In the walled garden Maude was having trouble with her sprinkler, and also with Arthur. She was trying to sow some seeds from a packet, but as soon as she had patted the earth back over her carefully-made drills, the cat dug them up again. Then he lay down in them, purring, and began to chew the empty seed packets which, impaled on twigs, marked where everything had been planted. “This is hopeless,” she said in exasperation, chasing him off. “He thinks he’s a dog. I’ve never known a cat chew things. He’s in absolute disgrace with Colonel Stickley; he keeps chewing up The Times.” She looked at the sprinkler which was dribbling feebly out of only half its holes. “And look at that. Do you think he’s chewed that up too?”
Sam inspected the sprinkler and noticed that the hosepipe attached to it was kinked up in several places. As soon as he straightened it out the water wooshed out with terrific force, soaking them all. Nobody minded getting wet, it was so warm, but Arthur fled to a safe viewing point on top of a rose arch.
Sam was thinking how peculiar it was that Cousin M, who was a professional gardener and who’d written books on the subject, hadn’t noticed all those knots in the hosepipe. Gardeners were usually such practical people.
But then she said, “It’s really most odd, getting all those kinks in the pipe. No wonder the sprinkler was bunged up. Thank you, dear. That was such a help.” In spite of himself, and although he was determined not to get obsessed like Magnus, or to start seeing things where there was probably nothing to see, Sam couldn’t help thinking of Cousin M’s flower arrangement in the turret room fireplace, and of how the white petals had been torn to pieces. If there really were some ghostly women around then they had a grudge against people.
“It seems ridiculous to have sprinklers on all the time,” Cousin Maude went on. “They banned sprinklers and hosepipes last year, and they’ll be banning them again if we don’t get some rain soon. Life would be a lot easier for me if we concreted this whole place over. Perish the thought.”
“But it’s gorgeous, Cousin M,” said Floss, looking round at the ancient kitchen garden with its rusty brick walls smothered in every conceivable thing that grew. There were not only roses and honeysuckles, but vines and serious-looking fruit trees, their branches trained into intricate patterns along wires fixed into the masonry. There were orderly rows of vegetables and there were flowerbeds, there was a sundial and a pond with a fountain and, right in the middle, there was a maze with fat little box hedges. It was so small you got to the middle in no time and, as all the children were taller than the hedges, there was no danger of getting lost. They were soon right in the centre of it, where they found an ancient statue of a little child. It was made of some greenish metal, its ridged curls covered with bird-droppings, a child with gently-folded hands that stared rather sadly into another small pool, covered with waterlily leaves.
Cousin M was obviously pleased that Floss approved of her garden, but she didn’t seem to want anybody lingering by the statue. “Colonel Stickley doesn’t really like people coming here,” she said apologetically, leading them out of the maze. “It’s rather a special place to him, I mean where the statue is. He likes to sit there and smoke his pipe.”
“Why is it special?” asked Magnus.
Cousin M paused. “Well, he did have a wife,” she said, “but she died a long time ago. There is a son, David – oh, he’ll be at least forty by now, though I still think of him as a young boy. I can see him now, playing in this garden.”
Magnus said sharply, “Where is he? You said is not was.” Sam and Floss exchanged looks. He was in his detective mood again, firing questions at everybody.
But the odd, abrupt manner which so irritated them didn’t seem to offend Cousin M. She said, “Yes, dear, I did. He’s a very clever man, he speaks a lot of languages. He worked abroad for a newspaper and he was captured some years ago by a group of terrorists – two of them were captured. They’d insisted on entering a no-go area, to try and get some photographs. It’s the usual story I’m afraid. They just disappeared. He is alive – well, he was three years ago. But his father hasn’t heard anything about him since then, when the man they captured at the same time was released. It’s really terrible for my cousin, not knowing what has become of his only child.”
The three of them looked very grave and no-one knew what to say. Then Floss spoke. “He must think it’s part of the curse,” she said, “and why nothing’s gone right here for years and years. Does it really go back to that horrible-looking monk, that – what was he called?”
“Burst Belly,” Magnus informed her.
“I don’t think so, dear,” Cousin M said calmly. “Families do have runs of bad luck and some have very tragic histories, but as for curses, well, I don’t believe in that sort of thing at all.” She bent down and began to attack a clump of weeds that were growing up vigorously in the middle of a seed drill. “Now, you could say this was a curse, just look at those roots!”
“You’re like me,” Sam told her, squatting down in the flowerbed and helping her pull them out.
