An indefinite period when each cloaked figure, incapable of action, stood poised upon quivers of dismay or consternation — then Wynter reacted. He threw his hands out in a gesture so frantically uncoordinated neither appeal nor rejection could be discerned in it. The voice that issued from him seemed torn to a thin, weird shriek by a beseeching rage:But the child ... where is the child? Then he was gasping, collapsing, as if his body had been overwhelmed by the impact of some gigantic physical blow. Mandy and Evelyn had run to him and begun to help him towards the house. Cass, trying to work out what had happened and afraid — for reasons she could not explain — to approach the stranger who stood motionless, shadowed by darkness and her enveloping garment, gestured to the actors, drawing them aside, asking them furiously what was going on — had they brought along a third as some kind of joke?
Cass, following his reconstruction, at this point said excitedly, ‘It was the panic of the moment that made me say that. I knew they couldn’t have, Iknewit wasn’t ajoke, Henry, I —’
‘All right, hang on. Let’s just follow it through.’ One of the men had said that if this wasn’t in the script it was nothing to do with them; the other said the whole goddam set-up was giving him the creeps and he wanted to get the hell out of it. As they both appeared on the point of flight and it was undesirable, to say the least, to have them tearing about the countryside dressed as they were, Cass took them to the tack room (part of the outbuildings that lay behind the house) and told them to wait. She then ran to the house where Evelyn and Mandy had taken Wynter to his rooms and had come out on to the gallery outside, overlooking the hall ...’
‘Or was that afterwards? I think I ran into the house twice. Did I? Does it matter? Oh, ask the others, Henry, they’ll be able to tell you. It was so muddled and so strange. You don’t seem to understand ... Everythingtook off. One minute we were going through the motions and the next — it was for real. No. Beyond reality, like breathing a different air, seeing things as they’d never been before: the moonlight and the blackness of the shadows, and the trees whisperingunderneaththe silence, like voices of people a long way away. And you know —’ she stood up and went to the window, not a restless movement but a deliberate one, a cautious curiosity about the world outside, ‘— it felt then as if everything had changed, as if there’d been an enormousoverturning. Things shouldn’t look the same as they did yesterday, or the day before; theydo, but theyshouldn’t. You wouldn’t feel it, of course.’
Her carelessly arrogant assumption that he was too entrenched to experience anything beyond the range of the purely practical made it easy for him to shake his head, to say, ‘No.’
‘No, of course not,’ she murmured, as if she found this reassuring.
She went into the kitchen. He stood for a moment, thinking of what she had told him. When she had recounted Wynter’s cry of ‘The child,’ his mind quickened to the recollection of his aunt’s words: I’ve done what I can about the child. If anything happens, Henry will understand. And so on that earlier occasion, when Lydia had conveyed the message to him, he shook his head, murmuring, ‘But I don’t understand. I don’t.’
Pondering this, he took his things upstairs. Knowing Cass was too occupied to bother about what he was doing, he lingered, going quietly and attentively from one room to another. When he went down to her call of ‘Breakfast’, he said nothing to her of the coincidence he had come upon. She had had marvels enough, and would no doubt make another of the fact that all the clocks in the house had stopped. At midnight.
11
In the shroud of its trees and bushes the house had a toppling look. Sprawling, crenellated, mullion-windowed, it seemed not so much to be constructed as to hang together with a deranged persistence; in its ugliness there was something too chillingly grotesque to be ignored, even its vulgarity was sinister. Henry, coming upon it round a turn of the drive, murmured, ‘Gawd ...’
Cass had been accustomed to it all her life, nevertheless, making allowance for its effect, she said, ‘Hollywood gingerbread.’
‘Gothic nightmare.’
‘Transylvanianglup ... Pull round the side.’
There was something like a clearing, Cass’s car was parked there, which meant that Evelyn had returned. She had, Cass explained on the way from Henry’s, driven the two actors across country to pick up the overnight London train at its nearest stopping point. He observed they’d been in rather a hurry to get rid of them, but Cass said that had been the arrangement all along, there was no reason to alter it: ‘We never intended to have them hanging round here, they’d only be in the way ...’ And, as Henry drew up in the clearing, she said, referring to the matter, ‘They didn’t know anything.’
