Someone in the House (15 page)

“No more than one would expect,” Roger said, “considering the age of the place and the vicissitudes of life. Nor is the survival of the house unique. There are hundreds of stately homes in England—”

“Surely not this old,” Bea said, with something of the same defensive pride Kevin had displayed when he spoke of the house.

“Not all of them, of course. But quite a number date back four or five hundred years.”

“And in that length of time every old house must have had its share of violent deaths,” Bea insisted. “We’ve already found several. Robert Romer, the Lovell who was killed at Bosworth, the two Mandeville sons in World War I—”

“Admitting that your naive idea is correct, you’re on the wrong track,” Roger said. “We’re looking for a woman.”

“You say the house is older than 1485,” I said. “How much older?”

Roger looked at me keenly. “You’ve got something in mind. Don’t be coy.”

“I’m not. I just this minute remembered. That picture in Kevin’s room. The costume is medieval, but the style—”

“That’s right,” Bea exclaimed eagerly. “It is a woman’s portrait. A woman with long fair hair—”

“But it’s the wrong period,” I said stubbornly.

Roger banged his fist on the table. “What are you talking about? Have you been holding out on me?”

“I don’t think it has any relevance. It’s the wrong—”

“Period. I know,” Roger said resignedly. “I won’t ask what you mean by that ambiguous evaluation; I’ll look at it myself. Let’s put this stuff back the way we found it. I’ll take charge of the notes.”

When we had restored the books to their original state of disorder, we locked up. Bea scribbled a note for Kevin explaining that Roger was spending the night. Then we went upstairs, trailed by two of the cats and one of the dogs. Belle stayed in the library waiting up for Kevin. She was courteous to all of us, but she really preferred him.

We went first to Kevin’s room to show Roger the portrait. After studying it, he shook his head.

“What a daub. I see what you meant about the wrong period, Anne. The costume is medieval, but the style is Late Victorian or Edwardian.”

“The costume is wrong,” Bea added. “It’s a mixture of styles that would never have been worn at the same era—an early-fourteenth-century kirtle and mantle and a Mary Queen of Scots cap, which is inappropriate with her long, unbound hair.”

“I didn’t know you were an expert on the history of costume,” I said admiringly.

“One of my hobbies. The painting may not be very good, but it is of a young woman with long fair hair.”

“Bah,” said Roger. “Nobody with the slightest rudiments of good taste could admire this catastrophe, much less develop an adolescent romantic crush on it.”

“But he moved it,” I said. “He brought it in here. When I arrived it was hanging someplace else, in one of the other bedrooms.”

Roger turned away with a shrug. “I fail to see any connection. Where is that kid anyway? Time he was home.”

“He may not be back for hours if Debbie comes through as expected,” I said. “You’re going to have a long boring wait, Roger. Where are you planning to hide?”

“In the same alcove you used. Much more convenient now that the statue is out of the way. It’s a neat setup, with the plants as camouflage. Come and see.”

Gadgets and machines are our modern religious symbols. Watching something click or tick or turn gives us the same sense of security a medieval peasant felt when he touched a reliquary—a hope that the incoherence of the universe is thereby regulated. I could not help being impressed by Roger’s gadgets, which included every tool I had ever seen and a good many I had not seen. His camera was an expensive Japanese model, small in size but absolutely exuding efficiency.

“Infrared film,” Roger explained proudly. “It takes a frame every second, automatically. This—” indicating a square black box bristling with knobs and antennas—“measures and records changes in temperature. I’ll have to wait till Kevin goes to bed before I set it up; he might notice it. Same with the black thread, which attaches to these cameras. The suction cups enable them to be clamped to the walls.”

“So you think your psychic force is solid enough to move a thread,” Bea said scornfully.

“We have not eliminated the possibility of human trickery,” Roger said. “Wait—” for Bea’s lip had curled in protest—“I’m not saying I think Kevin is guilty. But a scientist can’t operate on feelings. If anything palpable touches the thread, it will be photographed. If it doesn’t trip the thread, I’ll catch it with my other camera. There are more sophisticated instruments available, but I don’t own them and I didn’t have time to borrow them. We can make a start with these.”

“What shall we do?” I asked. Bea remained silent, her lower lip protruding mutinously.

Roger looked surprised. “You go to bed, of course. Nothing is going to happen. I don’t intend to attack the thing, just take its picture.”

I scooped up Tabitha, who had already taken a couple of swipes at Roger’s dangling thread, and Bea and I went to our rooms. I got into bed with Tabitha and Agatha. I did not expect I would be able to sleep, but I couldn’t decide whether I hoped something would happen—or that it wouldn’t.

I had left my door open. The late-night silence was so profound that I heard Kevin when he came home—first the distant rattle of chains and bolts as he locked up, then the creak of one particular stair. After that, silence descended again. I glanced at the clock on my bedside table. It was oneA.M. Roger was probably tiptoeing around stringing his threads and putting his cameras in place.

One fortyA.M. The murderer was the innocent-looking young girl. Hercule Poirot arrived just in time to keep her from killing again…. My chin banged into my chest. Blearily I glanced at the clock. Two ten. I dropped the book onto Tabitha, who moaned but did not move, and let my eyes close.

