It was by now well past six o’clock. Mrs. Gissing had prepared an eel pie, which I ate accompanied by the best part of a bottle of Bordeaux from Maulding’s cellar. When I was done, Mrs. Gissing ran a bath for me before departing for the night. I thanked her for her kindness, and then I was alone in Bromdun Hall for the first time.
I checked the bath, but the water was still too hot to bear. I had no desire to boil myself like a lobster, so I returned to my room and poured the last of the red wine while I waited for the water to cool. I had taken some books from the shelves for my own amusement, among them McNeile’s recently issued Bulldog Drummond, published under the pseudonym Sapper. McNeile had fought at Ypres, and I’d admired his stories for the Daily Mail and The War Illustrated, even if he had sugared the pill more than I liked. Then again, he was writing while the war was still ongoing, and had he dwelt upon the true horror of the fighting at the time, then none of his stories would have seen the light of day.
I had read about two pages of the novel when I heard the sound of splashing from the bathtub.
“Mrs. Gissing?” I called.
Perhaps she had returned to the house for some reason and felt compelled to check the water while she was there, but I had not heard the front door opening, and the stairs leading up to the bedrooms creaked and moaned like souls in torment. Neither did the sounds coming from the bathroom resemble those of a hand being briefly swished through water in an effort to gauge its temperature. Instead the splashing was intermittent, yet consistent with the noise a person might make while washing in a tub.
Mrs. Gissing had set a fire in my bedroom before her departure. I grabbed a poker from the fireplace and, gripping it tightly, made my way to the bathroom. The door was slightly farther ajar than I had left it, although that might simply have been my nerves playing tricks on me. The difference was marginal at best. As I drew nearer the door the splashing increased in tempo before ceasing altogether, as though someone inside had become aware of my approach and was now listening for me.
I used the poker to push the door open to its fullest extent. The bathtub was empty, and there appeared to be only the faintest hint of disturbance on the surface of the water. That water, though, had changed in color. When I had left the room it was relatively clear, with only the faintest hint of brown to it. Now it was a sickly, unpleasant yellow, like curdled milk, and held a faint scum upon it. There was a smell, too, as of fish on the turn.
I stood above the tub and, feeling faintly foolish, used the poker to probe the water, half expecting to feel soft flesh give beneath it, and a torrent of bubbles to rise to the surface as the force of the poker expelled the air from whomever might be hiding below. No such bubbles appeared, however, and the only obstacle the poker encountered was the porcelain of the tub itself. There was nowhere else in the bathroom where anyone might have hidden.
I called Mrs. Gissing’s name again, the sound of it echoing from the bathroom tiles, but there was no reply. I wrinkled my nose at the smell from the water. Perhaps what I had heard was some emission from the taps, an expulsion of pollutants from the pipes that had tainted the water. I had no intention of bathing in it now, but I was still intent upon a bath. Mrs. Gissing had assured me that there was plenty of hot water to be had so, almost without thinking, I reached into the tub to pull the plug.
Something moved against my hand. It was hard and jointed, reminiscent of the carapace of a lobster. I withdrew my hand with a shout, the chain of the plug still grasped in my fist, and watched as the water began to drain. Down, down it went, leaving a layer of residue on the sides like foam on a beach after the tide has departed. When there was barely six inches of water left, there came a sudden flurry of movement from the vicinity of the plughole, and a form briefly broke the surface. I had a brief impression of an armored body, pinkish-black in color, with many, many legs. I caught a glimpse of pincers like those of an earwig, except larger and wickedly sharp, before the creature somehow forced itself into the small plughole and exited the tub, even though its body had seemed far too wide to be accommodated by such a small means of escape. There were noises from the pipes for a time, and then all was quiet.
Unsurprisingly, I did not take my bath after all. After immediately restoring the plug to the plughole, I did the same thing with every bath and sink I could find, more for some false peace of mind than out of any real hope that a plug of metal could stop such a creature from emerging again, should it have chosen to do so.
