by Sarah Rayne
‘I never listen to gossip either,’ said Oliver.
‘What about Dr Sterne, sir? Dr Leo Sterne. Have you ever met him?’
‘Not as far as I know. I suppose I might have met him somewhere and forgotten.’
‘I think you’d have remembered him, sir. Now then, would you mind giving us your own movements yesterday? From around two o’clock onwards. Just a matter of routine, you know.’
Oliver had in fact spent most of the afternoon and evening reading Dan’s manuscript and trying to decide if it was a good time to make a second assault on October House, and perhaps leave a careful note for Thalia Caudle. He told the sergeant that he had been working in his room for most of the day – the landlord would probably confirm this. He had had some lunch in the bar – ham and cheese rolls and a half pint of lager, if they wanted chapter and verse – and then he had taken a turn around the village afterwards, just to get a breath of fresh air. No, he had not taken his car out, he had left it in the car park here, and no, he had certainly not been as far as Thornacre. He had spent the evening in the bar where he had eaten the Black Boar’s idea of beef stroganoff for dinner.
The sergeant wrote these blameless details down and thanked Oliver for providing them. Probably, he added, buttoning his notebook into an upper jacket pocket, the missing girl would turn up of her own accord. This was what often happened. The policewoman added that they were not treating the disappearance as suspicious.
‘Not yet,’ said the sergeant doomfully. ‘But she’s been missing all night now, which makes it a matter of concern. If you think of anything that might help, I hope you’ll give us a call, Dr Tudor. I’ll give you a card with the station’s phone number and the—’
‘Have one of mine, Dr Tudor,’ said the policewoman. ‘WPC Morrison. That’s my extension number.’
‘Thank you very much.’ Oliver pocketed the card. ‘I hope you find the girl,’ he added.
‘The inspector thinks she’s most likely gone off on a little expedition on her own account,’ said the sergeant. ‘She was taken out just after lunch yesterday by a lady visiting one of the other patients at Thornacre – a Mrs Caudle staying in Blackmere village – and she was dropped off at the gates at about five o’clock.’
Oliver had been about to make good his exit. He stopped in the doorway and said, very carefully, ‘Really? And that all checks out, does it?’
‘Oh yes. This Mrs Caudle was quite clear. Apparently the girl, Quincy, had befriended Mrs Caudle’s niece in Thornacre and Mrs Caudle arranged a little outing to thank her. There was some plan of going to an art exhibition somewhere but it didn’t come off, and so she drove the girl back.’
Oliver wondered whether he should say that his brother had known Thalia Caudle in London, and decided against it. Better not appear too familiar with anything up here. He said, ‘Is it possible that Mrs Caudle didn’t take the girl as near to Thornacre as she’s claiming? If she was in a hurry perhaps she dropped her off somewhere on the road, and the girl – what did you say her name was? Quincy? – wandered off in the wrong direction.’
‘Wandered a bit too far and got lost?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘Mrs Caudle didn’t strike me as the kind to tell lies, sir. She’s been up here for two or three months. Quiet lady. Recovering from the death of her son. Well thought of, it seems.’
‘Oh, I see. Well, anyway, Sergeant, if I see or hear anything that might help, I’ll let you know. Or WPC Morrison.’
‘Very kind of you, Dr Tudor. You, er, aren’t planning on leaving the area yet, you said?’
‘Not for a few days. But you’ve got my Oxford address in any case.’
‘Oh yes, sir.’
Oliver went back up to his room. It was the middle of the morning and there was a dry, hard whiteness everywhere that heralded a frost-ridden night to come. The girl who had vanished from Thornacre might be somewhere out there, lost, frightened, shivering with cold.
Or locked up and helpless?
He had finished Dan’s manuscript after breakfast that morning, which was to say he had read as far as Dan had written. There was a rough draft of a conversation between Adam and the hotel manager’s daughter, in which a seldom used, semi-secret tunnel into and out of the ancient sea fortress was mentioned. Oliver supposed that the idea had been for Adam to sneak in via this route, and could not decide if this was a clumsy plot device or not. It looked as if Dan had not been able to decide either, because the manuscript ended at this point. Had Dan abandoned it? Or been forced to abandon it?
