Northanger Abbey

25

Cat’s eagerness to turn detective next morning was unintentionally thwarted by the General. At breakfast, he informed the young women that he would be unavailable to escort them anywhere since he was hosting an important meeting of key strategists. ‘We will be using the main drawing room all day, I’m afraid.’ He glanced out of the window, where the sun was vainly trying to make its way through thin cloud. ‘The forecast is for a cool day without rain. I suggest you have Mrs Calman make you up a packed lunch, Eleanor, and take Catherine on a hike up the Devil’s Hump.’

‘The Devil’s Hump?’ Cat was startled and it showed. The General grinned as widely as she’d ever seen, his teeth glittering.

‘The hill you can see from the grounds,’ Ellie explained. ‘There’s a local legend. Apparently the Devil came down to Kelso to steal some cattle. But a brave young cowherd raised the alarm and they chased him back to the cleft of hell he’d carved into the hillside. Just as he was about to disappear, the brave young cowherd jumped on his back. And the cleft closed behind the Devil, leaving his hump and the cowherd behind.’

‘Pretty standard nonsense,’ the General said. ‘People will make up any old rubbish when they come across things they can’t explain, from a peculiarly shaped hill to a meteor shower.’

Whether it was nothing more than legend, the story of the Devil’s Hump was sufficiently exciting for Cat to be more sanguine about not having the chance to explore the abbey’s mysteries. She had no walking boots with her, but she and Ellie had the same size feet and her host was able to kit her out with an old pair of hiking shoes. ‘There’s not much ankle support,’ she apologised. ‘But they’ll protect your feet better than trainers.’

They hung around the kitchen while Mrs Calman packed substantial picnics, and Cat marvelled at the array of appliances. There was everything from a breadmaker to an ice-cream machine, including three different coffee makers. Some of the devices were incomprehensible to her and she was too shy of Mrs Calman to ask their purpose. It was hard to believe this temple to the preparation of food sheltered under the same label as Annie Morland’s domain back in Dorset. Cat couldn’t imagine sitting round the table here with a tumbler of squash, talking about the latest book she’d read.

With the picnics stowed in a couple of daypacks, the two young women set out, leaving by the kitchen door. Cat couldn’t resist looking over her shoulder at the turret with the stair she’d glimpsed the day before. ‘Do you ever go up the turrets?’

‘Three of them are sealed off because the stairs aren’t safe and Father says there’s no point in spending what it would cost to repair or replace them. It’s not as if there are lots of rooms you could use. They only ever had one proper room, right at the top.’ Ellie struck off across the park at a steady pace.

‘What about the fourth one?’

‘You can only climb up another twenty feet or so, then it’s closed off with a gate. We used to play up there when we were kids, but Father had the gate put in because he thought the stairs were too dodgy and he didn’t want some visitor falling down and killing themselves.’

Her words only fuelled Cat’s curiosity. But there was nothing to be gained until she could see the secret corridor for herself. Instead, she concentrated on enjoying the scenery as they climbed steadily through the park. Soon they entered a dark stand of conifers that scarcely let through enough light to trace their path. It was strange and even spooky; when they occasionally emerged into a clearing, Cat couldn’t help wondering what macabre rituals it might have seen. At length they cleared the trees and reached a deer fence. Cat paused to catch her breath while Ellie undid the combination lock that held the tall gate fast.

Once through the gate, they were in open moorland. Ellie led the way along a faint path which climbed the Devil’s Hump in a gentle spiral. As they rounded the hill, Cat caught sight of a pitched roof. ‘What’s that?’ she asked.

‘You’ll see soon enough,’ Ellie said, turning into a narrow cleft in the hillside. Cat followed her and found herself staring at a tiny red sandstone church surrounded by weathered gravestones.

‘What is it?’ she asked again.

‘It’s the Tilney family chapel. The path we’ve just been walking on, it’s called a lyke-wake walk. It’s the route the coffin is carried from the house to the chapel so it can be laid to rest here in the graveyard.’

‘You’re using the present tense,’ Cat said.

‘That’s because we still do it. This is where we brought my mother. Father and Henry and Freddie and Calman carried the coffin.’

‘Doesn’t it freak you out, coming here?’ Cat hung back as Ellie set off for the chapel.

Ellie looked back. ‘Why should it? It’s where we come to remember our dead. You’re a vicar’s daughter, you should understand the importance of memorials.’ She gestured for Cat to follow. Reluctantly, she caught up and entered the chapel just behind Ellie.

It was a small, plain place with narrow wooden pews and frosted-glass windows. On the wall were several memorial plaques to various Tilney ancestors, dating back to the fifteenth century. Ellie was right, it wasn’t freaking her out at all. Cat approached the freshest-looking plaque, an ornately carved memorial to Margaret Johanna Tilney. It gave her dates and beneath them, a single line of chiselled lettering: Taken from us too soon.

No wonder General Tilney had wanted Ellie to bring her here without him. This was no proof of his wife’s demise, but being in the presence of her memorial would surely provoke a guilty reaction, whether he had had a hand in her death or her continued captivity. No man could fail to react in such circumstances. ‘It’s very moving,’ she said.

