Читать книгу While You Sleep: A chilling, unputdownable psychological thriller that will send shivers up your spine! - Stephanie Merritt - Страница 10

The door of C. Joseph, Rare & Second-hand Books produced a sonorous chime as she pushed it open to enter an atmosphere of rarefied, eccentric chaos. The interior was done up like a gentleman’s library from the last century, or the bar at a fancy country club, without trying so hard: all mahogany panelling and scuffed wine-dark leather winged chairs, books stacked floor to ceiling along every wall and piled in precarious towers in corners. It smelled reassuringly of tobacco and old paper.

‘Give me a minute,’ called a voice from somewhere at the back of the shop. Zoe peered around a bookcase to see the old Labrador padding towards her, nose quivering towards the paper bag in her hand.

‘Hey, Horace,’ she said, reaching down to scratch him behind the ears. When she looked up, Charles Joseph was standing in front of her, hands clasped together.

‘She remembered the buns, Horace,’ he remarked to the dog, with solemn pleasure. ‘I told you she would. Your timing is impeccable, Ms Adams – I’ve just put a fresh pot of coffee on. Come through to the back.’

He led her past a wooden desk with a cash register and through an arched doorway into a smaller room. This, too, was lined with bookshelves along the walls, but the central space had been left for a couple of shabby armchairs and a wide desk that looked like an antique. In one corner a jumble of coloured beanbags and cushions sprawled across the floor.

‘I call this the Reading Room,’ he said, with a sweeping gesture. ‘Rather grand, I know. But sometimes people like to have a quiet place to sit down with a book while they’re in town. Some of the youngsters come here to study at the weekends, if they can’t get any peace at home. People drop by in their lunch hour and the children like to stop off on their way home from school. I’m always pleased to have company.’ He waved towards the coloured cushions.

‘You’re better than a public library,’ Zoe said, smiling. The old man’s face grew serious.

‘I’m afraid that’s more or less true. They closed our library down a couple of years ago. Someone on the mainland decided it wasn’t financially viable. I’m all the islanders have now.’ He lifted his hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘That’s why I give away so many books, though our young friend Edward despairs at my business sense.’

‘And you don’t …’ she hesitated, searching for the right way to phrase it ‘… worry about the money?’

Charles gave an indulgent chuckle. ‘My dear girl, I worry about it all the time. But I’ve been fortunate. I wrote a number of books when I was younger that enjoyed some success. I invested wisely, and that’s given me an income over the years. And I dabble in rare books – now and then I come across an item of more than average value, and that keeps us afloat, with what I make from the maps and walking guides. So I can more or less afford to allow my charitable instincts to get the better of my commercial ones.’

‘What kind of books did you write?’

‘Oh, studies of myths. That was my field. There’s bound to be one around somewhere.’ He poked about on a nearby shelf, running his finger along dusty spines until he pulled out a fat volume in a transparent plastic cover and handed it to Zoe. The Myths That Make Us by Dr Charles M. Joseph. The dust-jacket featured a reproduction of Rubens’ Saturn Devouring His Son.

‘Is it history?’ she asked, turning the book over to look at the back cover.

He tilted his head. ‘Partly. History, anthropology, psychology, literature, art, travel – there’s a bit of everything in mythography. This one found its way on to various university syllabuses over the years – that’s why it’s still in print.’

The inside cover showed a black-and-white photograph of the author in a tweed jacket much like the one he was currently wearing, his eyes crinkled at the edges as he smiled into the camera. He didn’t look a whole lot younger than he did now, Zoe thought, yet this book was clearly published in the last century. She turned to the inside flyleaf to find that it was dated 1975. Charles caught her looking at him and smiled.

‘I was born middle-aged,’ he said. ‘Now then – take a seat while I find a plate for those buns. Milk and sugar?’ He disappeared into a small kitchen through the back. Zoe could hear the chinking of crockery and the hiss of steam.

‘Neither, thanks.’ She sank back into one of the armchairs, the book in her lap, and flicked through a few pages, her eyes lingering over the lavish illustrated plates – reproductions of paintings, sculptures and maps.

‘Take it home if you like,’ Charles said, setting down a mug of coffee on a table he pulled up between them. She handed him the paper bag and he settled into the other armchair, elbows jutting out and hands folded together, watching her. ‘What did you want to ask me, then?’

‘Oh.’ She looked up, startled. ‘I was interested in finding out a bit more about the local history. Since I’m going to be living here for a bit.’

He continued to look at her. ‘Naturally. But I think you wanted to ask something in particular?’