“Am I really, dear? That’s very encouraging. How, exactly?”
“Well, you’re practical and you don’t seem to believe old wives’ tales.”
Cousin M grinned. “Even though I’m a bit of an old wife myself?”
“I didn’t mean that,” Sam began, feeling confused. “I just meant that I get the feeling you wouldn’t take Magnus’s theories about the Abbey very seriously.”
Cousin Maude straightened up. “Ouch! That’s my back. I really must remember to get up more slowly, doctor’s orders.” She shook the earth off her trowel then looked at Magnus. “What are these ‘theories’ of yours about the Abbey, dear? I don’t think I’ve heard about them.”
Magnus opened his mouth but Sam got in first. Magnus’s rather slow and pedantic manner of speaking, when he was really gripped by something, got on his nerves. “He thinks the Abbey might be haunted and that that’s why people don’t book conferences here any more, or use the sports centre. Have you seen anything, Cousin M?”
She looked him straight in the eyes. Then she looked equally keenly at Magnus and Floss. Silence had fallen on the old garden. They were all waiting for her to speak.
“No, dears, I haven’t, not ever. I’ve not lived in the Abbey all that long, I only came back here two years ago. Cecil didn’t want to lose the place and he needed a business partner. I had some money to invest and I wanted to get my hands on another garden. So, well, here I am. I don’t really understand why people have stopped coming here. It’s a perfect sort of place, I think.”
“Who does know about the Abbey, then?” demanded Magnus. “Colonel Stickley doesn’t seem to want to talk about it, or to show us things. But I suspect he does think there are ghosts around, he’s like me.”
“Really? What do you mean by that, dear?”
“Well, in some people,” Magnus began in the high-pitched, detective voice that was becoming familiar to them, “the veil between this world and the spirit world is very, very thin. Those are the people who see things.”
“Or think they do,” Sam muttered.
“I see. That’s very well put. I think I’m not one of those people, Magnus. My feet are very firmly planted on the earth, you could say. I’m not a person who ‘sees things’, or picks up special atmospheres.”
“I just wish somebody would take me seriously,” Magnus said. His voice had become rather petulant and complaining but, even as the words came out, he felt ashamed of himself. The Colonel’s only son, David, who would have inherited the Abbey, was missing, presumed dead. That in itself was a truly terrible thing. No wonder he wandered about at night and brooded by the fire. The missing son felt like a curse in itself; you didn’t need ghosts as well.
“Does Wilf know anything?” asked Floss. The small lean-looking man frying bacon in his khaki shorts had seemed quite friendly.
“I don’t know what Wilf knows,” Maude told her. “But he’s a real no-nonsense type. I wouldn’t think he’d have much time for spooks. He was in the war, with the Colonel. He was his batman.”
Sam, visualising Batman and Robin flying off on some dangerous mission, smiled to himself, not able to square this picture with Wilf and the Colonel.
Cousin Maude saw the smile. “Oh, it just means he was his aide,” she explained. “He did the practical things, when they were on military manoeuvres. Wilf’s my cousin’s best friend – but I’m not sure how much he knows about the Abbey.”
She stared across the vegetable plot, spotted more unofficial greenery, frowned and prepared to do battle. “Japanese Knot Weed… whatever next? It’s lethal!” Then, as she picked up her trowel again, her face suddenly cleared. “There is somebody who knows a lot about the Abbey,” she said, “but I’m not sure. I imagine you wouldn’t really want to go visiting the sick.”
“Everybody calls her Miss Adeline,” explained Cousin M. “She’s over ninety, but she’s certainly in her right mind. She’s got a wonderful memory and she’s as sharp as a needle. She’s very frail though, and she’s going blind. She loves having visitors and she’s quite a talker, if she’s got someone who’ll listen. I call in most days, but of course it’s only boring old me. She’d love it if someone young were to drop by, I know she would. She was born in the Abbey and she’s never lived anywhere else.”
“Where’s her house?” asked Magnus. This ancient lady sounded the most promising thing so far. He felt very warm towards Cousin M. She may not believe in ghosts but she’d just given him the opportunity to do some serious research.
“It’s the Lodge by the front gates. You passed it last night, in the dark. If you’d like to go I’ll make her up a few goodies. She has those rather boring meals in tins delivered most days. I think a bit of home cooking wouldn’t go amiss. Would you like to go after lunch? I’ve got quite a bit more to do here.”
“‘Luncheon is at twelve-thirty’,” quoted Magnus, in a flat voice. “‘It will be a light repast’.” Maude stared at him quizzically. Did he have a very subtle sense of humour or was he poking sly fun at Colonel Stickley?
