Dearest Enemy

by Alexandra Sellers

  A passing cloud decided to obscure the moon for them, and they both leaned up to look inside. Someone in a white dress or robe was moving around the room, holding the tiniest of flashlights. The beam of light was just too faint to show them a face or any distinguishing characteristic. But Elain felt sure it was a woman. They ducked down again as the cloud went on its way.

  “She’s moving furniture!” Elain whispered. “That’s what it looked like!”

  Math was frowning. He slipped up for another look and came down again. “Moving the rug now.”

  “Math! Do you think—could there be a trapdoor in the floor? Something buried underneath?”

  He shook his head. “Don’t know. It’s the cellar under here as far as I know.” But with a house like this, built over time and on an erratic plan, it was hard to be sure of direction and dimension.

  Another cloud came along, and they both crept up again. “Where is she? She’s gone,” Elain hissed.

  “In the corner,” said Math. “By the fireplace.”

  He was right. Elain found her just in time to see her raise an arm, white in the moonlight, and it seemed as if she threw something. Then there was a bright, white light and a loud, roaring explosion. When her eyes could see again, the woman was gone.

  So was Math. He was inside the front door and running towards the lounge. Elain gasped and followed.

  When she came around the corner, he was smashing his shoulder against the lounge door, and there was the sound of a door opening and footsteps and a call from above. With one huge thump, the door broke open under Math’s weight, and his hand found the switch and flooded the room with light.

  Elain noticed two things. The room looked as though a bomb had hit it, and there was no one in the room save themselves. “Where did she go?” she demanded. “Could she have got out this door and locked it, as fast as that?”

  Math just put his finger to his lips. “People coming,” he said.

  There were more voices and footfalls overhead, and within a minute or two more, they came clattering down the staircase, Jeremy in the lead, with Davina close behind and Vinnie a poor third. Olwen came running along the hall, tying the belt of her dressing gown, Evan close on her heels. Upstairs they could hear Rosemary calling, “What is it? What’s happened?” Then Rosemary and Brian Arthur arrived in the hall, making the numbers complete.

  They all shoved their way into the lounge, gasping and exclaiming with shock.

  “My God, what’s happened here?” said Olwen in astonishment.

  “There has been a psychic explosion,” Davina said in a low, throbbing voice that, in spite of herself, sent chills up Elain’s spine. “I can sense the energies. She has Tuhned now.” Wearing a pair of dark pyjamas under a rather tattered red terry robe, her hair wilder than usual around her head, she was looking more like Madame Arcati than ever. She turned to Math accusingly. “I warned you!” she said.

  “But what’s she done? Dropped a bomb?” asked Jeremy.

  That was what the room looked like, all right—except that there was no sign of burn. All the furniture seemed to have been blasted back from an epicentre a few feet in front of the fireplace. Chairs were tipped over, rugs were squashed up against the walls, pictures and mirrors had fallen, lamps and tables were overturned—but there was no black spot where the epicentre should be. There was no breakage, no fire, no actual damage. You might imagine that a presence with a huge force field had manifested in that spot.

  If she hadn’t seen what she had seen through the window, Elain would have been as chilled and shocked by the unearthly quality of the room as the others clearly were.

  Looking at Math, Jeremy screamed faintly, “My God, were you here when it went off? You’re wounded!”

  Everyone looked at him then. His bare arms were covered with scratches and abrasions, and it was clear he would have bruises. “No,” said Math.

  “And Elain, too! Your face is bleeding!” Rosemary exclaimed in shock.

  “We were not here,” Math said. “Our scrapes have got nothing to do with whatever happened here.”

  They were all shaken; no one questioned that. They stood helplessly looking around, murmuring to each other in wonder. Elain began to watch them. Olwen was wearing a yellow nightgown, but she had too large and comfortable a figure. The ghost, Elain was sure, had been much thinner. Jeremy lit a cigarette, and put his silver case and lighter back into the pocket of a blue velveteen dressing gown with a trembling hand. Underneath she caught sight of striped pyjama cuffs.

