A Dark and Stormy Night

by Jeanne M. Dams

  ‘You’re getting morbid, and your arithmetic is at fault. We started fifteen, if you count in the Bateses.’

  ‘Oh, they certainly count,’ I agreed reluctantly. ‘But I was thinking of the . . . the above-stairs crowd, if that archaic term can be allowed.’

  Alan just grunted. He hates unresolved problems, and the weekend had produced nothing but. Coils within coils, as Pat had said. No wonder he was a bit testy.

  The vicar conducted a simple church service that morning for anyone who wanted to attend. It would have been nice to do it in the old cloisters, but they were unsafe, as well as freezingly cold and wet. The rain had stopped, or had paused, rather. More was certainly to come. We gathered in the library instead, for Matins and an abbreviated Eucharist.

  Sunday, November 5. The day I had been so looking forward to, with fireworks and all the trimmings. No mention had been made, naturally, of the aborted festivities, but they were on everyone’s mind, I was sure. When one is enmeshed in crises, the mind hunts, almost frantically, for trivialities to fret about instead. I tried to pray for a resolution to all our disastrous difficulties, but found myself wondering wistfully if the display would have been truly spectacular.

  After church Jim went to the cloisters with his tools. If escape was impossible, at least he, with the other men, could keep on with repairs to the house. Alan told me to stay away. He almost never issues a command, but this time he had sense on his side. ‘The roof could cave in, Dorothy. It’s extremely touchy work, and I don’t want you and your dodgy knees anywhere near it. See if you can keep the other women in the house, as well.’

  I argued that if it was all that dangerous, he and the others shouldn’t try it either, but I knew it was a lost cause. The gentleman’s code of honour, the laws of hospitality, centuries of unwritten rules about the way an Englishman should behave – I could never win against those odds. So I left him to it and, in the perverse spirit of biting down on the aching tooth, started off on a walk through the wood to the river.

  It was a thoroughly unpleasant day, not actually raining but threatening to at any moment. All the colours of the world seemed to have faded to gray and brown, and the most depressing shades of both. The floor of the wood was sodden and slippery with fallen leaves, which made the footing uncertain. More than once I wished I had brought my cane, but I was too stubborn to go back for it. I kept seeing Mike, yesterday, leaping through the wood like a fawn – or a faun. After one nasty near-fall, I picked up a fallen branch to use as a stick, but it was rotten and crumbled the first time I leaned on it. After that I went more carefully, picking my way and testing each step. I should have followed the drive instead. At least my knees hurt hardly at all; there was that to be thankful for.

  I smelled the river before I saw it, and when I came upon it I gasped. The placid stream of three days ago was an angry, pulsing, living thing, boiling and foaming, terrifying in its mindless intensity. It had not yet risen above its banks, but it was visibly rising and would surely breach soon.

  Walking toward the drive, I tried to find the place where Mike had attempted his crazy, quixotic leap, but it was hopeless. I should have realized that the rain would have washed away every trace. I had hoped, foolishly, that I might be able by daylight to see what the men last night had not, some sign that he had, however improbably, reached the far bank. There was nothing.

  I said a little prayer for a lost dancer. Maybe someday someone would compose a ballet for him, along the lines of Debussy’s Drowned Cathedral – Le Danseur Englouti. But someone else would dance the role.

  There was something hypnotizing about the angry, ceaseless, rushing water. I couldn’t take my eyes off it, and I could feel myself drawn to the brink. If I watched it much longer, I knew, I would go mad, or jump in, or . . . something. My mind and senses numbed, I fled back to the house.

  The men were still at it in the cloisters, cutting up the tree that had fallen through, clearing away broken glass, shoring up the roof where it threatened to fall in. I went close enough to take a look, though I knew I mustn’t get in the way. The destruction was pitiful to behold, but I could see signs of progress. John Bates was working like a demon, everywhere at once, giving precise orders which everyone seemed to obey. I didn’t know what his work had been before he came to the Moynihans, but he clearly knew what he was doing.

  I went to seek out a like expert.

  I found her, as usual, in the library, this time absorbed in a bound volume of Punch. ‘Your tastes are catholic, I see.’

