It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the shadows, but he could already see that the wrought-iron gate to the walled garden was open, which he thought it had not been earlier. This did not prove anything one way or the other, however. A ghost might not open a gate – it might not need to. But a straightforward burglar might not do so either, in case it attracted attention. His hand closed around the phone. It would take three seconds to tap out 999, but it might take twenty minutes for the police to get out here.
He was just managing to convince himself that he had imagined the sounds when they came again, and this time he saw dark shapes moving as well. There was a whippy little wind, and flurries of rain dashed against the windows, but through this he could hear whispers. Fragments of words and phrases. At first he could not make any sense of them, then he recognized one or two of the words, and realized, with a cold frisson, that the whispers were in German. Ruhig sein, which he was fairly sure meant quiet, or ‘be quiet’, and verbergen, which he thought was hide.
Be quiet and hide. Was this Hugbert Edreich’s men, creeping towards the house to capture Stephen? This was a bizarre thought, but Michael was beginning to think he had already seen so many bizarre things in this house that the addition of a quartet of German soldiers from 1917 was perfectly believable.
He leaned forward, and as he did so he accidentally caught a fold of the curtain, which fell more widely open. The light from the desk lamp streamed into the gardens, and there, caught in the ray of light, were two dark-clad figures, apparently carrying a third figure between them, while a fourth appeared to be giving directions or even orders. They turned sharply towards the house and the window, their faces pallid, featureless blurs, but their eyes wide with shock. For a moment Michael’s curiosity pushed aside his fear, and he leaned over the window sill, trying to see more. There was an impression of hazy, hasty movement, the sound of hurried footsteps, and then the iron gate swung shut, as if of its own accord. Darkness closed down again and there was only the sound of the rain beating down on leaves and grass.
Michael realized he was shaking, but after a few moments he managed to pull himself together sufficiently to close the curtains. He sat down in the deep chair facing the window and tried to sort out his thoughts. They’ve got him, he thought. Those were the German soldiers and they came for Stephen, and they got him. That’s who they were carrying.
Did that mean there would be no more disturbances? Had the finale of that long-ago tragedy been played out tonight, and would Fosse House now sink back into its own brooding half-silence? It was unexpectedly disturbing to think Stephen had finally been caught and, presumably, later executed, but it might at least mean the house would be spook-free for few hours. If so, it might be safer and more sensible to stay put. And even if the road had been cleared, he would still have to go outside and walk the twenty or thirty yards to his car. His mind presented him with a mental picture of his car, parked on one side of the building, in a small gravel area surrounded by dark, overgrown bushes.
In about four hours – say four and a half – it would be getting light. Could he get through four more hours in this house? He went to the window again and peered out. Nothing stirred. But would those men return? If there was any likelihood of it, Michael would brave the Serbonian bog and hell’s scalding pavements to reach the village. But had they returned? Was there any way of finding out? How about Luisa’s journal?
He made a decision. He would look through the next few pages of Luisa’s journal to see if there were any more references to Hugbert’s gang of merry men. Depending on what he found – or did not find – he would decide then whether to make a dash for his car and trust to luck that the road would not be blocked.
But, as far as he could tell, nothing moved anywhere, although rain pattered steadily against the windows. If Hugbert Edreich’s little band were still out there they would be getting drenched. Michael had a sudden wild vision of himself calling to them to come inside out of the storm, and offering them dry towels and hot toddies. ‘And do sit here, Hauptfeldwebel Barth, and tell me about the Kaiser. Is it true he once threw a deed box at Bismarck?’
He reached for Luisa’s journal:
Today I made a slightly surprising discovery. When I opened Father’s desk earlier, I found the translation he had made of the German soldier’s letter – the one he read to me and that I copied into my diary.
But also in the desk was a second letter from the same man, which Father has also translated. I hadn’t known about this letter, but it follows on from the one Father read out.
It’s another fragment of Stephen, so I’m copying it down here.
Michael spared a thought to wonder why Luisa had been looking in her father’s desk – Booth Gilmore had sounded fiercely protective of his work, and Luisa did not seem to have been permitted into the library very often. But perhaps Booth had gone off on another of his research expeditions, and Luisa had simply not bothered to record the fact.
He was aware of pity. Luisa seemed to have written a good deal of this while in her early teens, and she had led a more or less solitary life in a gloomy isolated house, with uncaring parents, and without any of the normal outlets of teenagers. Life in this part of the world in the 1950s would not exactly have been a riot of wild living, but Luisa’s situation had been very nearly Bront?-esque. But the Bront?s had had their own strange and wonderful fantasy worlds, which they had spun out of the dark moors, and they had had each other. Luisa had had no one. It was small wonder she had succumbed to the slightly eerie fixation on Leonora, and even less wonder that she had focused with such intensity on the mysterious, romantic Stephen.
He began to read the letter she had copied down.
To Hauptmann Niemeyer
Sir,