Oliver sat back and considered October House and Thalia Caudle again. There was probably no connection at all. But it was curious, yes, it was very curious indeed that the girl from Thornacre, Quincy, had vanished on the very afternoon she had gone out with Thalia. Probably she was no longer missing. Probably she was already safely back inside Thornacre.
And however much all this was mirroring Dan’s book, you could not go creeping around the gardens of other people’s properties. For one thing you would be caught. You might, if you were sufficiently foolhardy, get away with doing it at midnight, but if anyone was going to commit the classic folly of prowling around October House at midnight it was not going to be Oliver.
But there was something else he could do. He could go up to Dan’s nightmare mansion and talk to Leo Sterne.
It gave him an odd, through-the-looking-glass feeling to find himself shown into the black and white tiled hall and to smell the faint, lingering cooking scents and the miasma of illness that characterised most hospitals and that Dan had described so well. Dan’s asylum had had dark red tiles and chipped marble floor, but that was about the only difference.
Dr Sterne was younger than Oliver had expected – he was probably in his late thirties – and he was tall and rather thin, with the thinness of people who possessed a great deal of mental energy. He had very clear eyes and although he looked as if he might not suffer fools gladly, he also looked as if he could be extremely gentle. Oliver, who had been trying to dismiss the leering image of Dan’s Dr Bentinck, liked him at once. This was no Bentinck; this was someone he could talk to. He remembered that Sterne was a psychiatrist and supposed it was a talent that went with the territory.
He thanked Leo for seeing him without an appointment, and told his story, careful not to omit anything, scrupulous not to over-emphasise. He explained about Dan’s brief relationship with Thalia Caudle in London, which might or might not be significant; Dan’s subsequent disappearance, and the threadbare but convincing clues that had led Oliver himself to Northumberland.
‘The police have questioned me about your missing girl,’ he said. ‘I can’t be sure that there’s any connection, of course, but it’s a bit suggestive, I think. It raises a few questions about Thalia Caudle.’
‘I think it does as well.’ Leo frowned, considering this, and remembered his own fleeting distrust of Thalia.
Oliver said diffidently, ‘You do believe me, do you?’
‘What? Oh, good God, yes, of course I believe you. You’re clearly in your right mind – at least as much as any of us are these days – and Thalia Caudle was the last person to see Quincy. That makes her the most suspicious. I can’t begin to think what her motives for kidnapping the child would be, though. Even if she’s mad – I mean really, clinically mad – she’d need a motive.’
‘Really?’ Oliver had wondered about this.
‘Mad people need motives more often than you’d think,’ said Leo wryly. ‘In fact there’s almost always a thread of astonishingly convincing logic running through what they do. It’s warped logic, of course, but not to them. That’s the point. One of the most stubborn cases of persecution mania I ever had was a young man who was absolutely convinced that he was an IRA target. He refused to go outside the house for six months because of it, and to prove his argument he even compiled a file of all the evidence. He recorded the times that suspicious cars were parked outside his house and took Polaroid photos of people he clai
med were watching him. He even produced threatening letters.’
‘Was he really an IRA target?’
‘No, of course not. He’d written the letters himself and the watchers turned out to be newspaper boys or leaflet distributors. His only connection with Ireland was drinking its whiskey. Listen, what are we going to do about Thalia Caudle? What can we do?’
‘I’m not sure we can do anything,’ said Oliver slowly. ‘She hasn’t, as far as we know, actually committed any crime yet.’
‘Thank God for a collaborator with a logical mind,’ said Leo. ‘You’re right, of course. I don’t know a great deal about police procedure but I don’t think what we’ve got adds up to very much. I’d guess the police would need far more evidence before they could search October House.’
‘And,’ said Oliver, ‘if the lady is up to something questionable, we shouldn’t risk the law galloping up there with sirens blaring and trumpets sounding. It’d alert her and she’d bolt.’ He paused, and then said, ‘But there’s no law I can think of that stops me from calling on her myself.’
