The Mistletoe Bride & Other Haunting Tales

  ‘But it wasn’t.’

  ‘No.’

  I look him in the eye. ‘So then what happened?’

  I say it quietly and carefully, but it doesn’t work and he shakes his head, sent spiralling back to the beginning again. The bare bones of the story are the same – the tenant in Number Three going off, Mrs Nash asking him to clear out the room, the box sitting in the hall with the carriage clock and the painting of the Pyrenees. This time, though, no funeral and no lawyer. The brown envelope spilling money. Fifty-quid notes.

  I’m getting impatient. ‘So,’ I say, ‘the twenty-first of October, Thursday, you decide to do it.’ I clap my hands and he jumps. ‘That’s it. Just like that, you decide today’s the day to make good on your promise. Pick up the box and you see all that money, yes? Been there all along. Put it in the pocket of your trousers, yes? Then you open the door down to the cellar. Yes? The paint’s peeling, isn’t it, chipped? You promised you’d have a look at that too, didn’t you?’

  He frowns. ‘She was always on at me,’ he says. ‘Never gave it a rest, all the time on at me.’

  ‘So you open the door, yes, and you look down, but it’s too gloomy to see anything. Isn’t it, isn’t that right? You can’t see anything down there, so you don’t know what’s down there. You put out your hand, feel around, looking for a light switch.’

  ‘Wired wrong. Upside down.’

  ‘But you do find the switch. Flick it up. Sickly yellow light down there.’

  ‘Sickly yellow light.’

  I nod. ‘And straight away, you know there’s something wrong down there, don’t you?’ I lean forward. ‘You can smell it, can’t you? Smell of the sea. Of rotting fish.’

  He puts his hands over his ears. He doesn’t want to hear any more. He is seeing it all now, smelling it, remembering the cold on his bare skin and the dust and the cobwebs, the decay and damp of a cellar in a seaside town. He doesn’t want to be back at that cellar on that Thursday the twenty-first of October 1965.

  But that’s why he’s here. Why we are here.

  ‘Not blood,’ he says, ‘it was a sweet smell.’

  ‘You didn’t think it would be so bad, did you? You rolled up your sleeves – didn’t want to spoil that pullover.’

  ‘Oranges . . .’ he whispers.

  ‘You pick up the box and carry it down,’ I say, pushing him further. ‘Know you’ve got to do something before she gets back. The smell’s too bad down there. She’s bound to notice.’

  ‘Ten steps down.’

  ‘Eight,’ I correct him. ‘Quite a weight, that box. All that stuff in it. Three or four trophies, a shield with his name on it. Bowls, wasn’t it?’

  He’s shaking his head, sticking to the first story. ‘Painting and a carriage clock and cuff links and the money.’

  ‘There all along,’ I say.

  He is shaking his head. ‘There all along. Thought it was under the mattress.’ His voice drops to a whisper. ‘Why did she come back? She’d never have known. We would have been all right.’

  ‘The box was heavy,’ I say.

  I see his expression. He’s frightened at how much I know, how much he has already told me. He is staring at me, clear brown eyes, a little yellow. Medication yellow.

  ‘I could manage.’

  I admire his courage, but I can’t let myself be deflected. ‘You have dust on your cuffs, and that annoys you. It’s your best shirt and you need it for the weekend.’

  He nods. ‘The Gaumont. Saturday night.’

  ‘The girl, yes,’ I say, impatiently. We are doing well, but we have to stay in the house. I can’t let him get away from me. We have to go down into the cellar, him and me. Only then will the last pieces of the jigsaw fall into place.

  ‘So you managed, of course you did. Strong chap like you. On the up.’ I hesitate. ‘But she came back. Called out, didn’t she?’

  ‘Caught me by surprise.’

  ‘That’s right, so you slipped. Lost your footing.’

  He flushes. ‘It was dark.’

  ‘Of course it was. Could have happened to anyone, in the dark.’

  ‘She shouldn’t have come back.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘She scared me.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I say. ‘Her fault really. If she’d left well alone.’

  ‘Her fault.’

