‘I hadn’t thought of any of those things,’ John admitted ruefully, and, angry with himself for having suggested going to bed while the night still held a chance to further elucidate the grim mystery which surrounded Christina, he pressed his foot down on the accelerator.
Two minutes later he drove the car a little way up a blind turning that he had noticed earlier, barely a hundred yards from the gates of The Grange, brought it to a standstill and switched out its lights. C.B. produced a big torch from under the seat and went round to the boot. From it he got out several implements that are not usually found in a motor repair outfit, then they walked along the road to the entrance to the drive. As they reached it, C.B. said: ‘Now this time –’
‘Sorry, C.B.,’ John interrupted him before he had a chance to get any further, ‘I’m much too cold and wet to hang about here. I’m coming in with you.’
‘Then if we are caught we may both be jugged for housebreaking.’
‘No. You know jolly well that doesn’t follow. If we are surprised, the odds are that one of us will have time to get away. I couldn’t go in with you before, because the Canon would have recognised me; but this is different. Honestly, we’ll both be much safer if we stick together.’
‘You won’t, because you will be taking a quite unnecessary risk.’ C.B. grinned at him in the darkness. ‘Still, since you insist, I won’t deny that I’ll be glad to have you with me. Come on, then.’
In single file they walked along the grass verge of the drive until they reached the sweep in front of the house; then C.B. led the way round to its back. The rain had eased a little and in one quarter of the dark heavens the moon was now trying to break through between banks of swiftly drifting cloud. The light it gave was just enough to outline dimly the irregularities of the building, parts of which were four hundred years old, and it glinted faintly on its windows. No light showed in any of them, neither was there now any sound of a wireless; but as it was still only a little after eleven o’clock C.B. feared that the Jutson couple might not yet have gone to sleep; so he continued to move with great caution.
As John peered up at the flat over the stables in which they lived, he whispered: ‘I wonder if they keep a watchdog.’
‘If they do it would be a pretty definite indication that there is nothing worse here. Dogs will always run away rather than stay in a place where there are spooks.’
No growl or whine disturbed the stillness and, having been right round the house, they turned back. Drawing on a pair of rubber gloves, C.B. told John to put on his wash-leather ones; then he selected a small window in a semi-circular two-storied turret that jutted out from a main wall, and had evidently been built on at a much later date. Inserting a short jemmy opposite the catch, he pressed down on it: there was a sharp snap, and the window flew open.
Climbing inside he found, as he had expected, that the turret contained a back staircase. As he turned to help John in after him he whispered: ‘Never break in by a room, my lad, unless you know it to be the one room in the house you want to get into. Otherwise the odds are that you will find its door bolted and may have half-an-hour’s hard work before you can get any further. On the other hand, if you come in by the hall or stairs the whole house is your oyster.’
He flashed his torch for a second. It disclosed a short passage ahead of them and a baize door. Tip-toeing forward, he reached the door and pushed it gently. Yielding to his touch, it swung silently open. They listened intently for a moment, but no sound came to them. C.B. shone his torch again and kept it on while he swept its beam slowly round, then up and down. The door gave on to the main hall of the house. It was large and lofty, with heavy oak beams. A broad staircase on one side of it led up to the landing of the first floor, and there was a small minstrels’ gallery on the other. Opposite the intruders stood the front door, and to either side there were other doors, evidently giving on to the principal rooms of the house. The moving beam was suddenly brought to rest on a large oak chest under the stairs. On it stood a telephone.
Moving softly forward, C.B. shone the light down behind the chest till it showed a square, plastic box that was fixed to the skirting. Producing a pair of clippers from his pocket, he cut the main wire a little beyond the box. John, who had come up behind him, said in a low voice: ‘In for a penny, in for a pound, eh? We won’t be able to laugh off the breaking and entering business now by spinning a yarn that we found a window open and just came in out of the rain.’