  ‘“Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale the humour in these pages”’, said Pat. ‘Are you seeking company or reading material?’

  ‘Neither. Pat, something has to be done. This can’t go on.’

  She put down her book and gave me her full attention. ‘I agree, in principal. The men are working it out in sweat or prayer. What do you suggest we do?’

  ‘I want you to do what you do best. You’re a solicitor. Are you also a . . . is it a barrister, someone who goes to court?’

  ‘Yes, barrister, and yes, I am. In a village there isn’t a lot of scope for that sort of thing, but in London, before I moved back here, I was a pretty good trial lawyer, as I believe the term is in America.’

  ‘I thought so. Now, look. There is only one person who knows anything at all about what went on the night Dave Harrison died, and she’s locked up in her room upstairs refusing to talk to anyone. I want you to make her talk.’

  Pat said nothing for a full minute. Then she rose, removed her reading glasses, and said simply, ‘Yes. I think I might be able to do that.’

  I followed her into the kitchen.

  ‘Rose,’ she said, ‘I thought I’d take a cup of tea up to Mrs Harrison. Please don’t bother about it – I’ll make it – but I’ll need your passkey for her door. Let’s see – third on the left after the small landing, isn’t it?’

  Now if I’d made that request, Rose would probably have insisted on taking the tray up herself. Pat, with her inborn self-assurance, got her own way. In a few minutes we were heading up the stairs to Julie’s room.

  Pat handed me the tray while she unlocked the door. She didn’t bother to knock.

  Julie was not in bed, as I had expected, but was sitting slumped in an armchair in the bay window. They had moved her from the isolated suite she had occupied with Dave to one nearly at the west end of the house. It faced the front, so she had a good view from the bay window of the cloister and the work going on there. She didn’t look up as we entered, but pointed and said in her whiny voice, ‘Look at that, Reverend. It’ll cost a fortune to fix that part of the house, let alone the rest. Why, there won’t be anything left by the time they get done—’

  At that point she looked up and saw us, and screamed. ‘What the hell are you doing in here? Out! Get out!’

  ‘I don’t think so, Mrs Harrison,’ said Pat calmly. ‘I’ve brought you some tea. We need to talk.’

  ‘I don’t want any tea! I don’t want to talk to you! You had no right to come bustin’ in here. I – I’ll sue.’

  ‘Well, there you are, then. You are talking to the right person. I’m a lawyer, and I never lose my cases.’ She had moved a little table closer to the chair, and I set the tray down on it. Pat poured out the tea, then took a small flask from the pocket of her slacks. ‘This is good for shock,’ she said gravely. ‘I think you’d better have a little. You’ve been through a lot these past few days.’

  Julie’s eyes lit up at the sight of the amber liquid Pat poured into the teacup, and she offered no more protest. I’ve never been sure if it was the drink or Pat’s air of intelligent sympathy that opened Julie’s previously sealed lips. Or maybe she was just tired of her own company. At any rate, once she started talking, the torrent flowed like the river in spate.

  ‘Lady, you ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie. Let’s go visit your sister, he says. Have a nice European vacation, he says. And it’s turned out to be nothin’ but trouble, right from the get-go. My snooty
sister and her snooty husband and their run-down old house, and all too good for the likes of us.’ She took a healthy swig of the heavily laced tea. ‘Dave, he says we can talk ’em around. Money talks, he says, and when they find out how much money they could make, they’ll be draggin’ us to the lawyers for the papers. Hah!’ Another swig, and the cup was empty. ‘Treated us like dirt, tried to throw us out, and then changed their minds and said we had to stay here. We don’t gotta put up with this, I told him. I don’t care what they say, they’re up to something. Stands to reason there’s a way out of here, storm or not. They just don’t want us to find it, damned if I know why. Dave, he says they’re tryin’ to put us off the place, makin’ out like it’s a dangerous place to live and that. So we took off, lookin’ for the secret way out. Thanks very much, don’t mind if I do.’

  The fluid in the cup this time was neat whiskey. If this was Pat’s usual technique with reluctant witnesses, I could believe her claim of never losing a case.

  ‘So anyway, we start to look. Kinda sneaky-like, y’know? Dave, he figures there might be a tunnel or somethin’ under the river, like they used for smugglers way back when.’

