She woke again shortly after eleven. The heavy curtains were still drawn, and a fresh candle was burning by the bedside. I had fallen into a light doze, but grew alert the moment I felt her stir beside me. For several moments, she seemed confused and frightened, still partly in a stupor as a result of the morphine. I reached forward to calm her, and, as I did so, she stared directly at me, and I swear that, for some brief moments, what looked out at me from her eyes was not my wife, but someone else entirely. She blinked, and it was Simone again, her eyes filled with fear and incomprehension. I held her to me, and she came into my arms moaning gently and mumbling words I could not make out.
Dr Willingham arrived about half an hour later. By then, Simone was showing signs of recovery, though still much weakened by her fever. The doctor examined her carefully again. When he was done, he reassured her that all was well, but insisted she rest for the remainder of the day, and eat only light dishes for the next week or so. He prescribed a tonic and left a small bottle of pills “to help her nerves.”
Before leaving, he took me aside to say that, though Simone’s recovery seemed complete, he remained puzzled by the whole thing.
“It may be nothing more than a short-lived reaction to the rapid change of circumstances you told me of, in which case I see no grounds for apprehension. She seems perfectly well now, and her constitution seems extremely robust. Nevertheless, I make it a rule never to be complacent in such matters. Your wife must be watched with care for the next few weeks. Report to me any changes, however slight. We may be able to prevent a second attack before it gets under way. I’ll make calls at your house every other day for the first week or so. And be sure she takes her tonic religiously.”
Soon after his departure, Agnes arrived on our doorstep, having heard only minutes earlier from Willingham’s wife the nature of his mid-morning errand. She scolded me for not having called her in the night, and went up straight away to sit with Simone.
I took advantage of her being there to accompany Bertrand to school, for I thought it best he stick as near as possible to his original plan. We had acquired a pair of Stanley safety bicycles, and I had taught Bertrand to ride. It was raining lightly that morning, but we made good time and were at the choir school by lunchtime. I explained the reason for Bertrand’s absence and left him in the capable hands of M. Aristide, whose charge he was to remain for the first month or so. It was arranged that I should collect him after choir practice that evening.
As I rode away from the school, my thoughts turned to Atherton and my promise. To be honest, I was sorely tempted to ignore him and return to Simone, whose condition continued to cause me anxiety, despite Willingham and his reassurances. But, as always, Atherton exercised a hold over me. Perhaps it was pity, perhaps a sense of duty. And perhaps it was no more than the revulsion I felt at my own distaste for the man. His fear was, after all, no more than an exaggeration and perversion of my own. I had Simone to comfort me, he had no one.
I cycled the short distance to Sidney Sussex and, leaving my bicycle with the porter (who insisted that no such “contrivance” might pass within the inner sancta of the college), made my way to the building in which Atherton had rooms. The paths were packed with black-gowned college men who had just come from lunch in hall and were now heading off for afternoon lectures, to dreary hours with tutors, or to the silent contemplation of the whisky bottle in their own chambers. There was a solemn, almost monastic feeling about the place, or perhaps it was just an alteration in my own perception of things, occasioned by my marriage and my new-found domesticity.
Atherton’s staircase, though lit through a series of long windows on each landing, had a dim, oppressive character, an air of neglect that made it seem cauled in a permanent shadow. There are stairs like that in every college, ill-positioned and destined to become the abode of the most reclusive dons and the least popular undergraduates. Dark, faintly smelling of mould and long, sinking illnesses, they draw to themselves whatever misery may be found in the closed, stagnant world around them.
Atherton’s stair had its own quality besides, a quality of menace, of foreboding. I disliked being there intensely, and as I climbed the stairs I found myself again glancing uneasily into their dark corners.
I knocked on Atherton’s door, but there was no response. Again and again I knocked, but once the sound died away, a weary silence returned. The shadows and the curious angles of the staircase swallowed up even the echoes and left me bleak and frightened outside the unopened door.
Retracing my steps to the porter’s lodge, I enquired if Dr Atherton was expected back that afternoon. The porter, a rubicund man whose careworn manner flatly contradicted his cherubic features, gave me a puzzled look.
“Dr Atherton? Well, sir, he usually keeps to his rooms on Thursdays. Has done for years. No outside classes, tutorials every other hour. Myself, I’ve been on duty here since eight o’clock this morning, and I’m sure I ain’t seen him go past.”
He crossed to the other side of his little enclave and glanced at the pigeon-holes lined up against the wall. When he came back, the puzzlement on his face had deepened into something like concern.
“Hasn’t been for his letters neither, sir. I reckon he’s still in his rooms. I’d come with you, sir, but my orders are strict, and I daren’t leave my place here. You’ll find Dr Atherton’s skip on Y staircase, first door on the left. He has the key.”
As I turned apprehensively to go, the porter called after me.
“I hope nothing’s wrong,” he said. “God forbid he’s been took ill.”
I hardly answered, so preoccupied was I and so loud was the beating of my craven heart in my own breast.
Rawles, the skip, was in his store-room as predicted, sorting laundry. I explained what had happened. He straightened up, a slender man with callused hands and a sad face.
