The House on the Strand

by Daphne Du Maurier

  "It is over," he said. "Ride to the Priory at once and inform the Prior, that he may give orders for tolling the bell. Work will cease when the men hear the summons, and they will start to come in from the fields, and assemble on the green. Directly you have delivered your message to the Prior ride on home and place this package in the cellar, then wait for my return. I have much to do, and may not be back tonight."

  The boy nodded, and disappeared into the stables. Roger passed through the archway into the court once more. Otto Bodrugan was standing at the entrance to the house. Roger hesitated a moment, then crossed the court to him.

  "My lady asks you to go to her," he said, "with Sir William and Lady Ferrers and the lady Isolda. I will call William and the children."

  "Is Sir Henry worse?" asked Bodrugan.

  "He is dead, Sir Otto. Not five minutes since, without recovering consciousness, peacefully, in his sleep."

  "I am sorry," said Bodrugan, "but it is better so. I pray God we may both go as peacefully when our time comes though undeservedly." Both men crossed themselves. Automatically I did the same. "I will tell the others," he continued. "Lady Ferrers may go into hysterics, but no matter. How is my sister?"

  "Calm, Sir Otto."

  "I expected it."

  Bodrugan paused before turning into the house. "You are aware," he said, and there was something hesitant in his manner, "that William, being a minor, will forfeit his lands to the King until he attains his majority?"

  "I am, Sir Otto."

  "The confiscation would be little more than a formality in ordinary circumstances," Bodrugan went on. "As William's uncle by marriage, and therefore his legal guardian, I should be empowered to administer his estates, with the King as overlord. But the circumstances are not ordinary, owing to the part I took in the so-called rebellion." The steward maintained discreet silence, his face inscrutable. "Therefore," said Bodrugan, "the escheator acting for the minor and the King is likely to be one held in greater esteem than myself--his cousin Sir John Carminowe, in all probability. In that event, I don't doubt he will arrange matters smoothly for my sister."

  The irony in his voice was unmistakable.

  Roger inclined his head without replying, and Bodrugan went into the house. The steward's slow smile of satisfaction was instantly suppressed as the young Champernounes, with their cousin Henry, entered the court, laughing and chatting, having momentarily forgotten the imminence of death. Henry, the eldest of the party, was the first to sense, intuitively, what must have happened. He called the younger pair to silence, and motioned William to come forward. I saw the expression on the boy's face change from carefree laughter to apprehension, and I guessed how sudden dread must have turned his stomach sick.

  "Is it my father?" he asked.

  Roger nodded. "Take your brother and sister with you," he said, "and go to your mother. Remember, you are the eldest; she will look to you for support in the days to come."

  The boy clutched at the steward's arm. "You will remain with us, will you not?" he asked. "And my uncle Otto too?"

  "We shall see," answered Roger. "But you are the head of the family now."

  William made a supreme effort at self-control. He turned and faced his younger brother and sister and said, "Our father is dead. Please follow me," and walked into the house, head erect, but very pale. The children, startled, did as they were told, taking their cousin Henry's hand, and glancing at Roger I saw, for the first time, something of compassion on his face, and pride as well; the boy he must have known from cradle days had not disgraced himself. He waited a few moments, then followed them.

  The hall appeared deserted. A tapestry hanging at the far end near the hearth had been drawn aside, showing a small stairway to the upper room, by which Otto Bodrugan and the Ferrers must have ascended, and the children too. I could hear the shuffle of feet overhead, then silence, followed by the low murmur of the monk's voice, "Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetualuceat eis."

  I said the hall appeared deserted, and so it was, but for the slender figure in lilac: Isolda was the only member of the group who had not gone to the room above. At sight of her Roger paused on the threshold, before moving forward with deference.

  "Lady Carminowe does not wish to pay tribute with the rest of the family?" he asked.

  Isolda had not noticed him standing there by the entrance, but now she turned her head and looked at him direct, and there was so much coldness in her eyes that standing where I was, beside the steward, they seemed to sweep me with the same contempt as they did him.

  "It is not my practice to make a mockery of death," she said.

