The Haunting of Toby Jugg (33 page)

She nodded, but a sad look came into her eyes. ‘I do understand, darling. You must have been through a terrible time. But
the thing that worries us all so much is that there has never been any suggestion before that this place is haunted; and we are afraid that you would have seen—or thought you saw—this terrifying apparition, during the periods of the full moon, if you had been with us at Queensclere, or anywhere else.’

‘Then you don’t believe that I really saw anything at all?’ I challenged her.

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ she replied thoughtfully. ‘Helmuth does not believe in the Supernatural, but I do. I’ve never seen an apparition myself, but I am certain that the “burglar” that you saw when we were down at Kew was one. Perhaps you are more psychic than I am, and so more receptive to such influences.’

‘I’ve never regarded myself as a psychic type,’ I admitted. ‘But you remember that business of the Abbot’s grave at Weylands. After that horrible experience I described my sensations to you, and I had exactly the same feelings of cold, repulsion and stark terror down in the library here.’

‘That could have been caused by a recurrence in your memory of the Weylands affair.’ She took out a cigarette. I lit it for her, and she went on: ‘I’ll tell you what makes me doubt if you really did see anything. When Helmuth and your nurse were telling us all about it, before I came up, they described the night just a week ago when you started bawling barrack-room choruses at the top of your voice, and they ran into your room. You pointed wildly to the bottom of the blackout curtain and yelled: “Look! Look! Do you call that an hallucination?” But neither of them saw anything; and I should have thought one or other of them would have, had there been anything to see.’

‘Perhaps neither of them is psychic,’ I argued a little weakly.

‘That might be the explanation,’ she shrugged, ‘but I don’t think so. I have been at séances where trumpets and tambourines have floated in the air, and others where the medium has emitted large quantities of ectoplasm; and it is not just one or two people who see such manifestations, but the whole audience—and sometimes some of them are convinced sceptics before the séance starts.’

For quite a time we argued round the matter. She pointed out that although Great-aunt Sarah and Miss Nettelfold had lived
here for a lifetime, no complaint had ever been made by them to the Trustees that Llanferdrack had a family horror which periodically gave trouble; and that although servants were usually the first to get the wind up about such things, none of the staff here had ever given notice on the grounds that the place had a bad atmosphere.

So, eventually, I was forced to agree that such evidence as we had to go on all pointed to the Shadow having no existence outside my imagination.

About seven o’clock Julia left me to go and change; but she said that she would have her dinner sent up on a tray with mine, so that we could dine together.

I think most beautiful women look their best in evening-dress, and although Julia is a sight to gladden the heart in anything, she is certainly of the type whose proper setting is satin and pearls rather than tweeds. She looked absolutely ravishing.

We had a couple of cocktails apiece, split a bottle of Burgundy and rounded things off with some Kümmel. By the time we had finished I was feeling so good that I was almost resigned to the thought that I had gone a bit mental—provided I could get away from Llanferdrack, and there was a decent hope of my being cured pretty quickly. But I was still of the opinion that Helmuth’s conduct needed a lot of explaining, and when Konrad had carried away our dinner trays I started in on the subject.

We went into the whole business piece by piece: the letters, the blackout curtains, my telephone extension; the refusal to leave me my lamp, or get me a torch, or move my radio; or let me have more than one sleeping tablet; Helmuth’s arbitrary treatment of Taffy, his stopping me from getting into the train and, finally, his virtually making me a prisoner in this old part of the Castle.

Looked at in retrospect, I must honestly confess that there was really very little to it all, if one once accepts the following premiss:

(1) That shortly after my arrival here Helmuth began to suspect that my injury and eight months in hospital had, to some degree, affected the balance of my mind.

(2) That he at once began to keep me under observation and opened my mail as part of the process.

(3) That, on finding his fears confirmed, he considered it his
duty to my relations to save them from worry, and his duty to myself to take all possible steps to prevent the knowledge leaking out and prejudicing my future.