“Wilf said it was only going to be cheese and pickle sandwiches,” Sam explained solidly. Then he added, “I’m going to see if I can get into the swimming pool first. I’m melting.”
They found the pool quite near the front gates, near Miss Adeline’s house, which turned out to be a beautiful old cottage with brick and flint walls, a sagging roof of crumbling red tiles and a messy, tangled garden. Cousin Maude no doubt would have whipped out her secateurs and set it to rights in no time but Sam, who had some experience of old ladies, worked out that this Miss Adeline would have her own views. Not that he intended to come visiting. He had other plans.
The old cottage presented a sharp contrast to the swimming pool building which resembled a mini aircraft hangar and was built of ugly yellow brick. “It’s a good thing most of it’s hidden under the trees,” said Floss. “How could Colonel Stickley have put up such a monstrosity? It’s hideous.”
“I expect he was saving money,” Sam said.
The main door of the building was open and admitted them into a cool tiled entrance hall filled with bedraggled-looking pot plants. The windows were smeary, there was a stale, musty smell and a definite feeling that nobody used the place much. But it was a swimming pool, and it was a large one, a serious rectangular pool, not silly, in the shape of a piano or a whale, and through glazed inner doors they could see gently-moving waters of a bright Mediterranean blue. There was nobody swimming, it was all theirs. Sam’s heart rose. He adored being the first in. “Let’s go,” he said.
But when he pressed the handle down he found that the inner door was firmly locked. He rattled it in frustration yelling, “Damn! This was the only thing I wanted, and now it’s locked!”
Floss tried the door too, and banged on the glass. She quite wanted a swim herself. She’d improved recently and she reckoned her front crawl might be faster than Sam’s.
“No good trying to break the door down,” Magnus told them sententiously. Secretly, he was much relieved. He’d been dreading this moment, being exposed as a poor swimmer in front of the others. He’d been planning to slip down to the pool on his own some time, and practise in secret. “Wilf probably knows about the pool,” he said. “Why don’t you ask him when it’s open?”
“I’m going to. I’m going to do it right now,” Sam answered, giving the locked door a final kick before turning away.
“Wait for me,” Floss said. “Come on, Mags.”
Magnus watched them running off down the drive. Then something made him turn and look back, some physical thing, some force that seemed to be drawing him like a magnet towards the bright blue water which shimmered at him through the locked glazed doors. And she was there again, the woman in the white dress, moving over the surface of the bright blue panelled water, in a kind of soft-edged haze.
This time Magnus found that he wanted to hold his ground. He felt no fear. If asked why, he would have answered that there was nothing to be afraid of, because he could clearly see the woman’s face. This was because the apparition was scarcely moving, rather hovering over the pool, anxiously twisting the little white gloves in her thin fingers, reducing them to a crumpled ball. And the face was not a face to instil terror.
It was certainly the face of the portrait in the Great Hall and, like the painting, it was proud and haughty. But round the mouth there was something else, less of certainty, more of regret. Some grievous memory was softening what he’d thought was a harsh face. The apparition’s eyes, as in the painting, were blue, a colour he’d always thought of as hard and cold. But now, momentarily, the woman stopped moving, turned her head and looked at him and he saw two tears roll slowly down her cheeks.
He cried out, “Speak to me.” But the apparition merely stared down at him, taking in, he thought, his height and age, registering the fact that she was looking at a mere child who could be no use to her, she who had walked with a queen.
Then the figure opened its mouth but Magnus could hear nothing through the thick glass criss-crossed with its web of fine wires. In desperation he hammered on the window. “Come to me!” he cried, “Oh, come to me! Tell me why you are not at peace in this world,” strange words that did not feel like his own, words that had been given him to speak, by another being.
At once the figure vanished and the blue water surged up in a great wave and splashed over the edges of the swimming pool. Magnus felt weak, he had to clutch on to the edge of the window in the door to stop himself sagging down. He felt bitterly cold, great goose pimples stood out all over his arms and legs and his teeth were chattering. He took one last desperate look through the swimming pool door to see if the vision had really gone away, but found he could not see through because the glass in the windows was skinned with ice.