  Way back where, too, I thought. Branston was in the heart of Kent and miles from any coast. Smugglers would have had to build an awfully long tunnel. But Julie’s geography was apparently a trifle vague.

  ‘So we figured, if the tunnel came out in the house, it’d be in the basement somewheres, so we went down to poke around. But there was nothin’ much down there but a lot of wine in one part, and the furnace in the other. Nice and clean, it was, I’ll have to say that for ’em. Course, if you’ve got tons of money like them, you can get somebody else to do all the work. Must cost a fortune to run this house. I wouldn’ mind a li’l bit o’ that money, myself.’

  Julie held out her cup for another round. Pat and I exchanged glances. At this rate, she’d pass out before she told us anything useful. This time Pat made the mixture mostly tea. Julie didn’t appear to notice.

  ‘So where was I? Oh, yeah, we’re tryin’ to find the way out, but there wasn’t nothin’ in the house, not that we could find, anyways. So Dave says, maybe it came out in one of those other buildings, the garage or somethin’. Well, I told him, I says, dummy, I says, they didn’t have garages back then. But he says, hey, brain, they had horses, didn’t they? And where they kept the horses, now they keep cars. Dave could be smart sometimes, when he wasn’t being dumb.’ She sniffed. ‘Maybe he wasn’t the best husband in the world, but he had ideas, all right.’ She sniffed again, and I feared she had reached the weepy stage of her rake’s progress, but she took another drink, and it seemed to buck her up.

  ‘So we headed for the garage, and when we was almost there, Dave stopped so sudden I ran into him, and he says, there’s somebody out here. Then I heard ’em, too, a couple of guys talkin’. So Dave tells me to keep still.’ Julie put her finger to her lips in exaggerated pantomime. ‘Ooh! He told me to keep on keepin’ my trap shut, and here I’ve been shootin’ my mouth off to you.’ She opened her mouth again to finish off the contents of her tea cup, and then shut it firmly, an owlish look in her somewhat bleary eyes.

  Oops. Was this all we were going to get?

  I had reckoned without Pat. ‘Quite right,’ she said, putting the flask back in her pocket with a gesture that could have been seen from the third balcony. I wondered if she had ever acted when she was at Oxford, in OUDS, perhaps? ‘You wouldn’t want to say anything foolish. Dave knew best, I’m sure, so if he told you to shut up, you’d better not say anything he wouldn’t like.’

  ‘Whaddya mean, Dave knew best? I’m the brains of this operation! I was the one told him he’d better do somethin’ quick when that Upshawe guy was gonna blab about— never mind what. I was the one told him to follow Upshawe and tell him he’d better keep his lip buttoned, or else. I was the one had the sense not to go with him, in case there was trouble.’ She paused and hiccuped. ‘And there was!’ she said with a wail, and began to sob.

  ‘That’s all she wrote,’ I whispered, and Pat nodded. She got out the flask and put it on the table, and we went downstairs, leaving Julie to her alcoholic blues.

  SIXTEEN

  ‘Frustrating,’ was my comment when we were back down in the library. ‘We’re no closer to knowing what happened in the encounter between the two men. And I was so sure she could tell us!’

  ‘It’s still possible that she could, if she would. I think we’ve got all we can out of her for the moment, but I wonder if she’s the sort to respond to a séance. Do you think, if the egregious Dave came back and told her to tell all, she’s credulous enough to believe, and talk?’ asked Pat thoughtfully.

  ‘Hmm. She’s not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but she’s shrewd in her own way. I suppose, perhaps, if we could work it out so that she could see some self-interest in the proceedings – but we’re talking nonsense. I wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to stage a séance, and anyway that sort of thing went out with the thirties, surely.’

  ‘We’re trapped in the thirties, hadn’t you noticed? That wasn’t just a storm we experienced, it was a time warp. I expect at any moment to hear someone cranking up a gramophone to play Rudy Vallee records.’

  ‘You’ve been reading too much, is what’s the matter with you. What did you make of her ramblings, though? Was there anything of use?’

  ‘Well, we know she and Dave overheard Upshawe’s confession, and that it upset them. I couldn’t quite follow why.’