(4) That he hoped the rest and a regular routine would put me right, and decided that nothing must be done which would encourage me to believe that I was suffering from anything worse than nightmares.

The above is the gist of how he had put it to Julia, and as she passed it on to me. After thrashing the matter out we fell silent for a bit; then she suddenly said:

‘Besides, what possible motive could he have for adopting such an extraordinary attitude towards you? I mean, trying to make things worse for you instead of better, as you still seem to half-suspect?’

I was surprised that Uncle Paul had said nothing to her about my theory that there was a conspiracy to drive me insane; but perhaps he had thought it too far-fetched to mention. I told her my ideas on that and her eyes widened in amazement as she listened.

‘But Toby!’ she exclaimed at last. ‘How
could
you think such base thoughts of a man who has given some of the best years of his life to developing your mind and character? This is the first time that I have ever been ashamed of you.’

‘Oh, come!’ I protested a bit uncomfortably. ‘After all, he was damn’ well paid for what he did.’

She shook her head. ‘One can’t pay for care and affection with money, darling. Perhaps, though, I am being a little hard on you. To talk to, you are so perfectly normal that I forget about your not being quite well in your mind. It is only when you produce ideas like that of turning Paul and myself out into the street, or this one that Helmuth wants to lock you up and rob you, that I suddenly realise how right he is about your no longer being your real self.’

‘All the same,’ I argued, ‘you must admit that the Trustees would stand to gain if a Board of Lunacy ruled that I was unfitted to inherit.’

‘Not sufficiently to provide a motive for them to enter into a criminal conspiracy,’ she countered. ‘You seem to forget that most
of them are immensely rich already. Paul, of course, is an exception, but he knows as well as I do that if you come into your money you will make a most generous provision for him; and Smith and Roberts don’t stand to lose anything, because they are professional advisers and would go on drawing their fees just the same, whatever happens.’

‘That still leaves Iswick and Helmuth.’

She laughed. ‘Really, Toby darling, you’re being too silly. We may all look on Harry Iswick as an awful little bounder, but he is as clever as a cart-load of monkeys. In the past ten years he has made a fortune on his own account, and his interest in the Jugg combine is only a side-line with him now. I know that for a fact. As for Helmuth, surely you see that he has much more to lose than to gain from your being put in a home. Big business isn’t really his line of country, so it is unlikely that he would be able to improve his position much by continuing as a Trustee. Whereas, with you in possession of your millions, he would have every right to expect you to find a suitable use for his abilities, at a handsome remuneration, in recognition of all he has done for you in the past. I give you my word, sweet, that this conspiracy idea is absolutely fantastic.’

There seemed no answer to her arguments, and reviewing them again, now that I no longer have her glowing presence before me, I still don’t think there is. But accepting them brought me face to face with the question of Helmuth, and I asked her what she thought I ought to do about him.

‘Sleep on it, darling,’ she advised me, ‘and see how you feel about it in the morning. If you find that you really cannot rid yourself of this awful prejudice that you have built up in your mind against him, I think it would be better to let sleeping dogs lie. Later, perhaps, you will feel differently; then you can let him know how sorry you are that you suspected him so unjustly. But he is terribly fond of you, and must be feeling very hurt at the moment.

‘So if all I have said has convinced you that you are in the wrong, the generous thing would be for you to let me bring him up to you tomorrow. You needn’t eat humble pie, or be embarrassed about it; but must say that you realise now that you have
not been quite yourself lately, and have given him a lot of unnecessary trouble. That’s quite enough. He’ll understand; and I am sure it would please him a lot to know that you bear him no ill-will before you leave here.’

It was late when she left me, but I lay awake thinking about it a long time after she had gone. I came to the conclusion that in many respects Helmuth had shown very poor psychology in his treatment of me, and that the arbitrary way in which he had handled matters was enough to make anyone who was slightly mental develop a persecution complex, but that my conspiracy idea was the wildest nonsense, and that there was not one atom of proof to show that he had not acted throughout in what he
believed to be
my best interests.

