(1992) Prophecy

  His eyebrows rose. ‘Excuse me being personal, Francesca, but was there anything – you know – between you and Mr Holland?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not at university?’

  She hesitated. Almost. Once. They had snogged on a sofa at a party. But she had been dating someone else at the time and it had gone no further. It was one of those things that might have been. ‘No.’ She looked at him. ‘You think I pushed him or something? In a fit of jealousy? Or so that I could get to marry him?’ Her face flushed with anger and she saw he had at least the grace to blush a little.

  ‘I’m afraid it is my job to look at all the angles.’

  Hello, young fellow! The expression on Seb’s face as he had stepped into the lift. As if he was greeting someone in there. A small boy.

  Edward.

  He had seen Edward.

  ‘So I’m a murder suspect, is that it?’

  He raised his hands. ‘Please! Nothing like that. But I do have to make a full report.’ He smiled. ‘You have to understand that I’ve come into this cold. A man is dead; the circumstances are very odd. At the inquest we will have to show we have looked at every possibility, for everyone’s sake – and particularly for the deceased and his relatives.’

  Wet, heavy sand heaved in her guts. The image of Seb’s face brightened in her brain. She saw him again, lying there, amongst the dirt. The policeman’s face dissolved into Seb’s and drifted up away from the table. The table slid sideways; she gripped it, tried to prevent it from crashing to the ground. Her cheek pressed against it and she saw her blurred reflection in its mirrored shine, and tears flooded from her eyes.

  A hand touched her arm, gently. ‘I’ll get someone to run you home. Do you have the number of your doctor? We’ll ask him to pop in and see you.’

  She lifted her head slowly, feeling giddy. The table was fine, solid, had not moved and she looked at it in confusion. ‘I have to go to the office. I have a meeting this afternoon at three. My boss is going to be really angry.’

  ‘Would you like to phone him?’

  ‘How much longer do I have to stay here?’

  ‘We’re almost finished.’ He smiled. ‘Don’t worry; no one’s accusing you of anything.’

  I’m guilty, she wanted to say. I’m guilty. You’re quite right to accuse me. It was my idea to have the Ouija session in the cellar. I made it happen. Seb would be alive now if –

  She sipped some more of her tea, as tears welled in her eyes again. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said to the policeman.

  ‘I think you should go home and go to bed, have your doctor give you something that’ll make you have a good night’s sleep.’

  She shook her head. ‘I can’t. There isn’t time.’

  He smiled again, but did not ask her what she meant.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Frannie got back to the Museum shortly after half past three. She stopped in the middle of the hall, feeling giddy and sick, and looked numbly at the crowds, at the queues for the bookshop tills, the souvenir shop, the information desk. Feet clacked all around her on the hard floor. Voices. She fumbled in her bag for a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes, tried to still the image of Seb’s last look of amazement, which spun like a fairground centrifuge in her brain, pressing her back against the walls of her skull. If she had been quicker she could have dived forward and –

  Hello, young fellow!

  Constable Boyle had told her she could not have done anything, that she’d never have held his weight, that she would have been dragged down also. She felt the floor swaying beneath her. She could have seen the elevator was not there, could have screamed out.

  Could have realized when he had said Hello, young fellow!

  She collected her key, nodded at the security guard without noticing him, walking in a trance, then stopped outside her office, forgetting where she was for a moment, shock and fear clogging her mind. Eventually she opened the door and went in. Penrose Spode was not there, and had left a note on her desk: ‘Not feeling well. Have gone home. Benedict is expecting you at 6.30, address and directions on reverse. If I can help, call me at home.’

  There was another note also in his handwriting: ‘Kate Hemingway phoned, Evening Standard. 2.50. Will call back.’

  She looked with a feeling of hopelessness at the message from the newspaper. Calling about Seb, no doubt. She sat down, closed her eyes and began to pray. The phone rang and she answered it warily, afraid it might be the Evening Standard reporter. But it was Oliver, and he sounded distraught.