  I can see beads of sweat on his forehead, a sickly yellow. Skin sickly yellow. Or is that Turner? Lying on the floor of the cellar, like a dummy. One of those mannequins in Reynolds department store on the front. I pull the handkerchief from my pocket and wipe my face. He does the same – great minds think alike – and he looks better for it.

  I put my handkerchief away. ‘That’s when she saw him. Over your shoulder, looking over your shoulder.’

  ‘Screamed.’

  ‘No call for it,’ I say.

  He’s nodding. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt her. Tried to explain.’

  ‘But she starts screaming, that’s the thing, says she’s going to call the police.’

  ‘I reach up, just wanted to talk to her. Got hold of her ankle.’

  I shudder, remembering the saggy nylons like loose skin on her leg, the sponge-like flesh beneath. Her tumbling down the wooden steps, taking us both down with her. The box and the silver plate rattling down to the cellar floor. The weight of her lying on top of me. Not waking up.

  ‘Banged my head,’ he says. ‘Out for the count.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ I say. ‘Bad luck she came home. She didn’t have to scream.’

  ‘She didn’t have to make such a fuss. I only wanted to explain.’

  ‘You’re telling me, you’re telling me,’ I say, ‘never a truer word spoken. I like that.’ I stop. Take a breath. Let my shoulders drop. ‘I like that.’

  I start picking at a thread on the sleeve of my jacket, a heavy twill much too warm for our room. There’s blood on the sleeve, that’s the thing. All that money. All that money stashed away. Thought it was under the mattress in Number Three. He found me looking. I didn’t mean to hurt him, but Turner went for me. Pushed him. Hit his head. Down he went. Taking him down to the cellar, knew he’d be safe there. Mrs Nash never went down there, couldn’t manage the steps.

  If she hadn’t have come back, she’d never have known.

  ‘Never a truer word spoken,’ I say.

  There’s a noise at the door. The sound of the key being turned in the lock and the bolt being shot back. We are out of time.

  The orderlies come in. Tweedledee and Tweedledum, we call them, on account of their size.

  ‘All right, Jim? Time for your medication.’

  I let my eyes slip away, warning him not to say anything in front of them. Not to admit to anything. It’s not murder if you don’t mean to kill someone. Turner or Mrs Nash, not his fault. Checking he’s quiet now. And he is. He’s sitting silent as the dead in the corner of the room, not saying a word. I put my finger to my lips just in case. They can’t see him. They don’t know he’s here.

  ‘Yes, I’m all right,’ I say.

  ‘Here you go then.’

  I hold out my hand obediently. The quicker it’s done, the quicker they’ll go and we can get back to business. Tweedledee drops two yellow pills into my palm. Sickly yellow. I take the paper cup and swallow, drain the water and hand the cup back. Tweedledum ticks something on his list, then they are wheeling the trolley out of the room again.

  ‘Someone be round with supper soon,’ he says.

  I put my hands over my nose, keen for them to be gone so we can resume our conversation. I can’t believe they can’t smell it. The rotting fish, the seaweed. Just like before. I want them to go. We’re at the interesting part now. The reason we’re here.

  ‘See you tomorrow,’ says Tweedledee.

  ‘Tomorrow it is,’ I say.

  I wait for the bolt again and the key again, then I turn round.

  ‘Thought they’d never go,’ I say. ‘Now, where were we?’


  But he’s gone. I’m on my own. Pity. A pity.

  I lie back on the bed. It doesn’t matter though. We’ll talk again tomorrow. Start again. Get to the bottom of things tomorrow. I must ask them to do something about the smell. The rotting fish, the seaweed. Someone’s going to notice soon. Someone’s bound to notice. I look around for the box, but that’s gone too.

  He’s taken it. Perhaps he’s already taken it down to the cellar.

  ‘Tomorrow it is then,’ I murmur. ‘Never a truer word spoken. All right for some, all right for some.’

