by M. M. Kaye
‘Oh my God!’ gasped Copper. ‘I believe I’ve bitten my heart in half — it jumped into my mouth and now it’s in pieces. For heaven’s sake let’s go out and turn up the ballroom lights and see who’s there. I can’t stand this!’
‘All right,’ said Valerie shakily. ‘But I didn’t hear anything. I’m sure it’s only bats.’
‘Bats my foot!’ retorted Copper forcefully. ‘You don’t have to hear! You can feel. If you don’t believe me____’ Before Valerie could stop her, she had reached over and switched off the light.
‘Copper!’
‘Ssh. Listen.’
They had not long to wait. There was no sound, but after a few moments they felt again that soft vibration of the floorboards, and presently, following it, there came the faint, unmistakable creak of the loose board by the drawing-room door.
‘Now do you believe me?’
‘Yes. There’s someone prowling about the rooms. Turn the light on, Coppy, I’m going to see who it is.’ Once again the bedside lamp made a friendly pool of light in the room, and Valerie said: ‘We’d better put something on. If it’s one of the servants, we can’t go skittering about in our nightgowns.’
She found that she was still speaking in a whisper and was unreasonably annoyed by the discovery; but somehow she could not bring herself to speak aloud. She flung Copper a gaily striped wrap of towelling, and slipping her own arms into a silk dressing-gown, tightened its belt about her slim waist with a savage jerk as though it gave her courage, and added, still whispering: ‘I expect we’ll find it’s only Ruby giving her insomnia an airing.’
‘Well, Ruby or no Ruby,’ said Copper, ‘I’m taking a golf club with me. I admit I’d be happier with a poker, but a steel-shafted mashie makes me feel almost as good.’
Valerie reached wordlessly for the niblick and Copper was suddenly seized with inconvenient mirth: ‘Oh g–gosh! we must look such f–fools! And I can’t think why I’m laughing, because it isn’t really a bit f–funny and I’m scared to death!’
‘So am I,’ admitted Valerie, ‘but I shall have hysterics if I sit here any longer. I was all right until Kioh made that hellish noise, but that finished me. Come on, Coppy, and for heaven’s sake hold my hand!’
Holding firmly to each other with one hand and clutching a golf club apiece with the other, they tiptoed over to the doorway. The main electric light switch for the bedroom was just inside the door, and Valerie turned it on, flooding the room with harsh light. Then pushing apart the swinging shutters, they braced themselves and stepped into the darkness.
To reach the switches for the ballroom involved walking a few yards down the passage to the left of the door. But the light streaming from Valerie’s bedroom was sufficient to guide them, and a few seconds later a flood of light wiped out the lurking shadows in the ballroom.
There was no one there, and gaining confidence, they crossed the end of the ballroom and turned on the lights in the dining-room where the long, polished table, cleared of its glittering decorations, gleamed like a strip of dark water. ‘Nothing here,’ said Valerie, speaking aloud for the first time in ten minutes. But even as she spoke something moved swiftly in the shadow behind them, and they whirled round, white-faced.
Nicholas Tarrent, clad in pyjamas and a dressing-gown, stood scowling at them from the edge of the dining-room.
‘Oh God, Nick, you gave me such a fright!’ gasped Valerie.
‘Nothing to what you’ve given me! What the hell do you two think you’re doing, wandering about at this hour of the night? Brushing up your approach shots?’
Valerie and Copper, who had been endeavouring to conceal their possession of a couple of steel-shafted clubs, had the grace to blush. ‘As a matter of fact,’ confessed Copper, already slightly ashamed of her recent fears, ‘we thought we heard someone walking about the house, so we came out to see who it was. We didn’t know it was you.’
‘Me? Why, you wretched golfing maniacs, I’ve only this moment torn myself from my bed. I heard someone prowling about, and when lights started springing up all over the house I thought I’d better come and investigate in case someone had been taken ill.’
‘Do you usually conduct an investigation round a sick bed with a squash racquet?’ inquired Copper accusingly.
Nick laughed. ‘You’ve got me there. I’d forgotten I was still clutching the damn thing. As a matter of fact it was the only weapon within reach, and between you and me, I felt happier with something in my fist. You two ruddy little night-birds have been giving me the cold creeps, tiptoeing around in the dark.’
