Thorn

by Sarah Rayne

  PART TWO

  ‘And now, as the enchantment drew to an end . . .’

  Charles Perrault, The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Oliver Tudor stood indecisively on his brother’s doorstep. It was nine o’clock on the evening prior to Christmas Eve, and he had rung the bell of Dan’s flat and knocked loudly on the door several times. There were four or five pints of milk on the step, and a box of eggs. Some of the milk looked as if it had gone off.

  Oliver was not especially concerned. It was possible that Dan had forgotten he was joining him to spend Christmas in London, or that he had been called away and was due back soon. It was entirely possible that Oliver himself had got the arrangements wrong.

  But Oliver knew quite definitely that he had phoned Dan because the answerphone had been on, and he had left a careful message. He did not entirely trust the answerphone, because it was amazing how often machines went wrong, and so he had posted a quick letter as well, confirming the date he would arrive and the approximate time. He was actually a bit later than he had said because he had missed a turning which had taken him quite a long way off his route, but Dan would surely have allowed for something like that.

  Oliver had driven to London on Thursday afternoon, straight after what had been a really very good party in the rooms of a fellow don. It had been nice of her to include him; in fact it was very nice the way so many people did invite him to things.

  He fished in his pocket to find the key which Dan had given him when first moving in here. Always useful to have a spare somewhere, he had said. And there might be occasions when Oliver would turn up in London and Dan could not be here to let him in. This looked like one of those occasions.

  There was a large pile of post on the mat and a film of dust everywhere. Oliver switched lights on, which made the flat feel friendlier, deposited his suitcase in the tiny spare bedroom, and came back into the living room. The first thing to meet his eyes was Dan’s manuscript, stacked in two piles, one on each side of the typewriter. Oliver had a swift, vivid image of Dan working, the finished pages on the right, the draft pages on the left. The cover was off the typewriter, although this did not necessarily mean anything; Dan tended to be erratic about things like that. Oliver understood this because he was erratic himself.

  There was food in the fridge – cheese and bacon – and bread in a bin. The bacon had unpleasant whitish spots, and the cheese and bread were both white and furry and in a disgusting condition. Oliver threw everything away, and tipped the sour milk down the sink.

  This was beginning to be very worrying, because it looked as if Dan had not been in the flat for some time. Oliver scooped up the pile of letters and studied the postmarks under the light of the desk lamp. Some were blurred, but many were readable. With a feeling of mounting concern, he saw that several were dated the end of November.

  Dan had not been in the flat for a month.

  It was no longer a case of respecting his brother’s privacy; it was a case of searching for clues as to where he might be. Oliver considered phoning the police but decided to leave this as a last resort. In any case, as Dan’s nearest relative, he would have been notified of accident or illness. Dan kept the Oxford address and phone number in his wallet and diary, under the ‘In case of accident, please inform’ section.

  The answerphone was flashing, which presumably meant there were messages on it. Oliver eyed it nervously; machines were so unpredictable. But it would have to be dealt with in case any of the messages provided the answer, and so he rummaged in the desk and eventually found the instruction leaflet. It took quite a long time to understand, and he was worried about wiping off messages that might be important, but in the end he understood which button did what. He found pen and paper from the motley collection on the desk, and scribbled everything down as it came.

  There were three calls from Piers, Dan’s agent, each one sounding more exasperated than the last, and ending with an exhortation for Dan to ring pronto, or find himself another bloody agent. And there were a couple of invitations from friends to join them for drinks or a meal over Christmas. One added that Dan must be sure to bring his brother if he was spending Christmas in London, which pleased Oliver.

  One was from a lady with a feline-sounding voice, who announced herself as Juliette Ingram, and who was apparently ringing to thank Dan for taking her out to dinner, and also for a delivery of flowers. So he’s at it with somebody new, thought Oliver, torn between vague embarrassment and envy. Juliette sounded rather attractive.