  Author’s Note

  When I started ‘Duet’, I had in my mind to write a doppelgänger story. Literally meaning ‘double walker’ in German, a doppelgänger is a shadow self – a living ghost – supposed to be someone’s double. In traditional ghost stories, it is only the owner of the doppelgänger who can see this phantom self and is often – usually – a harbinger of death. In stories of bilocation, a person can either spontaneously or willingly project his or her double, known as a ‘wraith’, to a remote location. This double is indistinguishable from the real person and can interact with others just as the real person would.

  However, during the writing process, things went their own way and it became a story about conscience. Like Lady Macbeth being unable to wash her hands clean of Duncan’s blood or the murderer in Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ – who imagines he can hear the heart of the old man he’s killed beating under the floor and so gives himself away – guilt exacts a heavy price.

  The story also seemed to belong in the 1960s, an era of landladies and oddball misfits living in a seaside town where events might go unnoticed for some time.

  RED LETTER DAY

  Montségur, the French Pyrenees

  March 2001

  Red Letter Day

  And Something’s odd – within –

  That person that I was –

  And this One – do not feel the same –

  Could it be Madness – this?

  Poem 410

  EMILY DICKINSON

  It was a mistake to take the mountain road into the Pyrenees. On the map it had looked more direct and, having made up her mind, Claire wanted to take the quickest route, before her courage deserted her and she conjured up an excuse not to go. To put it off again.

  This journey had been more than three years in the making. Claire didn’t want to cause any more distress and upset to those friends and family who’d done their best to look after her and help her get through things. It would get better, they told her. She’d never forget him, but it wouldn’t always feel this bad. Perhaps she’d have another child. Time, they said, was a great healer.

  If anything, the passing of one year to the next had made her grief more acute, her sense of loss more profound. Memories of the tiny, lifeless body in his cot, the weight of her son in her arms, the look of him. She knew things would never get better. Her heart would never heal and nor did she want it to.

  With that acceptance had come relief, then a sense of purpose. All she wanted was not to feel anything, not to think anything, to close her eyes and see only white space. There was no point going on.

  The decision made things easier. The place had been harder to choose. Claire wanted it be somewhere away from her everyday life, so as not to burden her family and friends, and somewhere remote.

  Then, it came to her. Years ago, they’d gone on holiday to south-west France, the Ariège, where her mother’s family had originally come from. Holed up in her tiny hotel in Carcassonne, guide book in hands, Claire had been captivated by the story of the Cathars. Had fallen in love with the tragic history of Montségur, the mountain citadel in the Pyrenees where a generation of rebels and heretics had made their final stand nearly eight hundred years before. One of her own ancestors among them.

  Why not there?

  According to legend, Montségur was the Holy Mountain of Grail legend. Or maybe the inspiration for Wagner’s Parsifal, Munsalvaesche. Or a blueprint for the Mount of Salvation, Mons Salvationis. A place of hope and revelation and salvation. A place to live and to die.

  It was a place of myth, certainly. The ruined fortress perched impossibly high above the village of Montségur, three sides of the castle hewn out of the mountainside itself. Many different citadels, different strongholds had been constructed on that same inhospitable spot, their rise and fall testament to the turbulent history of the Ariège. Mont Ségur, the safe mountain. The spirit of place, however, remained constant.

  The idea took root until Montségur was the only place Claire could imagine feeling at peace.

  Today was Thursday, 16th March. She’d picked the date deliberately. It was the anniversary of the day in 1244 when the defeated inhabitants of the citadel finally came down from their mountain retreat. Two hundred Cathar believers – heretics in the eyes of the Catholic Church – had chosen death by fire rather than to recant their faith. Ordinary believers and their priests, men and women both. Their remaining friends and families were brought before the Inquisition to bear witness to the horror of the times. Forced to listen to the screaming as those they loved died, to see the poisonous black cloud rising from the pyre. Covered their noses and mouths to keep out the sickly sweet stench of burning flesh.

  Claire shook her head. Today was not the day for such violent images, she’d lived with those long enough. Today was a red letter day, the sort of day to be picked out in gold leaf and crimson ink on parchment. Today, she would stand in the place where – in the poet’s words – prayer had been valid, and make her choice. Many times over the past three years she had pictured herself climbing the mountain, her feet steady on the flat slippery stones, her breath white in the chill air.