I sat up in my bed, wondering. What could it be, I thought: some crustacean of the Broads, unfamiliar to me but a commonplace sight to those who lived in these parts? Had I mentioned it in the Maidensmere Inn, might the landlord have tipped the wink once again to his customers and announced that what I had seen was merely X, or Y, and that fried with some cream sauce, or boiled in a pot with a little white wine vinegar, it was actually most palatable? Somehow, I suspected not. My fingers tingled unpleasantly where they had touched the thing, and they looked red and irritated in the lamplight.
Eventually I dozed. I dreamed of Pulteney’s tanks rolling ineffectually toward High Wood, great rumbling silhouettes moving through the darkness until picked out by the light of flares and the explosion of shellfire. Then the shape of them began to change, and they were no longer constructions of metal but living, breathing entities. They did not roll on heavy tracks, but propelled themselves on short, jointed legs. Turrets became heads, and gun barrels were transformed into strange, elongated limbs that spat poison from orifices lined with curved teeth. The flares were bolts of lightning, and the landscape they illuminated was more terrible yet than the wasteland between the trenches, even as it seemed almost familiar to me. I picked out in the distance the ruins of a village and realized that I was looking at the Norfolk Broads, and what was left of Maidensmere, the steeple of its sixteenth-century chapel still somehow intact amid the rubble. But it was another town, too, a place not far from High Wood, where bodies lay broken in the ruins, killed by shellfire: old men, women, little children. We were told that everyone had fled, but they had not.
I woke with a start. It was still dark, and only the ticking of a clock disturbed the silence.
But there was no clock in the room.
I sat up. The sound was coming from the other side of the bedroom door, which I had closed—and, yes, I admit it, locked—before going to bed. As I listened, it became clear that it was more a clicking than a ticking. I lit my lamp and gripped the poker, kept close at hand for any such eventuality. I climbed from the bed and padded across the floor as softly as I could. The sound began to increase its tempo until, just as I reached the door, it stopped, and I heard what appeared to be footsteps moving swiftly away. I unlocked the door and pulled it open. Before me there was only the empty hallway, illuminated as far as the stairs by my lamp. Beyond was darkness. I squinted into the gloom, but could discern nothing.
I looked at the door. The wood around the lock had been picked away, leaving it splintered and white, as though someone had been trying to expose its workings. I reached down and rubbed a finger against it. A splinter caught in my flesh, causing me to gasp. I took it between my teeth and pulled it loose, then spat it on the floor. A tiny jewel of blood rose from the wound.
From the shadows there came the sound of sniffing.
“Who’s there?” I said. “Who are you? Show yourself!”
There was no reply. I moved farther into the hallway. The darkness retreated a little with each step that I advanced, and I was reminded uncomfortably of the bathwater slowly disappearing from the tub until the creature in the water had no option but to expose itself before fleeing. Two steps, four, six, eight, the shadows before me giving way to light, the shadows behind me growing, until, when I reached the stairs, the darkness made its stand. It seemed to me that there was a deeper blackness apparent, and this did not move. It was much larger than a man and slightly hunched. I thought that I could discern the shape of its head, although the flickering of the lamp made it
difficult to tell, and its form blurred into the shadows at its edges, so that it was at once a part of them and apart from them. Within it were the reflections of unseen stars. It turned, and where its face should have been I had an impression of many sharp angles, as though a plate of black glass had dropped and been frozen in the first moment of its disintegration. I felt blood trickle from the cut in my finger and drop to the floor, and the sniffing commenced again.
I backed away, and as I moved the shadows advanced once more, and the dark entity moved with them. Faster now they came, and my light grew increasingly ineffectual, the darkness encroaching upon its pool of illumination, slowly smothering it from without. Soon it would be but a glimmer behind the glass, and then it would be gone entirely.