‘What’s the story with the house?’ she blurted. ‘The one Mick and Kaye don’t want me to hear?’

‘Ah.’ He picked up his bun and took a large bite, leaving the question hanging while he chewed it, nodding several times in appreciation. Zoe wondered if he would make her wait until he had finished the entire thing, but when his mouth was empty he glanced towards the doorway. ‘Mick’s put a great deal of time and money into doing up that old place. Love, too, in a sense. It was important to him to redeem it. The house had been left to ruin when his father died – perhaps when you’re more settled you can get him to show you the photos. What he’s done there is extraordinary.’

‘Redeem it from what?’

‘From its history. You’re their first tenant, you know. They’d only had the website live two days when you emailed him, he said, and he was fretting that he might not find anyone at all over the winter. So you were a bit of a godsend – you can understand why they don’t want the locals putting you off the place with lurid tales. Especially a woman on her own.’

Zoe gave him a stern look. ‘I’m interested in the tales. I think I’m old enough to tell fact from fiction.’

He met this with an enigmatic smile. ‘Well. I wonder if any of us can really claim to know that.’

There was an odd pause while Zoe tried to judge whether or not he was serious. ‘So – it’s supposed to be haunted, right?’ She made the question sound deliberately sarcastic, but as she spoke she recalled the chill she had felt on the stairs, the plaintive tone of the woman singing. But that had been the whisky and jet lag. No point in telling him about that.

Charles picked up his coffee and leaned forward. ‘Are you sure you want to hear this story? Only, one can’t unknow things, you see, and there’s a world of difference between hearing it here, all cosy over buns, and remembering it later, after dark, alone in that big house.’

‘You’re doing it too, now. I’m not a child, Dr Joseph.’

‘I apologise.’ He nodded, smiling, but there was a trace of resignation in his tone, as if what she was demanding were an unpleasant but necessary cure.

‘Well, then.’ He set his cup down and eased back in his chair, steepling his fingers. ‘Tamhas McBride owned this island in the mid nineteenth century, though he never lived here until he married Ailsa Drummond in 1861. She was the eldest child and only daughter of the Reverend Teàrlach Drummond, great-great-great-grandfather to our Mick, who was then minister of the island’s kirk. The reverend was widowed and Ailsa refused to abandon him on the island after her marriage, so her new husband had a grand house built overlooking the bay on the northern coast. To say the McBrides were not liked here would be an understatement. Tamhas’s father had been a Glasgow industrialist who bought the island in the 1830s when the laird went bankrupt – it happened all over this part of Scotland. His first act as landlord was to send sixty of the inhabitants to Nova Scotia.’

‘Jesus. What, like a punishment?’

‘He claimed the island was over-populated. “Assisted voluntary emigration”, they called it. Nothing voluntary about it, of course – it was eviction by another name, and the rest were supposed to be grateful they were allowed to stay. Some islands were cleared altogether.’ He paused to shake his head. ‘So the McBrides were not well-loved, as you can imagine, though Tamhas was less interfering as a landlord than his father. He was getting on for fifty by the time he married Ailsa – his first wife had died in childbirth, along with the baby. Ailsa was thirty-four – her family had given up any hope of her marrying, so to find such a prestigious husband was seen as a blessing, despite his name. The islanders must have hoped Ailsa would be their advocate.’ He paused for a longing look at his bun. Zoe grinned and nodded her permission. Now that he had agreed to talk, she was willing to indulge him.

‘Tamhas McBride travelled a lot on business, leaving his wife at home,’ Charles continued with his mouth full, brushing sugar from his beard. ‘But she seemed contented enough out there in her big house, according to the letters she sent her younger brother.’

‘That would be Mick’s great-great …’ she paused, trying to calculate.

‘Great-great-grandfather, that’s right. William Drummond. He was ten years younger than his sister and studying theology in Edinburgh – he was intended for the kirk, like his father. William and Ailsa corresponded regularly. Everyone assumed there would soon be a McBride heir and that would keep Ailsa occupied. But they had been married less than a year when Tamhas was drowned. He was on board a ship that went down during a storm in the Atlantic, all hands lost. On his way back from America, as it happens.’ He added this with an encouraging nod, as if it would give her some sense of participation in the story.

‘And he haunts the place?’ She tried to sound light, but it came out nervous and over-excited. Charles chuckled, as you might humour a child.

‘I’ve never heard of Tamhas giving anyone any trouble from beyond the grave.’

‘Then …?’ Zoe found she was gripping her mug tighter.

He uncrossed his legs, leaned back in his chair and recrossed them the other way around.