  Rosemary, surprisingly, seemed to be naked under her woolly purple dressing gown. Brian Arthur was still dressed, in chinos and a shirt. Vinnie was wearing a short tartan robe over a light cotton knee-length nightgown.

  For one wild, uncomfortable moment, Elain began to think that they had really seen a ghost. After all, the woman had been dressed in white, and had disappeared without a trace. Then she remembered the little flashlight. Ghosts, she told herself, don’t need the benefit of artificial light.

  “There was a terrific blast,” Jeremy protested from the far side of the room, examining one of the rugs where it was squashed up against the drinks dresser. People were beginning to recover. “It should have left a mark, shouldn’t it, something that size? But there’s nothing.”

  “You don’t understand about psychic explosions,” said Davina.

  “No, we don’t,” said Elain suddenly. “Tell us what you think happened here.”

  How was it she had never noticed before how awkward Davina became when asked for specific details?

  “Oh, my dear, I can hardly—the presence is still so strong—a psychic explosion is an explosion on the...the etheric level. There is light and sound and force, but not from an explosion of matter.”

  “And it’s Jessica, you think?”

  “Certainly some One, or some Thing, resident in this house. Perhaps a certain evil energy has been released by the opening of that passage in the cellar,” she said darkly. “Which I warned against.”

  “Bollocks,” said Math evenly. “Some sleight of hand is what we’ve got here. Right, would you all mind going back to bed? I’m going to lock this room and make it out of bounds. I’d like the police to have a look at it. This isn’t the work of any ghost.”

  Rosemary had been looking around the room. Her face was white with shock now. “I hope you’re right,” she said doubtfully, and Elain was amazed to hear her voice actually trembling with fear. She looked as though she might faint. “Well,” she said, her panic abruptly calming into decision. “I’m for bed, as Math says. I think we should all go. It’s well past two, and this sort of thing is really too distressing at my age.”

  The headmistress tone in her voice was impossible to disobey entirely. They all began to shuffle awkwardly.

  “Yes,” said Math. “Will everybody go back to bed, please? We’ll talk about this in the morning.”

  They obeyed reluctantly, glancing over their shoulders as they filed out of the room and up the stairs. After a few minutes, there were only Math, Brian Arthur and Elain left in the room.

  “What did you see?” Math asked Brian Arthur softly.

  The detective glanced at Elain and back at Math, who nodded. “This young lady is the only person who left her room after retiring for the night,” he returned, his voice quiet, as though he thought someone might be eavesdropping. “The rest stayed in their rooms.”

  She gaped from one to the other. “You?” she whispered hoarsely. “You’re the one who hired him?”

  “You never guessed?” said Math. He was at the fireplace, looking for something. Suddenly his hand waved the other two to silence. “Right,” he said loudly. “Good night, then. See you in the morning.”

  He reached down and seemed to catch hold of something, and stayed there. Elain crept closer. Between two of the antique wooden panels that covered the stone wall at the side of the fireplace, a piece of white fabric, triangular in shape and no more than a foot square, was caught on a rough p
iece of wood. Math had grabbed this and was still holding it. For a moment, Elain couldn’t understand what it was doing there, what it was. Then her brain made sense of the image: the fabric was sticking out between the panels. Something was caught behind.

  At his signal, Brian Arthur moved towards the door and said a loud good-night. Elain crossed the room with loud steps, out into the hall, and said good-night as Brian Arthur put out the lights. Then they crept back into the room before closing the door with a bang.

  Moonlight flooded the room through the leaded windows, making the disorder seem even eerier and reminding Elain of what they had seen earlier. They stood in perfect silence for several minutes, while her eyes got accustomed to the darkness, and then there was a faint whisper, as of silk on sandpaper, and the piece of fabric Math was clutching began to disappear into the wall.

  He held it tightly. It was clear a great deal of pressure was being exerted on it. Elain was gawking, her brain whirling. Someone was behind the panels, but how the hell had they got there, and who was it? Everybody had been in the room a moment ago, they had all gone out by the door.