  If Roger was surprised he gave no sign of it, but made the same deferential gesture as before. "Sir Henry would be grateful for your prayers," he said.

  "He has had them with regularity for many years," she answered, "and with increasing fervor these past weeks."

  The edge in her voice was evident to me, and must have been doubly so to the steward. "Sir Henry has ailed ever since making the pilgrimage to Campostella," he replied. "They say Sir Ralph de Beaupre suffers today from the same sickness. It is a wasting fever, there is no cure for it. Sir Henry had so little regard for his own person that it was hard to treat him. I can assure you that everything possible was done."

  "I understand Sir Ralph Beaupre retains full possession of his faculties despite his fever," Isolda replied. "My cousin did not. He recognized none of us for a month or more, yet his brow was cool, the fever was not high."

  "No two men are alike in sickness," Roger answered. "What will save the one will trouble the other. If Sir Henry wandered in his mind it was his misfortune."

  "Made the more effective by the potions given him," she said. "My grandmother, Isolda de Cardinham, had a treatise on herbs, written by a learned doctor who went to the Crusades, and she bequeathed it to me when she died, because I was her namesake. I am no stranger to the seeds of the black poppy and the white, water hemlock, mandragora, and the sleep they can induce."

  Roger, startled out of his attitude of deference, did not answer her at once. Then he said, "These herbs are used by all apothecaries for easing pain. The monk, Jean de Meral, was trained in the parent-house at Angers and is especially skilled. Sir Henry himself had implicit faith in him."

  "I don't doubt Sir Henry's faith, the monk's skill, or his zeal in employing that skill, but a healing plant can turn malign if the dose is increased," replied Isolda.

  She had made her challenge, and he knew it. I remembered that trestle table at the foot of the bed, and the bowls upon it, now carefully wrapped in sacking and carried away.

  "This is a house of mourning," said Roger, "and will continue so for several days. I advise you to speak of this matter to my lady, not to me. It is none of my business."

  "Nor mine either," replied Isolda. "I speak through attachment to my cousin, and because I am not easily fooled. You might remember it."

  One of the children started crying overhead, and there was a sudden lull in the murmur of prayers, the sound of movement, and the scurrying of footsteps down the stairs. The daughter of the house--she could not have been more than ten--came running into the room, and flung herself into Isolda's arms.

  "They say he is dead," she said, "yet he opened his eyes and looked at me, just once, before closing them again. No one else saw, they were too busy with their prayers. Did he mean that I must follow him to the grave?"

  Isolda held the child to her protectively, staring over her shoulder at Roger all the while, and suddenly she said, "If anything evil has been done this day or yesterday, you will be held responsible, with others, when the time comes. Not in this world, where we lack proof, but in the next, before God."

  Roger moved forward, with some impulse, I think, to silence her or take the child from her, and I stepped into his path to prevent him, but stumbled, catching my foot in a loose stone. And there was nothing about me but great mounds of earth and hillocks of grass, gorse-bushes and the root of a dead tre
e, and behind me a large pit, circular in shape like a quarry, full of old tins and fallen slate. I caught hold of a twisted stem of withered gorse, retching violently, and in the distance I could hear the hoot of a diesel engine as it rattled below me in the valley.

  7

  The quarry was steep, carved out of the hillside, spread about with holly and clumps of ivy, the debris of years scattered among the earth and stones, and the path leading out of it ran into a small pit, and then another, and yet a third, all heaped about with banks and ditches and knolls of tufted grass. The gorse was everywhere, masking the view, and because of my vertigo I could not see but kept stumbling against the banks, with one thought paramount in my mind--that I must get out of this wasteland and find the car. It was imperative to find the car.

