Kate Morton - The Distant Hours

‘To a man called Matthew. We fell in love when we were very young. Sixteen.’ She smiled softly, remembering. ‘We planned to marry when we were twenty-one.’

‘Do you mind me asking what happened?’

‘Not at all.’ She began folding down the bed, smoothing back the blanket and sheet at a neat angle. ‘It didn’t work out; he married someone else.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. So much time has passed. Both of them have been dead for years.’ Perhaps she was uncomfortable that the conversation had taken a self-pitying turn for she made a joke then: ‘I was fortunate, I suppose, that my sister was kind enough to let me live on at the castle for such a bargain rate.’

‘I can’t imagine Percy would have minded that at all,’ I said lightly.

‘Perhaps not, though it was Juniper I meant.’

‘I’m afraid I…?’

Saffy blinked at me, surprised. ‘Why, the castle is hers. Didn’t you know? We’d always supposed that it would pass to Percy, of course – she was the eldest and the only one who loved it as he did – but Daddy changed his will at the last.’

‘Why?’ I was thinking aloud; I hadn’t really expected her to answer, but she appeared to be wrapped up in the telling of her story.

‘Daddy was obsessed with the impossibility of creative women being able to continue with their art once saddled with the burden of marriage and children. When Juniper showed such promise, he became fixated on the idea that she might marry and waste her talent. He kept her here, never let her go out to school or to meet other people, and then had his will changed so that the castle was hers. That way, he reasoned, she would never have to concern herself with the business of making a living, nor with marrying a man who’d keep her. It was terribly unfair of him, though. The castle was always meant to be Percy’s. She loves this place as other people love their sweethearts.’ She gave the pillows a final plump before collecting her lamp from the table. ‘I suppose in that respect it’s fortunate that Juniper didn’t marry and move away.’

I failed to make the connection. ‘But wouldn’t Juniper have been happy in that case to have a sister who cared so much for the old place living here and looking after it?’

Saffy smiled. ‘It wasn’t so simple. Daddy could be cruel when it came to getting his own way. He put a condition on the will. If Juniper were to marry, the castle would no longer be hers, passing instead to the Catholic Church.’

‘The Church?’

‘He suffered with guilt, did Daddy.’

And after my meeting with Percy, I knew exactly why that would be. ‘So if Juniper and Thomas had married, the castle would have been lost?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that’s right. Poor Percy would never have borne it.’ She shivered then. ‘I am sorry. It’s so cold in here. One never realizes. We have no need to use the room ourselves. I’m afraid there’s no heating along this wing, but there are extra blankets in the bottom of the wardrobe.’

A spectacular bolt of lightning struck then, followed by a crack of thunder. The feeble electric light wavered, flickered, then the bulb went dark. Saffy and I both raised our lamps, as if puppets drawn by the same string. We gazed together at the cooling bulb.

‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘there goes our power. Thank goodness we thought to bring the lamps.’ She hesitated. ‘Will you be all right, alone up here?’

‘I’m sure I will.’

‘Well then,’ she said with a smile. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

Night-time is different. Things are otherwise when the world is black. Insecurities and hurts, anxieties and fears grow teeth at night. Particularly when one is sleeping in a strange, old castle with a storm outside. Even more particularly when one has spent the afternoon listening to an elderly lady’s confession. Which is why, when Saffy left, closing the door behind her, I didn’t even consider snuffing my lamp’s flame.

I changed into the nightdress and sat white and ghost-like on the bed. Listened as the rain continued to pour and the wind rattled the shutters, just as if someone were on the other side, struggling to get in. No – I pushed the thought aside, even managed to smile at myself. I was thinking of the Mud Man , of course. Understandable when I was spending the night in the very place in which the novel was set, on a night that might have materialized from its pages.

I tucked myself under the covers and turned my thoughts to Percy. I’d brought my notebook with me and now I opened it, jotting down ideas as they came to me. Percy Blythe had given me the story of the Mud Man ’s genesis, which was a great coup. She’d also answered the mystery of Thomas Cavill’s disappearance. I should have felt relieved, and yet I was unsettled. The sensation was recent, something to do with what Saffy had told me. As she’d spoken of her father’s will, unpleasant connections were being made in my mind, little lights turning on that made me feel increasingly uncomfortable: Percy’s love for the castle, a will that specified its loss if Juniper should marry, Thomas Cavill’s unfortunate death…

But no. Percy had said it was an accident and I believed her.

I did. What reason did she have to lie? She might just as well have kept the whole thing to herself.

And yet…

Round and round the snippets went: Percy’s voice, then Saffy’s, and my own doubts thrown in for good measure. Not Juniper’s voice, though. I only ever seemed to hear about the youngest Blythe, never from her. Finally, I closed my notebook with a frustrated slap.

That was enough for one day. I heaved a sigh and glanced through the books that Saffy had provided, seeking something that might still my mind: Jane Eyre , The Mysteries of Udulpho , Wuthering Heights . I grimaced – good friends, all, but not the sort with whom I felt like keeping company on this cold and stormy night.

I was tired, very tired, but I warded off the moment of sleep, loath to blow out the lamp and submit myself finally to the dark. Eventually, though, my eyelids began to droop, and after I’d jerked myself awake a few times, I figured I was tired enough for sleep to claim me quickly. I blew out the flame, closed my eyes as the smell of dying smoke thinned in the cold air around me. The last thing I remember was a rush of rain slipping down the glass.

I woke with a jolt; suddenly and unnaturally at an unknown hour. I lay very still, listening. Waiting, wondering what it was that had woken me. The hairs on my arms were standing on end and I had the strongest, eeriest sense that I was not alone, that there was someone in the room with me. I scanned the shadows, my heart hammering, dreading what I might see.

I saw nothing, but I knew. Someone was there.

I held my breath and listened, but it was still raining outside and with the howling wind rattling the shutters, its wraiths gliding along the stone corridor, there was little chance of hearing anything else. I had no matches and no means of relighting my lamp, so I talked myself back to a state of comparative calm. I told myself it was my pre-sleep thoughts, my obsession with the Mud Man . I’d dreamed a noise. I was imagining things.

And just when I had myself almost convinced, there was a huge lightning flash and I saw that my bedroom door was open. Saffy had closed it behind her. I’d been right. Someone had been in the room with me; was still there, perhaps, waiting in the shadows-

‘ Meredith …’

Every vertebra in my body straightened. My heart pounded, my pulse ran electric in my veins. That wasn’t the wind or the walls; someone had whispered Mum’s name. I was petrified and yet a strange energy gripped me. I knew I had to do something. I couldn’t sit the entire night out, wrapped in my blanket, wide eyes scanning the dark room.