by John Burke
“Well . . . oh, I knew him all right.”
“Did you like him?”
“Yes,” said Tom in an undertone as though afraid to speak out too boldly. “Yes, I liked him. He kept himself pretty much to himself up there, but . . . well, what I did see of him I liked very much.”
“And Mad Peter? You were the only one who went to his funeral, apart from us. The only one who went to the trouble . . . or took the risk.”
“What are you getting at?”
“You liked them—but you don’t care how they died?”
Tom slammed his glass down. It was a wonder it didn’t break. He said tensely: “Yes, I do care, Mr. Spalding. I care very much.”
“Then—”
“I also care about myself. All the time I was at sea I dreamed of owning a little place like this. I was going to settle down and it was going to be somewhere peaceful—no storms, no trouble. Now I’ve got it I want to keep it. I want to live my days out here and to die here—in bed. Not to be found out there with my face all black, foaming at the mouth.”
“You mean you’re frightened?”
“Yes,” said Tom, “I’m frightened. For the first time in my life I’m really frightened.”
“I’m sorry.” Harry finished his drink and put the glass down more carefully than Tom had done. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
Tom shook his head dolefully. “I don’t blame you, Mr. Spalding. Look, I’d like to help you, but . . .” He struggled with something inside himself, then shook his head again, forcefully this time. “No. Nothing I can do.”
Harry was in a troubled mood as he set out on his homeward journey. It was ironical to think that such a short time ago they had been promising themselves an idyllic honeymoon in the sleepy calm of the countryside. And after that there had been the promise of blending gradually with the community, learning to know the people and their ways. Harry still wanted to know more about the people and their ways—but not in any spirit of easy camaraderie. He would like to get his hands on a few of them and shake the truth out of them.
He quickened his pace as he approached the cottage. Valerie had gone home quite some time ago, and for the first time he was shaken by a fear that she might have walked into yet further complexities. He ought not to have let her go alone.
But she was in the cottage, and safe. They clung to each other for a long minute. Then they both began to speak at once, laughed, and were both silent.
“Go on,” said Valerie. “Tell me what Tom had to talk about.”
“No, if you—”
“Go on,” she said, kissing him; “you first.”
He told her how little he had gleaned from Tom. She nodded. It was no more and no less than she had expected.
“Everything’s so . . . so cloudy,” she said. “Nothing makes any sense. The world out there”—she waved towards the window—“looks solid enough, but it’s all wrong somewhere. Somewhere . . . somehow.”
Harry sat down and she told him that she had had a visitor. “Bringing me flowers,” she said meaningly, and he realized that the room was full of luxuriant colors and that he had not even noticed them. “Just like a man!” she said.
An invitation to dinner . . . He had looked forward to a quiet evening with his wife. His wife—an incredible but delightful concept. He was still not used to the idea or to Valerie.
But there were mysteries to be solved. He would not be happy until these irritating veils of secrecy were torn aside. At least Doctor Franklyn was an educated man, if not by any means a likeable one, and it ought to be possible to challenge him as man to man. Round the dinner table they might establish a sounder relationship.
“I said we’d come,” said Valerie tentatively. “I hope you don’t mind?”
“We’ll be delighted to have dinner there,” Harry assured her.
His hopes fell slightly as they approached the house. It was just as forbidding as when he had come upon it for the first time in the small hours of that unforgettable morning. One thing, however, he had forgotten: the heat that welled out as soon as the front door was opened. Valerie, in a long evening frock with bare shoulders, might welcome such a temperature, but it didn’t suit Harry.
When they sat down to eat there were only three of them. Doctor Franklyn was civil but certainly not an effusive host. He offered no explanation for the absence of his daughter.
The food was served by the Malay who had come to collect Mad Peter’s corpse. Harry saw Valerie shiver. Whatever thoughts might be passing through her mind, they must be grim: there was no draught of cool air in here to explain the tremor.
