The Staircase: A haunting romantic thriller

by Deryn Lake

  THE STAIRCASE

  © Deryn Lake 2017

  The right of Deryn Lake to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  First published in 1990 in two parts by Women’s Realm Magazine

  This edition published in 2017 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter One

  The dream haunted Helena. She was in her nightdress on a vast spiral staircase, mingling with people she did not know. At the top, a man waited for her, a man from another century with brilliant eyes . . . Somewhere, here in France she knew she would find the key to the mystery . . .

  *

  This evening there seemed a great many people on the staircase, all mingling together, silently rubbing shoulders as they climbed. On the marble steps long skirts swished against high-heeled buckled shoes, while ornamental swords, their handles encrusted with rainbow gems, dipped and rose as their owners made their steady way upwards.

  It was dusk, for the magnificent marble pillars and balustrades of the staircase were suffused with the colour of doves, a soft lavender grey that beautified all those strange and silent people In the midst of whom walked Helena, only too miserably aware that she was in her night-clothes while all the rest were garbed gaudily as a field of butterflies.

  As always the mystery of the staircase struck her afresh. For there were those Helena could see going up — or was it down? — and yet never passed. And these people — the ones she could watch but not touch — were different. Faded jeans were plentiful, as if they were a uniform, while shorts and T-shirts abounded. Cameras swung from necks, though none so fine as those carried by a party of Japanese, all dressed formally, grimly enjoying themselves. It was as though two entirely different worlds, people from two disparate times, had come together on the staircase yet could never meet.

  The throng with whom Helena reluctantly mingled suddenly began to climb faster, as If they had received a silent signal, and she was forced along with them. And it was then that a girl with the other crowd on the staircase, a tarty-looking girl thrust into terribly tight jeans and stilt-like stilettos, looked across at Helena, shrieked piercingly, reached out and grabbed her boyfriend’s arm.

  “Oh, my Gawd, Darryl, I’ve seen the ghost!” she bellowed as the Japanese turned as one to gaze unsmilingly in Helena’s direction.

  She stared back, amazed, thinking that her thin nightdress was the culprit, that the girl had mistaken her lacy attire for ghostly veils, but before either woman could look at one another again their varying crowds had swept them apart. Now, for the first time, Helena felt a sensation of fear as she was thrust upwards on a human surge of people, none of whom ever looked at her, yet from whom she could not escape.

  “Oh dear,” she called hopelessly, “please Stop. I must go home.”

  The throng sped on, hurrying up the broad spiralling curve and drawing level with a stone-flagged landing. Summoning a burst of speed that only a frightened person could achieve, Helena somehow elbowed her way through her companions and managed to get a step ahead, to see that a man stood waiting for her, holding out his hand.

  “Quick, little one,” he called, “I have come to help you.”

  She smiled, her heart gaining momentum at the sight of him, as it had done ever since she had been a child. “I’m here at last,” she called. Their fingers locked together and then Helena fell, down and down into the drenching darkness, as slowly he vanished from her sight . . .

  Right by her ear the radio alarm burst into life and a disc jockey with a mid-Atlantic accent brightly informed the world that the weather was unsettled and showers could be expected later. With a feeling of desolation, Helena stretched out her hand and switched the radio off, seeing from its illuminated digital face that it was six am, that she had set it too early and was not due to get up for another hour.

  So it had happened again! The dream which had recurred ever since childhood had once more returned to haunt her. The staircase with its extraordinary visitors, its shrieking showy girl, its glorious butterflies of another age, had come back, and with it her rescuer, the man who always stood at the top waiting for her. The man whose hair clustered in blue-black curls about his head and whose vivid blue eyes had a rim of purple around the iris.

  In the silence of her bedroom Helena smiled, partly at her foolish self. Here was she, Miss Helena Holley, aged twenty-six, single by choice, admiring the looks of a dream man, a vision, a creature without substance. And yet he excited her, that dark-haired creature who waited for her at the second landing, his hand extended, his brilliant eyes alight.

  Despite the early hour Helena got out of bed and made her way to the kitchen, putting on the kettle and radio simultaneously. Music blared forth reminding her that she was very much in the present and that dream men really had no place in the go-getting. With a sigh she firmly switched off and, enjoying the sudden quiet, sat at the table sipping coffee and thinking about her life.

  She supposed that she was what would be described as a small town girl, having been born in Stow Wells in Gloucestershire and, other than a year at secretarial school in London — something her father had insisted upon as part of her education — never having left it.

  “Being a character’s daughter,” said Helena to herself, smiling a little wryly, “is not always easy.”

  She simply couldn’t imagine life without her father, just as Stow Wells could not imagine the town without John Holley. Almost from the moment he had been born, fifth son of an impoverished parson with rather more children than he could count, John, with a combination of dazzling charm and ruthless determination, had bent the world to his will.

  A place in the local grammar school had led to university and also to meeting the right people.

  “And that was where Hal came in,” muttered Helena, making her way to the bathroom and stepping under a warm shower.