  ‘Edward’s disappeared,’ he said.

  ‘From school?’

  ‘He had breakfast, then he didn’t turn up for any classes. No one’s seen him.’

  Spode’s neat handwriting blurred. ‘What does the – the headmaster – say?’

  ‘He doesn’t know what to do.’

  ‘Are the police –?’

  ‘They’re looking for him.’

  ‘God, I’m sorry.’ She bit her lip. ‘What’s happening?’ she said quietly. ‘What are we caught up in, Oliver?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Her knees were knocking together; she felt the pressure of her knuckles against her cheek as she held the phone to her ear. She had to tell him. ‘It’s even worse than you think. Seb’s dead.’

  ‘Seb? Holland?’

  She started telling him what had happened, but her voice became too choked with tears to go on.

  ‘Christ, you poor thing,’ he said, and was quiet for a moment. Then he grasped at the only shred of hope they had left. ‘Did the priest – rector – get in touch?’

  She stared into the tiny holes in the mouthpiece. ‘I’m seeing him this evening.’

  ‘If Edward turns up, I’ll come straight to London.’

  ‘I’m sure he’s all right. He’s very resourceful.’

  ‘Yes,’ Oliver said grimly. ‘What time are you seeing the priest?’

  ‘Half past six.’

  ‘Will you call me afterwards?’

  She promised she would in a choked whisper.

  The Reverend Benedict Spode’s address turned out to be a grimy, detached Georgian house on a busy main road south of the Thames, behind London Bridge Station.

  Dark clouds with pink underbellies from the setting sun slid like burning boats across the sky. The wind was freshening, and occasional fat splodges of rain burst on the pavement around her as Frannie approached the front door and rang the bell.

  She was surprised by the appearance of the man who answered it, quite different from the image she had in her mind. He was ten years older than his brother, short and bald, with a small round head as solid as a cannon ball and thyroid eyes. The only feature he shared in common with Penrose was the same bung-shaped mouth. His body was parcelled inside a billowing black cassock and what neck he had was squashed, fleshily, inside a tight dog-collar.

  ‘Frannie Monsanto?’ he said fiercely.

  ‘Yes.’ She held out an uncertain hand. The clergyman discarded it almost before he had shaken it, as if it were a package he had been handed for an Oxfam sale and should have been passed on to someone else. ‘I was expecting you at six o’clock.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Penrose told me half past.’

  He looked at his watch. ‘I really don’t have any time left – perhaps you could come and see me at the beginning of next week? Say Monday evening?’

  She looked at him aghast. ‘But I need help now. It can’t wait that long. Please could we have a talk tonight? I can wait if it’s not convenient; I must see you tonight.’

  He looked exasperated. ‘Bloody brother of mine. I told him six quite clearly.’

  ‘Please,’ she said again.

  He hesitated, assessing her, then stepped back and gestured for her to come in.

  The hallway had a shabbiness that reminded Frannie of a student rooming-house, and stank of wet dog. The hall carpet was worn down in places to the underlay, and strewn with moulted hairs; the paint was yellowed and chipped, and th
e walls virtually bare. The clergyman took her mackintosh and hung it on a Victorian coat stand, which stood out rather proudly, and then led her into a small, austere study.

  There was a marble fireplace with an unlit gas fire in the grate, and a crucifix dutifully resting on the mantelpiece – a postcard of a pyramid beside it. A plain oak desk cluttered with papers, amid which sat a weary-looking manual typewriter and a small fax machine, fronted a typist’s chair that looked as if it had been salvaged from a skip. The room also boasted a beat-up armchair and a sofa with shot springs that appeared as lumps in its blue covering. The window beyond the desk looked out on to the street, and rattled from the passing traffic.

  Frannie heard a pattering sound, and an elderly Old English sheepdog limped inquisitively into the room.

  ‘Basket, Shula!’ Benedict Spode said in an equally dictatorial but kinder tone than the one in which he had greeted her. ‘Back to your basket!’

