While You Sleep: A chilling, unputdownable psychological thriller that will send shivers up your spine!

Zoe gave him a stern look. ‘I’m interested in the tales. I think I’m old enough to tell fact from fiction.’

He met this with an enigmatic smile. ‘Well. I wonder if any of us can really claim to know that.’

There was an odd pause while Zoe tried to judge whether or not he was serious. ‘So – it’s supposed to be haunted, right?’ She made the question sound deliberately sarcastic, but as she spoke she recalled the chill she had felt on the stairs, the plaintive tone of the woman singing. But that had been the whisky and jet lag. No point in telling him about that.

Charles picked up his coffee and leaned forward. ‘Are you sure you want to hear this story? Only, one can’t unknow things, you see, and there’s a world of difference between hearing it here, all cosy over buns, and remembering it later, after dark, alone in that big house.’

‘You’re doing it too, now. I’m not a child, Dr Joseph.’

‘I apologise.’ He nodded, smiling, but there was a trace of resignation in his tone, as if what she was demanding were an unpleasant but necessary cure.

‘Well, then.’ He set his cup down and eased back in his chair, steepling his fingers. ‘Tamhas McBride owned this island in the mid nineteenth century, though he never lived here until he married Ailsa Drummond in 1861. She was the eldest child and only daughter of the Reverend Teàrlach Drummond, great-great-great-grandfather to our Mick, who was then minister of the island’s kirk. The reverend was widowed and Ailsa refused to abandon him on the island after her marriage, so her new husband had a grand house built overlooking the bay on the northern coast. To say the McBrides were not liked here would be an understatement. Tamhas’s father had been a Glasgow industrialist who bought the island in the 1830s when the laird went bankrupt – it happened all over this part of Scotland. His first act as landlord was to send sixty of the inhabitants to Nova Scotia.’

‘Jesus. What, like a punishment?’

‘He claimed the island was over-populated. “Assisted voluntary emigration”, they called it. Nothing voluntary about it, of course – it was eviction by another name, and the rest were supposed to be grateful they were allowed to stay. Some islands were cleared altogether.’ He paused to shake his head. ‘So the McBrides were not well-loved, as you can imagine, though Tamhas was less interfering as a landlord than his father. He was getting on for fifty by the time he married Ailsa – his first wife had died in childbirth, along with the baby. Ailsa was thirty-four – her family had given up any hope of her marrying, so to find such a prestigious husband was seen as a blessing, despite his name. The islanders must have hoped Ailsa would be their advocate.’ He paused for a longing look at his bun. Zoe grinned and nodded her permission. Now that he had agreed to talk, she was willing to indulge him.

‘Tamhas McBride travelled a lot on business, leaving his wife at home,’ Charles continued with his mouth full, brushing sugar from his beard. ‘But she seemed contented enough out there in her big house, according to the letters she sent her younger brother.’

‘That would be Mick’s great-great …’ she paused, trying to calculate.

‘Great-great-grandfather, that’s right. William Drummond. He was ten years younger than his sister and studying theology in Edinburgh – he was intended for the kirk, like his father. William and Ailsa corresponded regularly. Everyone assumed there would soon be a McBride heir and that would keep Ailsa occupied. But they had been married less than a year when Tamhas was drowned. He was on board a ship that went down during a storm in the Atlantic, all hands lost. On his way back from America, as it happens.’ He added this with an encouraging nod, as if it would give her some sense of participation in the story.

‘And he haunts the place?’ She tried to sound light, but it came out nervous and over-excited. Charles chuckled, as you might humour a child.

‘I’ve never heard of Tamhas giving anyone any trouble from beyond the grave.’

‘Then …?’ Zoe found she was gripping her mug tighter.

He uncrossed his legs, leaned back in his chair and recrossed them the other way around.

‘Tamhas McBride’s death was only the beginning. After she was widowed, Ailsa became reclusive. She dismissed all the staff except one maid for housework and laundry, and a woman from the village who came in once a day to cook – despite the fact that Tamhas had left her a rich woman.’

‘She stayed in the house?’

‘Apparently she would walk every day along the cliffs, or sit on the beach drawing – the same scenes over and over, the sky and the sea.’

Zoe felt an odd chill.

‘How do you know all this?’

‘Mick Drummond inherited a remarkable trove of letters and photographs when his father died last year,’ Charles said, running a moistened finger around the edge of his plate to mop up any stray crumbs. ‘Passed down through the generations, though his father had kept them hidden away. There was an unspoken agreement in the family to leave the story buried, though God knows I did my best over the years to persuade old Mr Drummond to part with those papers, without success. Mick offered them to me, knowing my interest, on condition I didn’t publish anything without his permission. He said he had no time for poking through the past.’

‘Does Mick’s family still own the island?’

‘No – I’m afraid the Drummonds have rather fallen from their former glory. The land has all been sold off piecemeal over the decades – most of the centre is National Trust Scotland now, thank goodness, so it’s protected. But he owns the cove where your house is. The McBride land, as it’s known. He either can’t or won’t get rid of that.’

‘So did you find anything good in the letters?’

‘Oh, a great deal. Plenty relating to the McBride case, which has taken on all the colour of a melodrama over the years. I plan to write a book based on the letters one day, but Mick was adamant he didn’t want anything made public yet. I’m hoping he’ll change his mind, of course, but once he’d decided to do up the house, he was afraid any kind of publicity about the case would frighten people away.’ He took a gulp of coffee. ‘Or, worse, attract them. The wrong people. Haunted-house nuts, psychic researchers, amateur detectives – you know the kind.’

