by Jonathan Coe
This, however, was easier said than done. The upper floor of the house presented a maze of corridors, and Michael had, he now realized, been so distracted by the butler’s prophecies that he had not taken proper notice of their various twists and turns. After several minutes’ walking up and down the shadowy, thinly carpeted passages, his unease had begun to grow into something approaching panic. He also had the feeling – a ridiculous feeling, he knew – that he was not alone in this part of the house. He could have sworn that he had heard doors being stealthily opened and closed, and even that, once or twice, he had caught a fleeting glimpse of something moving in the darkest corner of one of the landings. This feeling was not completely shaken off even when he arrived (just when he was least expecting it) at the top of the Great Staircase. Here he paused, standing for a moment between two rusting suits of armour, one of them wielding an axe, the other a mace.
Now: was he ready to face the family? He patted his hair into shape, straightened his jacket, and checked that he hadn’t left his flies undone. Finally, noticing that one of his shoelaces had come loose, he knelt down to tie it up.
He had been in this position for only a few seconds when he heard the scream of a woman’s voice behind him.
‘Look out! For God’s sake look out!’
He wheeled around, and saw that the axe-wielding suit of armour was toppling slowly towards him. With a cry of alarm he flung himself forward, just half an instant before the blade of the venerable weapon embedded itself with a thud on the very spot where he had been kneeling.
‘Are you all right?’ said the woman, running to his side.
‘I think so,’ said Michael, who had in fact knocked his head on the banister. He tried to get up and failed. Noticing his difficulty, the woman sat down on the topmost step, and allowed him to lie across her lap.
‘Did you see anyone?’ asked Michael. ‘Somebody must have pushed it.’
Just then, as if on cue, a large black cat crept out from the alcove where the suit of armour had been standing, and ran off down the stairs with a guilty miaow.
‘Torquil!’ said the woman, scoldingly. ‘What were you doing out of the kitchen?’ She smiled. ‘Well, there’s your assassin, I suppose.’
A door had opened downstairs, and several members of the family rushed out from the sitting room to investigate the disturbance.
‘What was that noise?’
‘What’s going on here?’
Two men, whom Michael recognized as Roderick and Mark Winshaw, were heaving the suit of armour back into place, while Tabitha herself bent over him and asked: ‘He isn’t dead, is he?’
‘Oh, I don’t think so. He’s had a knock on the head, that’s all.’
Michael was slowly coming back to his senses, and now found himself gazing up at his rescuer, a very attractive and intelligent-looking woman in her early thirties, with long blonde hair and a kind smile; and as soon as he did so, his eyes widened in amazement. He blinked, three or four times. He knew this woman. He had seen her before. At first he thought it was Shirley Eaton. Then he blinked again, and a distant, more elusive memory rose to the surface. Something to do with Joan … With Sheffield. With … yes! It was the painter. The painter from Joan’s house. But it couldn’t be! What on earth would she be doing here?
‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ asked Phoebe, seeing the change in his expression. ‘You look a bit odd.’
‘I think I must have gone mad,’ said Michael.
Tabitha laughed hysterically at these words.
‘How amusing!’ she cried. ‘That makes two of us.’
And with this enlightening remark, she led everyone back downstairs.
CHAPTER THREE
Don’t Panic, Chaps!
‘MR Mortimer Winshaw’s will,’ said Everett Sloane, looking gravely around the table, ‘takes the form of a short statement, which he composed only a few days ago. If nobody objects, I shall now read it in full.’
Before he was able to proceed, the first crack of thunder sounded outside, causing the windows to vibrate and the candle-sticks on the mantelpiece to rattle loudly. It was followed almost at once by a streak of lightning, which for a brief, hallucinatory moment made the intent and hawkish faces of the expectant family look suddenly pale and wraithlike.
‘ “I, Mortimer Winshaw,” ’ the solicitor began, ‘ “pen these last words to the surviving members of my family, in the sure and certain knowledge that they will be present to hear them. I must therefore begin by extending the warmest of welcomes to my nephews, Thomas and Henry, to my niece, Dorothy, to my younger nephew, Mark (son of dear, departed Godfrey), and last, but by no means least, to Hilary and Roderick, the offspring – though it almost shames me to acknowledge it – of my own loins.
‘ “To the three other guests, of whose attendance I am perhaps not quite so confident, I offer more tentative greetings. I hope and pray that, for one night at least, my dear sister Tabitha will be released from her outrageous confinement in order to be present at what promises to be a unique and, dare I say it, never-to-be-repeated family gathering. I hope, too, that she will be joined by my most loyal and selfless nurse, Miss Phoebe Barton, whose grace, charm and gentleness have been a source of great comfort to me in the last year of my life. And finally, I trust that the family’s luckless biographer, Mr Michael Owen, will be on hand to make a complete record of an evening which will, I believe, provide a most fitting conclusion to his eagerly awaited history.