  The richest family in Stow Wells had been the Tymons, the local solicitors, who had made a rule of marrying their sons and daughters well, on occasion even into the aristocracy. At school, Richard Tymon had become a great friend of John Holley, and poor though the parson’s son had been, the friendship had continued throughout university and beyond. It had been Richard who had secretly lent his friend the money to buy out an ailing estate agent in the town, and it had been with this first break that John’s gifts of charm and drive had finally come to fruition. The business had prospered as never before, John had repaid the money within a year, and within two had bought out his only competitor. Within five he had acquired a chain of estate agencies and was advertising in Country Life. The firm of Holley’s had arrived.

  In a way, Helena would have liked to escape it all, leave the close-knit community and the intimate circle of friends and strike out on her own. But there had been no chance of that. The days of equal opportunity had arrived by then and John, not in the least disappointed that fate had given him only one child and a girl at that, had changed the name of the company to Holley and Daughter. She was trapped, caught, enmeshed. A career as an estate agent had already been chosen for her.

  And that, thought Helena reflectively as she dressed, would not have been so bad. If it had just finished there.

  John Holley, by now a man with prospects, had married a distant cousin of the Tymons; while Richard, in his turn, had married the Honourable Rosalind Owen, daughter of a minor peer. Within a year of the birth of Rosalind’s son Harold, known as Hal, Helena had come into the world.

/>   And the marriage was planned at once, she thought. Hal and Helena. Even the names went well!

  As children they had been inseparable and Helena, an only child, had lived for the company of Hal and his three younger sisters. They had played together, plunged into group scrapes and generally stood up for each other when the adults were cross. But then had come the teens and with them Helena’s horrified realisation that what she had considered to be her father’s teasing was semi-serious.

  “When you marry Hal . . .” he would say — and then laugh.

  “John,” Sheila Holley had remonstrated, “Helena will marry whom she likes, when she likes.”

  “Yes, yes,” he would answer, smiling knowingly, “so long as it is Hal.”

  Nothing could have been guaranteed to put me off more, thought Helena now, biting into toast, and I’m sure Mummy must have told him so.

  *

  From the age of fifteen onwards she had refused to have anything more to do with Richard Tymon’s son, and the remarks about Hal had grown less frequent and finally died out altogether. Whether her mother had intervened or not, Helena was never sure, but something had certainly brought the message home to John. In the end it had been she, after a year away in London, who had first asked after her old childhood friend, and seen her father’s face light up.

  Meeting Hal again had been strange. In the year in which she had not seen him, though Helena had changed little, merely developing a veneer of sophistication, he had grown out of all recognition. Tall, large and handsome, with thick hair the colour of butterscotch and very pleasant eyes, grey as a moody sky, or so Helena had thought at the time.

  Whether or not he had been programmed by his father was impossible to tell — but the result was the same. The twenty-one year old Hal, articled clerk in his father’s firm and the most eligible bachelor in town, had fallen madly in love with Helena and had never from that day to the present deflected in his wish to marry her.

  Six years, thought Helena, making up her eyes with pinks and mauves. Six whole years. I would have got bored with me ages ago.

  The expression on the face looking back at her from the mirror was just a little smug. In her heart, if she dug deep enough and admitted it, Helena was flattered. It amused her to keep Hal on a string, very occasionally allowing him to stay the night in the flat she had bought to prove her independence to the world. Despite the fact she would one day have to make up her mind about him, one way or the other, an on/off love affair suited Helena Holley very well at this particular stage of her life.

  *

  The journey to the estate agency that was her sole charge was rather too long to walk so Helena took the car, easily finding a space in the car park.

  The office when she entered it was dark, unnervingly quiet, and at once the dream came back; the suffocating silence of the staircase, the phantom walkers who strode so relentlessly upward, the tourists who gazed and gazed.

  “Tourists!” said Helena aloud, sitting at her desk. “Of course!”

  Why had she never thought of it before? What else could those people have been? The camera-loaded Japanese, the shorts and T-shirt brigade. Sightseers swarmed the great staircase along with that multitude of resplendent beings from another age.

  Helena found herself shaking at the strangeness of the discovery and it was an effort to go to the lights and switch them on, then make herself another coffee in the little kitchen behind the office. She sat down at her desk again, thinking of the dream and consciously trying to remember the first time she had experienced it.

  Had it been the night of her aunt’s wedding when she had been a bridesmaid or had it been when she had stayed up late for the first time on Boxing Night? Helena frowned. It had definitely been the wedding because she could remember — distinctly now that she concentrated — dreaming that she wore her bridesmaid’s dress as she climbed that vast marble spiral for the very first time. The man at the top had grinned when he had seen it, his brilliant eyes twinkling and his whole face creasing into a spectacular smile.

  “Ma petite belle,” he had said.

  Helena shook her head in bewilderment. She had almost forgotten that occasionally he spoke French on those strange nocturnal visits she made to him. How many times had it been, she wondered. How many times had she seen the staircase in all? Slowly she began to count on her fingers.