‘Worth it,’ replied C.B. tersely. ‘On a job like this, cutting the enemy’s communications as a first move quadruples one’s chances of getting away safely. If it becomes necessary to run for it they can’t call out the police cars to scour the roads.’
‘It’s a great comfort to be in the hands of a professional.’ John’s voice betrayed his amusement.
‘That’s quite enough from you, young feller. I have to know these things; but my own visits to strangers are nearly always by way of the front door, with a search warrant.’
‘I suppose that’s why you carry such things as jemmies, wire-cutters and rubber gloves in your car kit, and always …’
John’s banter was cut short by a faint noise that seemed to come from the top of the house. It sounded like the muffled clanking of some small pieces of metal. C.B.’s torch flicked out: they stood in silence for a minute; then John whispered a trifle hoarsely: ‘What was that? It … ghosts don’t really ever rattle their chains, do they?’
‘Not as far as I know; but it certainly sounded like it,’ C.B. whispered back. ‘Keep dead quiet now, so that next time we’ll hear it clearly.’
For three minutes, that seemed like thirty to John, they stood absolutely still in the darkness; but the only sound they could catch was that of one another’s breathing. At last, switching on his torch again, C.B. shone it aloft and round about. There was no sign of movement up on the landing or in the minstrels’ gallery, and nothing to be seen other than the black oak beams outlined against the white walls and ceiling. Lowering the light, he said: ‘False alarm, I think. Just one of those noises there is no accounting for that one often hears in old houses at night. Come on! Let’s explore.’
Crossing the hall, he opened the door on the right of the entrance. It gave on to a long low-ceilinged drawing-room. The place had a slightly musty smell, as though it had been shut up and no fire lit in it for a considerable time. The furniture in it was very ordinary: some of it had faded chintz covers, the rest was black, spindly-legged stuff. On the walls there were some quite awful pictures in gilt frames.
As they advanced into it John caught sight of a photograph of Christina on an occasional table, which must have been taken when she was about seventeen. Picking it up, he stared at it and said: ‘How fantastic that anything so sweet should be even remotely connected with such ugly surroundings as these.’
C.B. had always preferred small, fair, vivacious women, so he saw nothing particularly attractive in Christina; and, being a realist, it was on the tip of his tongue to reply, ‘I’ve known better lookers who were reared in the slums of Paris and Vienna’, but it occurred to him that that might be unkind; so he forbore to comment and continued to flash his torch this way and that, until he had decided that the room contained nothing worth closer examination—at all events for the time being.
Leaving the drawing-room, they crossed the hall to the room opposite. It proved to be the dining-room. It also had an air of long disuse and chill dampness owing to lack of regular heating. John followed C.B. in and walked straight over to the bulky Victorian sideboard. At one end of it stood a tarnished silver tantalus containing the usual three square cut-glass decanters. Taking the stopper from one, he smelt it and said: ‘Good. This is brandy. Shine your torch here a moment, C.B., and we’ll have a quick one.’
‘I see you are becoming quite a professional yourself.’ C.B. smiled as he focused the beam.
John found some glasses in one of the sideboard cupboards, poured two stiff tots, then turned and gr
inned back. ‘Oh no; I’m only carrying out my role of Christina’s fiancé. If I were really Mr Beddows’ prospective son-in-law, I’m sure he would expect me to play host to you in his absence.’
‘You’ve certainly taken to the role like a duck to water,’ C.B. twitted him. ‘I believe you have become jolly keen on that girl, although you haven’t yet known her a week.’
‘We’ve seen a great deal of each other in a short time, and in quite exceptional circumstances,’ John replied in a noncommittal voice. ‘That makes a big difference; so naturally I’ve a very personal interest in helping to protect her.’
‘Here’s to our success in that, then.’
They clinked glasses and drank. The brandy was not of very good quality, but it was nonetheless welcome at the moment. John’s shoes were soaked right through from standing about in the mud and wet, while C.B. had had to leave his hat and coat in the Canon’s house; so he had since had a steady wetting from the drizzling rain. Both were feeling the chill of the raw night; and, although their behaviour was now light-hearted, beneath the surface the nerves of neither of them had yet fully recovered from the shaking they had had in the crypt.