‘ “The following remarks, however, are addressed not to this trio of interested bystanders, but to the six relatives previously mentioned, whose presence around this table tonight is already a foregone conclusion. And yet how, you might ask, can I possibly make this prediction with such assurance? What force could possibly motivate six people, whose lives keep them so busily and gloriously occupied on the world’s stage, to abandon their commitments at a moment’s notice and to travel to this lonely, godforsaken spot – a spot, I might add, which they found no difficulty in avoiding while its owner was still alive? The answer is simple: they will be propelled by the very same force which has always – and solely – driven them throughout the entire conduct of their professional careers. I refer, of course, to greed: naked, clawing, brutish greed. Never mind that we have, gathered around this table tonight, six of the wealthiest people in the country. Never mind that they all know, for a certain fact, that my personal fortune can only amount to a tiny fraction of their own. Greed is so ingrained in these people, has become such a fixed habit of mind, that I know they will not be able to resist making the journey, merely in order to scrape whatever leavings they can from the rotten barrel which is all that remains of my estate.” ’
‘Poetic old thing, wasn’t he?’ said Dorothy, seemingly not at all discomfited by the tone of the document.
‘If rather prone to mixing his metaphors,’ said Hilary. ‘You scrape the bottom of barrels, don’t you? And aren’t they only meant to be rotten if there’s a rotten apple in them?’
‘If I may continue,’ said Mr Sloane. ‘There is only one more paragraph.’
Silence fell.
‘ “And so it gives me no small pleasure to announce to these parasites – these leeches in human form – that all their hopes are in vain. I die in a condition of poverty such as will be beyond their imaginations to grasp. Throughout the long, happy years of our marriage, Rebecca and I did not live wisely. What money we had, we spent. Doubtless we should have been busy hoarding it, investing it, putting it to work, or devoting all our energies to sniffing it out and laying our hands on even more of it. But that, I’m afraid, was not our philosophy. We chose to enjoy ourselves, and the consequence was that we ran up debts: debts which remain unpaid to this day. Debts so large that even the sale of this accursed residence – always assuming that we could find someone foolish enough to buy it – would not be sufficient to cover them. I therefore bequeath these debts to the six aforementioned members of my family, and instruct that they be shared out amon
g them equally. A full schedule is attached as an appendix to this statement. It only remains for me to wish that you all pass a safe and pleasant evening together under this roof.
‘ “Dated this eleventh day of January, in the year nineteen hundred and ninety-one. Signed, Mortimer Winshaw.” ’
There was another crack of thunder. It was closer, now, and it rumbled on for some time. When it had finally died down, Mark said: ‘Of course, you all realize that legally he can’t get away with that. We’re under no obligation to bail him out with his creditors.’
‘Doubtless you’re right,’ said Thomas, rising to his feet and making for the whisky decanter. ‘But that’s hardly the point. The point, I suppose, was to have a damned good joke at our expense: and in that respect, I’d say he succeeded rather well.’
‘Well, at least it shows the old boy still had a bit of spirit in him,’ said Hilary.
‘How much was he paying you?’ barked Henry, suddenly turning in Phoebe’s direction.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘The fellow claims he didn’t have any money – so how come he was employing a private nurse?’
‘Your uncle paid Miss Barton,’ said the solicitor, pouring suave oil on troubled waters, ‘out of a capital sum raised on a mortgage against this property.’ He smiled at the angry faces ranged against him. ‘He really was a very poor man.’
‘Well, I don’t know about anybody else,’ said Hilary, getting up and pulling on the bell-rope, ‘but I could do with some supper after sitting through all that lot. It’s after ten and I’ve had nothing to eat all evening. Let’s see what Pyles can come up with.’
‘Not a bad idea,’ said Roddy, as he too gravitated towards the drinks cabinet. ‘And make sure he goes down to the wine cellar while he’s at it.’
‘Damn this weather,’ said Dorothy. ‘I could normally have driven back to the farm before midnight: but there’s no point in risking the roads tonight.’
‘Yes: looks like we’re here for the duration,’ Thomas agreed.
Tabitha rose stiffly from her chair.
‘I hope no one will mind,’ she said, ‘if I resume my former station. Only, this armchair is so comfortable, and you’ve no idea what a treat it is to sit beside a real fire. My room at the Institute is quite chilly, you know: even in the summer. Won’t you come and join me, Mr Owen? It’s so long since I’ve enjoyed the company of a real man of letters.’
Michael had not yet had a chance to talk to Phoebe, and had been about to reintroduce himself with a view to finding out if she remembered their earlier acquaintance; but he did not see that he could very well refuse his patron’s summons, and now went to join her by the hearth. As he took his seat, he glanced up at the portrait which hung above the fireplace, wondering if there was a pair of watchful eyes looking out from behind it. But this, he had to admit, was unlikely: it was a Picasso, and both eyes had been painted on the same side of the face.
‘Now tell me,’ Tabitha began, laying a thin hand on his knee. ‘Have you published any more of those fascinating novels?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ he answered. ‘Inspiration seems to have deserted me recently.’
‘Oh, what a shame. But never mind: I’m sure it will return. At least you are well established in the literary world, I hope?’
‘Well, it’s been a number of years, you see, since –’
‘You’re well known to the Bloomsbury group, for instance?’
Michael frowned. ‘The … Bloomsbury –?’