  Time, now, to make the journey.

  As Claire left Carcassonne, driving south towards the mountains, the air was soft and the dawn sky a gentle pink. A perfect spring day, though the hotel proprietor warned her that it would be winter still in the mountains. The clock on the dashboard of her hire care blinked out the time: 8:00.

  She had headed first for Limoux – beautiful in summer with its central square and rocky river winding through the town – then on towards Couiza. The sun grew weaker, less definite. At Puivert, the pale spring mist turned to rain. Now, as she turned off onto the mountain road, following a signpost for Montségur, the rain was turning to sleet.

  The narrow strip of tarmac twisted and turned back on itself until Claire felt carsick and dizzy and disorientated. As she climbed higher and higher, the temperature dropped.

  Sleet turned to hail.

  After three hours of driving, Claire reached the village of Montségur. Snow was hitting the windscreen and visibility was down to a few metres. The mountain, towering over the village, was half shrouded in a mantle of thick grey cloud, and the citadel itself was invisible.

  Claire swapped driving shoes for her old hiking boots, the fur flattened by years of service, then got out of the car. Her feet crunched on the shards of ice on the ground. All other sound was muffled. She saw wisps of smoke winding out of one or two chimneys, evidence of the presence of others behind shuttered doors. She thought she heard a dog bark, although the sound was quickly swallowed by the billowing fog that prowled between the buildings. All she could be sure of was her own breath, white in the cold air, and her footsteps echoing through empty village streets.

  Everything was closed. There were no other visitors and nobody local was unwise enough to be out. Whichever direction she faced, she seemed to be heading into a biting wind. Regretting her lack of hat and gloves, Claire pulled her red duffel coat tight around her. She always felt cold these days in any case. Friends thought it was because she was thin, but she knew the chill was inside her and that no amount of wool or fleece would make any difference to that.

  She pushed her hands deeper into her pockets and walked on, drawn by the promise of a lighted window up ahead. The sign outside the restaurant was banging rhythmically against the wall, a monotonous thud o
f wood against stone.

  It was too early for lunch, but the sign said ouvert and when she pushed the door, Claire found it was unlocked. She stepped inside. Warm air rushed to greet her, rubbing against her cold hands and cheeks. She stamped the snow from her boots, then paused.

  Something didn’t seem right.

  Claire stood still in the small entrance hall, until she realised what it was. There was no noise, nothing. No clatter of pans, or babble of conversation. There was no smell of food cooking.

  ‘Hello?’

  Nothing but the echo of her own voice surged back at her.

  Pushing her hood back from her head, Claire shook her dark hair free. For years she had worn it in a sharp geometric bob – blunt fringe, blunt edges resting just above her shoulders – every photo the same: school, graduation, wedding. Then, three years ago when everything ceased to matter, she stopped bothering. Her black hair was long now, lifeless.

  ‘Il y a quelqu’un?’

  No one answered. She walked up a couple of steps, then paused and called out again:

  ‘Allô? Vous servez, oui?’

  Now she was at the top of the stairs. Claire found she was standing in a large, pleasant dining room. Exposed stone walls and wooden beams and floors, a timeless room. It felt welcoming, friendly even, despite the fact it was empty. A fire burned fiercely in the hearth. To her left there was a long wooden bar, the bottles and glasses gleaming. The centre of the room was filled with rows of waxed refectory tables, each seating ten and laid for lunch. Knives and forks, bowls of salt, oil and vinegar. Earthenware pitchers of water up the middle of each table and small matching bowls, in place of glasses, face down at each setting.

  ‘S’il vous plaît?’ Claire said loudly.

  Still, nothing. She went into the kitchen, peered through the glass in the door, and saw no one. She hesitated, then walked in to the deserted space. The oven was hot, though, and there was the lingering smell of cooking. Thyme, perhaps? Red wine and onions? Claire peered out of a small, square window to a stone yard below, but there were no signs of life there either. No footsteps in the snow, no prints of a cat or a dog. If someone had recently gone that way, they had left no evidence of their presence.