  There was his own message as well, explaining about arriving today, and hoping this would be all right. Oliver had had no idea that he sounded so apprehensive on the phone. He hoped he did not sound like that when he lectured.

  Certain things had to be given priority. The phone calls had better be returned and, if possible, dates when they had been made established. Oliver rang Dan’s agent first, and then the friends who had issued the drinks invitations. He explained to them all that Dan seemed to have vanished; agreed that there would certainly be a logical and ordinary explanation in the end, and promised to report progress. The dates of the calls confirmed his original suspicions: Dan had not been in the flat for at least a month.

  He left Juliette Ingram until last.

  ‘Goodness, I don’t know where he could be,’ said the breathless, slightly husky voice on the phone. ‘He certainly isn’t here, in fact I haven’t heard from him since we dined together four or five weeks ago. But it all sounds very intriguing. Shall I dash over to discuss it? I’m expecting people for drinks shortly, but I could—’

  ‘No, no, I wouldn’t dream of troubling you,’ said Oliver, terrified. ‘But – would you by any chance know what Dan was working on at the moment? It’s possible that he had to go off somewhere in connection with a – a commission, and forgot to leave a message.’

  ‘He did the article on Thalia,’ said Juliette, thoughtfully. ‘That’s Thalia Caudle, my aunt.’

  Oliver said he knew about this.

  ‘As a matter of fact, it was very good,’ said Juliette. ‘But I don’t know what else. Doesn’t his agent know?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh. Well, I can tell you one thing, Oliver – you did say Oliver, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve always wanted to meet someone called Oliver.’

  ‘You said you could tell me—’

  ‘Oh yes. Well, I do know that Dan was interested in my family,’ said Juliette. ‘I mean interested as a writer. The two mad Ingram ladies who went wild with meat axes and butchered people, you know.’

  Oliver began to wonder if this husky-voiced lady was mad herself, or only a bit drunk. This was the party season, after all. He said, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t think—’

  ‘It’s ancient history,’ said Juliette. ‘But I suspect that Dan was planning a book about it. In fact he half admitted it, now I come to think back.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘It’s quite a good story,’ said Juliette, cheerfully. ‘And so long ago that it wouldn’t hurt anyone if it was resurrected. Sybilla was the Regency one, you know, and they shut her away in an attic for chopping up her husband with a meat axe. I daresay it was what they did in those days. Shut mad people in attics, that is, not chop them up. She lived until she was eighty-five, but of course her husband died there and then.’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘And then Lucienne, the Edwardian one, was locked up in Thornacre too. Dan was fascinated by that.’

  ‘Fascinated by Thornacre?’

  ‘My dear, riveted by it.’

  ‘The Thornacre that was in the news a couple of months ago?’

  ‘Yes. Too dreadful for words, wasn’t it? And now, d’you know, there’s my cousin Imogen there as well. It really seems as if—’

  ‘You’ve got a cousin in Thornacre?’

  ‘Yes, poor darling, she—’ Juliette broke off abruptly and Oliver caught the sound of a door bell be
ing rung peremptorily at the other end. ‘Oh, bother,’ said Juliette, crossly. ‘Oh, isn’t it infuriating when people arrive early! Frightfully bad etiquette. Listen, Oliver, are you sure I can’t scoot across to you? Or you could come here. There’ll be dozens of people wandering in, and you’d be very w—’

  Oliver said firmly that he had a great deal to do, and rang off before he could get dragged into any alarming situations. It was only then that he saw two things amongst the jumble of papers on his brother’s desk.

  One was the Women in Business article on Thalia Caudle. He glanced at it briefly, saw the photograph and registered that Thalia had left London.

