Hugbert Edreich
There was a long silence. Then I said, ‘They came here, didn’t they? They came to kill Stephen.’
‘Yes, I believe they did. The death sentence had been passed in Holzminden – I don’t know why or what Stephen’s crime had been, but I don’t think four German soldiers would have risked coming to the country at that time just to recapture an escaped prisoner of war. They came to this house to get him. I think they got into the grounds. I think Stephen saw them or heard them, and he tried to get back into the house to escape being captured and being—’
‘Executed?’
‘Yes. I think he was in the walled garden when they came, Luisa.’
In the walled garden … Then Stephen was the shadow that occasionally darted across the gardens at twilight … He was inside the smudged twilight images when the trees seemed to take on the shapes of men … And the echoes trickling through my mind at dusk were his echoes as he fled from his pursuers. ‘Let me in …’
‘Did he get back into the house?’ I said, and I could hear how my voice was strained and desperate. ‘Did he escape them?’
‘I don’t know. What I do know is that there’s no record anywhere of his death. He simply vanished. So, seven years after that war ended, I had him pronounced as officially dead by the courts. I hated doing that, you know, but it was necessary if I was to inherit this house. It had been empty all those years. It was falling into terrible disrepair.’ He glanced towards the window. Someone had left the wrought-iron gate to the walled garden open, latched back against the wall. Mother would probably send me out to close it after supper. She would not go herself, because she disliked the walled garden, saying it was a gloomy old place.
Father said, ‘If they did execute him, they would have done so in secrecy. That German, Hugbert Edreich, wrote in his letter that he wonders if the sentence would have been legal in this country.’
‘It might have been seen as murder?’ I said tentatively.
‘Yes. I think that’s what he meant. He sounds a decent sort of man, doesn’t he?’
‘Would they have shot Stephen?’
‘I don’t know. Shooting was one of the more usual forms of execution, though. But we could save him, Luisa.’ He came closer to me. ‘Think about it. Stephen tried to run back to this house – he called out as he ran – he called out to be let in. We’ve both heard him.’
‘There was someone in the house, then? Someone who could have let him in?’
‘I don’t know that, either. But it’s Stephen we hear, Luisa. He’s constantly trying to get inside the house—’ He broke off, breathing a little too fast, the dreadful mad look glaring from his eyes. I pretended it was only the light from the nearby lamp making him look like that, but I knew it wasn’t. ‘We could save him,’ he said again.
‘But he isn’t real. How can you save someone from something that happened such a long time ago? Because—’ I struggled with a complicated concept, then said, ‘Whatever happened all those years ago has happened. You can’t change it.’
‘Are you sure about that?’ he said softly. ‘Perhaps you’re too young to understand. I forget how young you are. You wouldn’t grasp how Time operates. How it can travel forwards as well as backwards. It bleeds, you see, Luisa. If it’s damaged, Time bleeds. And sometimes it bleeds forward.’
I don’t know if I’ve written that down correctly, because I don’t know if I’ve remembered it correctly – I certainly don’t know if I’ve understood it.
‘How could we save him?’ I asked.
My father said, ‘Tonight, when he whispers at the window, we’re going to let him in.’
That was the point at which I knew he was mad.
Now I’m sitting in the library, with the curtains open to the night garden. I’m listening for the footsteps I have heard so often in this house and for the whispering that can lie on the air like torn fragments of old silk.
I’m not sure where Father is, and I don’t know what he intends to do. He was silent throughout supper, but that isn’t unusual, and it drew no comment from Mother. My own silence did, though, and Mother subjected me to a series of questions about my health. Some were boring, some were ridiculous, and several were embarrassing. I said I was quite all right, thank you, only perhaps a little tired.
To this, Mother at once said she was tired as well, in fact she believed she had one of her headaches coming on, not that she expected anyone to understand or sympathize. She would take one of her sleeping tablets and hope she was granted a reasonable night’s sleep for once.
I mumbled something and said I would read in the library before going up to bed. I had the newest Agatha Christie mystery. Father’s eyes flickered, and the shared knowledge of what we were going to do passed between us.
The Christie book is in front of me as I write this, and I see I have reached the part where M’sieu Hercule Poirot is about to reveal the killer’s name. I wish I could continue reading, and I wish I could be interested in nothing more than finding out who committed the three (was it three?) murders earlier in the story.