Warmed in body and fortified in mind by the fiery spirit, they put the glasses back and resumed their reconnaissance. While they were drinking, C.B. had already surveyed the dining-room, and it contained no piece of furniture in which it seemed likely that papers would be kept; so they went out into the hall and tried a door under the stairs. It led only to a stone-flagged passage, which was obviously the way to the kitchen quarters. Closing it quietly, C.B. shot its bolt, so that should Jutson be roused and, entering the house by a back door, seek to come through it, he would find his way blocked. They then tip-toed across to the door opposite and, opening it, found themselves in a study, three walls of which were lined shoulder-high with books.
‘Ah, this looks more promising,’ C.B. murmured, as the torch lit up a big roll-top desk. ‘You stay by the door, John, and keep your ears open, just in case the Jutsons are not asleep yet and we have disturbed them. If you hear anyone trying that door across the hall that leads to the kitchen quarters, slip in and warn me. We’ll have time then to get back into the drawing-room and out through one of the front windows.’
While he was speaking he walked to the study window and drew its curtains as a precaution against the Jutsons seeing a light in the room, for it looked out on to the backyard. Then, producing a bunch of keys from his pocket, he set to work on the desk. In less than a minute he had its roll-top open.
With swift, practised fingers he went systematically through one pigeon-hole after another. When he had done, the owner of the desk would never have guessed that the papers it contained had been examined; but the search had revealed nothing of interest. The pigeon-holes and shallow drawers held only Henry Beddows’ household accounts, notepaper, cheque-books, pencils, rubbers and so on. None of the bills or receipts suggested any activity which could be considered unorthodox.
C.B. was just about to reclose the desk-top when John stepped back through the door and swiftly swung it nearly shut.
‘What is it?’ C.B. asked below his breath.
‘The clanking of that chain again,’ John whispered.
He was still holding the door a few inches open. C.B. stepped up to him and, their heads cocked slightly sideways, they listened with straining ears for some moments. As no further sound reached them, John mumbled rather shamefacedly: ‘Sorry. I could have sworn I heard a chain being dragged across the floor somewhere at the top of the house; but I must have been mistaken. Nerves, I suppose.’
‘The dank, unlived-in atmosphere of this place is enough to give anyone the creeps,’ C.B. said understanding. ‘It was probably a fall of soot in one of the chimneys brought down by the rain.’
Returning to the desk, he closed its top, and set about opening the drawers in its two pedestals, most of which were locked. The locked ones he found to contain a number of stamp albums and the impedimenta of a philatelist.
A glance showed him that the albums covered only the British Empire. Quickly he flicked through a couple of them and saw that they were a fairly valuable collection. Then he noticed a curious thing. The pages for some of the smaller Colonies had on them the remains of a number of stamp hinges but not a single stamp of any denomination. Turning to John he said: ‘This is interesting. Beddows evidently started a general collection of the British Empire; then, unless I’m right off the mark, he began to specialise in Barbados, Cyprus and perhaps a few other places. Being a rich man, he could afford to buy rarities and his special collections soon grew too valuable for him to leave them with the rest; so he removed his pet Colonies into a separate album.’
‘Where does that get us?’ asked John, a little mystified.
‘Come, come, my dear Watson. Surely you realise that a keen philatelist would never keep the best part of his collection in his office, where he couldn’t look at it in the evenings. The fact that it is not here suggests that it is in a safe somewhere in the house. If Christina’s papa has a safe, it is there that he would also keep the sort of highly private papers in which we are interested.’
‘That sounds logical; but if there is a safe surely it would be a bit beyond you to get it open?’
‘Probably, but not necessarily. If it is an old type, patience and my skeleton keys might do the trick. Anyhow it would be worth trying.’
