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CHAPTER XXIII.

STIRRINGS IN THE NIGHT.

A soft chanting leaks from my dreams, surrounding me in my apartment in a lilting euphony. Looking for the chorus and finding none, I get out of bed and follow the music into the hall.

The portraits in the gallery are singing. The voices of the subjects join in rustic harmony to the tune of an old Yorkshire ditty – How sweet the sound / of corpses singing together / under Yorkshire ground / below the moss and the heather – their mouths puckering like little arse-holes as I walk through the gallery, generations of Poundses trilling on either side of me.

From the wall, Grandfather Pounds’ eyes follow me. They are no longer small and black as birch tar but large and lashed and green. It cannot be. This is all wrong. The letter opener I stole from the library is in my hand, the mother-of-pearl handle glinting in a patch of moonlight. I decide to swap his eyes for those of Lady Marlowe two paintings up, and so I stab him, right in the iris.

Grandfather Pounds sputters and takes a step forward, shadow emerging from shadow, whereupon I see that it is not a portrait at all – it is Fergus, the hall boy.

Fergus makes a lot of noise. I press a hand to his mouth, blood dripping from his harpooned eye and oozing between my fingers. His blackened hand reaches up to mine, giving off the sour bite of vinegar and lampblack from hours of polishing boots.

I drag a squirming Fergus from the gallery to my bed-room. Beds creak and doors open down the length of the hallway as whispers turn to mumbles turn to voices.

‘What was that?’ Marigold – I think it is Marigold – asks, as I stumble across the threshold of my bed-room with Fergus, who falls to the floor in a heap.

I fasten the door behind us and press an ear to it.

‘What is all the fuss?’ Mr Pounds cries – the loudest he’s ever been.

‘We heard a noise.’

‘Oh, a most dreadful noise.’

‘What kind of noise?’

‘It was –’

‘Nothing of this Earth!’

(Dramatic.)

‘You’ve been reading too many of those Gothic serials, dear.’

‘It sounded like a woman screaming in the night.’

‘That’s Yorkshire for you.’

At my feet, Fergus moans, blood gurgling in his throat. I kick him and he yaps.

‘There it is again!’

I kneel beside Fergus, who is trembling vigorously as he reaches death’s climax, which I know from experience can get noisy. I place my hand on his mouth, hard, cupping his one last whispered word in my palm – ‘Help.’ It comes out slick and soft like an organ.

I light the candle I had left on the window-recess and open the bed-room door. Fergus, who has died sitting upright against it, slides down to the floor, face-down.

I peer into the hall, wearing what I believe to be the expression of irritation and confusion a governess might wear if she had thus been awoken by a group of bumbling idiots.

The guests barely perceive my face in the dark, lit amber from below by the candle in my hand. One of them excitedly proposes a midnight quest to investigate the source of the sound. It is their second night at Ensor House, and they all seem to have packed for just this occasion; the ladies wrapped in sable-trimmed velvet shawls, the gentlemen in colourful damask dressing-gowns and tasselled caps. Mr Fancey looks flustered, touching his scalp as if afraid it might fall off. Indeed, his hair seems to be slightly askew, Mrs Fancey murdering him with her raised eyebrows. His syphilis has begun to show, I speculate, and he is hiding his sores and bald patches under a wig.

The group sets out to investigate, Marigold, yellow curl-papers in her hair, circling on the spot like an overexcited dog. Mr Pounds leads the expedition, the tassel on his cap trembling around his temples and poking at his eyeballs. I start to close my door, which groans in a piercing falsetto – ‘What! Who goes there!’ someone exclaims, and they all whip around in unison, sicking the candlelight on me.

‘Oh, it’s only the governess,’ Mrs Fancey huffs.

‘Go to bed, Miss Notty,’ Mr Pounds bids cheerily.

‘Go to bed, Miss Notty,’ Mrs Pounds orders, less cheerily.

I nod and obediently close the door upon them, the letter opener still in my hand. I toss it into the basin on the wash-stand, where it falls with a clink, the hall boy’s blood smeared on the porcelain.

I blow out the candle.

Bodies pile up in the attic.