“Not answering, you say?”
I shook my head.
“Not at all like him. Sharp ears, has Dr Atherton.”
He opened a large cupboard and took down a large ring of keys from a rusty hook.
“Sharp ears,” he repeated. “Very prompt. Some think him a dull man, a quiet man, but I find him sharp as nails.”
I accompanied him to Atherton’s stair, regaled at first by observations on various aspects of my friend’s character. As we drew closer, however, my silence and my mood of disquiet must have insinuated themselves into Rawles’s consciousness, and we climbed the stairs without a word between us.
Rawles knocked as I had done, but had no more answer than myself. He called a few times, at first in a quiet, respectful voice, then more loudly. I feared the worst by now, and told Rawles he must open the door.
“I’m not sure as it’s my place without permission, sir. You’re not a Fellow of this college, and I’ve no authority to go opening doors without by or leave.”
“He may be ill. I saw him last night, and he looked poorly then. If you don’t open the door, I’ll break it down myself.”
This threat had the desired effect. Rawles opened the door and let it swing back into the room. It was pitch dark inside, for the shutters and curtains were still drawn. A strange smell struck my nostrils at once, as though the room had been shut up for a very long time. I recognised it straight away as the same smell that I had met when entering Atherton’s mother’s room all those weeks earlier. Rawles noticed it too. I saw him hesitate at the threshold and clap one hand to his mouth.
“Rawles,” I said, “find a light as quick as you can.” Nothing could have induced me to go any further into that room without first having at least a candle with which to light my way.
Rawles took a box of matches from his waistcoat pocket and slipped round the door. He knew exactly where to find the nearest gas mantle, and in moments he had it lit. A dull yellow light quickened and settled.
I do not know quite what I had expected to find. Atherton crouching on the floor, perhaps, a quivering wreck. Or Atherton stretched out on his bed like his brother o
r mother before him, terror written across his face in bold letters. But no such sight greeted me, neither in the living room nor the bedroom, nor in the small study to one side. The rooms were quite empty. Of Atherton there was not the slightest trace.
Rawles opened the windows to let in both light and air. Able to see properly, he and I made a quick examination of the rooms.
“I think he’s gone out after all, sir. We’d better lock up and wait till he comes back.”
“No,” I said. “Something’s wrong. That dreadful smell. It wasn’t here last night.”
Had it not been for the odour pervading everything and only slowly dispersing as fresh air entered the rooms, I think Rawles would have hustled me through the door that moment. Moreover, it was immediately obvious that Atherton had left the place in a terrible mess, quite unlike its normal state. Books and papers were piled everywhere, strewn across the floor and heaped on tables and chairs. I picked up a sheet of paper. Across it someone—Atherton I presumed—had scribbled strings of letters and numbers. And so on every sheet I lifted. The same letters, marked with different figures, or in different combinations. By the third or fourth sheet I realised that he had been trying to decode the random letters carved on William de Lindesey’s tomb.
It was Rawles who found the next puzzling item: Atherton’s door key, set on the little table by the door where he always kept it. But the door had been locked from the inside when we arrived.
“Did he keep another set?” I asked.
Rawles shook his head.
“I don’t think so, sir. If he was ever to lose a key when out, he knew he could have another from me or the porter.”
“He can’t have left by the window.”
“No, sir, you’re right. All shuttered, sir, all closed tight.”
“Maybe he had another key cut. To give to a friend, perhaps. Some men let graduates use their rooms in their absence. Dr Atherton has a fine collection of books.”
“I’m sure you’re right, sir.”
I nodded, but I knew the truth was quite different. Matthew Atherton had not left his rooms after I took my leave of him. I picked up more of the scattered sheets. On some, the paper was torn where Atherton’s pen had gouged holes.
“Leave those, sir,” said Rawles. “I’ll tidy them later on.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to keep them for a day or two. Dr Atherton won’t mind. They’re for a lecture I’m working on. He was helping me with it last night—I called back for my papers this morning: I need to work on them today. Just say Professor Asquith took them.”
Though it was evident he had misgivings, Rawles acquiesced. It was only a matter of a few sheets of paper, after all.
Though the smell had largely disappeared, I still felt acute uneasiness in that place. Several sheets had been left in the bedroom. I went in to fetch them and, as I did so, noticed that the bedclothes had been pulled back and were tangled together, as though someone had spent a restless night then leapt from bed suddenly.
Going closer to pick up a sheet of paper that had fallen by the side of the bed, I noticed something that had earlier escaped my attention. A long brown stain lay on the undersheet, as long as a man, and about as broad. One part of the stain revealed the unmistakable imprint of a human hand. And I noticed that some of the same stain covered the pillow.
Rawles, who had followed me into the room, noticed it too.
“Whatever’s that?” he asked. “Those sheets were fresh only two days ago.”
I went no closer. The stain seemed to me an unclean thing; I could not bear to touch it or look at it any longer. Gathering the loose papers in my hand, I apologised to Rawles for having inconvenienced him, and hurried out, not pausing to close the door behind me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Simone woke me again that night. Exhausted by my vigil of the morning before, and the anxiety provoked by my visit to Atherton’s rooms, I had fallen into a deep sleep marred by disturbing dreams. I woke to find Simone clutching my arm. She had shaken me to consciousness, terrified by a dream of her own.