  I caught hold of a thorn tree and held on to it to steady myself, and there were more old cans at my feet, a broken bedstead, a tire, and still more clumps of ivy and holly. Feeling had returned to my limbs, but as I staggered up the mound above me the dizziness increased, the nausea too, and I slithered down into another pit and lay there panting, my stomach heaving. I was violently sick, which gave momentary relief, and I got up again and climbed another mound. Now I saw that I was only a few hundred yards from the original hedge where I had smoked my cigarette--the mounds and the quarry beyond had been hidden from me then by a sloping bank and a broken gate. I looked down once more into the valley, and saw the tail-end of the train disappearing round the corner to Par station. Then I climbed through a gap in the hedge and began to walk uphill across the field and back to the car.

  I reached the lay-by just as another violent attack of nausea came upon me. I staggered sideways among the heap of cement and planks and was violently sick again, while ground and sky revolved around me. The vertigo I had experienced that first day in the patio was nothing to this, and as I crouched on the heap of cement waiting for it to pass I kept saying to myself, "Never again... never again..." with all the fervor and weak anger of someone coming round from an anesthetic, the revulsion beyond control.

  Before I collapsed I had been aware, dimly, that there was another car in the lay-by besides my own, and after what seemed an eternity, when the nausea and the vertigo ceased, and I was coughing and blowing my nose, I heard the door of the other car slam, and realized that the owner had come across and was staring down at me.

  "Are you all right now?" he asked.

  "Yes," I said, "yes, I think so."

  I rose unsteadily to my feet, and he put out a hand to help me. He was about my own age, early forties, with a pleasant face and a remarkably strong grip.

  "Got your keys?"

  "Keys..." I fumbled in my pocket for the car keys. Christ! What if I had dropped them in the quarry or among those mounds--I should never find them again. They were in my top pocket, with the flask; the relief was so tremendous that I felt steadier at once, and walked without assistance to the car. Another fumble, though: I could not fit the key into the lock.

  "Give it to me, I'll do it," said my Samaritan.

  "It's extremely kind of you. I do apologize," I said.

  "All in a day's work," he answered. "I happen to be a doctor."

  I felt my face stiffen, then quickly stretch into a smile intended to disarm. Casual courtesy from a passing motorist was one thing; professional attention from a medico another. As it was he was staring at me with interest, and small blame to him. I wondered what he was thinking.

  "The fact is," I said, "I must have walked up the hill a bit too fast. I felt giddy when I reached the top, and then was sick. Couldn't stop myself."

  "Oh, well," he said, "it's been done before. I suppose a lay-by is as good a place as any to throw up in. You'd be surprised what they find down here in the tourist season."

  He was not fooled, though. His eyes were particularly penetrating. I wondered if he could see the shape of the flask bulging the top pocket of my jacket.

  "Have you far to go?" he asked.

  "No," I said, "a couple of miles or so, no more."

  "In that case," he suggested, "wouldn't it be more sensible if you left your car here and let me drive you home? You could always send for it later."

  "It's very kind of you," I said, "but I assure you I'm perfectly all right now. It was just one of those passing things."

  "H'm," he said, "rather violent while it lasted."

  "Honestly," I said, "there's nothing wrong. Perhaps it was something I had for lunch, and then walking uphill..."

  "Look," he interrupted, "you're not a patient of mine, I'm not trying to prescribe. I'm only warning you that it might be dangerous to drive."

  "Yes," I said, "it's very good of you and I'm grateful for your advice." The thing was, he could be right. Yesterday I had driven to St. Austell and back home with the greatest ease. Today it might be different. The vertigo might seize me once again. He must have seen my hesitation, for he said, "If you like I'll follow you, just to see you're OK."

  I could hardly refuse--to have done so would have made him the more suspicious. "That's very decent of you," I told him. "I only have to go to the top of Polmear hill."

  "All on the way home," he smiled. "I live in Fowey."

  I climbed rather gingerly into my car and turned out of the lay-by. He followed close behind, and I thought to myself that if I drove into the hedge I was done for. But I navigated the narrow lane without difficulty, and heaved a sigh of relief as I emerged on to the main road and shot up Polmear hill. When I turned right, to go to Kilmarth, I thought he might follow me to the house, but he waved his hand and continued along the road to Fowey. It showed discretion, at any rate. Perhaps he thought I was staying in Polkerris or one of the nearby farms. I passed through the gate and down the drive, put the car away in the garage, and let myself into the house. Then I was sick again.