He walked very slowly after the others. He wouldn’t tell them yet. He believed a very important pattern might be forming, a pattern that involved them all. But to understand what it all meant they would have to be patient, like bird-watchers sitting quietly in their hides or anglers waiting for the fish to bite. The most significant thing about what had just happened was that for the first time when the ghostly woman had been present he hadn’t felt afraid, and that she had communicated with him – or at least there had been the beginnings of a communication. His banging on the glass, which he regretted now, had frightened her away and that meant she was not locked in her own time, as he had understood from Father Godless was the usual way of ghosts. For a few minutes in the swimming pool building she had stepped from her time into his, perhaps because she needed the modern people in the Abbey. Or could it be that she just needed Magnus?
They found Wilf making sandwiches in the buttery. He knew all about the costs of the day-to-day running of the Abbey, and he was able to explain about the swimming pool.
“It costs a lot to run, a pool like that,” he said. “It’s the maintenance. And with nobody coming on these courses any more there’s no point in keeping it open, not all the time. But the Colonel goes in every day, briefly – swimming’s good for his injury, stops him stiffening up. And your Aunt Maude insists—”
“Cousin Maude,” said Magnus.
“The lady insists on letting folk from the village come, now and again. The nearest public pool is in High Wycombe and they don’t all have transport. The Colonel’s not keen of course, but he can only stay on here because of her money, so he’s got to give way on some things.”
“Did he really not want us to come here, Wilf?” asked Magnus. “Doesn’t he like children?” He felt very emotional. Sam and Floss’s parents had given him a lot of love since he’d come to live with them and although he could not forget what had happened in his own family, and still dreamed terrible dreams about it, the way this new family treated him seemed to be healing something inside him, healing it with their love. Colonel Stickley had been quite kind to him, when they’d been on their own in the middle of the night, but most of the time he was grumpy and irritable. Magnus found it very hard to trust him and he very much wanted to.
Wilf, seeing tears in his eyes, patted him on the shoulder. “No, lad, he doesn’t dislike young people, not at all. But he has this sadness to cope with, about his son.”
“The one who’s missing? Cousin M told us,” Floss explained.
Sam said, “Do you think he’s dead, Wilf?”
The little man paused, then let out a big sigh. “It seems pretty likely, to me.” He slapped big chunks of chicken between slices of bread, sprinkling on lemon juice and a dash of curry powder, and feeding scraps to Arthur who was sitting hopefully under the table. “About this swimming lark,” he said. “Your only chance is the early morning.”
“What time?” asked Sam suspiciously. He liked lying-in during the holidays; he was hopeless at getting up early.
“Six-ish. Or you could go when the village people swim. I’ll find out what’s happening this week.”
“What about the multi-gym?” Sam asked next. He’d seen, again through locked glazed doors, glimpses of the most brilliant sports equipment, all laid out in a sports hall: tread-mills, cycling machines, rowing machines – thousands of pounds’ worth of stuff all sitting there unused. And they had inspected the tennis courts too. They were marvellous, miles better than the ones they played on at school. Yet these also were firmly padlocked and notices everywhere said, “Temporarily Out of Use”.
Wilf said, “Listen, I’ll tell you what I know, though it’s not very much. And when I’ve told you, do you think you could let it drop and concentrate on your holiday? There’s plenty to do here. You can go on the river and I’ll try to get permission about the swimming, and there are some great walks round here – don’t keep asking all these questions though; it doesn’t help anybody.”
“But what do you know?” asked Magnus persistently. Grown-ups were so good at sliding off the point.
Wilf covered his plates of sandwiches carefully with plastic film, sat down and took Arthur on to his lap, almost like a bit of protection against these over-inquisitive children. He said, “The Colonel and I have been together since the war. We were very young men when it ended. We… a lot happened to us. He won medals. He’s a brave man – and a good man,” he added quite fiercely. “Anyhow, I had no family much so I stuck with the Colonel. He got married but they didn’t send me packing, and I helped, when his young wife was so ill, and then died. David, his son, was only little. We brought him up together.”
“So you must miss him too?” Magnus observed, his driving need to know everything getting the better of his tact.
Wilf pulled at Arthur’s ears, drawing out of him big, rapturous purrs. “Yes, Magnus. I miss him. He’d have liked this cat. He always wanted to be a vet.
“The Colonel inherited the Abbey, eventually, from another branch of his family that had nobody else to leave it to. He was just a second cousin of a lady whose two sons had both been killed in the Second World War, killed in two separate battles. Hard to believe, isn’t it? There was quite a bit of money too. So he thought he’d turn it into a place where young people could come, to do sport really seriously, in beautiful surroundings. He felt it was a kind of memorial to those two dead boys. Of course, people had to pay, but a lot of them got grants, and he never turned people away. He started with tennis and had all the courts laid out, then later, he added the swimming pool and the multi-gym. The very best people came to coach the young folk and it became quite famous, this place; they were queueing up to get on the courses. And then—”
He stopped and his lean brown body seemed to go rigid, quite suddenly. Arthur jumped off his knee and went to sit under the table again where he engaged in vigorous washing.
