Sarah Rayne - What Lies Beneath

‘And I saw the figure and visage of Madness seeking for a home.’

The figure and visage of Madness. Think about that, my unknown reader. Imagine seeing the figure and the face of Madness starting to take shape. The darkness of the spirit becoming flesh. I’ve seen it all right, which is why I can write about it. The real horror is that the figure doesn’t materialize all at once, in one huge smack-in-the-face vision so that you fall down in a fit there and then and lose all comprehension of the world. It’s nothing so merciful. It steals up on you, so that at first you think your eyes are playing tricks. Then you think it’s just a shadow you’re seeing. You spend weeks, months, trying to convince yourself you’re perfectly sane. But finally you come to understand that a slow inexorable madness is creeping over you, nibbling away at your brain as it comes…

I mustn’t get sidetracked, though. Nor must I allow myself to get too far ahead with this account. I must space it out, so that the days are filled. Because the clock is ticking relentlessly, and in three days – seventy-two hours – I shall hear death approaching.

Death. My death can no more be avoided than the stars can be halted in their courses.

The Present

Clem Poulter’s little dinner parties could no more be avoided than the sun could be prevented from rising each morning. Even if you were not on the guest list, it was impossible not to hear about them. Meeting Veronica in the supermarket, Ella was not best pleased to learn from her that Clem was in the planning stage of one of his evenings.

‘It’s next Friday,’ said Veronica, who this morning was wearing what Ella considered an impossibly inappropriate outfit, consisting of leather trousers, a woollen jacket and a quantity of gold jewellery. The fact that the gold was almost certainly genuine did not make it any better. In fact, Ella thought it rather vulgar of Veronica to be flaunting nine carat in the middle of Sainsbury’s halfway through the morning.

Everyone knew, without the parade of gold necklaces and nappa leather, what a very good thing Veronica had made out of having two husbands. The first had been discarded via the divorce courts and the ceding of a five-bedroomed house into Veronica’s name, and the second had died from a perforated stomach ulcer, leaving behind what Derek referred to as ‘an entire battalion of insurance policies’. At the time he had said he could very easily visualize Veronica checking the insurance policies with one hand and stirring arsenic into the coffee with the other. Ella had thought this remark in very poor taste, but the Operatic Society had been rehearsing Così Fan Tutte at the time, in which there was apparently a lot of arsenic-quaffing, so the remark could be partially forgiven.

Veronica cornered Ella to say Clem had phoned her last evening to invite her to the dinner party. Oh, Ella had not been invited? Well, doubtless Clem would get round to it. He had meant to have it a couple of weeks ago but he had had that shocking cold, so he had postponed. The invitation was seven thirty for eight, and Veronica had decided to wear a trouser outfit because Clem said there were to be games afterwards. She had a brand-new one – silk, with satin lapels on the jacket – and when she tried it on in the shop the assistants had all said how youthful and sexy and elegant she looked.

‘If there’re games, at least he won’t be forcing his dreadful music on the guests,’ said Ella, because once Veronica got onto the subject of being youthful and sexy and elegant they would be here all morning.

‘No, but I wouldn’t put it past him to stage a session of Murder or Sardines,’ said Veronica, and went off to the wine section.

Ella watched her for a moment, seeing how the vain creature teetered along the aisles in her absurd high heels and paused to ostentatiously examine the labels on wine bottles. She would be hoping people were looking at her and speculating on who would be drinking the wine with her. As if, thought Ella crossly, anybody gives a damn. Ella certainly did not give a damn who drank special-offer Pinot Noir in Veronica’s over-furnished house, nor did she give a damn about Clem’s stupid dinner party with its even more stupid games, whatever they might be. She and Derek would probably not be able to go anyway; as well as The Mikado , Derek was very busy with some sort of audit at the council offices. Amy said he was looking quite haggard, poor old Gramps, but to Amy’s generation anyone over forty looked haggard.

If anyone was entitled to look haggard at the moment, it was Ella herself, what with all the worry about whether Clem and Veronica would keep their nerve if questioned about the body found at the lodge. She was not sleeping very well, and in the ragged sleep she did get she saw the dreadful face peering over the ruined tumble of bricks in Cadence Manor. Sometimes she saw Serena Cadence with her staring dead eyes and ravaged face, and sometimes Serena’s face turned into that of Ella’s own mother, with the scars livid and ugly on her skin.

She had no idea if the police had identified the man’s body yet, or if they had found her watch with the damning initials, E. L. F., and the date of her birthday. Initials and date together would show she had been inside Cadence Manor during the two days between her birthday and the closing of the village. It was what Derek would call ‘a very small window of time’.

Ella was annoyed with Derek. She thought she might reasonably have expected him to notice she was preoccupied, but he had not, though she did not want him asking awkward questions. Amy had noticed. That very morning she had asked if Gran was all right, because she was looking a bit moth-eaten. Ella took this to mean slightly unwell in Amy’s vocabulary, and said she was perfectly all right – well, maybe a bit tired, what with one thing and another.

‘What things?’

‘All sorts of things. You don’t realize what a lot I have to do,’ Ella said. ‘There’s the running of this house – all the shopping and washing and ironing.’

Amy said, ‘But you’ve got a washing machine. And a dishwasher. And there’s someone in Lower Bramley who does an ironing service. She’s put a little poster up in the library. She’ll collect and deliver, and it’s not very expensive.’

‘It’s not just that,’ said Ella quickly. ‘There are all my various activities. I lead a very busy life, you know. A very fulfilled life,’ she added hastily, in case this sounded grumblesome.

‘Oh, I see,’ said Amy, in the blank voice of someone who did not see at all.

Walking round the supermarket, trying to keep a distance from Veronica, Ella remembered Amy’s words and suddenly wondered if other people were thinking she seemed moth-eaten. She could not risk anyone wondering if she had a secret worry. People were so gossipy, and she was quite a well-known figure in the district, what with helping Derek’s operatic people on their social nights, what with the Gardening Club and the library group, and helping in the Oxfam shop for an hour on Friday mornings.

At this point she caught sight of herself in a mirror display. She did look a bit drawn, although supermarket lights were invariably unfriendly. Still, it would not hurt to book a hair appointment when she got home. Quite apart from looking moth-eaten, standards had to be maintained and Ella liked to look smart. And even without silly dinner parties with childish games (to which she would not go, even if Clem asked her), in her busy and fulfilled life there was generally something to look forward to.

Clem Poulter was pleased to have one of his little dinner parties to look forward to. Everything had been so dreary of late, what with his cold and the horrible chemical mist hanging over Priors Bramley, and the unpleasant discovery of the body. He was a bit worried about that, but only a very little bit. What had happened all those years ago had been the purest accident. They certainly had not deliberately pushed the man into the ruined chimney shaft. Clem had wanted to go down there in case there was something they could do for him, but the church clock had already been striking twelve and they had known the plane with its sinister cargo would be approaching.