Winthrop Hall

A music graduate takes any job she can find and gets more than she bargained for.

Despite her instincts and the protestations of her parents, she took the job as housekeeper because she was broke, recently graduated and desperate for work. 

It was a garish, cold, unwelcoming house, filled with shadows and sadness from times gone by. 

She disliked it when she approached the wrought iron gates every day and had to press the buzzer. The camera zoomed in on her face every time as she rolled her eyes and waited for someone to let her in. 

The walk up to the house was exhausting. She didn’t have a car but luckily, she lived nearby. She often thought how strange it was that she hadn’t known about this place before now. It was a stone’s throw from the village where she had grown up. 

The driveway curved dramatically on an incline, each section hidden by tall trees and old, well maintained hedges. The roses she saw in the front garden didn’t fit the picture, she thought. They were too pretty, with dainty pink, white and red heads. Their delicate, papery petals scattered across the gravel like confetti. 

The house cast its hideous shadow over the widest part of the driveway. Gargoyles crouched ominously over the high, arched doorway and the curved edges of the roof. Some mornings, she could swear she saw their eyes following her to and from the house as she emptied bins and cleaned steps. They made her shudder. 

Winthrop hall had been described as a seventeenth century mansion once belonging to some cousin of the Rothchild’s. It had its own mausoleum at the back. If a building could glower at visitors, she felt that it would have been this one. 

Strangely, she had taken the interview for the role in London. The solicitor interviewing her was a family friend of the client, or so he said. Lord Winthrop was an elderly man and very ill and she was not to bother him. She had asked if he had any family nearby. He had none. She was to tidy and clean the rooms, tend to any other affairs such as sorting through Lord Winthrop’s mail, tending to his rabbits and liaising with the gardener once a fortnight. His meals were already dealt with. She did not know if he was currently living there or not. It was none of her business. 

She was instructed, in no uncertain terms, to leave the house every day before dark. As she had to pass through woodland to get home, she felt this was reasonable and asked no questions; she needed the money. 

On the day when it was time to polish the mahogany stair rails, she would look up at the imposing portraits that decorated the walls of Winthrop hall with their exquisite, gilded frames from eras that had spanned well before her time. All were of handsome lords and ladies. Some posed with dramatically large feathered hats, rifles, swords or hounds. Others held their children on their knees whilst wearing enormous powdered wigs. The most recent one, she had guessed, was a portrait near the bottom of the stairway. It was of a young man with large, sad eyes, a carefully carved square jaw and tightly curled, jet black hair that had been combed back to reveal his widow's peak. Beneath his cleanly trimmed facial hair she could see a deep dimple in his chin. She had often wondered if this portrait was the elusive Lord Winthrop as a young man. She felt that the painting had seemed ageless albeit more modern than its acquaintances. 

In the parlour room, there was a grand, turn-of-the-century piano that had been long neglected. She dusted it with the care one would reserve for a loved one. As she was a graduate of music and had yet to discover a room that inhabited her employer, she couldn’t help but try the keys each afternoon. She would find herself absorbed by Mozart, Chopin, Brahms and Handel. Just one song, she thought. Each day for a week, it was one song. 

Until  she found the note. 

It had been left on the piano. A hand written request.

 Do you know Moonlight Sonata? 

She felt her face flash with heat; her fingers tingled. The butterflies in her stomach finally subsided and she inhaled slowly. She played the composition, almost closing her eyes in the euphoria. She stopped abruptly. Someone was behind her.

“Wait!” She called to the shadow that passed the parlour doors as quickly as she had turned to catch a glimpse. “Please, wait!” She ran after it into the hall. There was no one there. 

The next afternoon, she approached the piano again. There was another note. 

I am sorry for the disturbance. Please, play at will. Don’t mind me.

She played again, passionately. She played as though she was under the spotlight. All eyes in the house were on her; she could not let them down. 

Weeks passed this way. 

On a sunny afternoon in October, she played Moonlight Sonata again. That was when she saw him. He lingered in the shadows of the room, hiding like a child who had been told multiple times to go to bed and leave his parents to entertain guests. “I love to hear you play,” he said in a hoarse voice. She didn’t look straight at him but maintained his gaze in the corner of her eye. “Please, don’t look at me,” he said, his voice breaking. “You would never return if you did.” 

“I’m not afraid,” she said, still looking at the piano, her back straight. There was a pause.

“It is almost dark. You had better go.” 

In her defiance, she turned to look at him but he was gone, leaving nothing but shadow in his wake. The sun was going down. Leave the house before dark. 

It was already dark when she was standing in the hallway with her coat on, looking up at only one portrait: his. Had she seen the same eyes looking at her while she played? It was impossible. In that moment of indulgence, she didn’t see them opening the sash windows with their crowbars. 

She screamed as they beat her down to the ground and bound her hands. In the twilight, they were terrifying. Clad in all black with balaclavas, they had left a white transit with its lights off on the driveway, ready to leave as soon as they had what they wanted. 

There were so many of them until there were none. In the darkness, they yelped like frightened dogs as claws slashed their skin and an incomprehensible force took their knees from under them. Their blood and his, pooled on the floor of the hallway. 

Effortlessly, he untied her and carried her to the chaise longue in the parlour. Though shocked at first, she did not question what she saw. She accepted him as he was in the dim candlelight. 

---

By dawn, she had limped to the windows of the parlour room, following the trail of blood that he had left behind him. She knelt down and held his head in her hands. He was no longer a creature of the night hiding in the shadows but a bleeding, young Lord Winthrop as she had seen him in his painting. He felt the fingers that had played music so beautifully comb through his hair. He looked into her eyes and with his chest rising slowly, released his last breath, “it was worth it.” 

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