‘What did they think they were doing?’
‘Do actors think? Getting paid for following directions, that’s all. They didn’t know the specific purpose, it wasn’t necessary to tell them. We just said you do this and this and this — not why.’
‘No,’ Henry murmured. If a group of adults wanted to play games, then who was better equipped to assist them than professional fantasists, people who spent their lives on the edge of make-believe, whose natural element was pretence.
They got out of the car. The mist had dissolved, leaving a dankness to the sombre morning, there was an unbreathing stillness about them, as if every growing thing had petrified; they walked, their footsteps soundless on the moss-grown drive. Taking his arm with the explanation, ‘We don’t use the front door, it’s barred-up,’ Cass guided him round the side. The house leaned engulfingly; Henry studied it with a defiant but sensible gaze. ‘Who looks after all this?’
‘Oh, we manage,’ Cass said imprecisely. ‘Most of it is shut up, never used. And we have housekeepers. Note the use of the plural.’
‘I did. I imagine an army.’
‘No, one at a time. They come and go with depressing regularity. No one stays long.’
Who can blame them? he thought, as they approached a recessed side door. In the gloom of the porch Cass paused, turning to him, putting on a mad face. ‘Welcome to Castle Dracula.’
*
In echoing silences and bleak morning light there was a consciousness of the bulk of the house, doors opening endlessly upon doors of mouldering, shrouded rooms; but in the big room where Henry stood — where everything was too comfortable, too expensive and in deplorable taste — the ornate contended with the cosy, producing a stuffed effect. In this oasis of paranoid domesticity the thought of the rest of the house was almost a relief.
‘Make yourself at home. So good of you to come, dear,’ Mandy said from her cheesecake pose on a dreadful chaise-longue.
‘I hardly need to introduce you,’ Cass said coolly, a remark that precipitated — quite probably by specific intent — a flutter of eyelashes, hands and contrition.
‘You’ve forgiven us, I know, Inspector — I may call you Henry? You’re the sort of man who understands the lengths to which we women are sometimes — driven by circumstances.’
Behind the flirtatious appeal — in itself nerve-racking enough — Henry glimpsed a steely resourcefulness. Apart from her build and the tinkling gold bracelet, there was no similarity between this woman and the flustered creature he had previously met. This woman’s silliness was on the surface, as deliberately applied as her makeup; and the gestures she used — bountiful gestures which on a tall, long-limbed woman would have had an outgiving grace — reduced her to what she was: the sweep of the arm, the descriptive thrust of plump, strong, jewelled fingers confined her to her pugnacity, her cunning, her small stupidities.
He was saved the effort of seeking an answer to the unanswerable by Cass’s sister, Evelyn, who nodded and said stiffly that although they had often seen each other, they had never actually met — ‘I wish it could be under less — irregular circumstances. Augustus has led a completely private life for many years, what he does with it is his concern. Ours, I should say.’ Her glance went to the other two women and returned, fleetingly, to Hen
ry; there was no hostility in it, only the resisted panic of a reserved woman obliged to admit a stranger to a view of embarrassing family matters. ‘He was generous to Cass and me when we were children, we owe him loyalty, if nothing else; our protection, if necessary. This unexpected turn of events has taken us very much off guard, it could have — repercussions ... Please sit down. Would you like coffee? Cass, make some, there’s a dear.’
‘We’vehad some,’ Cass objected, with the rather desperate air of a child threatened with banishment from the grown-ups’ conversation.
‘I haven’t, and I’ve only just got back,’ Evelyn said.
Henry, watching her, noting the pallor of tiredness on her strong-featured face, said, ‘You’ve had a long drive, and a long night.’
‘We all have, it’s a wonder we’re not destroyed by hysteria,’ Mandy gasped, hysteria being plainly the last thing to afflict her. ‘Except you, Cass. All you’ve done is stand around mooning, as usual, leaving Evelyn and me to cope. Go on and make some coffee.’
A minor wrangle broke out, Evelyn providing the pacifying that sent Cass off with a dramatic, ‘Don’t say anything till I get back.’