“Then what?”
Wilf hesitated. “People started making complaints. It began with the adults, not the kids. First some of the top tennis coaches upped and left, just abandoned the young people in the middle of their training. Well, their parents had paid out a lot of money for them to come, some of the coaches were ex-Wimbledon. There was a lot of nasty business, about money. The Colonel had to go to court.”
“But that doesn’t seem bad enough to close the place down,” Sam said. “Not that on its own.”
“It wasn’t, not at first. But it’s funny, word gets round. Places get bad reputations and people start to avoid them, and go elsewhere – especially when children are involved. Anyhow, the Colonel weathered the court case and got new coaches. But then, the kids themselves started to complain.”
“What about?”
Wilf looked uneasy. “They just… didn’t like staying here, particularly in the turret rooms, where most of the dormitories are. They kept asking to be moved. So the Colonel brought in some portakabins. You’ve seen them, I expect, they’re down behind the tennis courts. Nothing spooky about a portakabin, for heaven’s sake.”
“What was spooky?” said Magnus. They were at last getting to the point.
“Just let me finish, Magnus,” Wilf said patiently.
“The crunch came when a girl had an accident. She was found in the garden, very early one morning, at the foot of the turret block. She had two broken legs and she’d injured her back. She made a full recovery, as it happened, but she could have broken her neck. Her father was quite a well-known politician. There was an enormous fuss and the Colonel – typical of him, I must say – just closed down the whole operation, while they conducted an enquiry.”
“And what did the enquiry prove?” said Sam. He dimly remembered such a case, on the television news.
“Nothing really. They could have just been larking about in the dormitories, or drinking. I don’t know. But the Colonel was blamed and somehow, well, it broke his spirit. He never re-opened the Abbey as a sports centre. He’s tried to get big companies to hold their conferences here, but people just don’t book. And all because of that silly girl who was probably a bit drunk. I’m telling you, I could wring her neck!”
“But why do you think she jumped out of the window, Wilf?” Magnus wanted to know.
“I haven’t a clue, and that’s the truth. When it happened they were all asleep in bed. The coaches had gone the rounds and all was well. Any larking about was long since over for the night. Now I’ve told you what I know. The best thing you can do for the Colonel, and for Miss Maude, is to keep mum, enjoy the Abbey and not jump out of any windows. Got it?”
“We couldn’t anyway,” Magnus explained solemnly. “We’ve got bars in our room.”
“That’s right,” said Wilf. “They barred all the windows after the accident but it didn’t make any difference. People still didn’t sign up for the courses.”
“Why on earth did they put us in one of the turret rooms, Wilf?” Sam asked.
He grinned. “Well they nearly didn’t, they had a real ding-dong about it, the Colonel and your cousin. He wanted you to have a portakabin but she said no, too damp and smelly and I must say I agree – not that I said anything, mind you. She said the turret rooms were always warmer than anywhere else, which is true, and she wanted you to have the very nicest of all, which you’ve got, and if there was any larking about which of course she knew there wouldn’t be, because she knew you were perfect children, every flipping window in the place more or less is barred now. Also, of course…” but here his voice died away. “Oh never mind. Here, Arthur, fancy a bit of bacon old chap?”
Magnus grabbed his arm feverishly. “Also what?” Why, oh why, did grown-ups have this infuriating habit of drying up at the most crucial moment?
“Also,” said Wilf, shaking Magnus off quite vigorously, “the two of them had a basic disagreement. In a nutshell, the Colonel has this notion that the Abbey is haunted at certain times by the ghost of Lady Alice Neale, the woman in the portrait, and your cousin thinks it’s a load of poppycock. I reckon she wanted to show him just how much credence she placed in the things people say by putting you in the turret. So… seen anything yet? Who are you putting your money on, the Colonel or your Cousin Maude?” And he grinned at them. It was pretty obvious whose side he was on.
Magnus answered for them all. He clearly did not want to divulge anything of his private “sightings” to Wilf, not at that moment. “We need to talk about it,” he said crisply, “we all have… rather different views at the moment.”
“‘Curiouser and curiouser’,” Floss muttered as they went outside and started walking towards the river. She was thinking, not of the Lady Neale, but of another, less formidable Alice.