‘So it is haunted?’ She pointed at him, triumphant, as if she had tricked him into admission. Charles merely gave her his quiet smile.

‘I’m coming to that. Most of what I’m telling you I’ve gleaned from William Drummond’s letters.’

‘Ailsa’s brother.’

‘Yes. Young William was a prolific correspondent, it seems – first with his father and sister, and later, after the reverend died, with the solicitor who took over the McBride estate. One of the chief subjects of his letters is his sister’s welfare.’

‘So what happened to Ailsa?’

‘Well, at first she kept to herself. Stayed away from the village, turned down all social invitations. Of course, she had become an intriguing prospect, as you may imagine – a wealthy widow living alone in a large house, relatively young, certainly young enough to remarry. As soon as a decent interval had passed, the suitors began paying court. She spurned every advance, according to the maid. Burned letters unopened.’

‘Perhaps she was still grieving her husband,’ Zoe murmured.

‘Perhaps,’ Charles said evenly. ‘She saw her father occasionally, but much less than she used to, and not at all once he became too ill to make the journey out to her. Eight months after Tamhas was drowned, the Reverend Drummond also passed away, from pneumonia. Ailsa McBride finally emerged for his funeral – the first time she’d been seen in the village since they buried her husband – and shocked everyone by turning up in an advanced stage of pregnancy.’

‘Wow.’ She stared at him, eyes wide, the mug halfway to her lips. ‘Was it her husband’s?’

‘Naturally, that’s what everyone wanted to know. But no one quite dared to ask her directly and she never offered an explanation. She wrote to her brother of her “poor fatherless child”, but in the same letter she says “his father will always be watching over him”, which sounds like a sentimental reference to her dead husband. But here’s the bombshell.’ He paused for effect, raising an eyebrow over the top of his cup. ‘Ailsa McBride gave birth to a son nearly eleven months after her husband was buried.’

‘Whoa.’ Zoe sat back. ‘Naughty Ailsa. Unless they miscounted?’

‘The dates are there in the church records. Ten and a half months after the burial. And Tamhas had been away for the best part of two months before he died. You can imagine, in a village like this, the gift that would have been to the gossip mill. But that was the point at which she truly became an outcast.’

‘She doesn’t sound like someone who would have cared too much about that,’ Zoe said.

‘Apparently not. She kept to the house after her son was born. Dismissed the maid, saying she intended to care for the child herself, which of course was unheard of for a woman of means at the time. The maid was less than delighted – there was little work available on the island. It’s my view that much of what was passed down had its roots in malicious rumours put about by the maid in anger at losing her position.’

‘Like what?’ Zoe sat forward, intrigued.

‘Oh, that there was something wrong with the child. Ailsa didn’t send for a midwife – only the maid was present in the house when the child was delivered, and she swore it was stillborn. Ailsa never had the boy baptised either – you can imagine the scandal of that. The cook continued to visit every day but she said she never once heard the child crying, nor ever saw him, though Ailsa was always sewing clothes for him. This went on for a couple of years. This cook said Ailsa McBride was growing stranger and stranger – more remote, as if she was in another world most of the time.’

‘Losing her mind, you mean?’

‘That’s what the new reverend implied in his letter to William Drummond. Though you must remember how quick people were to diagnose madness in women in those days. But even that was principally among educated people. Rough-hewn island folk jumped to other conclusions first.’ He raised a finger, as if he were giving a lecture. ‘Consider it. A woman living alone, who shuns church and refuses to answer the door to the minister, with an unbaptised child no one ever sees?’

‘They said she was a witch, I guess?’ Zoe felt the goosebumps rise on her arms and the back of her neck. ‘Did the rumours never imply who the father was?’

‘Oh yes.’ He gave a mirthless smile. ‘They said it was the Devil himself. There was even a rumour that she had murdered the child at birth in some kind of blood sacrifice, which was why no one ever saw him.’ Charles’s face tightened in anger, as if he took such ignorance and prejudice personally. ‘But that is a real mystery – with all the gossip flying, there was never a finger pointed at any of the island men. Not even the disgruntled maid could confect any plausible evidence of male visitors in the year after Ailsa was widowed. Even the minister didn’t cross the threshold.’

‘Wow. She really knew how to keep a secret.’ Zoe felt a growing admiration for Ailsa McBride and her disregard for convention.

‘So it seems. But after the child was born, Ailsa left the management of her financial affairs to the one solicitor in the village, a Mr Richard Bonar,’ he continued. ‘Bonar would go out to the house once a month to discuss the estate. His letters to William Drummond are fascinating.’ He leaned forward, eyes bright. ‘He says despite the talk, he’s never found Ailsa anything less than entirely lucid. She is always impeccably dressed, the house clean, and she displays a sound understanding of her accounts and investments together with an impressive grasp of arithmetic for a woman.’

‘Big of him,’ Zoe remarked.

Charles laughed. ‘Yes. Though it’s curious – I can’t help but wonder about the effect of those letters. What might have happened if Bonar had been less pragmatic, if he had encouraged William to come back and see his sister. But William was evidently reassured by Bonar’s words. Especially when, a couple of years later, the solicitor said he’d seen the child.’