‘We can scarcely sit here speechless,’ Evelyn murmured, and for a few moments, a trifle awkwardly, observed the social requirements of making small talk.
She was wearing the tweed suit Cass had borrowed the night she had played at being Mrs Enderby-Smythe, and with her statuesque figure and humourless air she had a passing resemblance to Mrs Enderby-Smythe; but there was a world of difference between Cass’s caricature and the real woman who took her seat opposite Henry. She was not unattractive, her femininity evident but contained; the precision of her manner and the balance of her large frame lent her dignity if not grace, and with the ladylike restraint of her dress she had her own elegance. And perhaps there was passion there, Henry thought, the cold passion of her determination to lead an ordered life, unhindered by the extravagant dramas of the past.
That he was sitting looking at her in the light of the knowledge that only a few hours before she had been dressed and occupied in a manner eccentric enough to stun the neighbourhood was a fact, she might resent it but she could scarcely escape from it; reducing it to impersonal essentials she would trust to his professional discretion and barricade herself behind the integrity of her motives.
He glanced at Mandy. Two women could scarcely have been less alike. Evelyn’s attitude to Mandy was obscured by a guard of politeness, in return she was treated to a goodwill so nonchalant and amiable the touch of respect was inappropriate, hinting at the invisible cringe of the sycophant. But for all the differences that separated them there was one quality they had in common: the ability to wrest what they wanted from life by the sheer force of self-interest; they were tough, and beside them Cass was as fragile as a harebell.
With the sharpness of a basking reptile Mandy had caught his glance. She leaned forward confidentially. ‘Cass has told you ...’ The idiotically comprehensive question was intercepted by Evelyn, to whom lack of definition would probably be another form of bad manners. ‘No doubt Cass has “told” any number of things. Specifically, we hoped you could help us find out about this strange woman.’
‘Who just happened to turn up, on the right day, at the right hour, and can’t account for herself. I presume she has a name. And where is she now?’ Henry asked.
‘Her name is Leonora Lee,’ Mandy said, adding dubiously, ‘she says.’
‘And she’s asleep, upstairs. Well, I suppose she’s still there. Oh, no doubt you think it odd that we just — let her in.’ Evelyn leaned forward, clasping her hands; she glanced at Mandy and an uneasiness passed between them. ‘But that’s what we did because — because that was the way things happened. Cass must have told you — about when the three of us were standing on the gallery outside Augustus’s room.’
‘I have had a not very coherent account of the events leading up to that.’
‘Ah, yes. Well, you see, it was at that point — the three of us together, we began asking one another what had happened: had there been a slip-up? Could one have possibly altered the arrangements without telling the others? But no, we hadn’t, we settled that there and then, bewildered as we were, and it’s stayed settled. Then, as we were whispering, I looked down — or Mandy did, or ... I don’t know, it just seemed to occur to all of us, for no reason.’
‘And she was there, in the hall.’ Cass had come in quietly, she paused, holding the tray of coffee. ‘She was just standing there, in her cloak, but with the hood thrown back. Just standing there. There were a couple of lights on, hardly giving any light at all that hall is so vast, but we all know our way about ... There’s a window, high up, and the moonlight was coming through it on to her face, staring up at us. It was uncanny.’
‘Yes, it was,’ Evelyn murmured. ‘I must admit we were rather shaken.’
‘Shaken,’ Mandy repeated. ‘My blood ran cold. It seemed that if you dared to blink — then the next minute she’d be on the stairs. And if you blinked again she’d beat the end of the gallery. And ... Christ ...’
The three women were silent, sharing the recollection of an unnerving circumstance: the moment when the ghost they had cynically pretended to summon had walked out of the night, into the house, and staring silently up at them ensnared them in their own fantasy.
‘What did you do then?’ Henry asked gently.
‘Do?’ Evelyn repeated from the depth of her thoughts, then collecting herself. ‘I told Mandy to go in to Augustus ... I don’t know why, I just felt she should be with him. Ellen I went down the stairs. I went and spoke to her. I asked, “Who are you? What are you doing here?” She looked at me in a blank way and shook her head, very slowly. I asked again, and she shook her head again and said, “I don’t know.” Didn’t she, Cass? You were behind me then.’