An unlabelled bottle of wine was placed at Franklyn’s elbow. He drew a glass towards him.
“I trust you will enjoy this wine, Mrs. Spalding. It is made not from grapes but from rice. I serve it slightly warmed.” He observed her glance at Harry, and smiled his thin, melancholy smile. “Don’t be alarmed. It is really quite palatable.”
He passed the glass to Valerie and filled another one for Harry.
They drank. Harry would have preferred a cool draught of hock, but he had to admit that in its way the oddly insipid taste of the wine and the lukewarm glow of it on his palate were right for this oppressive atmosphere.
“Have no fear, Mr. Spalding: it is not poisoned.”
The remark failed to be even mildly funny. Harry thought of Mad Peter’s agonized face and the torment of his death throes. And inevitably he thought of his brother and visualized the same convulsions. He set the glass down and plucked instinctively at his collar.
“Do you find it too hot in here?” asked Franklyn. “I am used to it. In fact, I need it. Anna and I have spent most of our lives in hot climates.”
Valerie seized this opportunity with a brashness of which Harry would not have been capable. “Is Anna not joining us, Doctor Franklyn?”
Their host’s face hardened. “No.”
“I hope she’s not indisposed?”
“She is being punished.”
There was an embarrassed silence.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Harry, knowing that he was not carrying it off with Valerie’s flourish. “I had hoped to make her acquaintance.”
“So you shall, Mr. Spalding. Later.”
This firmly ended the subject. Harry saw that he was not going to make much headway with Franklyn unless the doctor chose of his own accord to confide in him; and he did not give the impression of being a confiding sort of man.
The Malay moved softly in and out, setting a fine array of small, spiced dishes before them. Some were subtly flavored and some burnt with a fire more potent than the wine, yet without spoiling the gentler tastes. Doctor Franklyn asked Harry about his career and nodded courteously at each experience as it was recounted. On the surface everything was pleasant, leisurely, and uncomplicated. But Harry found it a strain. Basically he was sure that Franklyn took no real interest in the conversation. Because his daughter had issued the invitation he had felt bound to honor it; but this was not a house where visitors were welcome, and not a dinner table at which social chatter flowed freely.
At the end of the meal Harry observed a swift glance pass between Franklyn and the Malay. The Malay raised an eyebrow. It seemed to be enough: Franklyn nodded almost imperceptibly. There was something in the interchange which suggested that their relationship was not merely that of master and servant.
“I suggest we have coffee in the library,” said Franklyn.
As they crossed the hall there was a faint rustling from the head of the stairs. Harry looked up.
A dark girl in a gleaming sari stood on the landing. The colors of the silk ran in and out with the restlessness of living things. When she took one step down, they glowed and shimmered and fell into new patterns, never still, never to be captured.
“Anna,” said Franklyn levelly, “your guests are here.”
“Thank you, father.”
She hurried lightly down the stairs. The musky scent of her perfume swirle
d around her, as alien and compelling as the flowers she had brought to the cottage. She glanced shyly but with a certain feminine challenge at Harry, then put out her hands in welcome to Valerie.
“May I introduce my husband,” said Valerie. “Harry, this is Anna Franklyn.”
The girl’s hand seemed to glide through his. His own palm was clammy with the heat, but hers was smooth and sinuous.
Doctor Franklyn said peremptorily: “Anna, perhaps you’d like to show Mrs. Spalding your pets?”
The welcoming smile on her face dissolved into abject fear.
“Your pets, Anna,” said her father.
“Perhaps . . . perhaps Mrs. Spalding isn’t interested.”
Franklyn looked at Valerie. “Are you interested in animals? Most Englishwomen are.”
“Why, yes. I love them. But if it’s inconvenient—”
“Anna will be delighted to show you her little collection.”
“Of course.” Anna had recovered. She stood to one side and waited for Valerie to approach the stairs. Harry was tempted to put out a hand and hold his wife back. But this was Franklyn’s house and Franklyn’s daughter. He would have to play along with the man as civilly as possible until he became utterly intolerable.