  The dog turned and padded slowly back out. Benedict Spode gestured Frannie to the sofa, then perched on the swivel typing chair and gave her a more thorough inspection. With his air of disdain and conceit, he reminded her of a portrait she had seen of one of the Borgias.

  He raised his head a fraction when he spoke, as if in order to throw his voice to an entire congregation, and his aggressive tone was belittling. ‘Penrose tells me you’ve been mucking around with the Ouija?’

  ‘Once. When I was a student,’ Frannie said.

  ‘Once!’ He tapped his foot on the carpet; he was wearing polished black loafers that seemed too small and dainty for him. ‘What is it about this word once that seems to make everything all right? There are circumstances where once is more than enough, young woman. Went bankrupt once. Mugged an old lady once.’

  He shook his head in frustration, as if there were some inner demon trapped within him. ‘I’m fed up with intelligent young people who should know better, who dabble with the Ouija then come running to me for help, expecting me to wave some magic wand and make everything all right.’

  Frannie’s spirits dropped to an even lower ebb. This was all wrong. She should not have trusted Penrose, not listened to him. She balled her fists in anger and despair. And yet, last night: Penrose at the table. The things he had said were not lucky guesses. And she tried to remind herself that the Bishop of Lewes had recommended this clergyman. The diocesan exorcist. He must know what he was doing. Must.

  ‘I don’t imagine you even go to church, do you? Except for Christmas carols?’ he added with a faint sneer.

  ‘I used to.’

  ‘How long ago is used to?’

  ‘Seven or eight years.’

  He squeezed his hands together. ‘I’m fed up with non-attenders! They either come to me because they want a church wedding – so they can have pretty pictures to stick on the mantelpiece, or else because they’ve been dabbling with the occult.’ Then his tone mellowed, just a fraction. ‘OK. Lecture over; time is short.’ There was even a hint of sympathy in his face. ‘Would you like to tell me the full story?’

  ‘How much has Penrose filled you in?’

  ‘Let’s make no assumptions, then we won’t make any mistakes.’ He leaned back, waiting.

  Frannie began. The clergyman nodded impatiently several times as she told him all about the Ouija session and the messages that had turned into predictions. He sat motionless as she related Edward’s plea to her in the library, the Latin he had been reciting in his sleep, and which she had too. And he listened without comment as she told him about Oliver’s research into his family background, his studies in numerology, and her discovery of the common ground shared by her parents’ sandwich bar and the Halkin residence.

  ‘Twenty-six,’ Benedict Spode said when she had finished, sucking in his cheeks as though he had a boiled sweet in his mouth. ‘Twenty-six. This man who died today, this friend, Seb Holland, you don’t know what he was told by the Ouija?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you really think it would have made any difference if you had known?’

  She stared back bleakly. ‘I don’t know.’

  He gathered a fold of his cassock, lifting the hem a few inches and inspecting his shoes. Then he looked at Frannie with a new intensity. ‘Birds never sing at Auschwitz. Did you know that?’

  ‘No,’ she said, surprised by the apparent non sequitur.

  ‘There’s a reason. All the suffering that went on there is imprinted in the land. Animals sense it and they avoid it; those that do pass over it are silent.’ He lapsed into silence himself for a moment. ‘People leave imprints behind them when they die. Imprints of their energy, emotions. Some, like my brother, can read these imprints. There are other people who simply act, without knowing it, as channels, like radio receivers and transmitters, passing those imprints on to others who can either visualize them in the form of ghosts, or be subconsciously influenced by them.’

  Channel. The word Oliver had used.

  ‘It sounds,’ Benedict Spode continued, ‘as if you might be channelling the spirit of this second Marquess to Lord Sherfield’s son, Edward.’

  Her voice faltered. ‘Do you really think that’s possible?’

  ‘What do you think?’ he retorted sharply.