Returning the stamp albums to their drawers C.B. relocked them. He had already noticed a door between two sets of bookshelves that stood against the further wall. Walking over, he opened it and looked through. The room beyond was another sitting-room. From some fashion magazines, a bowl of pot-pourri and a work basket it looked as if it might be Christina’s sanctum on the rare occasions when she was at home. After a quick glance round he left it and they returned to the hall.
They had now explored all the downstairs livingrooms without success, and it seemed that if there was a safe in the house at all it must be up in Beddows’ bedroom.
At the foot of the main staircase they paused, while C.B. shone his torch upward. No movement was to be seen and no sound reached them. Yet the very silence of the damp, chill house seemed to have something vaguely sinister about it; so that, instead of advancing boldly, both of them half-held their breath and trod gently as they went upstairs.
They were within two steps of the main landing, and could see across it to a dark rectangle between a pair of oak uprights, through which a narrower flight of stairs led to the top floor of the house, when the clanking came again.
This time it was distinct and unmistakable; a noise of chains being dragged across a wooden floor. The sound was so eerie, so uncanny, in that dark, deserted house that it caused their hearts to leap. The blood seemed to freeze in their veins, and momentarily they were inflicted with a semi-paralysis. Yet it was the very terror that caused their throats to close and their muscles to contract that saved C.B. from a broken neck.
He was in the act of planting his right foot on the landing. Instead of coming down firmly, it was arrested in mid-air by the same nervous shock that made his scalp prickle. For a second or so it hovered; then, by no act of will but by the residue of its own momentum, it sank gently on to the carpet.
The carpet gave as though it was a feather bed. There came a faint snap, then a swift slithering noise. A large piece of carpet suddenly flopped downwards from the topmost stair. Its loose end and sides had been secured to the main carpet of the landing only by threads. It now hung straight down between the newel post of the banisters and the wall, leaving a four foot square gulf of blackness. The square of carpet at the stairhead had been cunningly suspended to conceal the fact that the flooring beneath it had been removed. Anyone stepping firmly upon it must have been flung down into the hall fifteen feet below.
C.B. gasped, staggered, and recovered his balance. Then, flashing his torch through the gaping hole that the vanished carpet had left in the nearest corner of the landing, he muttered
: ‘My God, that was a near one! It’s a modern oubliette. The sort of death-trap that the French Kings used to have in their castles for troublesome nobles whom they invited to stay with intent to murder. But this one must have been made quite recently. Look at the torn edges of those boards, where some tool has been used to prise up the ones that have been removed.’
John nodded. ‘Anyhow, this isn’t the work of spooks. It is good solid evidence that Beddows keeps something up here, and is so anxious that no one should see it that he doesn’t even stick at killing as a method of keeping out intruders.’
As he finished speaking there came the rattling of the chains once more.
It was a horribly unnerving sound. In spite of what had just been said the blood drained from the faces of the two men as they looked quickly at one another.
‘I expect it is some mechanical gadget made to scare people,’ John said a little dubiously.
‘Perhaps.’ C.B. hesitated. ‘On the other hand, if Copely-Syle and Beddows are buddies it may be something very different. Still, if you’re game to go on, I am.’
The vitality of both was now at a very low ebb, and John would have given a lot for a sound excuse to abandon their investigations there and then; but he hated the idea of losing face with C.B.; so he said in a low voice: ‘All right. But as we cross the landing I think you had better recite the Lord’s Prayer, as you did in the crypt, and I’ll join in.’
Handing the torch to John, C.B. grasped the newel post firmly and swung himself across the gap, carefully testing the firmness of the floor beyond before letting go. John passed him back the torch and followed. Together, they began to pray aloud. Shining the light downward on to the floor and taking each step cautiously, in case there was another trap, C.B. led the way across the landing. In the archway he paused, put one foot on the lowest stair of the upper flight, tested that, then swiftly raised the beam. The thing it fell upon caused them to break off their prayer. The chain clanked loudly. Simultaneously they jumped back.
To the Devil, a Daughter Page 27