“A cigar?” said Franklyn as the two girls went upstairs. He took a cigar case from his pocket and held it out. The case was covered with a dark, exquisite skin of some kind. “Mr. Spalding”—Franklyn was already leading the way across the hall to the library as he spoke—“may I speak with you frankly?”
The Malay appeared, silent as ever, and opened the library door. When they were settled in armchairs he brought in a silver tray with the coffee and then went out again.
As Franklyn poured coffee, Harry looked round the room. It was less a library than a museum. The walls were lined with bookshelves, but only a certain number of the shelves actually held books. Instead there were impressive arrays of small, delicately carved ivories, divided into groups by an occasional elaborately patterned vase. A green jade dragon sprawled along one shelf with its head snarling out into the room. A porcelain lion with a face like a pug curled up on a tall stand in the middle of the room.
Harry said: “You’ve travelled a lot, Doctor.”
“Yes.” Franklyn spared the room but a brief glance and said: “I asked if I might speak frankly. I propose to do so. You, too, have travelled, Mr. Spalding. Or is it Captain Spalding . . . Major Spalding . . . ?”
“Captain.”
“Captain Spalding. May I suggest that you continue your travels as soon as possible?”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“Clagmoor is not the place for people like you and your charming wife. Particularly if she is to be left here alone when you, presumably, rejoin your regiment or brigade in due course. This is a very primitive community, sunk in its old ways. Cornwall is jealous of its secrets, you know, and doesn’t take kindly to strangers.”
“But you yourself chose to settle here,” Harry pointed out.
“Many is the time I have regretted it.” There was no denying the sincerity of the outburst. Franklyn went on more calmly: “This is an unhealthy place. I would not recommend young people to stay here. You will make no friends, and if something happens to either you or Mrs. Spalding—”
“Something?” Harry echoed. “What would happen, Doctor? What does happen to people here—what is there to be so secretive about?”
“I was only saying that if something happened . . . you would be far from friends, far from anyone who could help you. My advice to you is that you should leave without delay.”
“You’re holding back a lot that I would like to be told. I think the time has come, Doctor, when you should be honest with me.”
“I am honest,” said Franklyn fervently, “in saying that it is in your own interest to get away from here.”
The events of the last few days had already tended to make Harry consider this course of action; but he stiffened in an instinctive resistance to any attempt to intimidate him. He said:
“I have no intention of leaving.”
“I wish I could persuade you to see that—”
“Nothing you have said so far will persuade me.”
“I see.” Franklyn sipped his coffee as though to take away the taste of an unpalatable memory. “But if anything unpleasant should occur . . .”
“Such as?” Harry insisted.
“If anything unpleasant should occur, please remember that you were warned.”
The door opened with more noise than the Malay would have made. Anna and Valerie swept in. They made a striking picture—a striking contrast. Valerie was tall and fair and very English. Anna must presumably be English, but her Oriental garb and the Oriental tinge of the room made a more appropriate setting for her than would a country lane or the cottage down the slope.
Harry and Franklyn rose to their feet. Harry waited for Valerie to say something about the animals she had just seen, whatever they might be, but Franklyn spoke first:
“Anna, dear, why don’t you play something for our guests?” He smiled from Harry to Valerie, suddenly and incongruously an indulgent father wanting to show off his daughter’s skills. “Anna is an accomplished musician—really quite brilliant. Do you like music, Mrs. Spalding . . . Captain Spalding?”
“I like a good tune,” said Harry.
“A good tune. Mm. Yes, well, we’ll have to see what we can do. Anna . . . ?”
It was both an encouragement and an order. Anna went to a curtained recess in one corner of the room and drew from it a lavishly inlaid stringed instrument which Harry thought vaguely must be some kind of guitar.