  Had the woman in white disappeared into the panels? And had she been there all the time, waiting to dislodge her gown and get away? Was there a secret door, a space big enough for a person, between the stone wall and the wood panelling beside the huge fireplace?

  In spite of this ordinary possibility, she felt shivers up and down her spine when the shadows began to move in the moonlight, and the panel shifted, and a white hand reached out into the room, dragging at the fabric. The moment seemed to go on forever, but it could have been only a split second before Math’s hand snapped out and grabbed the wrist.

  There was a wild cry and a scream, and then the panel was thrust wide open with the person’s struggles, and the lights flashed on.

  “Well, Rosemary, hello!” said Math cheerfully.

  Chapter 19

  “Let me go!” Rosemary said furiously.

  “I don’t think so, just for the moment,” said Math. “Why don’t you come out of there?”

  “Take your hands off me! This is appalling!” she shouted. But the typical Englishman’s conditioned response to that headmistress’s tone wasn’t affecting Math.

  “I think so, too,” he said. “You might have killed someone. You nearly did.”

  He dragged her out by main force, while a voice from above cried softly, “Rosemary?”

  She was clutching a torn white nightgown. Math gave Rosemary into Brian Arthur’s hold, then put his head into the space that had been revealed in the wall and looked up. “Why don’t you come down, too, Davina?” he invited.

  “Is it a staircase?” Elain demanded in shocked delight. “A secret staircase? How amazing!”

  “Not amazing at all,” said Rosemary contemptuously. “Not even unusual. Just a priest’s hole, almost standard in houses of this age. The staircase makes it slightly more elaborate than the general run, of course.”

  “Of course, you’d know that, wouldn’t you?” Elain couldn’t resist saying. “You teach history, so you’d know all about priests’ holes.”

  “Anyone with any kind of education at all knows about priests’ holes,” Rosemary said, putting Elain in her place.

  Of course, that room was called The Chapel, Elain reminded herself as Davina appeared, gingerly clambering down the rickety ladder from the room above. She remembered, too, how unwilling the sisters had been to be moved somewhere else.

  Davina was crying. “Oh, I knew it would come adrift,” she said, wringing her hands.

  “You didn’t know any such thing, you silly woman,” said Rosemary. “Shut up.”

  There was a tap on the door, and Jeremy poked his head around. “I say, I thought something was up!” he exclaimed in his Famous Five voice. “Mind if I join you?”

  Math rolled his eyes but didn’t say anything, so Jeremy came into the room. He righted a couple of chairs and then sank into one, looking around expectantly. “Good grief!” he said when his gaze fell on the fireplace. He got up and moved to the space, poked his head in and looked down. “Leads down into the cellar, I suppose,” he said.

  At this, Elain leaped to the priest’s hole and peered in. On the right, there was a hole in the floor and a ladder leading down. “But where does it come out?” she demanded.

  “Is that you, Elain?” called a voice. She looked up. Vinnie’s head was framed against the square of light on the floor above. “Isn’t this fascinating? To think I’d been living with this in the house all these years, and never knew it!”

  Clutching her robe around her, she came rather nimbly down the ladder. “Well, well!” She beamed into the room. “This solves a lot of the mystery, doesn’t it? Now we know how the burning coal got onto the carpet. Rosemary simply came in this way when there was no one in the room, and went out again the same way.”

  “Be careful,” Elain warned. “There’s another opening just by your feet. It goes down into the cellar.”

  “But how thrilling! I suppose this is how Jessica’s lover got into the house and how he disappeared when they thought they had him.”

  “I suppose,” remarked Jeremy, who had lit another cigarette, “it’s also how the tap in the sink upstairs got broken. While being blamed on poor Jessica!”

  “It explains a lot of the how,” Math agreed quietly, and the authority in his voice caused them all to fall silent. “But none of the why.” He turned to where Rosemary was, now sitting in an armchair, Davina hovering beside her. “Would you care to make that clear?”