‘Mm. That’s what she said.’ Cass took the tray over to Mandy whose lacquered features still registered, in the form of a grim distaste, the strangeness of the experience. ‘Here, pour the coffee, take your mind off it.’
‘You were as frightened as we were,’ Mandy rapped. Cass raised her eyebrows. ‘Did I say I wasn’t? Did I —’
‘Don’t bicker, girls,’ Evelyn said with a lack of emphasis that indicated she said it constantly. ‘Then she turned and walked, slowly, across the hall, down the passage and into here. She sat down, on the chair where you are now. Cass and I followed her — then Mandy came in, and we sat and talked to her.’
‘For quite a while,’ Mandy said. ‘But it wasn’t any good. She couldn’t remember anything.’
‘What?’ Henry forced his gaze from the excessively gracious manner with which Mandy was pouring coffee to Cass, hovering, waiting to carry cups. ‘You never told me that.’
‘Didn’t I really? Oh ... sorry. Are you sure? Well, that’s it, you see. She’s lost her memory.’
‘Convenient,’ Henry murmured. ‘Yet she knows her name.’
‘Practically all she does know,’ Mandy said. ‘She kept repeating it as if she was afraid she’d lose that as well.’ Cass gave a little laugh. ‘She was so strange. Not frightening any more, just odd, in a rather pathetic way. She sat there bundled in her cloak and fished about underneath it and produced a pair of enormous spectacles, put them on and said “That’s better’’. Staring at us like an owl ... as if she was only just getting us into focus.’
‘Meanwhile, you all had a good look at her,’ Henry said.
Evelyn spoke, for all her diffidence she was direct, she did not waste words. ‘I know what you’re going to ask, and the answer is no. She could not possibly be Helen.’
‘Not possibly,’ Mandy added. ‘Her eyes are the wrong colour.’
‘And her hair —’
‘And Helen had a little mole on her chin, remember?’
Henry drank his coffee and listened to the three women talking over physical characteristics, making comparisons, dismissing resemblances; eventually Evelyn’s observation that she
was ‘just simply all wrong for Helen’, seemed to dispose of any doubt. But Cass, in a rush of words, went on, ‘No, I’m not saying she’s Helen — who’s suggesting she could be? But how do we explain her knowing her way about — never having been here before. I mean, she does know that, it’s one thing she was positive about, knowing the Dragon room —’
‘Cass, come down off that high-wire a minute, will you,’ Henry murmured.
‘Yes,’ she said, taking him literally and sitting down suddenly on the arm of his chair.
Evelyn turned to him, frowning. Again, he sensed unease but wondered if this could be accounted for by the scarcely contained wildness Cass’s closeness generated. Evelyn said, ‘You see, it was one thing she was insistent upon — that she’d never even been to Marchstearn before, much less this house. But she knew her way about —’
‘You mean, because she walked from the hall to this room.’
‘You noticed I’d said thatwefollowedher ... yes. Not just that. After we’d talked for a while she said she was tired, she did seem rather dazed, poor creature, as if she was exhausted. I said that as she had nowhere to go she had better stay and we’d talk things over in the morning —’
Mandy leaned forward, imperilling her position on the chaise-longue by one of her histrionic gestures. ‘You’ve perhaps realised that this is a self-contained apartment, quite separate from the rest of the house. I’ve made it comfy, you know, over the years, as you can see. I like nice things round me. There are two bedrooms — mine and Cass’s. Well, I said, of course she could stay, we wouldn’t turn her out; but, thinking aloud really, I said, “I don’t know where we’re going to put you,” and she said ... she said, “I’ll sleep in the Dragon room.” Well, we were speechless, you can imagine.’
‘No, I’m afraid I can’t.’
‘Of course you can’t. Silly me. Helen had always called it that, you see. One of the bedrooms, it had this wallpaper she used to pretend reminded her of Chinese dragons. She loved to play there, and even after it was redecorated she went on calling it the Dragon room. Well, this woman went there. Got up while we were just staring at her and went out. Didn’t she, Evelyn?’ Her voice faltered, as if the scepticism in Henry’s gaze had suddenly become apparent to her; automatically she turned to Evelyn for confirmation.
Samain Page 14