Anna seated herself on the floor in the centre of an Indian rug and laid the instrument across her knees. She looked at her father, waiting for his permission to start.
Franklyn nodded.
Anna stroked the strings. They thrummed gently into life. She began to pluck at them in a strange, stumbling rhythm which seemed first to limp and then to spring. The melody which emerged was disturbing: to Western ears it had no obvious pattern, no familiar rise and fall.
Franklyn leaned towards Harry. “The instrument,” he murmured, “is a sitar. Anna spends many hours with it. An accomplished performer, don’t you think?”
Harry, a bit out of his depth, nodded.
Franklyn half closed his eyes. The sternness of his features relaxed. He appeared to sink into a reverie, remembering things that would be meaningless to anyone else, surrendering to the music with an enviable completeness.
Anna’s fingers flew madly in a complex dance over the strings, to and fro. She might have been weaving, creating a design in sound rather than in cloth. Her eyes were fixed on some spot in the middle distance. Like her father, she was in a kind of trance. Her fingers played on their own, taking possession of her mind rather than being controlled by it.
Suddenly Harry heard a recognizable theme through the exotic counterpoint. Distinctly, plucked from the swirling rhythms with the force of a church chorale, he made out the plaintive tune he had heard somewhere else . . . so recently . . . somewhere close at hand. Then he remembered. It was the eerie melody which had fluted from the darkness when he met Mad Peter—the melody which they had heard later, and which Peter declared was a prediction of death.
Franklyn was jerked from his reverie. He sat bolt upright, his features contorted with anger.
Beyond him, the door opened. The Malay stood in the opening, looking in with an odd, appreciative smile. Then he was gone.
Franklyn pushed himself up to his feet.
“Stop!”
The shout cut across the throbbing of the strings. The music collapsed into a jangling discord. Anna, bewildered, looked up at her father. For a few minutes she had forgotten him, forgotten everything.
Franklyn snatched the instrument from her and hurled it across the room. It snapped and splintered against the edge of a bookcase.
Anna scrambled up. Her arm was rais
ed to ward off a blow.
It would certainly have come—Harry sensed it—if he and Valerie had not been there. As it was, Franklyn made a terrific effort. He shook as though with an ague, and his arm was trembling with the desire to strike out at his daughter.
Virulently he said: “Get out of my sight!”
Anna backed away, then turned and ran. She dragged the door open, and they heard the swish of her sari as she raced across the hall—a sound like a dying, shuddering breath.
Harry said: “Doctor Franklyn, it’s not my place to interfere—”
“Then don’t.”
It would have given Harry the greatest satisfaction to strike the man down where he stood. But there was a certain code to which he adhered; a discipline which had been drummed into him.
“We’re leaving, Valerie.”
She hesitated, staring at him reproachfully. A woman, of course, would expect to see some violence done in the circumstances. Harry smiled wryly. Valerie turned, then went towards the hall.
Franklyn clapped his hands once.
By the time Valerie was in the middle of the hall, the Malay was advancing with her coat. The gleam in his eyes was mocking rather than deferential. Harry took the coat from him and put it across Valerie’s shoulders.
“Goodnight, Doctor Franklyn.”
Franklyn paid no attention. He had turned away from the library door and was beginning to mount the stairs slowly and purposefully.
Harry took Valerie’s arm and guided her over the rougher patches of ground and through the trees to the smoother slope above the cottage. She did not speak until they were clear of the trees. Then she said tautly:
“How could you let him?”
I’ve no jurisdiction over Doctor Franklyn in his own house. Or anywhere else, for that matter.”
“You should have stopped him.”
“In his own house?” said Harry again, seething because he had wanted to manhandle Franklyn and had had to restrain himself.
“He was obviously going straight upstairs to beat her.”
“We can’t be sure.”
“I can be sure,” said Valerie. She stumbled on the path above the cottage, but shook off Harry’s arm when he tried to support her. “I think you’re afraid of him.”
