The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery by Catherine Bailey Page B
Authors: Catherine Bailey
Ads: Link
many times.
I had been so absorbed by the missing episodes in his life that I had barely given any thought to his death – or rather, to his manner of dying. He had died on this sofa of bronchial pneumonia.
It was not as if he had died suddenly.
He must have lain on it, seriously ill, for some days.
I looked around me, trying to visualize the scene. An oxygen tent had been brought in here. I could almost hear the sounds of despair: the shallow, rapid breathing of the dying man, the judder of the oxygen pumps. I imagined him lying under the canopy, isolated in the centre of the empty room, dwarfed by the tall glass cabinets that surrounded him.
A draught coming along the passage rolled a ball of dust across the bare floorboards. I watched it as it drifted past. It was such a perverse thing for John to have done, to have willingly immured himself in these rooms in the last days of his life. It was where he had wanted to be, Roger, his son, had said. But it simply didn’t make sense. There was a rudimentary form of under-floor heating – hot air blasted up through vents from the floor below – but otherwise the coal-burning stove in front of me was the only source of heat in the Muniment Rooms. John had died in April when the rooms would have been damp and the nights still cold. Not one of the five rooms had washing facilities or running water: the nearest bathroom was a good distance away beyond the old servants’ hall. On the upper floors of the castle,there were suites of bedrooms. Lavishly furnished, they had huge four-poster beds with soft linen sheets and great stone hearths for blazing fires. During his final hours, any one of these rooms would have been more comfortable, a more fitting place for a Duke to die. Instead, he had died in a cramped, sparsely furnished room deep in the servants’ quarters.
Why?
It was a question I puzzled over for weeks. In some way, it felt as if the peculiarity of the circumstances of his death held the key to him. I spoke to numerous members of the Manners family, and their relations – men and women born in the early 1920s who remembered John. But they were unable to tell me why he had chosen to spend the last days of his life in the Muniment Rooms. With the passing of time, his final hours remained shrouded in mystery. It was not even clear whether there had been anyone with him when he died.
It was then that I began the search for a contemporary witness: someone who had been working at the castle and had been inside the Muniment Rooms before he had died.
The pool of potential witnesses, notwithstanding the decades that had intervened, was far smaller than I had imagined. The former servants I spoke to painted a vivid picture of the events at Belvoir in the last days of John’s life, but their memories were confined to the corridors and back passages of the castle. John, it emerged, had barred them from entering the Muniment Rooms. Just three members of his household were permitted inside them: his butler, Mr Brittain; his valet, Mr Speed; and Mrs Hayward, the housekeeper. They were all dead: Mr Speed was killed in 1941 as he cycled along the main road into Grantham; Mrs Hayward died in the 1960s; and Mr Brittain in 2005.
There was no one left alive to explain why John had closeted himself away in the Muniment Rooms in the final hours of his life. Nonetheless, what I learned from the servants who had been on duty at the castle was startling. Evidently – based on what they had seen and overheard – they had been as mystified as to why he had chosen to die in a cramped suite of rooms in their quarters as I was seventyyears after the event. The speed with which his illness had claimed him had also surprised them. It was then, in confusion, that those in the servants’ hall fell back on the two curses: the first cast by the three witches in the seventeenth century; the other, by the pharaoh prince, Tutankhamun.
Yet these accounts, however extraordinary, brought me no closer
I had been so absorbed by the missing episodes in his life that I had barely given any thought to his death – or rather, to his manner of dying. He had died on this sofa of bronchial pneumonia.
It was not as if he had died suddenly.
He must have lain on it, seriously ill, for some days.
I looked around me, trying to visualize the scene. An oxygen tent had been brought in here. I could almost hear the sounds of despair: the shallow, rapid breathing of the dying man, the judder of the oxygen pumps. I imagined him lying under the canopy, isolated in the centre of the empty room, dwarfed by the tall glass cabinets that surrounded him.
A draught coming along the passage rolled a ball of dust across the bare floorboards. I watched it as it drifted past. It was such a perverse thing for John to have done, to have willingly immured himself in these rooms in the last days of his life. It was where he had wanted to be, Roger, his son, had said. But it simply didn’t make sense. There was a rudimentary form of under-floor heating – hot air blasted up through vents from the floor below – but otherwise the coal-burning stove in front of me was the only source of heat in the Muniment Rooms. John had died in April when the rooms would have been damp and the nights still cold. Not one of the five rooms had washing facilities or running water: the nearest bathroom was a good distance away beyond the old servants’ hall. On the upper floors of the castle,there were suites of bedrooms. Lavishly furnished, they had huge four-poster beds with soft linen sheets and great stone hearths for blazing fires. During his final hours, any one of these rooms would have been more comfortable, a more fitting place for a Duke to die. Instead, he had died in a cramped, sparsely furnished room deep in the servants’ quarters.
Why?
It was a question I puzzled over for weeks. In some way, it felt as if the peculiarity of the circumstances of his death held the key to him. I spoke to numerous members of the Manners family, and their relations – men and women born in the early 1920s who remembered John. But they were unable to tell me why he had chosen to spend the last days of his life in the Muniment Rooms. With the passing of time, his final hours remained shrouded in mystery. It was not even clear whether there had been anyone with him when he died.
It was then that I began the search for a contemporary witness: someone who had been working at the castle and had been inside the Muniment Rooms before he had died.
The pool of potential witnesses, notwithstanding the decades that had intervened, was far smaller than I had imagined. The former servants I spoke to painted a vivid picture of the events at Belvoir in the last days of John’s life, but their memories were confined to the corridors and back passages of the castle. John, it emerged, had barred them from entering the Muniment Rooms. Just three members of his household were permitted inside them: his butler, Mr Brittain; his valet, Mr Speed; and Mrs Hayward, the housekeeper. They were all dead: Mr Speed was killed in 1941 as he cycled along the main road into Grantham; Mrs Hayward died in the 1960s; and Mr Brittain in 2005.
There was no one left alive to explain why John had closeted himself away in the Muniment Rooms in the final hours of his life. Nonetheless, what I learned from the servants who had been on duty at the castle was startling. Evidently – based on what they had seen and overheard – they had been as mystified as to why he had chosen to die in a cramped suite of rooms in their quarters as I was seventyyears after the event. The speed with which his illness had claimed him had also surprised them. It was then, in confusion, that those in the servants’ hall fell back on the two curses: the first cast by the three witches in the seventeenth century; the other, by the pharaoh prince, Tutankhamun.
Yet these accounts, however extraordinary, brought me no closer
Similar Books