‘We haven’t corresponded for some years, to my regret, but Virginia and I were very close, at one time. And dear Winifred, of course. Winifred Holtby. You’re familiar with her work?’
‘Yes, I –’
‘You know, if it would help you at all in your career, I could quite easily supply you with a number of introductions. I have a certain amount of influence with Mr Eliot. In fact the truth of it is, if you can keep a secret’ (and here she lowered her voice to a whisper) ‘I’m told that he has quite a crush on me.’
‘You mean – T.S. Eliot?’ Michael faltered. ‘Author of The Waste Land?’
Tabitha let out a bright, musical laugh.
‘Why, you silly boy!’ she said. ‘Hadn’t you heard: he’s been dead for years!’
He joined in her laughter uncertainly. ‘Yes, of course.’
‘I hope you’re not trying to tease an old lady,’ she said, poking him playfully in the ribs with a knitting needle.
‘Who, me? Of course not.’
‘My reference,’ she explained, her eyes still twinkling at the joke, ‘was to Mr George Eliot. Author of Middlemarch and Mill on the Floss.’
Tabitha took up her ball of wool and began knitting again, smiling benignly all the while. She was only able to bring an end to Michael’s dumbfounded silence by introducing an abrupt change of subject.
‘Ever flown a Tornado?’
∗
Supper at Winshaw Towers that night was not a cheerful meal, consisting as it did of cold meat, pickles, cheese and an indifferent Chablis. They were only eight at table: Henry and Mark chose to remain in an upstairs room, watching the news on television. They both seemed to think that an announcement of American air strikes against Saddam Hussein might be imminent. The others all sat together at one end of the long table in the dining room, which was draughty and inhospitable. The radiators were not working, for some reason, and the electric chandelier was lacking several bulbs. They ate for some minutes in near-silence. Michael did not feel that he could initiate a private conversation with Phoebe in these circumstances, and the Winshaws themselves appeared to have little enough to say to one another. Meanwhile the constant howling of the wind, and the hammering of rain against the windowpanes, did nothing to raise anybody’s spirits.
The monotony was broken, at last, by the sound of heavy knocking upon the front door. Shortly afterwards they could hear the door being opened, and there were voices in the hall. Then Pyles shuffled into the dining room, where he informed the assembly as a whole: ‘There’s a gentleman outside, says he’s a policeman.’
Michael thought this a most dramatic announcement, but the others evinced no particular interest. It was finally Dorothy, seated nearest to the door, who got up and said: ‘Better have a word with him, I suppose.’
Michael followed her into the hall, where they were met by Mark, coming down the Great Staircase.
‘What’s all this about, then?’ he said.
A thickly bearded, beetle-browed figure of indeterminate age, his policeman’s uniform soaked through with the rain, introduced himself as Sergeant Kendall of the village constabulary.
‘By crimes!’ he exclaimed, his local accent almost impenetrable to Michael’s ear. ‘It’s a night when we’d all want to be tucked up safely at home, and no business to take us out of doors.’
‘What can we do for you, Sergeant?’ Dorothy asked.
‘Well, I’ve no wish to alarm you, Madam,’ the policeman said, ‘but I thought it best you were warned.’
‘Warned? About what?’
‘You have a Miss Tabitha Winshaw staying with you tonight, I believe.’
‘We do, yes. Is there any harm in that?’
‘Well you know, I suppose, that at the … hospital where Miss Winshaw usually resides, a number of highly dangerous cases – mental patients, you understand – are also held, under conditions of absolute security.’
‘What of it?’
‘It seems there was a break-out this afternoon, and one of these patients escaped – a murderous cut-throat, no less: a killer without mercy or remorse. By crimes! The life of the man unlucky enough to cross his path on a night like this would not be worth an hour’s purchase!’
‘But surely, Sergeant, the Institute lies more than twenty miles away. This incident, distressing though it may be, can hardly concern us.’
‘I’m very much afraid that it does. You see, the vehicle of his escape, we believe, was the very same car which brought Miss Winsha
w here tonight. The cunning fellow must have concealed himself in the boot. Which means, in all probability, that he’s still somewhere hereabouts. He can’t have got far, in this weather.’
‘Let me get this straight, Sergeant,’ said Mark Winshaw. ‘Are you telling us, in effect, that there’s a homicidal maniac at loose in the grounds?’
‘That’s about the size of it, sir.’
‘And how would you advise that we adapt ourselves to this regrettable state of affairs?’
‘Well, there’s no need to panic, sir. That would be my first advice. Don’t panic, whatever you do. Simply take the precaution of locking all the doors to the house – bolt them, too, if you can – set a few dogs out to roam the gardens, fortify yourselves with whatever guns and firearms you happen to have about the place, and make sure there’s a light burning in every room. But whatever you do, don’t panic. These creatures can sense fear, you know. They can smell it.’ Having thus reassured them, he set his cap firmly on his head and made for the door. ‘I’d better be getting along, now, if you don’t mind. My colleague’s waiting for me out in the car; and we’ve several more houses to visit tonight.’
After seeing him out – and letting in a torrent of rain and swirling leaves in the process – Mark, Dorothy and Michael returned to the dining room to inform the others of this extraordinary news.