‘Tamhas McBride’s death was only the beginning. After she was widowed, Ailsa became reclusive. She dismissed all the staff except one maid for housework and laundry, and a woman from the village who came in once a day to cook – despite the fact that Tamhas had left her a rich woman.’

‘She stayed in the house?’

‘Apparently she would walk every day along the cliffs, or sit on the beach drawing – the same scenes over and over, the sky and the sea.’

Zoe felt an odd chill.

‘How do you know all this?’

‘Mick Drummond inherited a remarkable trove of letters and photographs when his father died last year,’ Charles said, running a moistened finger around the edge of his plate to mop up any stray crumbs. ‘Passed down through the generations, though his father had kept them hidden away. There was an unspoken agreement in the family to leave the story buried, though God knows I did my best over the years to persuade old Mr Drummond to part with those papers, without success. Mick offered them to me, knowing my interest, on condition I didn’t publish anything without his permission. He said he had no time for poking through the past.’

‘Does Mick’s family still own the island?’

‘No – I’m afraid the Drummonds have rather fallen from their former glory. The land has all been sold off piecemeal over the decades – most of the centre is National Trust Scotland now, thank goodness, so it’s protected. But he owns the cove where your house is. The McBride land, as it’s known. He either can’t or won’t get rid of that.’

‘So did you find anything good in the letters?’

‘Oh, a great deal. Plenty relating to the McBride case, which has taken on all the colour of a melodrama over the years. I plan to write a book based on the letters one day, but Mick was adamant he didn’t want anything made public yet. I’m hoping he’ll change his mind, of course, but once he’d decided to do up the house, he was afraid any kind of publicity about the case would frighten people away.’ He took a gulp of coffee. ‘Or, worse, attract them. The wrong people. Haunted-house nuts, psychic researchers, amateur detectives – you know the kind.’

‘So it is haunted?’ She pointed at him, triumphant, as if she had tricked him into admission. Charles merely gave her his quiet smile.

‘I’m coming to that. Most of what I’m telling you I’ve gleaned from William Drummond’s letters.’

‘Ailsa’s brother.’

‘Yes. Young William was a prolific correspondent, it seems – first with his father and sister, and later, after the reverend died, with the solicitor who took over the McBride estate. One of the chief subjects of his letters is his sister’s welfare.’

‘So what happened to Ailsa?’

‘Well, at first she kept to herself. Stayed away from the village, turned down all social invitations. Of course, she had become an intriguing prospect, as you may imagine – a wealthy widow living alone in a large house, relatively young, certainly young enough to remarry. As soon as a decent interval had passed, the suitors began paying court. She spurned every advance, according to the maid. Burned letters unopened.’

‘Perhaps she was still grieving her husband,’ Zoe murmured.

‘Perhaps,’ Charles said evenly. ‘She saw her father occasionally, but much less than she used to, and not at all once he became too ill to make the journey out to her. Eight months after Tamhas was drowned, the Reverend Drummond also passed away, from pneumonia. Ailsa McBride finally emerged for his funeral – the first time she’d been seen in the village since they buried her husband – and shocked everyone by turning up in an advanced stage of pregnancy.’

‘Wow.’ She stared at him, eyes wide, the mug halfway to her lips. ‘Was it her husband’s?’

‘Naturally, that’s what everyone wanted to know. But no one quite dared to ask her directly and she never offered an explanation. She wrote to her brother of her “poor fatherless child”, but in the same letter she says “his father will always be watching over him”, which sounds like a sentimental reference to her dead husband. But here’s the bombshell.’ He paused for effect, raising an eyebrow over the top of his cup. ‘Ailsa McBride gave birth to a son nearly eleven months after her husband was buried.’

‘Whoa.’ Zoe sat back. ‘Naughty Ailsa. Unless they miscounted?’

‘The dates are there in the church records. Ten and a half months after the burial. And Tamhas had been away for the best part of two months before he died. You can imagine, in a village like this, the gift that would have been to the gossip mill. But that was the point at which she truly became an outcast.’

‘She doesn’t sound like someone who would have cared too much about that,’ Zoe said.

‘Apparently not. She kept to the house after her son was born. Dismissed the maid, saying she intended to care for the child herself, which of course was unheard of for a woman of means at the time. The maid was less than delighted – there was little work available on the island. It’s my view that much of what was passed down had its roots in malicious rumours put about by the maid in anger at losing her position.’

‘Like what?’ Zoe sat forward, intrigued.