  The other was the AA guide, which was lying on the desk, with slips of paper marking two of the pages. Oliver hunted in his battered briefcase for his glasses because the AA print was very small. The first marker was in the listings of towns, under the Ts, and the entry for a place called Thornacre in Northumberland was circled in pencil. A pencil mark also indicated the Black Boar Inn in Thornacre, and in the margin the approximate mileage from London, 350/375 miles, and next to it ‘7 hours? 8?’. What looked like stopping-off places had been underlined: Leicester Forest East and Woodall on the Ml, and Scotch Corner on the A1. Oliver pushed his glasses back on the bridge of his nose thoughtfully. These were exactly the kind of notes you would make if you were contemplating an unfamiliar journey, and earmarking somewhere to stay when you got there. He turned to the other marked page, which was the map for Northumberland, and saw that the route out of London all along the motorway and the A1 had been lightly traced, right up to the tiny village near England’s bleak north-eastern edge. Thornacre.

  That was circled in pencil as well.

  It was almost eleven o’clock when Oliver put the phone down. There was no record of Dan having booked into either of the two inns in Thornacre, and no record of him at any of the adjacent villages either.

  This had taken an hour to discover, and after that Oliver had phoned several of the hospitals, and then the police. No, they said; no accidents involving anyone of Dan’s description had been reported over the last four weeks. Yes, they could be absolutely sure; these things were all stored on computer now, sir, and it was just a question of calling up the information.

  Oliver, who distrusted computers as much as he distrusted most machines, thanked the duty sergeant and said he did not think he wanted to make an official report of a missing person yet. Very likely his brother had been called away and he would hear from him shortly. The duty sergeant said this happened all the time and wished Oliver a happy Christmas. At least he had not said have a nice day.

  Oliver assembled some kind of meal from the tins in the kitchen cupboards, made black coffee and reviewed what he knew.

  Dan had left his flat at least a month ago, although from the look of the things Oliver had found, he had not intended to be away for very long. Toothbrush, flannel and sponge and shaving things had gone, and Oliver thought a couple of jackets were missing as well. As to shirts and underthings, he had no idea, but the weekend case Dan used when he came to Oxford was nowhere to be found. The food in the fridge was the kind that would have kept for several days – say a week at least. The bacon had been a vacuum pack and the cheese was in an airtight container. Milk and eggs had been delivered. Oliver began to form a picture of Dan going away, perhaps for a weekend or three or four days, intending to come back to food and fresh milk. He had not bothered to let his agent know, and he had not done things like turning off the water which Oliver thought he would have done for a longer absence.

  What else?

  He had not gone in his car. Oliver had checked the mews garage earlier on, and Dan’s old Escort had been there. This might not mean anything because the car was so ramshackle it might be out of commission. Dan could have gone somewhere by train or plane or boat, or he could have gone off in someone else’s car. He could have hired a car – the AA book suggested that he had been planning a road journey. But that, and Juliette Ingram’s reference to Thornacre and the Ingram family, were the only clues so far. Was the fact that Thalia Caudle had recently left London connected? Oliver re-read Dan’s article with more attention, and saw this time that the magazine was dated the end of November, which fitted, more or less, with the date when the post had begun to pile up. He remembered how Dan had gone to Thalia’s flat for dinner and not returned until the next morning.

  It was possible that Dan had gone to Northumberland and Thornacre to research a book, quite possibly the one about the Ingram ladies. Oliver could accept this, and he could also accept that his brother might have gone off with Thalia, although she did not look to Oliver like someone Dan would have forsaken the world for. What he did not believe and could not accept was that Dan would go away for longer than a week without taking his manuscript. He might have done it if the book was finished and submitted to a publisher, but it was plainly not finished.

  With a feeling that he was committing the worst intrusion yet, Oliver hunted about for his glasses all over again, picked up the thick wad of manuscript, poured a large measure of Dan’s whisky, and sat down in the armchair to read.

  He saw at once what Dan had tried to do, and he thought on balance that he had brought it off. There was the right flavour of Gothic darkness about the writing, and the peppering of clues on the original legend. There was the dark romance of crumbling old castles as well, and of wicked stepmothers and helpless heroines and swelling menace. Dan had romanticised his Rosamund a little – Oliver thought that like most writers Dan had been a bit in love with her – but there was nothing seriously wrong with that.