  She regressed, pushed herself back through her mind, back into the darkness of the cellar. Something in there imprinted in the walls? The spirit of a man dead for 350 years who was still thinking, scheming, planning; still able to make others do his bidding? Able to make her do it? Edward do it? To kill Meredith, Jonathan Mountjoy, Seb Holland. And to strike Max Gabriel, maim Phoebe, blind Susie Verbeeten? To kill Oliver’s wife? Tristram?

  ‘I don’t understand what it is – exactly – that lives on – how it works.’

  The clergyman spoke more civilly. ‘I believe there are forces of evil that exist in their own right and which we all have the choice to accept or reject. Every time we accept evil, allow it to enter, we feed it and it becomes stronger; and sometimes when we die it remains behind. The second Marquess accepted and embraced evil. It perhaps did not die with him but remained dormant; a strong enough force to survive for 350 years.’

  ‘To survive in bricks and mortar? In stone?’

  ‘Bricks and stone are inert, but they contain many elements – including electricity and carbon – that are capable of storing energy. When people play with the Ouija they are inviting intense energy into one focal point. Creating a fusion of energies. The energies of six or seven people all focused into one glass. That concentrated mass can disturb whatever is in the room around them, and sometimes reactivate the place memories – or a dormant evil force. I would think that cellar, with all the evil that has taken place around it, was a highly dangerous place to play the Ouija. I can’t imagine anywhere that could be worse: sexual perversion; mass murder; a hideous end.’ He shook his head. ‘What do you expect?’

  Frannie was silent.

  ‘Evil is immensely cunning, but it can only work through adult humans who will accept it, or through young children who are not yet aware of the distinction.’ He smiled ironically. ‘The second Marquess was murdered on the premises, more than likely down in the cellar, by seven soldiers. Numerology was his big thing.’ He looked hard at Frannie. ‘Seven students held the Ouija session.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe significant, maybe not. What is significant is that Lord Sherfield, with his five-year-old son, came into the café after you had re-energized the force. You were the natural link.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘A young child’s consciousness is not fully formed until at least the age of seven. Here the evil force or the spirit, or whatever you care to call it, saw a child not only young, but also with direct ancestral and therefore genetic lineage back to the second Marquess. By using you as a channel, it could slowly become part of that child’s consciousness; test the boy out without him realizing, until he became used to it, accepted it as part of himself. And then –’ he looked away for a moment.

  ‘And then what?’

 
‘Then it – or he – doesn’t need either of you any more.’ His ironic smile returned.

  ‘Why?’ said Frannie. ‘Why would it want to carry on? Surely there – there’s no reason –’ her train of thought stumbled.

  ‘Evil is the corruption of good. That is its sole purpose: to corrupt, destroy, nullify. It requires no reason, only energy. The energy of a seance; the energy of a host body.’

  ‘Why would it harm everyone who was at the Ouija session?’

  ‘You know the expression “Let sleeping dogs lie”?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘A sleeping dog has no gratitude for being woken.’ He rested his hands on his lap and surveyed the room imperiously. ‘If the second Marquess was into numerology, the spirit probably finds it amusing to continue. Seven soldiers put him to death. Seven people bring him back into existence. Repeat the pattern.’ He parted his hands. ‘Evil does not have to account to anyone for its actions.’

  ‘But how does that explain the friend of mine who went blind? She picked up a virus swimming – how could a spirit have made her do that?’

  He flicked some tiny fleck off his cassock. ‘We understand very little about the body’s abilities to look after itself. The immune system is still largely a mystery. I should think most people don’t go blind from the virus your friend caught. Probably only a tiny percentage do. Was she unlucky? Or did something get channelled into her subconscious, blocking her immune system for her? To make her prophecy come true?’

  Frannie felt as though a nerve had snapped inside her. ‘Is there nothing I can do?’

  ‘There’s only one thing we can do. We go to that cellar and we hold a requiem mass. And we go now.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Just you and me.’

  She bit the back of her hand. ‘I don’t know if we can get in.’

  ‘We’ll worry about that when we get there.’

  ‘What – what happens in a requiem mass?’

  ‘We hold a simple communion service to lay the spirit to rest.’