I flung the poker. I acted without thinking, operating purely on instinct, aiming for that mass of shards and angles. The poker spun once in the air, and the heavy handle struck at the center of the black form. There was a sound like a million delicate crystals shattering in unison, and the shadows rippled in response to some concussive force. I was thrown backward and struck my head hard against the floor, but before I lost consciousness I thought I saw that deeper blackness collapse in on itself, and a hole was briefly ripped in the fabric of space and time. Through it I glimpsed unknown constellations, and a black sun and the remains of the dead world.
And the face of Lionel Maulding howling into the void.
IV
Mrs. Gissing arrived shortly after seven, an older man behind her whom I took, correctly as it turned out, to be Mr. Willox. They found me awake and seated at a table in the library, a cup of tea steaming before me, and more in the pot nearby. Mrs. Gissing seemed rather put out by this, as though in venturing to provide for myself I had usurped her natural place in the universe and, more to the point, threatened her livelihood, for if men began to make cups of tea for themselves then soon they might well attempt to cook meals and do laundry, and next thing poor Mrs. Gissing and her kind would find themselves out on the streets begging for pennies. As if to ensure that this would not come to pass without a struggle, she prepared to bustle her way to the kitchen to make bacon, eggs, and toast, even though I assured her that I was not hungry.
“Did you not sleep well?” she asked.
“No, I did not,” I said, then ventured a question. “Have you ever spent the night in this house, Mrs. Gissing?”
I should, perhaps, have phrased the question a little more delicately, as Mrs. Gissing appeared to feel that her reputation as a widow of good standing was being impugned. After some awkward apologies on my part, she chose to take the question in the spirit in which it was asked and confessed that she had never spent a night under Mr. Maulding’s roof.
“Did he ever complain of noises or disturbances?” I asked.
“I’m not sure what you mean, sir.”
I wasn’t sure what I meant either. The mind plays odd tricks, often to protect itself from harm, and it had already begun the process of consigning the events of the previous night to that place between what we see and what we dream.
“There was something in my bathtub last night,” I said. “It was a creature of some sort.”
Willox spoke for the first time.
“A rat?” he said. “We’ve had them, sir. They find ways into old houses like this. I’ll lay down some poison.”
“No, it wasn’t a rat. To be honest, I’m not sure what it was. It fled down the plughole as the water level dropped. It was more of a crustacean, I think.”
“A crustacean?”
“Like a crab, or a lobster.”
Mrs. Gissing looked at me as though I were mad, as well she might have done. Willox appeared uncertain and could have been considering whether people in London might enjoy a sense of humor different from, and stranger than, his own.
“Who would put a lobster in your bath?” said Mrs. Gissing. “Certainly not I.”
She seemed ready to take umbrage once again, so I assured her that I was not accusing her of being in the habit of putting lobsters in the bathtubs of strange men.
“And then,” I continued, “I was woken by what appeared to be a presence in the house.”
“A . . . presence?” said Willox.
“Yes. I can’t describe it any better than that.”
“Are you talking about a ghost, sir?”
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” I said. “Did Mr. Maulding believe in ghosts?”
“I can’t recall him ever mentioning the subject to me.” He turned to Mrs. Gissing, who shrugged and shook her head.
“I ask because he seems to have recently begun building a library of the occult, which suggests that something might have excited his interest in such matters. He never mentioned disturbances in the house to you?”
“No.”
“Did he appear distressed in recent weeks, or seem tired and anxious?”
“No.”
“Do you think I’m mad, Mrs. Gissing?”
For the first time, she smiled. “I couldn’t possibly say, sir. But this is a big, old house, and big, old houses are filled with creaks and groans that can seem strange to those who aren’t used to them. I’ll go and make you that breakfast, sir, and you’ll feel better for it.”
“What about you, Mr. Willox?” I said. “Do you doubt my sanity?”
“I don’t know you well enough to be certain, sir, but you look sane enough to me. But, like Mrs. Gissing says, it takes time to get used to a strange house, especially one as old as this one. Even I sometimes find myself looking over my shoulder when I’m alone in it. It’s the way of such places, isn’t it? They wear their history heavily.”