  It was the depiction of the evil Margot that disturbed him most. Oliver read on, his critical faculties to the fore, hardly aware of the house settling into silence all around him. Twice he got up to refill his whisky glass, and once he made another mug of coffee. Each time he did this, he passed the desk with the magazine article on Thalia Caudle. It was not a face for which you would count the world well lost, but it was a face that might well tempt you to a brief madness.

  It was not until he came to the chapter where Rosamund was carried with grim ceremony into the haunted lunatic wing of the old asylum that Oliver felt the strands and the clues mesh. Dan had called the place Thornycroft Hill. It did not take much of a leap to link Thornycroft with Thornacre.

  He picked up the AA book again.

  Oliver spent what was left of the night wrestling with the warring logic of what he had pieced together, and when he drove out of London at first light, he still had no idea whether logic or panic or some other emotion altogether had dictated his journey.

  The length of the journey would have been daunting at any season but it was a nightmare prospect on Christmas Eve. Dan or somebody had calculated it to be seven or eight hours, and Oliver thought he could not possibly reach Thornacre before nightfall. Even following the sketched-out route which Dan might or might not have followed, Oliver knew perfectly well he would get lost several times. The notion of a train on Christmas Eve had only to be briefly examined to be discarded, and in any case he would need a car at the other end. It would have to be attempted. He had no idea what he would do if his car broke down halfway there.

  In the event, the car behaved properly, and Oliver did not go too far out of his way too many times. This was largely due to the greater part of the journey being on the motorway. He stopped at the places that Dan had jotted down, which were quite well spaced out, and gave thanks that although the skies were leaden and menacing, no snow was falling.

  He booked into the Black Boar as the church clock was chiming six o’clock that evening. He was stiff from the long drive, and he felt grubby and crumpled, but there was a sense of achievement at having reached his destination.

  The Black Boar appeared to be the traditional oak-beamed, inglenook-fireplaced inn. Charles II had hidden here, Elizabeth I had slept here, and Walter Scott had written something here.

  ‘At separate times, of course,’ said mine host with the
automatic geniality of one who produces this epigrammatical gem for all newcomers.

  ‘Of course.’ Oliver signed the book and was shown to a chintz-curtained, flower-papered room on the first floor.

  Dan’s hero, Adam Cadence, had stayed at a similar place in one of the later chapters, when he was trying to find the captured Rosamund. Dan had described it in detail and it had a good deal in common with the Black Boar, although there was no decadently luxurious four-poster here as there had been for Adam, and there had not been an Egon Ronay recommended sign outside either. But the room he was shown to was clean, the bed was comfortable and the sheets were lavender-scented, with a white honeycomb quilt. There was a pleasing scent of old timbers and wood smoke, and a printed notice on the dressing table informed Oliver that dinner was served in the dining room between seven and eight thirty each evening; bar meals were available in the Oak Bar, breakfast was between eight and nine, and please not to use all the hot water when bathing because they were not on mains out here and hot water sometimes ran a bit low.

  Oliver washed, pulled on a clean shirt and sweater, and went down to the bar. Seven o’clock. He would have a drink and something to eat, and mingle with the locals in the hope of finding out a bit about Thornacre. From there he would lead up to questions about lone visitors to the area. In such a small place, a single man would surely not have gone unremarked.

  He had the curious sensation that Dan was quite close to him.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  The Black Boar’s meals fell a long way short of those enjoyed by Dan’s hero. Oliver, dining off something called Chicken a la King, which was served in a peculiar brown dish, and which, as far as he could see, was glorified chicken soup out of a tin, remembered with regret Dan’s description of the candle-lit dining room where Adam Cadence had partaken of a gourmet meal washed down with a very good vintage Bordeaux. Afterwards he had talked the manager’s daughter into joining him in the four-poster by way of diversion until it was time to set off for the castle keep and fair Rosamund. Dan had been quite graphic over the sexual athletics in the four-poster; Oliver felt he was learning a good deal about Dan that he had never suspected.