‘Now?’
‘Well, actually,’ said Oliver, ‘I was thinking of a little later in the day.’
‘How much later?’
‘About midnight.’
It was actually a quarter to eleven that night when Oliver crept out of the Black Boar. Driving to October House was the last thing he wanted to do, but he knew he would not be able to sleep until he had made sure that neither Dan nor Leo Sterne’s missing girl was there.
His car started with reasonable obedience this time, but the inside was like a fridge. As the engine warmed up, Oliver scraped a thick coating of ice from the windows. The roads were icy as well, black and treacherous. In this temperature it would take at least half an hour for heat to trickle into the car, and by that time he would either be back in his room at the Black Boar, or pounced on by Thalia Caudle as a trespasser, or even incarcerated in the nearest gaol. In view of the police sergeant’s suspicious attitude, this last seemed the likeliest fate.
As he parked in a patch of deep shadow, he was beginning to think he should have risked calling in the police after all. But it was too late to back out now, so he took off his glasses which were apt to fall off at unpredictable moments and climbed cautiously over the tall iron gates.
As he made his way furtively up the tree-lined drive, he saw that the house was not in darkness this time. A chink of light showed from the large bay window on the left of the porch, where the curtain had not quite been fully drawn. Oliver eyed it. It would be spine-tinglingly risky to go up to that window and look inside, but now he was here he might as well see what he could. He began to inch forward. The house was surrounded by a wide gravel path and the gravel was loose and crunchy underfoot. Oliver was wearing rubber-soled shoes, but he had the horrid feeling that every step could be heard for several miles and that the walls of October House were tissue thin. He wondered how much Dan’s book had influenced him, or even whether he was suffering from delusions. The possibility that some of his students had secretly laced his toothpaste with whatever disgusting drug was currently in fashion occurred to him as perfectly feasible.
The uncurtained section of window cast a narrow triangle of light across part of the garden. It was necessary to avoid standing in the beam of light, but it was also necessary to get as close as possible to the window if he was going to see anything. The gravel was a problem but Oliver had by this time discovered that if he went very slowly, letting his weight down gradually with each step, it made only the faintest of sounds. He approached the window in this fashion, hardly daring to breathe, expecting at any minute to see lights blaze all over the house and people come running out to question his presence. Supposing he had got it all wrong? Supposing this was the wrong house? But when, after what felt like a hundred years, he reached the window and crouched under the sill, peering in, he saw that the house was unquestionably the right one.
The room beyond the bay was large and lit by an overhead light and by rather dim wall lights on each side of the chimney breast. They looked as if they were the original gas brackets, adapted to take electricity. A fire burned in the hearth, and the room was comfortably furnished although it was not the last word in luxury. Set against the far wall was a glass-fronted bookcase and a round table of rather florid Victorian design, and drawn up to the fire were several deep armchairs with glazed chintz covers.
In one of the chairs sat a thin-faced dark-haired lady whom Oliver instantly recognised from the photograph in Women in Business, and then recognised on another, deeper level. Thalia Caudle. Dan’s greedy, unscrupulous Margot. In the other chair was a thin girl who looked about eighteen but who had eyes that might have been any age. She was not very pretty and she was not at all attractive, but she had a face you would find it difficult to stop looking at. She was sitting bolt upright in the chair, her knuckles white where she was gripping the chair arms, and her eyes were fixed on Thalia with the most abject fear Oliver had ever seen in any living creature. Quincy?
His first instinct was to bang down the brass knocker on the door and demand admittance, and then to grab the girl and beat it out of Thalia Caudle’s reach, trusting to God or the Devil to let him get clear. But you don’t know that it is Quincy, said his mind sharply. And although she doesn’t look very happy, she isn’t tied up or under any kind of duress.
