The house didn’t look beautiful in the headlights even while I was far from it; when I got up close it was hideous, sombre and huge. Fallen masonry, a lot of it, sprawled across the left-hand edge of the drive’s circle under the façade. I got out of the car; not one window was lit. All round me wild trees prayed soaking in the rain, their bare arms nagging the sky. I walked past a rusty Ford van with a flat front tyre and looked up at the five storeys, streaming with wet, that stooped over me. Then I noticed that one of the plate-glass front doors was swinging ajar in the gale, so I went up the porch steps and stood on the threshold. I shone my torch round the hall beyond; it was vast, unlit and empty. Rain spilled on to me from the balcony overhead.
I called out sharply: ‘Mardy? Dr William Mardy?’
There was no answer. I went in and stood in the hall. Facing me was an organ, its loft very high from the floor; the windows I picked out were stained glass, black now against the blackness outside. Far down from me was a marble fireplace, its breast rising to lose itself in false beams high above from which rain pattered down everywhere, dripping at logical intervals on a table built to seat twelve.
I called out again: ‘William Mardy? Are you there?’
Nothing.
Now that I was in out of the wind my hearing adjusted itself to the house. At first I thought the place was silent except for the droning of the gale, but presently I became certain that this was not so. A long way off, it sounded as if it might be high above me upstairs, I was sure I heard the murmur of voices, muffled, as though coming from behind closed doors. The voices sounded like those of a mans and a womans, alternately strident and persuasive on both sides, though there was no making out any words.
What could be easier than to stand in a pub with a few drinks inside you and tell everyone that you’ve got solid nerves? All I know is that when I saw a feeble light wavering down the staircase from the gallery that ran away above each side of the organ, I was glad I had the open door behind me, the torch and the car. However, I stood quite still and turned the torch off. There was no sound of any voices now. The light came slowly nearer down the stairs, appearing and disappearing at the bends. I thought of Hamlet – I’ll cross it though it blast me. The light shivered, throwing patches along the sick walls; then it descended the last stairs and came over to where I stood. Above the lamp was the face of an elderly man.
I said: ‘Are you Dr Mardy?’
‘Yes. Who are you?’
‘I’m a police officer.’
‘You surely don’t want to talk to me,’ he said. ‘You should go and see Inspector Kedward down in the town. He knows all about my affairs.’
‘No, it’s you I want to talk to.’
‘I don’t generally talk to anyone very much.’
‘This is going to be different,’ I said. ‘You and I are going to have a long talk.’
He sighed. By his dim light I watched him shuffle towards a corner. I heard his hand feeling along the wall; a switch clicked and a light sprang on. I looked at Dr Mardy. He was a hollowed-out shadow of a man in his sixties, as white as if his face had been dusted with chalk; his eyes were black and intense. He was dressed in an anorak, slippers and shapeless corduroys and had a dirty yellow scarf round his neck. He put his gas-lamp down on a table and turned it out; then he faced me. ‘What is it?’ he said in a dead tone. ‘Why can’t you leave me be? Are you a local man?’
‘No. From London.’
‘From the Yard?’
‘Yes, I’m working from A14, with Serious Crimes.’ I showed him my warrant card.
‘What is A14?’
‘Unexplained Deaths,’ I said. ‘I’m here to inquire about your wife.’
‘About Marianne,’ he said. ‘Yes, I see.’
‘Perhaps we could go somewhere and sit down,’ I said. ‘This’ll take a minute.’
‘Everything’s very primitive here, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘I seldom receive people now.’
‘Why is that? You used to, you and your wife.’
‘My wife isn’t here.’
‘All right,’ I said, ‘we’ll go into that presently.’
‘We could go into my study,’ he said, ‘it’s warm and hardly leaks at all – it’s my base here now.’ He relit his lamp, picked it up and said: ‘This way.’ He turned out the light in the hall and I followed him upstairs, We passed through suite after suite of rooms; they were all ruined. In some, books, reviews and medical magazines stood in piles up to the ceiling. In others the ceilings themselves had been shored up with beams. In one, a mountain of sodden books had collapsed.
When we had gone a reasonable way I asked: ‘How many rooms have you got here?’
‘Eighty.’
Everywhere plaster littered the floor; the house stank of wet. Curtain rails, the curtains themselves, lay where they had fallen. Furniture leaned against beds steaming with damp; mould, green and black, had spread across the walls.
‘Be careful of this piece of floor here, there’s some dry rot.’
‘Since when was the place in this state?’
‘I never noticed,’ he said, ‘I suppose that it slowly declined. My wife and I each had our own work. We were never ones for detail, and there would have been the cost.’
Had, I thought. We were never ones for. There would have been the. ‘You’re not a rich man,’ I said to him, ‘why do you live here?’
‘Where else would I live?’ he answered, confused.