‘Oh, that there was something wrong with the child. Ailsa didn’t send for a midwife – only the maid was present in the house when the child was delivered, and she swore it was stillborn. Ailsa never had the boy baptised either – you can imagine the scandal of that. The cook continued to visit every day but she said she never once heard the child crying, nor ever saw him, though Ailsa was always sewing clothes for him. This went on for a couple of years. This cook said Ailsa McBride was growing stranger and stranger – more remote, as if she was in another world most of the time.’

‘Losing her mind, you mean?’

‘That’s what the new reverend implied in his letter to William Drummond. Though you must remember how quick people were to diagnose madness in women in those days. But even that was principally among educated people. Rough-hewn island folk jumped to other conclusions first.’ He raised a finger, as if he were giving a lecture. ‘Consider it. A woman living alone, who shuns church and refuses to answer the door to the minister, with an unbaptised child no one ever sees?’

‘They said she was a witch, I guess?’ Zoe felt the goosebumps rise on her arms and the back of her neck. ‘Did the rumours never imply who the father was?’

‘Oh yes.’ He gave a mirthless smile. ‘They said it was the Devil himself. There was even a rumour that she had murdered the child at birth in some kind of blood sacrifice, which was why no one ever saw him.’ Charles’s face tightened in anger, as if he took such ignorance and prejudice personally. ‘But that is a real mystery – with all the gossip flying, there was never a finger pointed at any of the island men. Not even the disgruntled maid could confect any plausible evidence of male visitors in the year after Ailsa was widowed. Even the minister didn’t cross the threshold.’

‘Wow. She really knew how to keep a secret.’ Zoe felt a growing admiration for Ailsa McBride and her disregard for convention.

‘So it seems. But after the child was born, Ailsa left the management of her financial affairs to the one solicitor in the village, a Mr Richard Bonar,’ he continued. ‘Bonar would go out to the house once a month to discuss the estate. His letters to William Drummond are fascinating.’ He leaned forward, eyes bright. ‘He says despite the talk, he’s never found Ailsa anything less than entirely lucid. She is always impeccably dressed, the house clean, and she displays a sound understanding of her accounts and investments together with an impressive grasp of arithmetic for a woman.’

‘Big of him,’ Zoe remarked.

Charles laughed. ‘Yes. Though it’s curious – I can’t help but wonder about the effect of those letters. What might have happened if Bonar had been less pragmatic, if he had encouraged William to come back and see his sister. But William was evidently reassured by Bonar’s words. Especially when, a couple of years later, the solicitor said he’d seen the child.’

‘So the son was alive?’

‘Most definitely. A frail boy, Bonar says, very pale, but to all appearances well cared-for, though he suspected he might be mute. So William saw no need to get involved. He was engaged to be married by then, to a girl from an Edinburgh clergy family of some standing – he was moving up in the world and had no wish to be burdened with the care of a widowed sister and sickly nephew on a remote island, particularly when that sister had more than enough money to look after herself and there was a rumour of illegitimacy hanging over the boy. He writes encouraging Ailsa to sell the land and move to Edinburgh so they can see more of each other, but he doesn’t make much effort to persuade her.’ He stopped for another gulp of coffee and shook his head. ‘Perhaps if he had taken more trouble with her, the story might have had a different ending.’

Zoe watched him with a frisson of excitement, waiting for the reveal.

‘Would you like to see her?’ Before she could answer, he crossed the room to a vast walnut cabinet against the back wall, crouched to unlock the top drawer and drew out a leather folder crammed with documents. After some riffling through papers he held out a yellowed photograph, curling at the edges. She reached out for it, aware of a strange tightness in her throat.

‘I’ll put another pot of coffee on,’ Charles said, setting the folder down on the desk and leaving her with the picture.

Zoe looked down. The photo in her hand was a formal portrait, the woman sitting stiff-backed in her black dress with its high lace collar and wide skirts, hair severely parted and pulled back into a bun. The face was stern, not beautiful but strong-featured, with fierce dark eyes that stared into the lens as if issuing a challenge. No wonder the locals left her alone, Zoe thought; the force of that gaze would make anyone step back and apologise. Around her neck, Ailsa wore a silver Celtic cross patterned with ornate tracery.

‘Formidable woman, isn’t she?’ Charles’s voice over her shoulder made her jump. ‘Shall I get you a refill?’ He leaned over for her empty mug. ‘You wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of her, to judge by that expression. You can see why she made the villagers nervous.’

‘So what did happen to her?’ Zoe called, as he pottered back to the kitchen.

‘I’m about to tell you,’ he said. At the same time, the bell above the shop door chimed. Charles emerged from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a tea towel, as Mick appeared in the archway to the main shop. His gaze alighted on Zoe with the photograph in her lap and she watched his face working to suppress a reaction. Again, Zoe felt she had incurred his disapproval; guilty, she glanced at her watch.