‘I like to come up here and remember her,’ Ellie said. She gave her shoulders a little shake and said, ‘Come on, let’s carry on to the summit. We’ll have our picnic up there.’

As they left the graveyard, Ellie casually pointed out her mother’s headstone. Beneath her name and dates, it read, Beloved wife of General Henry Tilney, mother to Frederick, Henry and Eleanor. We miss you every day.

They clambered up the hill and enjoyed the view while they worked their way through the minor feast that Mrs Calman had packed for them. Cat lay back on the warm grass and groaned. ‘Thank God it’s downhill all the way, because you’re going to have to roll me down. How come you’re not as fat as a barrel, living on Mrs C’s cooking all the time?’

‘It’s tough,’ Ellie said. ‘I’m making the most of it while I’m home this time. I’m still holding out hope that Father will change his mind and let me go to art school in Edinburgh.’

‘That would be so cool. You’re lucky to have qualifications to do something like that. I’ve got a bunch of GCSEs but I didn’t even bother sitting A-levels. You couldn’t call what Mum taught me a curriculum.’

‘What do you want to do?’

‘Mum thinks I should train as a nanny, but I’d quite like to be a writer,’ she said. ‘Not for grown-ups, for kids. I’m really good at making up stories for the kids in the village. And I do the storytelling at Junior Church. Hey, you could be my illustrator!’

‘That’d be fun. Maybe we could try to start one while you’re here?’

‘Yes, why not?’

Buoyed up with the idea of a joint project, Cat and Ellie made it back to Northanger Abbey in record time. Judging by the four substantial black cars parked outside, the meeting was still going strong, so they ran straight upstairs. ‘I want a quick shower before we begin,’ Ellie said as they reached the top of the stairs.

‘Me too. But before we do that – your dad’s obviously still tied up with his buddies. Why don’t we take our chance? You could show me your mother’s room.’

Ellie looked uncertain. ‘I suppose. Look, why don’t you come to my room first, then I can show you her portrait.’ Clearly, she hoped this would be enough to assuage Cat’s curiosity. Equally clearly, she did not know her friend as well as she thought.

They scuttled along the landing and turned into the kids’ corridor, as Cat had come to think of it. Ellie’s room was the second on the right and Cat was enchanted by it. The colours were different tones of lavender and cream, everything blending like a Pantone chart. Watercolours were pinned all over the walls; some landscapes, some seascapes and some of buildings and cities Cat didn’t recognise. Oddly for the room of a teenage girl, there was no mirror on display for Cat to check whether her hostess had a reflection. But at the heart of the room, impossible to avoid, was a large oil painting of a woman. She had a mild and pensive face, fine featured with large blue eyes and a sweep of honey-blonde hair. ‘She’s lovely,’ Cat said.

‘Yes. I wish I looked like her.’

Cat couldn’t help recalling what she’d learned from her reading about vampire ‘families’. They were often loose-knit groups who had chosen to live together over the centuries because they were less visible in a family group. So Margaret Tilney wasn’t necessarily the biological mother of any of the children. Given that she had a separate bedroom from her husband, they may not have been married. Perhaps she wasn’t even his lover; perhaps that was the bone of contention that had led to her imprisonment.

The major flaw in this imaginative view of the Tilneys, which Cat appeared to have mislaid in all her imaginings, was that vampire families had to keep moving because eventually their neighbours and colleagues noticed that nobody in the family seemed to age at the normal rate. Every dozen years or so, they had to disappear and start again. But the Tilneys had been in one place for a very long time and although the men retired from public life at a relatively youthful age, it would still have been hard to fool the whole of the Scottish Borders indefinitely. But no young woman has ever allowed reality to stand in the way of her romantic fantasies, and in this respect, Cat was no exception to the rule.

‘You’re beautiful too, Ellie. Just in a different way.’ Cat put her arm round Ellie’s shoulders and squeezed. ‘And now I can picture what she looked like, why don’t you show me her room so I have her really fixed in my mind’s eye.’

Ellie let herself be steered out of the room and down the gallery. They turned into the middle corridor and passed the General’s room. Ellie paused at the double doors and Cat feared she’d have to make the unthinkable bad-guest-move and open them herself. Then all at once, they were outside Mrs Tilney’s door. Ellie took an audible breath and reached for the handle, while Cat, hardly able to breathe at all, turned back to shut the gallery doors behind them.

In that instant, the dreaded figure of the General appeared outlined against the light from the gallery. Before Cat could even groan a warning, the General barked, ‘Eleanor,’ in his best parade-ground voice. It bounced off the stone walls, tiny echoes ringing in Cat’s ears. For a split second she hoped she might have escaped his notice, but knew at once it was a forlorn hope.

‘Fuck,’ Ellie muttered and took off at top speed down the hall. Father and daughter disappeared and Cat took the opportunity to sprint back to her own room, relieved not to see another soul. She didn’t know whether she’d ever dare to leave her room again. But at least she would be clean if she had to leave in disgrace.

Standing in the shower as the water cascaded over her head, Cat resolved that she’d have to get into that room tonight, in case it occurred to the General to lock it up. For all she knew, he’d already done that.