In consequence, on Sunday morning I told Julia that I would like to see Helmuth, and later we had a grand reconciliation on my sunny terrace.

For such entertaining as my grandfather had to do, he bought anything that was going cheap in the City, in big parcels of forty or fifty cases at a time; so the cellar he left was not distinguished for either its variety or quality. But in the past thirteen years Uncle Paul has spared no pains to make up for those deficiencies, and soon after the war broke out he had a large part of the Queensclere and London cellars moved down here as a precaution against their being blitzed. So for us to celebrate he was able to order up a magnum of Krug, Private Cuvée 1926, and I don’t think I have ever tasted better champagne in my life.

Everything went off remarkably easily. I said my piece and Helmuth met me more than half-way. He admitted that many of his acts must have seemed high-handed and even tyrannical, but he had been dominated by the one thought of preventing it from leaking out that I had become mental.

As he explained, it is just like a man going bankrupt; however unlucky he may have been, and even if he pays up one pound in the pound afterwards and gets an honourable discharge, it always prejudices his future commercial undertakings. So with mental trouble, the effect would be little short of disastrous to me as the head of the Jugg enterprises if it ever became known that I had once suffered from hallucinations.

He went on to say that he had moved me from downstairs only with the greatest reluctance, because he was most loth to give the servants grounds for talk; but that after my attempts to get away he had felt that to do so was the lesser evil. And that when he had decided to move me he had chosen this room because it was one of those furthest removed from the servants’ quarters, so they were less likely to hear me if further attacks led to a renewal of my singing and shouting. He added, too, that he found it a considerably inconvenience to be deprived of Konrad’s services, but he knew that the fellow could be trusted not to blab, so he had willingly given him up to me, rather than risk letting a new man, who might later prove untrustworthy, into our secret.

We went on then to discuss what should be done with me. Julia said that she would willingly have me at Queensclere; but the difficulty about that is that the house is occupied by the Army, and she and Uncle Paul have been allowed to retain only what amounts to a flat of half-a-dozen rooms on the first floor. So, apart from the question of air-raids, and the business of getting me down to a shelter—which they insisted would have to be done if I went there—in the event of my having further attacks it would be practically impossible to prevent the officers who are billeted in the house from learning about my condition.

Kensington Palace Gardens is out, because it has now been taken over to provide additional accommodation for the Soviet Embassy; so, of my own properties, that left only the little house on Mull. And if I were put into a nursing-home it is a certainty that the secret of my affliction would get out.

I suggested that a small house should be bought for me in Devonshire or Cornwall, but they all seemed to think that it would be practically impossible to find anything suitable at the present time, as every available property in the ‘safe’ areas had been taken over to house evacuees; and even if we could find one it raises the problem of who is going to run it and look after me.

Of course, the same thing applies to Mull, but eventually Helmuth offered to throw up his work here and take me up there. That was very decent of him, and it seemed a possible solution for the next few months. But it would be far from attractive as a permanency, as to have to winter there would be incredibly depressing
and grim; and even during the summer we would have none of the good things, such as the garden produce, that we enjoy down here. Still, it seemed the best thing we could think of when lunch-time came, so they left me to think it over.

When they joined me again about three o’clock, Julia put it to me that, since I was now reconciled to Helmuth, did I really still feel so strongly about leaving Llanferdrack? She pointed out that, so far, I had been subject to attacks only while down in the library, and that now I had been moved I might not be afflicted with them any more. The advantages of Llanferdrack over Mull needed no stressing, and my acceptance of Helmuth’s offer would mean sabotaging much of the fine war-effort that he has built up here during the past two-and-a-half years. Therefore, didn’t I think that I could bring myself to stay on here for a time at least—anyhow until the next full-moon period—and if it transpired that the attacks did recur, then I could always be removed at once.