‘Thought I might find you here.’ Mick pressed his lips together, but his reproving look was directed at Charles.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Zoe said, half rising. ‘I didn’t realise how quickly the time had gone.’

‘It’s my fault entirely,’ Charles said, with his charming smile, flipping the cloth over his shoulder. ‘I persuaded her to stay for coffee, I’m afraid.’

‘And a wee history lesson, I see.’ Mick nodded to the picture in Zoe’s hand.

‘I asked him to tell me,’ she said, looking at Mick. She did not want to be the cause of ill feeling between the two men, but she found Mick’s efforts to hide the stories from her both irritating and a little ridiculous. Perhaps he was ashamed of having a family history that included witchcraft, or madness. That sort of thing still mattered in a place like this. ‘The island is so fascinating. I thought it might be inspiring for my painting.’

Mick’s face clouded further. ‘I don’t think—’ he began, but changed his mind. ‘I need to get back up the pub in a minute. If you do a quick dash round the shop now, I can run you home, but we’ll need to get a shift on.’

Zoe stood. ‘Look, I don’t want to put you to any trouble. Couldn’t I get a cab? That way I can take my time and explore a bit more.’

Mick laughed. ‘A cab, she says. Good luck with that.’ He folded his arms and appeared to relent. ‘Nae bother. You’ve my mobile number – if you can’t get a lift, I’ll be free again after about four, you can try me then.’ His eyes darted back to the photograph. ‘And don’t believe anything he tells you.’ He turned and stalked briskly out of the shop, leaving the bell jangling as the door banged behind him.

Zoe caught Charles’s eye and he grimaced.

‘We’re in the doghouse,’ she said, handing back the photo, avoiding a last look at the woman’s stare. ‘I shouldn’t have kept him waiting, when he was going out of his way to help me.’

‘It’s me he’s angry with,’ Charles said, though he didn’t sound as if this troubled him unduly. He picked up the document case and tapped it with a tobacco-stained forefinger. ‘But I only ever promised not to write publicly about the story without his blessing. I certainly never agreed not to discuss it. And as a publican, he should have a better grasp of human nature. The more he tries to stop you hearing, the more curious you’re bound to be.’ He took a long look at Ailsa McBride before slipping the picture back among the other papers. ‘How was your first night in the house, by the way?’

Zoe hesitated. For one reckless moment she considered telling him about the singing and the locked door, the figure on the beach. It would be a relief to voice the strangeness of it aloud, to have someone as unflappable as Charles reassure her that she had imagined it. But in the same instant she recalled the dream that had preceded it, her own nakedness and fierce desire, and felt unaccountably ashamed, as if he would be able to read traces of that dream in her face. Besides, he had seen her at the pub; he must have noticed how quickly the whisky had gone to her head. He would be too polite to tell her it was the drink, but she could hardly expect to be taken seriously. She shrugged and smiled.

‘Fine. I needed the sleep.’

He raised his head, eyebrows cocked in a question. ‘You didn’t find the silence unnerving? People often do.’

‘I’m OK with silence,’ she said, still smiling, though her face had begun to feel rigid.

‘That’s good. Few people really know how to be comfortable with it, I find.’

‘Will you tell me the rest of the story?’

Charles appeared to be on the point of answering when the shop bell rang again and a wavering voice called out as the door banged shut.

‘Anyone there?’

Horace lumbered up from under his chair to greet the newcomer. An elderly woman in a clear plastic rain hood picked her way through the piles of books, nosing the air like a woodland creature.

‘There you are!’ Her watery eyes alighted on Zoe. ‘Oh, but I don’t want to trouble you if you’re busy, Professor.’

‘No trouble at all, Betsy. It’s always a pleasure to see you.’ He pushed his chair back, turning to wink at Zoe over the woman’s head. ‘Do help yourself to more coffee, Ms Adams, and a book, if you like.’

But Zoe sensed the earlier intimacy had been broken; Mick’s appearance had cast a shadow of guilt over their conversation. She picked up her jacket and tucked The Myths That Make Us inside it.

‘Thank you – I should get on with my shopping. I’ve taken up enough of your time.’

‘Not at all.’ He waved a hand. ‘I’ve left you on a cliffhanger so you’ll have to come back and see us.’

The old dog followed her to the door, sniffing at her legs. She scratched his head between his ears on her way out and he made a low, throat-clearing noise of appreciation, sitting down solidly in the doorway. Zoe turned to see the elderly woman watching her through the glass as she walked away.