Rain, which I could see pelting through a glassless window, had now set in for the night. It tapped monotonously on floors, on tables and broken chairs as we passed – a gilt clock without its dome and smothered in verdigris stood with its hands forever at twenty to ten on a dripping mantelpiece. Pictures, eighteenth-century prints and maps, askew on the walls, some lying on the floor in their own glass, gazed at us in the light of Mardy’s gas-lamp – light that also glanced across a tallboy with jammed and swollen drawers, on a stricken chandelier with half its lustres missing. It danced over a music-room with a concert grand in it; moss choked the blocked teeth of the keyboard. It slid over partitas spread wetly on a stand, on a drenched metronome with its pendulum rusted out to the left, and the water streaming down the walls glittered in it.
‘Why don’t you get the roof done at least?’ I said.
He stopped to look at me. ‘Don’t you realize?’ he said, shaking his head. ‘There’s an acre of it; life’s hard and I’m sixty-three.’ A gust of wind swept past us, slamming a door. Mardy’s eyes fixed me from his disordered, unshaven face. I studied the hairs that curled out of his ears and nose – the mouth that slipped down one side of his face in an expression that was not a smile.
We walked on.
‘Don’t you feel lonely here?’ I said.
‘No. I’m never lonely.’
Finally we were confronted by a door which he opened. ‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘I’ll go first and put the light on, then you’ll be able to get on with your questions.’
‘There’s plenty of time,’ I said. The light came on. The room was warm after the damp we had walked through, and I smelt cooking. The smell was stale, the bad cooking of old people.
‘Sit down,’ he said, pointing to an old armchair.
I did so and said: ‘Where we’ve been through, was there any wiring in those rooms?’
‘There was,’ he said, ‘but it’s rotten so I don’t use it. It’s old and the wet gets through into it if you don’t look out.’
‘The wiring looks new in here, though,’ I said.
‘Yes, I’ve had some of it redone. This is my study in here though it’s half a kitchen now.’
Bookshelves covered two of the walls, a cooker stood against another next to a sink, and there were saucepans on a draining-board. It was a low room compared to those we had come through, and vaulted.
‘This is the old part of the house,’ Mardy said.
In a corner was a partner’s desk covered with papers. I just wandered over and had a look at
what lay there. There were a lot of bank statements in Mardy’s name with the name of his bank on them. None of the statements looked very promising. There was other correspondence too, but I didn’t bother with any of that.
He took off his anorak. ‘You’re starting your questions?’ He looked thinner than ever in his cheap shirt – his ears, the too large ears of an old man, showing through his grey, uncombed hair.
‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘do you ever hear people’s voices in this house? I’d been told you lived alone, yet I thought I heard voices when I arrived.’
‘The only voices I hear are past voices,’ he said, ‘that begins happening to you when you get older.’
‘So you’ve no one living in? No staff?’
‘No, I’ve no staff at all.’
‘But you did have a gardener for a while called Richard Sanders.’
‘He’s gone now.’
‘Why?’
‘I wasn’t happy with his work.’
‘No more to it than that?’
‘No. I weed round the house myself now.’
I was sure he was lying; his answers were pat and too short. I said: ‘Until your wife returns?’
‘Yes.’
‘So in the meantime you live alone here in eighty rooms.’
‘As you see.’
I said: ‘Have you any idea where your wife is at this moment?’
‘All I know is that she’s gone on a long journey.’
‘Do you know where? Come on, she must have told you something.’
‘She’s not been well; she’s gone until she gets better.’
‘But how long was she going for, and where to?’
‘I don’t know how long for, but I think she’s probably gone to France since she was French, though she didn’t say. She was ill, and tired of our existence here at Thornhill for a while.’
‘But you only think she’s in France, is that it?’
‘That’s all I can tell you, yes. She was a mysterious woman.’
‘Even so,’ I said, ‘you must have had some news of her, her whereabouts, since she left. No? Nothing at all? That’s what I find mysterious. Aren’t you worried about her? Don’t you miss her?’
‘Miss her?’ he said. He choked right to his lips, a most sinister sound. ‘Excuse me.’
I said: ‘What family has she got in France that could be contacted for news of her?’
‘She had a brother but we haven’t written for years, I couldn’t tell you.’
‘So all you know is that you believe she’s in France somewhere, but you don’t know where, and you haven’t had as much as a postcard from her. That is what you’re saying, isn’t it?’
Tears came into his eyes. I said: ‘Look, I’m only trying to get at the facts. That’s my work; that’s why I’ve been sent down here, people are worried about your wife.’
‘She’s resting,’ he said. ‘She just got tired in the race.’
‘I’d like to hear more about her illness,’ I said. ‘What exactly was the matter with her?’
‘A general malaise.’
I don’t know why, but instinctively I didn’t believe a word of it. ‘Did she go for treatment of any kind? A local doctor here? Or to London?’
‘No, she said she’d rather go home to France for a long rest,’ he said, ‘and visit a doctor there. To France.’
I try to act out of disinterest, which nearly always clashes with my superiors’ ideas of what my work should be; but I can always tell when something’s hiding from the light.
‘Why did she wear a thick veil round the lower part of her face?’ I said. ‘What was she concealing, do you know?’
‘She had begun to hide from the world.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘She was your wife, and you don’t know? Did she take the veil away in front of you?’
‘Never.’
‘You realize I can’t be satisfied with answers like that.’
‘They’re the only ones I can give you.’