  ‘I think I know. When we first got here— goodness, was it only three days ago? Feels like several lifetimes. Anyway, the Andersons had been here a day or two already and had had far too much time to get acquainted with Dave and Julie. They told us, Alan and me, that Dave had some scheme to tear this house down—’

  Pat uttered a horrified shriek.

  ‘—and build some sort of resort. He seemed to want to go into partnership with Jim. Yes, I know, it was an obscene idea, and impossible with a listed building, anyway. But that would explain why Dave went off after Laurence.’

  ‘It would? Oh, sure! What a ninny I am. Your hypothetical situation. If Laurence’s father killed the heir, then he couldn’t inherit, et cetera, et cetera. And if Jim didn’t own the house, he couldn’t sell it to Dave, and all the scheming was for naught.’

  ‘Exactly. So Dave had a motive for silencing Laurence.’

  ‘Not a very strong one, though.’ Pat frowned. ‘You and I talked this out. There are so many ifs, the threat to Jim and Joyce’s claim is practically non-existent.’

  ‘Yes, but would a Dave Harrison realize that? I would say that logical thinking was never his strong point, and he was not only drunk at the time, but in the grip of a monomania. He had convinced himself that Jim was going to buy into his plan, that this house was as good as his— oh!’

  ‘Sudden pain?’

  ‘Sudden idea, and . . . rats! It’s gone again. Something I said triggered . . . it was right on the tip of my mind . . .’

  ‘Stop thinking about it. Those things are like cats. They only run away and hide if you chase them, but if you ignore them, they come out and beg for attention. So you think Dave followed Laurence and tried to push him in the river, but ended up getting pushed in himself.’

  ‘Or falling in, more likely. He was bound to have been pretty unsteady on his feet at that point.’

  ‘I don’t know. Julie was still conscious and more or less coherent when we left her, and I’d poured the best part of a pint of whiskey into her. I think Dave must have had a formidable capacity.’

  ‘Years of practice, probably.’ I shook my head. ‘How on earth did a sister of Joyce’s find such a useless specimen to marry?’

  ‘Just lucky, I guess.’

  The vicar surprised us by coming down to lunch. He had retired to Laurence’s room as soon as the church service was over, and we hadn’t expected to see him the rest of the day, except perhaps to fetch a tray. We all wanted to know about his patient.


  ‘He seems to me to be quite a bit better. He’s breathing more easily and looks as if he’s sleeping, rather than unconscious. At least his eyes move now and then, beneath the lids.’

  ‘REM sleep,’ someone said. ‘They say that means he’s dreaming.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think the dreams would be pleasant,’ said Alan.

  ‘He has made little noises today,’ the vicar acknowledged. ‘Sounds of discomfort, as I interpret them. Moans, I suppose one could call them if they were better defined. Actually, they sound like nothing so much as the little whines produced by a dreaming dog.’

  ‘He hasn’t tried to speak? Or open his eyes?’ Alan tried to sound casual, but I could hear the sharpened awareness in his voice.

  ‘His eyelids fluttered once, but never opened. And there’s been nothing that sounded like words. Still, I am encouraged by his progress, and thought I might venture to take a few minutes away from him.’

  ‘I should think so,’ I said warmly. ‘You’ve done nothing but look after him for days.’

  ‘Less than two days, Mrs Martin. We found him Friday evening, remember. It seems longer, I agree. Many things have happened in those two days.’

  I think we all tried not to think about Mike.

  ‘Look here, sir,’ said Alan. ‘Suppose I take the duty for a few hours, and let you get some rest. I have a bit of basic medical training. I think I could serve.’

  Mr Leatherbury smiled a little. ‘I’m sure you know more than I about nursing. My concern is the cure of souls, not bodies. As I could be of next to no help anywhere else, I chose to sit with poor Laurence in case he took a turn for the worse and needed a priest. But I admit I’m not as young as I used to be, and trying to keep alert all this time has been a bit exhausting. If you truly don’t mind . . .’

  ‘Not a bit.’

  Pat spoke up at that moment. ‘Paul, Alan. I’m of no earthly use to anybody, just sitting around. I don’t know a thing about medicine, but I know how to keep my eyes and ears open. Let me take the next shift.’