  There had been that first occasion and then another the following Christmas. Helena remembered now that though there had been snow when she had gone to sleep, the staircase had been bathed in brilliant sunshine. Yet last night it had been dusky, full of shadows. So the time of day could change in the dream.

  “How odd,” she said aloud.

  Sitting like this in the early morning office, with no burbling staff and persistant telephone, Helena found herself remembering more vividly than she ever had before the very substance and texture of the dreams. She could almost recollect the feel of the man’s hand as his fingers gripped hers, the warmth and strength of him and the faint musky perfume he wore.

  Helena smiled. “If only he were real,” she said to the desk diary that lay open before her. “I wouldn’t have a moment’s hesitation. Poor old Hal.”

  She sighed gustily and, as if she had conjured him up, the telephone rang and Hal’s voice spoke.

  “Hello, darling, I saw the lights go on and thought you must be there already.”

  Thinking that having his office building almost opposite hers was a mixed blessing, Helena answered sharply, “You’re in early.”

  “I had some paperwork to catch up with,” Hal replied calmly, quite used to her little barbs. “I thought I’d make a start before the telephones begin to ring.”

  “Me too.”

  “Well, as we’re being so enthusiastic about work. I think we owe it to ourselves to have a pleasant lunch, don’t you?”

  “When did you have in mind?” asked Helena guardedly.

  “Today, of course. Are you free?”

  She hesistated. “Well . . .”

  “Oh please,” said Hal. “There’s something I want to ask you.”

  Helena’s heart sank. There had been no proposal of marriage since last Christmas and she supposed that he was working his way up to the next one.

  As though he had read her mind, Hal went on, “It’s nothing serious. Just a nice surprise.”

  Relenting, Helena said, “All right then. What time and where?”

  “The wine bar at twelve-thirty. I’ve booked a table.”

  “Sure of me, eh?” Helena laughed and rang off.

  The Purple Grapes, as their meeting place was called, was already filling up when Helena walked through the door. Country town equivalents of yuppies made a lot of noise saying nothing while, somewhat out of place in the midst of them, looking splendidly leonine in a biscuit coloured suit, was Hal.

  “You look nice,” said Helena, hurrying over and planting a peck on his cheek.

  “So do you,” he replied, and smiled in such a way that she wished she really could fall in love with him.

  She busied herself with choosing her lunch.

  “Not a bad selection,” murmured Hal, almost to himself. “But then of course one can never beat French cooking.”

  Helena looked up, and said in surprise, “We’re in a wine bar in Stow Wells, Hal. We’re hardly likely to be offered haute cuisine.”

  “I’m offering it,” he said, still in an undertone.

  “What are you on about?” asked Helena, putting the menu down and staring at him.

  Hal did likewise. “I’m on about you coming to Paris with me for a few days. It’s my birthday soon – though I suppose you’ve forgotten – and I thought it would be nice to go away and celebrate.”

  “I haven’t forgotten actually. I’ve been saving for weeks.”

  She had always been able to do that, make Hal smile when he was getting serious. But now, though his grin flashed at her, he persisted, saying “Helena, don’t wriggle. I know very well you’ve ne
ver been to Paris and that you’re longing to. Remember what you said to me once? You felt like a social failure because you had never walked up the Champs Elysées.”

  “I was joking.”

  “Well the joke is over. I want to take you.”

  Helena sat looking at Hal thinking that in many ways she was a fool not to marry him. After all he was good looking, getting more so with maturity, and his one concern in life seemed to be to please her.

  Impetuously she said, “Hal, I know that I’ve been a bitch to you sometimes but it was just reaction to family pressure. I’m sorry.”

  He laid his hand over hers. “I understand. Anyone would think arranged marriages were still in fashion going by our fathers.”

  Helena withdrew her hand and laughed lightly. “Perhaps it would be a good thing if they were. It might stop people making mistakes.” Seeing the expression on his face, she went on, “I don’t really mean that.”

  Hal smiled wryly. “Sometimes I think you don’t know what you mean at all.”

  “Meaning?” asked Helena, and they both giggled wildly.

  The lunch was a success and it was in lighthearted mood that they left the wine bar and Hal walked back with Helena to her office.

  “It’s been lovely,” she said, kissing him on the cheek.

  “France would be lovelier,” Hal answered, then took both her hands in his. “Listen, Helena, I want you to come with me to Paris for a reason you don’t know yet.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been offered a job with a firm of American lawyers in Washington. It would only be for about two years but nonetheless it would be the end of us. If there is an us, that is. And that’s what I want to find out.”

  “Oh, Hal, be plain. Are you asking me to go with you to America?”

  “No,” he answered fiercely, “no, I’m not. I’m asking you to come to France as the final attempt to make our relationship work. If you decide you don’t want to marry me after the delights of Paris then I’m leaving your life for ever. But if you do, then we can stay here, go to the States, do whatever you like.” He caught her close. “Helena, I love you so much that you must give me this last chance. I swear that if it doesn’t work I won’t bother you again.”