Clara’s Aunt Hetty had done all the talking in the taxi journey back from the school in Whitechapel. She had been full of ideas of how Reverend Fallowfield could improve his act. Clara had not spoken a word. Unlike her aunt, she felt as if she had witnessed something terrible. Try as she might, she could not rid herself of the memory of that poor woman’s terrible screams.
At home she went straight up to her room where she sat down by her toy theatre. It was a beautifully rendered version in miniature of Drury Lane, bought for her seventh birthday. With its stringed actors and moving curtains, it had provided many hours of entertainment for Clara as a child as she inflicted countless plays on her nanny. The plots mostly derived from real play titles she had heard her parents discussing, but which she had not seen. Her versions of She Stoops to Conquer, The Duchess of Malfi and Love’s Labour’s Lost were particular triumphs, even if they did bear little resemblance to the original works.
Clara had given up her career as theatre impresario in miniature some years ago and she was not the kind of girl to cling on to items of her childhood out of sentimentality. Few of her dolls had survived the great cull of 1881, when she turned twelve and decided she was no longer a child. But the theatre had remained in the corner, being too beautiful an object to throw away, even for as unsentimental a young lady such as herself.
She sat silently moving the actors on and off the stage, thinking about Reverend Fallowfield, Lady Aysgarth and the poor woman in the school.
Opening her notebook, she pulled out the list. She could scarcely believe it had come from the ghost, but the more she thought about it, the more she believed it to be true.
Clara unfolded it and read the title at the top.
The London Tenancy List: D. McNally’s Copy
Below was a list of London addresses. There were private residences, theatres, schools and public houses. Some were familiar, others were not. Down the right-hand column was a list of names. By Drury Lane Theatre was the name Mr David Kerby. The space alongside the Tower of London was crammed with long-dead kings and queens. Then she found her own address.
Aysgarth House, Three Kings Court
Clara moved her finger to the right and found the corresponding name:
Lady Aysgarth (gb 1864)
Clara’s hands trembled as the sudden realisation hit her.
‘Ghosts,’ she whispered to herself. ‘It’s a list of ghosts.’