She couldn’t stay in the shower for ever, and when she finally returned to her bedroom, she’d scarcely rubbed a towel over her hair when there was a timid knock at the door. Making sure the towel was firmly wrapped around her, Cat cautiously inched the door open. Ellie stood there, looking on the verge of tears. ‘Can I come in?’ she said.

‘Course you can.’ Cat threw the door wide and welcomed her with a hug. ‘Are we in deep shit?’

‘Not as much as I thought. He’s so distracted with his meeting he hardly told me off at all. He just wanted to make sure I was spruced up and changed—’ She gestured at her little black dress. ‘They’re having cocktails before dinner. You’re required too, I’m sorry.’

Cat looked at her in dismay. ‘I haven’t got anything like that to wear.’

‘I did wonder. It’s not really your style. Look, we’re about the same size. Well, you’re bigger in the bust than me, but we can get round that with the right fabric. I’ll lend you something of mine.’

Half an hour later, Cat was squeezed into a ruby velvet dress. The ruched material hid the fact that it was styled for a different shape and although she felt incredibly self-conscious, none of the four middle-aged men drinking cocktails seemed to pay her much attention. She and Ellie were clearly there for decorative purposes only, and they were able to escape when the men went into dinner. They retreated upstairs to more Sex and the City, but that night it was closer to eleven when they separated, worn out by emotion and exercise in the open air.

As she walked back to her room, Cat heard hearty male voices in the hall below and from her window she saw the headlights of four cars disappear down the drive. In the light of an almost full moon, the park looked eerie but empty. Would the General go straight to bed or would he go to his office? She’d have been willing to bet he wouldn’t be ready for bed yet. He had the habit of working late, she knew, and she imagined he would want to make his notes on the lengthy conversations of the day immediately, while they were fresh in his mind. She cracked open her door and listened hard. For once, there were none of the sounds of the building creaking and settling that she’d grown accustomed to in the short time she’d been at Northanger.

Cat slipped off her shoes and moved cautiously down the hall. At the dog-leg she paused, holding her breath, and peered round the corner. The gallery was empty, and the silence persisted. She seized her courage in both hands and raced to the double doors as fast as she could. She opened them, slipped through and gently closed them behind her. She leaned against them for a moment, heart hammering. Was there any sign of pursuit? The only thing she could hear was the beating of blood in her ears.

She inched forward in the dark, feeling for the door handle. After a few seconds, her hand closed round the knob and she twisted it open. The door swung silently back and in an instant she was inside. Moonlight illuminated the chamber through an array of arched windows that looked vaguely ecclesiastical and reminded Cat of the origins of the building. Although it bled most of the colour out of carpets, curtains and other soft furnishings, it was clear to Cat that this was no punishment cell. It looked like any other bedroom she’d seen in the abbey, except that it contained the small traces of individual habitation that were absent from the guest rooms – a hairbrush on the dressing table, a book and a pair of glasses at the bedside, a bottle of perfume beside them.

There were two other doors in the room. One led to a bathroom that had been stripped of toiletries and medication, the other to a dressing room bereft of clothing. It seemed that all but a few traces of Mrs Tilney had been removed from the room, either to save the General from painful reminders or else to cover his tracks. Then Cat thought of a third possibility. If Mrs Tilney were indeed a prisoner in the tower, she would need clothes and toiletries, no matter what the General’s purpose for her.

Clearly there was nothing to learn here. There was nothing for it but to explore the turret. Luckily she had a spotlight app for her phone which would light her way up the stone spiral that rose inside the turret. Cat crept back to the door and pressed an ear to the wood. She could hear nothing, so she cracked it open and listened again. In the distance, she heard a faint noise that might have been a door closing but it was too far away for her to worry.

Cat edged the door open and slipped through. Darkness again engulfed her as she silently pulled the door to and let the latch slip back into place. She tiptoed down the hall then turned on the bright screen of her phone app. It created an eerie glow, splashing shadows up the walls. But it provided a decent light to climb the stone stairs, so old and worn that each step had a depression in the middle.

Within a few seconds she had rounded the first turn in the spiral. She heard a scrabbling by her feet. Cat stifled a shriek and splashed the light downwards to reveal a tiny grey mouse paralysed with fear. Annoyed with herself, she shone the light upwards again. Ahead of her were more steps but now she could see the way ahead was blocked by a set of iron railings like an old fashioned prison cell, fastened with a heavy galvanised padlock. Cat crept closer, studying the padlock in the phone light. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed at the cobwebs and dust that festooned the padlock and the nearby bars. It was clear that nobody had disturbed it in a very long time.

Then all at once noise and light seemed to fill the hallway. Swift footsteps clattered up stairs and a bright overhead light bathed her in its brilliance. Even if she’d had time to make her escape, Cat was frozen with fear. The General was coming. The General would not, could not let her get away.

She had never known such paralysing horror. Her legs trembled beneath her and somehow she managed to turn her head. The long shadow of a man was cast into the stairwell ahead of the person himself and she felt her throat close in panic. No weapon, no escape. She was entirely at his mercy.