‘Why?’ I said. ‘Because they’re true, or just convenient?’
He said nothing, just looked away. I could have threatened him, but I was no Bowman – I wasn’t in the business of smashing down the resistance of an old man at the end of his tether, for I knew I was in the presence of a profound sorrow. So I stood up and said to him: ‘I’ve got other inquiries to make,’ since I was sure I could get at the answers I wanted by applying different methods to other people – I didn’t want to drive anybody mad. I only said: ‘I’ll have to come back again I’m afraid in the next day or two, you can be sure I’ll know a great deal more by then.’
‘There’s nothing to know,’ he said. ‘My wife’s just ill and abroad in her home country – if only you could all just leave me alone.’
‘I’m afraid that’s not possible now I’ve come down,’ I said. ‘I’ve no choice – I either have to get to the bottom of something or else put in a report that’ll wipe it off the books.’ This reminded me of his bank statements I had just seen on his desk. I said: ‘You’ve got money worries, haven’t you?’
‘Hasn’t everybody?’
‘Who is it?’ I said. ‘The bank?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what else?’
‘Tradesmen.’
‘What sort of tradesmen?’ I said. ‘Who are they? What are their names?’
‘No one I could pick out.’
I said: ‘Look, Dr Mardy, I can see you’re in some trouble you’re not telling me about.’
‘I’m not, I’m not.’
I said: ‘Be honest with me, because then I think I could help you.’
‘Isn’t that what the police always say?’
‘Some of them mean it,’ I said, ‘but if you won’t help me, I can’t help you, and I have a feeling I want to.’
‘I’m in trouble I can’t really explain,’ he said, ‘yes, I admit that.’
‘You mean you can’t explain it because you don’t know what the trouble is?’
‘Oh no, I know what it is all right,’ he said bitterly.
‘But you won’t tell me about it.’
‘I can’t. I’m literally not able to tell you.’
I said: ‘Come on, Dr Mardy, it can’t be that desperate.’
He said: ‘It is.’
‘I’ll find it out, you know,’ I said. ‘Not just from you, from all sorts of people here. I think there may be a villain or two about.’
He was quiet for a while, then he said: ‘What will Inspector Kedward have to do with your inquiry?’
I said curiously: ‘Why do you ask?’
He only shrugged, but the shrug was perhaps the most important answer he could have given me. Not for the first time, I was impressed by the association of words. No sooner did I mention the word villain, than up he came with the name Kedward. I picked up my torch.
‘Tomorrow, then?’ he said. ‘At about this time? I’ve no telephone, I’m afraid, but the front door will be open.’
‘That’ll be all right,’ I said, ‘I’ll have found out plenty by this time tomorrow.’
He relit his lamp and led me back through the rotten house and down to the entrance. ‘Goodnight,’ he said.
‘Goodnight.’
I went back to the hotel and spent the rest of the night thinking.
10
I came down the Quayntewayes staircase next morning at ten to ten. The steps had a way of making their concrete known to your feet under the cut-price carpet, and the reception hall, as it was named in green electric lights, had that enticing British habit of reminding you that you were on the away ground here.
An old blonde whose head looked as if it had been left behind in a train and whose bra was too big for her breasts sat behind the switchboard. She wore a ring with a big enough stone in it to deter a sex maniac, but had a nose like a peashooter that would have put him off anyway.
‘What was you wanting?’
‘Breakfast.’
‘Too late!’ she crooned triumphantly. ‘Kitchen shuts sharp at half eight, nothing till lunchtime now. Here,’ she said, pointing at a notice behind her with a finger that looked as if it had been borrowed from an archery course, ‘can’t you read?’
‘I’m good at it,’ I said, ‘and I could show you some card tricks too if I had as much time on my hands as you have, but I haven’t. Do you know a man called Dick Sanders?’
‘What do you want to know for?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I might want to tell him he’s won the pools; on the other hand I might want to tell him he’d been done for shagging sheep. What bloody business is it of yours?’
‘I don’t like your manners,’ she said, turning a dull orange colour.
‘Then you can think yourself lucky you don’t have to live with them,’ I said, ‘and not getting any breakfast makes my temper worse. Now do you know him or not?’
She said: ‘If you aren’t careful I’ll call the management and have you thrown out – you’re insulting, you are.’
I showed her my warrant card and said: ‘It’d take a little more than you, dear, to get a police officer thrown out of anywhere, so just answer the question, it’s quickly done, you either know the man or you don’t.’
Her whole manner turned coy. It’s always the same with people like that – they either spit at you or else go over on their back. ‘Of course I didn’t realize you were a police officer,’ she said, looking thoughtfully at me and nibbling a nail that curved sharply inward to get at the finger it grew on. She considered, lips spread across indifferent teeth. ‘I know him by sight,’ she said finally, ‘most people in Thornhill do.’ She shuddered delicately; it made her look like something being carried by a paraplegic waiter. ‘The Sanders are all just slag.’
‘I don’t care about that. Do you know where he lives?’
‘Somewhere out by Lakes Mill, who cares?’
‘I do for one,’ I said. ‘They on the phone?’
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