  “Give me one of those, please,” Rosemary said to Jeremy, reaching for a cigarette and bending towards him for the light he offered. She took a deep draw and exhaled. “Well, I suppose once you’ve got this far...” She drew and exhaled again, carelessly flicked the ash, and sighed, shaking her head. “I suppose you’ve been through the tunnel and found the passage,” she said to Math.

  He inclined his head, while the others made noises of astonishment.

  “There’s a passage?”

  “Where does it lead?”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “Did you understand what you saw?” Rosemary asked disdainfully, ignoring them all.

  Math grinned at the tone. “A Roman mine, I thought.”

  “That’s right,” said Rosemary. “A Roman mine. Do you know what they were mining?”

  “Lead?” Math wrinkled his forehead and then astonishment relaxed all the muscles in his face. “Surely not!” he said. “Gold?”

  * * *

  “All we wanted was to make you decide to sell, to take a lower price than you’d paid. Something we could afford. We didn’t really mean to burn the place down. We had no idea it would burn so quickly....” Davina was still crying, her face in her hands. “We only wanted to put you out of business. When we heard someone had only just escaped being killed, we were horrified!”

  Math wasn’t impressed. “If you set fire to a building with sleeping people in it, you can count yourself damned lucky not to be guilty of murder.”

  “Yes, I see that now, but—we thought, well, it’s not high season, the place isn’t full.... Rosemary came up and did it all. I was afraid of the mine, you know. We parked and came up the hill, and Rosemary went down and set the fire. Oh, Lord! There was the most terrible explosion! I was horrified, standing there watching it go up, and Rosemary hadn’t come out yet! But then she came—”

  “Bringing the tapestry,” interjected Elain drily.

  Rosemary turned on her. “Don’t you talk to me in that arrogant fashion!” she snapped. “You’re a horrible little spy! You needn’t feel so pleased with yourself, you sneaking, snooping little liar! I don’t know how you can look at yourself in the mirror! You have no idea of fair play or honour whatsoever!”

  Elain could feel herself blushing under the assault of words. She wanted to answer, but as usual, nothing came to her.

  “And you do?” asked Math pointedly. “Elain did what sh
e did to uncover a crime. Who has Elain hurt, or tried to hurt? You did what you did for personal gain.”

  “That isn’t the point!”

  “I think it is. Go on. You came out with the tapestry after setting the fire, and drove to wherever it was you were staying. Where is the tapestry now?”

  “I don’t know anything about any tapestry.”

  “Oh, Rosemary, what good is it?” Davina said tremblingly. “It can’t do any good now.” She looked at Math. “We’ve stored it away. You see, we’d seen the tapestry when we were here last year—well, we saw it the first time we came, too. But it wasn’t until last year, when we found the passage...” She began to babble almost incoherently. “It wasn’t quite by chance, because Rosemary said there ought to be one in a house this age—we had no plans then, except to show it to you if we found it—but then there was so much more to it. And Rosemary was sure it must be a gold mine.”

  “What made you think there was still gold there?”

  “I didn’t think it!” Rosemary snorted. “I took some samples and had them analysed. There is at least one healthy vein down there. Do you think I did all this for a dream? There are mines in this area that weren’t abandoned until the early years of this century and are now being profitably worked again! This mine hasn’t been touched since the Romans, as far as I can see.”

  “I’m rich then,” Math said drily. “So you made your plans and came back this year as newly unveiled psychics. Did you really think a ghost story would make me want to sell up?”

  “Well, if things kept happening, you see—and we thought, word will get out, and you’ll have no guests at all—people wouldn’t want to stay where there’d been one fire and a lot of accidents....” Davina, once started, was unable to stop. “And especially if we said the ghost was becoming sinister and evil—we thought you wouldn’t be able to survive, you see, and then you’d sell up.”

  “Crap,” said Math without emotion. “You were hoping to force me to default on the mortgage. If I had no customers and couldn’t pay, you were figuring that the bank would foreclose. What hope would I have had of finding a buyer at the eleventh hour for a burnt-out place in this market? You were hoping to get it at a bank auction, for about ten per cent of its value. And you would have, if the whole place had burnt.”