Mrs Holt gave her a long look. ‘We never told Master Rupert. Just said that she’d died, and it was true, in a sense. That lunatic wasn’t Mrs Bainbridge, not any more. I’ve seen hysteria, madam. I’ve seen a woman driven mad with her novel reading and her brain fevers. I’ve seen that look in your eye before.’
‘But I am not mad!’ Mrs Holt did not reply. ‘You know I am not. You were there, Mrs Holt. You saw the companions. You saw them burnt to ash and reappear from nowhere.’
Mrs Holt shook her head. ‘Maybe it’s losing a child that does it to your poor mind . . . God help me. I didn’t listen to the ravings of the last Mrs Bainbridge and I’ll be damned if I’ll listen to yours.’
Turning on her heel, she strode from the room and closed the door. Elsie heard her sharp steps echo through the corridor and down, down, descending the spiral staircase behind the wall.
The night hung heavy and interminable. Sarah lay beside her in the bed, her mousy hair spread out on the pillow. Her chest rose and fell beneath her ruffled nightgown. How could she sleep?
One window stood ajar, letting a gasp of air into the stuffy room, but it was not refreshing; it smelt warm and herbal. Outside, a barn owl screeched to its mate.
Rupert’s mother waltzed in circles around Elsie’s head. She had slept in this house, walked in the gardens. A lunatic? Or a fellow victim? She remembered that tattered, plundered crib in the nursery and shuddered.
Sarah shifted in the bed. Her body made the sheets too hot, but Elsie did not move. She kept her eyes open, waiting. Knowing it would come.
Yes.
Hissss. It was so soft, it might have been a breeze passing through the room. But there was no breeze tonight.
Hiss. She couldn’t stand it any longer. She had to find out. She had to get the second volume of that godforsaken diary and discover what Rupert’s mother had known.
Carefully, she slid her feet out from under the covers and placed them on the carpet. The bed rustled, but Sarah did not stir. Elsie reached beneath the pillow for the matches she kept there every night, like a talisman.
There was a snuffed-out candle in the holder on the dressing table. She picked it up as she passed. It made more sense to light the wick when she was outside in the corridor – then she could leave Sarah asleep, safe from the danger she was walking into.
Hiss, hiss.
She moved one leg after the other, forcing herself on, her hand out before her, feeling the way. Expecting, at any second, the sickening touch of wood.
Her palm collided with something. She flinched – it was the bedroom door handle, just the door handle. She leant against it and listened, stretching her senses to locate the next hiss, but nothing came.
She struggled to open the door, her nails clicking against the handle as she gripped it. She pushed down and eased the door open a fraction.
A wall of heat met her. It was like opening the door of a kitchen range. The scents of rose and thyme entwined about her, insinuating themselves into the fabric of her nightgown. Light the candle, light the candle. Neither light nor fire would protect her but she needed them, needed them like air.
The match flared in her trembling hand, sending shadows snaking out into the corridor. She would not look up, not until the candle was lit. It took every ounce of concentration to connect the flame with the wick. At last it caught; she shook out the match and let it drop steaming to the floor.
Quickly, quickly. She had to move but her hand refused to raise the candle, refused to do anything but grip the metal holder until her knuckle turned white. Close to tears, she finally managed to thrust the candle out ahead of her. The breath sealed in her chest.
The maroon corridor stretched before her, cross-hatched with shadows. Silver pools of moonlight dotted the path to the stairs. Three companions stood waiting, their eyes gleaming with a revolting hunger.
She would not scream, she would not scream. They were only pieces of wood.
Pieces of wood that can move.
She would have to move quicker – that was all. She could make it, she could do it. It was like jumping, like lighting a match. One. Two. Three.
Her tread was steady, far steadier than her careering heartbeat. Each time her foot hit the floor, the candle jogged and bumped in its holder. Light surged and retracted but the flame didn’t go out.
Sawdust bloomed from the carpet as she approached the first companion. Through the candlelit haze she made out the figure of a woman. A woman without arms.
Her throat squeezed as she drew level. The woman had long, matted hair and eyes alight with a ghastly vivacity. Familiar, somehow. She had seen those eyes before, knew them well . . .
Rupert.
Rupert’s mother, the other Mrs Bainbridge. A strait waistcoat concealed her arms. She was helpless, begging Elsie with an expression so lifelike that it cut her to the heart. Beneath the clumsy rhythm of Elsie’s pulse came a wail, thin and pathetic. She could hear her. Elsie could hear Rupert’s mother, crying.
Her skin pricked, tensed for the shock of contact – it did not come. Somehow, her feet kept walking; she passed by, unscathed, and moved towards the next companion.
This must be the cook that Sarah spoke of: she gripped a meat cleaver in her doughy hands. Blood streaked her apron and the coif that covered her hair. Red paint, just paint. Yet it carried the rancid smell of the real thing. Combined with the scent of roses and thyme it was a nauseous mixture, unbearable.
Again Elsie overtook the companion, this stab of fear deeper than the last. Terror knocked her vision aslant. She barely saw the last companion, the old woman with the child on her lap. Guided by memory, she turned past the Lantern Gallery and made her way to the stairs leading to the garret.
The staircase was empty. Relieved, drunk with a sense of her own bravery, she broke into a run and took the steps two at a time. Shadows wheeled around her, scuttling back to the corners. She had beaten them. She would get that diary.
As she rounded the newel post and gained the landing, a sound stopped her in her tracks. Her eyes shot back down the staircase. They were all there – every companion she had walked past – staggered like children in a game of grandmother’s footsteps; one on the treads, the other two at intervals down the corridor.
They had followed her.
Hiss.
Her gaze flew up: more companions had appeared, drawn to her like flies to a corpse. They were guarding the whitewashed passage that led to the garret. Hiss. Back again – the companion on the stairs had moved, ever so slightly.
Inch by inch, step by step, they were coming for her.
‘God help me, please help me.’
She could not watch them all at once.
With a cry of agony, she wrenched herself away from the banisters and charged down the corridor. The candle blew out but she did not stop, could not stop; she kept going, pushing her way on. They didn’t want her near the diary, and that was exactly why she must read it. She would read it if it was the last thing she ever did.