I asked him about Mr. Maulding, but he could add nothing to what Mrs. Gissing had told me. He did ask about his wages, and I told him that I’d arrange for Mr. Quayle to make the payments. He seemed satisfied with this, although he might not have been had he known Quayle personally. Quayle rarely paid quickly, and Maulding’s financial obligations to his domestic staff would have been very low on Quayle’s list of priorities. The fact that he had paid me money in advance was a sign of just how anxious he was to ensure Maulding’s safe return.
Willox departed to work on the grounds. I heard the sound of bangs and crashes from the kitchen, and the smell of frying bacon began to waft, not unpleasantly, into the library. Surrounded by these noises and scents, these indicators of normality, I became less and less certain of what I had witnessed the previous night. It was not unnatural. The undisturbed mind will tend to seek the most rational explanation for an occurrence: to do otherwise is to sow the seeds of madness. I had a troubled mind, fractured by experience, but I was not yet ready to surrender entirely to disquiet.
It was about this time that there came a knock on the door. Mrs. Gissing being otherwise occupied, I answered it myself and found the boy from the post office waiting with a telegram for me. I gave him a shilling for his efforts, having nothing smaller, and sent him on his way. I wondered if I could claim the shilling from Quayle as an expense. Perhaps I should have asked for a receipt.
The telegram was from Fawnsley. Its brevity made it clear that he was paying by the word, and counting every one. There was no greeting, merely an insincere expression of regret that no confirmed address could be found for Dunwidge & Daughter, although he had heard that they operated from somewhere near the King’s Road in Chelsea, and a final, terse addition:
LARGE WITHDRAWAL MADE FROM MAULDING FUNDS LAST MONTH STOP TEN THOUSAND POUNDS STOP NOT APPROVED BY QUAYLE STOP INVESTIGATE STOP
Ten thousand pounds was more than a small fortune. There was a safe in Maulding’s library, but I had no way of accessing its contents. It was possible that the money was still in there, but if Maulding had withdrawn it without going through Quayle, as he was perfectly entitled to do, even if it were not according to his habit, this suggested that the funds were required for some purpose that he did not wish to share with his lawyer, and one with a hint of urgency to it.
In my experienc
e, unusual patterns of spending gave rise to certain speculations about the reason for them. For example, a gradual seepage of money, slowly rising in quantity and instances of occurrence, might lead one to suspect a gambling problem; larger but more consistent sums suggested a newfound interest in a woman, or a tart. A single significant payment, particularly the kind that a man chose not to share with his lawyer, might be the consequence of an investment opportunity of dubious legality, or an effort to make a problem go away.
But from what I knew of Lionel Maulding, he had no particular interest in gambling or women, and therefore was unlikely to be troubled by the problems that might arise from overindulgence in either. No, the ten thousand pounds suggested a purchase of some kind, but Maulding already had one huge house: he didn’t need another. Neither was there a sudden proliferation of motor cars or yachts in the immediate vicinity of Bromdun Hall.
So: on what did Lionel Maulding spend his money as a matter of habit?
Lionel Maulding spent his money on books.
What kind of book, or books, would cost a man £10,000?
A rare book. A very rare book.
I ate my breakfast, confirmed the times of trains with Mrs. Gissing, and prepared to return to London.
V
I had rarely, if ever, darkened the door of Steaford’s, mainly because there was nothing in there that I felt qualified to read. I also feared that this would be recognized the moment I crossed its threshold, and some officious clerk would appear from behind a counter piled high with works on physics and the nature of the atom, politely steer me back out the door, and point me in the direction of a newsstand liberally stocked with illustrated weeklies. Instead, a very polite young man with the build of a good front row rugby player showed me to a seat in a cluttered office, and listened as I explained my purpose. I had brought with me some of the receipts for Maulding’s recent purchases, but the handwriting on them was abysmal, and those words that I could read meant nothing to me.
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