  The first thing I did when I recovered, still feeling pretty shaky, was to rinse out the flask. Then I went down to the laboratory and stood it in the sink to soak. It was safer there than in the pantry. It was not until I went upstairs once more, and flung myself into an armchair in the music-room, exhausted, that I remembered the bowls wrapped in sacking. Had I left them in the car?

  I was about to get up and go down to the garage to look for them, because they must be cleansed even more thoroughly than the flask and put away under lock and key, when I realized with a sudden wave of apprehension, just as though something were being vomited from my brain as well as my stomach, that I had been on the point of confusing the present with the past. The bowls had been given to Roger's brother, not to me.

  I sat very still, my heart thumping in my chest. There had been no confusion before. The two worlds had been distinct. Was it because the nausea and the vertigo had been so great that the past and the present had run together in my mind? Or had I miscounted the drops, making the draft more potent? No way of telling. I clutched the sides of the armchair. They were solid, real. Everything about me was real. The drive home, the doctor, the quarry full of old cans and crumbling stones, they were real. Not the house above the estuary, nor the people in it, nor the dying man, nor the monk, nor the bowls in sacking--they were all products of the drug, a drug that turned a clear brain sick.

  I began to be angry, not so much with myself, the willing guinea-pig, as with Magnus. He was unsure of his findings. He did not know what he had done. No wonder he had asked me to send up bottle B to try out the contents on the laboratory monkey. He had suspected something was wrong, and now I could tell him what it was. Neither exhilaration nor depression, but confusion of thought. The merging of two worlds. Well, that was enough. I had had my lot. Magnus could make his experiments on a dozen monkeys, but not on me.

  The telephone started ringing, and, startled out of my chair, I went across to the library to answer it. Damn his telepathic powers. He would tell me he knew where I had been, that the house above the estuary was familiar ground, there was no need to worry, it was all perfectly safe providing I touched no one; if I felt ill or
confused it was a side-effect of no consequence. I would put him right.

  I seized the telephone and someone said, "Hold on a moment, please, I have a call for you," and I heard the click as Magnus took over.

  "Damn and blast you," I said. "This is the last time I behave like a performing seal."

  There was a little gasp at the other end, and then a laugh. "Thanks for the welcome home, darling."

  It was Vita. I stood stupefied, holding on to the receiver. Was her voice part of the confusion?

  "Darling?" she repeated. "Are you there? Is something wrong?"

  "No," I said, "nothing's wrong, but what's happened? Where are you speaking from?"

  "London airport," she answered. "I caught an earlier plane, that's all. Bill and Diana are collecting me and taking me out to dinner. I thought you might call the flat later tonight and wonder why I didn't answer. Sorry if I took you by surprise."

  "Well, you did," I said, "but forget it. How are you?"

  "Fine," she said, "just fine. What about you? Who did you think I was when you answered me just now? You didn't sound too pleased."

  "In point of fact," I told her, "I thought it was Magnus. I had to do a chore for him... I've written you all about it in my letter, which you won't get until tomorrow morning."

  She laughed. I knew the sound, with the slight "I thought as much" inflection. "So your Professor has been putting you to work," she said. "That doesn't surprise me. What's he been making you do that has turned you into a performing seal?"

  "Oh, endless things, sorting out junk, I'll explain when I see you. When do the boys get back?"

  "Tomorrow," she said. "Their train arrives at a hideous hour in the morning. Then I thought I'd pack them in the car and come on down. How long will it take?"

  "Wait," I said, "that's just it. I'm not ready for you. I've told you so in my letter. Leave it until after the weekend."

  There was silence the other end. I had dropped the usual clanger.

  "Not ready?" she repeated. "But you must have been there all of five days? I thought you'd fixed up with some woman to come in and cook and clean, make beds and so on. Has she let us down?"

  "No, it's not that," I told her. "She's first-rate, couldn't be better. Look, darling, I can't explain over the telephone, it's all in my letter, but, frankly, we weren't expecting you until Monday at the earliest."