As Oliver watched, Thalia leaned forward. The leaping firelight fell across her face, and although she was smiling, it was the mad smile of the possessed and her eyes glittered. Oliver felt a shiver of fear. This was a creature drained of all humanity, as mad as the moonlight that showered its eerie radiance into the night, as malignant as Margot when she lured the trusting Anne-Marie into the dank outhouse.
Thalia stood up and moved to the girl’s chair, and the girl shrank back. Thalia smiled, as if this was pleasing, and then reached out to touch the short, rough hair. She said something that Oliver could not catch, but whatever it was, it brought a sudden look of resignation to the girl’s face. She stood up and began to undress. The firelight lit her thin, immature body to soft radiance, but even at this distance, even viewed through the chink of rain-spattered window, the cynicism in her eyes was apparent.
She’s hating it, thought Oliver, torn between disgust and compulsion. She’s hating it, but she’s not really surprised by it. But I’m surprised. Did I misunderstand about Dan and Thalia that night? Or maybe she’s one of those females who likes men and women. I don’t think I want to see any more of this. It’s supposed to be most men’s ultimate fantasy, two females making love to one another, naked in front of a leaping fire, but there’s nothing seductive about this. It’s grotesque. There’s something evil and wrong about it.
There was a moment when he thought a ghost image moved at Thalia’s side – a lady a little younger, a little sharper of cheekbone and a little redder of lips. She crossed in front of the hearth, a phantom silhouette, caught and held by the leaping firelight. Oliver blinked and the image vanished.
Thalia was standing in front of the girl, running her hands over her body; her eyes were half-closed and there was an expression of extreme concentration on her face. She’s savouring her, thought Oliver. This isn’t about sex or lust, I was right about that; this is something much deeper and much darker.
And I’m no nearer to finding out what Thalia’s aim is in all this, or whether she’s got Dan, and I haven’t the remotest idea what I’d better do next.
Chapter Thirty-two
Snatcher Harris had hugged his secret to himself all through the day.
There had been a lot of hours to get through but once they had stopped bothering him with their silly questions he had passed the time thinking about tonight; about taking Imogen out of her white bed, hugging her to him, feeling the soft, warm flesh through the thin nightgown she would be wearing, and then hiding her away for the Lady to come and fetch. He knew exactly where he was going to hide her; he had pointed to the place when the L
ady had asked about this, and she had nodded and looked pleased.
He waited until everyone was safely asleep in the long dormitory where he had his bed and his locker, and then crept out, pausing by each of the beds. It gave you power to look at people while they were asleep; Harris liked doing it. Most people looked horrible. He stood over them all in turn, looking at their faces, seeing how they blubbered their lips in a snory way. When he left the dormitory, he did so carefully, shutting the door so that it did not click and wake anyone, and then scuttled along the corridor to Imogen’s room.
Imogen did not look horrible while she was asleep. He knew this because he had crept into her room several times while there was no one about and stood looking down at her. It would have been nice to think she had been aware of him. It would have been very satisfying to think he might have got into her dreams, whatever they had been, and been frightened.
Imogen was not exactly asleep while Snatcher Harris was making his way towards her room, but she was not quite awake either. She thought that fragments of the strange forest place clung to her mind, and once or twice over the past two days she had been aware of the sick twilight still hovering on the outer rim of consciousness. Other things hovered there as well, but Imogen had not yet managed to sort them out properly. Her parents dying and something about Aunt Thalia, and something else about Quincy. She thought, vaguely, that it was odd that Quincy had not come to see her. Or had Quincy been at Briar House? The two places still got mixed up in her mind, but Dr Sterne had said that would get better. He had told her not to worry. He had a nice way of saying her name, Imogen, so that you thought about smoky-looking glasses and images reflected in fathomless pools. And his eyes were like melted silver merged with ebony. If you saw him in the dark they would glow.
She was falling deeper into sleep now. If she half closed her eyes she could just make out long, reaching shadows, like purple fingers, like melted bruises, oozing forward. It was like a travesty of that poem about Christopher Robin – ‘If I open my eyes just a little bit more, I can see nannie’s dressing gown on the door . . .’
