealt her a vicious blow and she had smashed her head against a marble fireplace.

Everyone at Ella’s school had to go to the memorial service at St Michael’s. The family deserved the community’s respect, said the teachers. There had been a time – not so very long ago, either – when the Cadences had brought considerable work and prosperity to the area.

Only a few of the Cadence family were at the service. Clem’s father said that was because the Cadences had almost all died out. Serena Cadence had not exactly been the last of her line, but there could not be many of them left. There were one or two distant cousins, he believed, but they were scattered around the world. Italy or Spain, so someone had told him.

Ella, seated near the back of the church, tried to get a good look at the members of the Cadence family, but it was impossible. They came in very quietly by the side door and sat at the front of the church, and all she could see was three or four dark-clad people. After the service the family went out through the same side door and were driven away in waiting cars. Ella wondered how she would feel if the man from St Anselm’s was there, but he did not seem to be. She had not really thought he would be – he didn’t seem like someone who’d be part of a crowd – and anyway he might not even be one of the family.

The school choir sang at the service and Derek Haywood had a small solo halfway through. Several of the congregation remarked on what a nice voice he had.

‘I thought he screeched a bit on the high notes,’ said Veronica afterwards, but she said it quietly because they had all been told to be solemn and quiet as a mark of respect to Lady Cadence.

‘I thought he screeched a whole lot,’ said Clem, who was still smarting at not being picked to play the prince, and not very inclined to admire anything Derek Haywood did. ‘I should think Lady Cadence would come back from her grave to haunt him for screeching like that at her funeral.’

‘People don’t come back from the grave,’ said Ella very sharply.

‘How do you know? My father said she was an old witch. I’ll bet she comes back to haunt Cadence Manor.’

The Present

Ella had not, of course, taken any notice of Clem’s words, not then and not since. Lady Cadence had not haunted the manor, nor had she haunted Ella herself.

It was the music that had haunted her. She had never been able to forget how the needle had stuck on the record that day, and how the music had played the same section over and over.

The Deserted Village. She had not known then what it was called, of course. What she had known was that it must have been the man from the church who had taunted her on that last morning when she and Clem and Veronica had walked through Priors Bramley. He had known Ella was there and he had deliberately played that piece in St Anselm’s for her to hear. Remember this, little girl, he had been saying. Remember the last time you and I heard this music…? In Cadence Manor, when your mother committed murder…?

Once or twice since that day Ella had wondered if she had been wrong, and if he had played it simply because he liked it. But she always pushed away this idea, because she did not want to ascribe to that sinister figure any of the softer qualities. When you have killed someone, you do not want to realize afterwards that they liked music.

What she had never been able to understand was how she could have heard the music on the day her mother went inside the poisoned village to find the lost wristwatch – the day the Geranos had burned her face. Because the man had been dead, he had been dead for a whole week. Ella had seen his body, broken and twisted at the bottom of the ruined chimney shaft, and her mother had seen it as well.

But on that afternoon someone had been playing his music in the deserted grounds of Cadence Manor.