I lit the oil-lamp and turned to reassure her. She was pale and trembling, like someone who has received a sudden shock.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, fearing she was about to have a relapse, that her fever had returned, perhaps more virulent than before.
She could not answer me at once. I reached out and touched her; her skin was cold. I waited patiently.
“I was there again,” she said at last.
“There?”
“In that place, the place you took me to. I’ve been there every night.”
My heart felt cold, as though something in it had been extinguished. Simone’s pallor frightened and unmanned me more than her burning fever had ever done.
“What place? Where did I take you?”
“To the abbey, the ruined abbey. Thornham.”
The cold leapt from my heart to the rest of my body.
“You dream of Thornham Abbey?”
“Yes, often. I did not tell you, it did not seem important. But tonight was . . . different. Tonight was horrible.”
“I don’t understand. What did you see in this dream?”
She looked round suddenly, as though some sound had distracted her, then shivered and returned her gaze to me.
“Until tonight,” she said, faltering, her eyes fixed on me as if to anchor herself to me, “nothing changed, nothing altered. The abbey was just as I remember it from the day of our picnic. In my dream, I would find myself standing there, in the nave of the church. Ruined walls, empty windows, moss-covered stones—just as it is, just as I remember. And all round, the whole countryside, bleak, empty. No one anywhere, not even a bird in flight. Just empty fields, and trees without leaves, and bare hedges, and a wind blowing cold across it all, the way it does sometimes at home in winter.”
“So it is winter in your dream?”
“Always winter. Always cold. Always a black wind.”
“Does anything happen?”
She shook her head.
“Not until tonight. I stand in the nave, shivering, watching the sun climb down the sky. It comes out from behind grey clouds, very red, red and yellow together. I can see it through a broken window. It is the only thing that moves.”
“And tonight?”
“Tonight I am in the abbey, but it is completely changed. Not a ruin any longer. Every stone in its place again. But I know it is the same place because of the window. I look up and see the sun behind the window, high up in the nave, and there is glass that catches the last light and breaks it up. I go on watching until the light fades and it is dark, completely dark, and when I look away from the window the church is in darkness. Someone has lit candles in the chancel. I think I am alone at first, but slowly I become aware that there is someone else. I feel terribly afraid. I don’t know why. Perhaps it is the darkness. Perhaps it is the lights flickering in the chancel.”
I stroked her hair. It had fallen across her face like a veil. I pushed it back gently. She smiled and touched my hand. Her fingers were cold, and she still trembled.
“I walk towards the chancel. It is a dream, remember, and I can do nothing, I must go where the dream takes me. All the time, I want to run, but I cannot. It is quiet, there are no sounds; I cannot even hear my own breath, my own heartbeat. When I reach the chancel, it is like ice, colder even than the nave. It’s dark all round me, but there are candles in the choir stalls, tall candles here and there. And shadows, shadows like long, restless animals.” She paused. On the wall behind her, her own shadow moved imperceptibly, long and thin and silent. It seemed a very old thing, far older than Simone or myself.
“He is there. At first he is all I see, standing in front of the altar. He is watching me approach.”
“He?”
“M. l’Abbé.” I don’t know his name. He has no name. I cannot see his face, it’s hidden inside his hood. But I know he is watching me.”
“How do you know he is the
abbot?”
“I’m not sure. He stands where the abbot should stand. He’s tall, he carries himself proudly, there’s something about him, a sort of grandeur. But not holiness, that I do not sense. Just pride, even arrogance. I can feel it washing over me. And something else, something I don’t like, much worse than the arrogance.”
She closed her eyes, and a shudder went through her, quick and febrile.
“He stands there so very still,” she went on, “and I know his eyes are watching me, but I cannot see them. Then I hear voices. There are monks in the choir, chanting in plainsong, ‘Kyrie, fons bonitatis,’ soft voices, very solemn, and at first I think, I must be mistaken, nothing bad could happen here, these are men of God, and their abbot must be a man of God. But there is something wrong with the voices, something I do not like.
“I turn and look, and I see hooded men in the choir, their faces in shadow. Just monks, I think, but still something is wrong. And then I understand. This is a dream, remember: no one has told me, but I know what is wrong. The monks are not alive, none of them is alive. I am in a church of dead men.”
She stopped, and I drew her to me.
“It’s all right,” I said. “Don’t go on.”
“No, I must finish. I stand like that, watching them, for a long time. Or perhaps it is only seconds, I cannot tell. I remember the abbot, and I turn again, but he is no longer there. At that moment, the singing stops. When I look, the choir is empty, as if no one had been there. But the candles are still burning. I am all alone in the darkness. But I know . . .”
I felt her shiver against me, her body suddenly hard and violent.
“I know I shall not be alone for long. Someone is coming. Someone I do not want to see. And then I wake and I am here.”
The shivering passed, and she was still. On the wall behind her, her shadow grew still as well.
A Shadow on the Wall Page 14