I was walking along a road—a yellow brick road. The forms that lined it on either side were not cute little Munchkins, they were human-sized people—or perhaps their statues. The figures were rigid and motionless, frozen in position. I knew some of them. Bea and Roger, Kevin…An old, old woman dressed in rusty black, her face a mass of wrinkles. A man in top hat and white tie, a heavy gold watch-chain stretched across his potbelly. I started to move faster. More women, wearing old-fashioned clothes, gowns with bustles and full skirts. A child with wide blue eyes that never blinked—a china-doll child in pantalets, holding a hoop. A tall young man in a gaudy uniform, gilt epaulets, scarlet tunic, a sword at his side. I was running, faster than the fastest Olympic racer, and a voice somewhere was chanting, “Back, farther back, farther…” The figures flashed by. I caught glimpses of white faces, rigid as marble, and clothes that belonged in museums or portrait galleries—a gown of forest-green velvet, twenty yards in the skirt; pleated ruffs, wide sleeves bordered with fur, a herald’s tabard stiff with gold embroidered figures. “Back, farther back…” Togas and tunics and homespun cloaks fastened with enameled brooches; figures shrinking in size, darker and bowed. At dizzying speed I skimmed the surface, and the shapes were no longer human. They had dropped down onto four feet, or hooves, or pads. I was moving so fast they seemed to move too, backward; crawling and slithering and swimming, shrinking still, while the voice continued to intone its litany: “Farther, farther back…” Back to the very beginning, to the shapeless blobs of matter from which we came, back to the primeval ooze and the organic chemicals. I could no longer bear to look at the shapes that squirmed and pulsed along the road. I was moving too fast. When I reached the end I must crash or fall; I could not stop….

The crash jarred every muscle in my body. I lay shaking for a minute before I realized that there was light—the light of my bedside lamp, which I had not turned off—and that the only squirming, pulsing object visible was Tabitha, sprawled across my legs. She suddenly sat up, her head cocked. So the sounds that echoed in my ears were not the remnants of my nightmare. The cat had heard them too.

I got out of bed. Bea’s door opened as I ran into the hall.

“What on earth—” she began.

“Roger must have attacked the ghost,” I said.

When I turned into the corridor that served the west wing, it seemed unusually dark. The light nearest Kevin’s door had gone out, leaving a long stretch of shadow. That was where the disturbance was taking place. At first I saw only a shapeless mass, squirming and twitching like the things in my dream, but considerably larger. I came to an abrupt halt, enabling Bea to catch up with me. She had had enough presence of mind to bring a flashlight. Its beam framed the tableau on the floor: Kevin, kneeling, his hands wrapped around the throat of Roger O’Neill, who lay supine, with Kevin’s full weight on his chest. Roger’s face was turning blue.

Bea let out a shriek. “Kevin! Stop it at once!”

Kevin reacted instantly. I suppose he had heard that tone, if not those very words, several thousand times in his youth. He let go of Roger and climbed off him. Roger took in air in a long, rasping gasp. Shoving her nephew out of the way, Bea fell on her knees beside Roger.

“Darling, are you hurt?”

“I may never speak again,” Roger croaked. His hand went to his throat. “That was a very stupid question, sweetheart.”

Kevin invoked a list of sacred names in tones Father Stephen would not have approved. “God Almighty,” he finished. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know—hey, Roger—”

A carved wooden chest, black with age, stood near me. I dropped down onto it.

“I was going to the bathroom,” Kevin explained. “I saw somebody duck out of sight, as if he were hiding; naturally I thought—Roger, are you okay? Let me help you up.”

Roger slapped his hand away. He seemed more insulted by Kevin’s sympathy than by his attempt to strangle him. “I’m not helpless yet, boy. You caught me unawares, or…All right, Bea, cut it out. I am capable of standing by myself.”

He proceeded to do so. Her arm around him protectively, Bea turned a furious gaze on Kevin, who was still squatting on the floor. He looked rather pathetic.

“Kevin, you idiot, didn’t you read my note? I told you Roger was spending the night.”

“I came straight upstairs,” Kevin said plaintively. “I was bushed. Hell’s bells, Aunt Bea, I said I was sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Roger straightened up. “An understandable confusion. No harm done.”

“I’m really sorry,” Kevin repeated.

Bea turned her back on him. “Come with me, Roger, and let me put something on those bruises.”

She led him away. I stood up. “Night, Kevin. Sleep tight.”

It was a good time to leave. Kevin was beginning to lose his temper at seeing his abject apologies rejected, and in another minute he would have taken it out on me. As I retreated I heard his door slam.

Roger was sitting on the bed in Bea’s room, his head tipped back, while Bea examined his throat. “Look at those bruises,” she exclaimed angrily. “How could he do such a thing?”

“I don’t blame him,” Roger answered. “I did what he said—tried to hide. It was a stupid move, but he caught me by surprise and I didn’t stop to think.”

I sat down beside Roger. In addition to the darkening marks on his throat he sported a lump on the jaw and some miscellaneous scrapes across cheeks and chin. He looked terrible.

“Should we go and minister unto Kevin also?” I inquired.

Roger rolled his eyes in my direction. There was an appreciative gleam in the eye nearest me.

“Thanks,” he said dryly. “I landed a couple, I think. But he’s a lot younger and tougher than I am; he’ll survive. Now, Bea, you’ve enjoyed yourself long enough. That will do.”

“I agree,” I said. “Let him talk, Bea. I want to hear what happened before the fight. Did you have any luck, Roger?”

“That depends on what you mean by luck,” Roger said maddeningly.

“I may strangle you myself if you don’t get to it,” I threatened.

“I’ll make tea,” Bea said.

Roger caught her by the sleeve as she turned away. “No. From now on you are not to wander around this house at night.”

“I have a hot plate and kettle in my sitting room,” Bea said.

“So something did happen,” I said.

“Some thing,” Roger said, deliberately separating the words. “I’ll give it to you from the beginning.”

I didn’t want a slow, measured narrative. I wanted to know whether he had seen my melting, slimy-faced apparition, and I suspected it was not so much his logical mind as his love of drama that made him select this method. But there was no use arguing with him, so I nodded and settled myself cross-legged on the bed.