Valerie and Copper exchanged a swift look. ‘In the dark?’ said Copper.
Valerie turned to Nick: ‘Had you heard us for long, before the lights went on?’
‘Well, hardly heard you. But I felt the floor vibrate every time you passed. And there are a couple of loose boards around: I heard them creak once or twice and I was beginning to think that this would bear looking into when the lights went up. So I came out to see what was up.’
‘Then there was someone out here!’ said Valerie. ‘It wasn’t us, Nick. We heard the boards too. And Kioh saw something in the ballroom. She stood and watched it moving, and it got on our nerves. So we came out to see who it was.’
They had all been talking in undertones to avoid arousing the rest of the house, but now Copper’s voice sharpened: ‘Well, what are we going to do? We all heard someone moving about, and unless we make certain that there is no one hiding up here, I for one shan’t sleep another wink.’
‘All right. Have it your own way,’ said Nick. ‘Come on. Keep your eyes on the ball and don’t press.’
Picking their way among the assortment of bowls and basins set to catch the leaks they made their way across the ballroom into the drawing-room, through the wide, glassed-in verandah and back past the dining-room again. They searched the pantry and the larder and along the passage to the turret room, and opened the doors of the nearby bathroom and the small room beside it. They looked behind and under sofas and chairs, bookcases and cupboards, made certain that all the doors and windows that led out of the house, or on to the two balconies that opened off the closed verandah, were locked, and by the time they returned to the ballroom they had searched the top storey of the house as thoroughly as was possible without entering the bedrooms occupied by Valerie’s father, the Stocks, or John Shilto.
Sir Lionel’s room and the turret room where John Shilto slept were the only two bedrooms in the house possessed of an orthodox door, and as their doors were closed it was unlikely that anyone other than the owners would have passed through them. The bedroom occupied by the Stocks, which lay beyond Valerie’s, closed with the usual ineffectual swing shutters, but a faint, rhythmic sound of snoring suggested that at least one of the occupants was sound asleep.
To make their rounds complete, and more for form’s sake than anything else, they looked into Nick’s room — this with extreme caution to avoid disturbing the peaceful slumbers of Dan Harcourt — and went through the girls’ bedrooms before ending up in the ballroom once more. But with the exception of Kioh, whom they flushed from under Valerie’s window-seat, still hostile and inclined to spit, they had found nothing and no one. ‘Well I hope everyone’s satisfied,’ said Nick shortly, his finger on the switch of the ballroom lights. ‘Unless it was your father, Val, or Shilto or one of the Stocks, it was bats or the wind. Or too much plum pudding! Take your choice.’
‘The last, I expect,’ admitted Valerie, yawning. ‘Plus a touch of Rosamund Purvis’s hysterics thrown in. Well, thanks for your support, Nick. I’m sorry we spoilt your beauty sleep. Come on, Coppy — bed, I think.’ She switched off the lights and they turned to go back to their own rooms. But they had barely taken more than a couple of paces into the darkness when they heard Copper gasp.
There had been so much stark fear in that small sound that Nick flung out an arm and caught her against him. ‘What is it, Copper?’ His voice was sharply peremptory. ‘Someone brushed pa
st me,’ quavered Copper in a dry whisper. ‘They almost touched me — Nick, listen!’
All three stood still: and heard, in that stillness, clearly and unmistakably, the creak of the loose board by the drawing-room door, and felt the tremor of the floorboards beneath their feet …
‘This is ridiculous!’ said Nick furiously. He thrust Copper away and took a quick stride back to the switches, and once again the ballroom was flooded with light. But there was no one there, and beyond it the drawing-room doors yawned black and empty.
‘Iman Din will be in the hall downstairs,’ quavered Valerie. ‘He’s supposed to stay awake, but he always falls asleep and someone may have passed him. Let’s go and wake him up.’
They went quickly over to the banisters, and turning on the lights above the staircase, looked down into the well of the hall.
But Iman Din, the old, white-whiskered chaprassi* who slept at the foot of the hall stairs by night, was not asleep. He was standing by the bottom step of the staircase, looking up at them as they leaned over the carved banister rail above him, and he did not look as though he had been recently awakened from sleep, but rather as though he had been standing there, listening, for some considerable time.
‘Well, I’m damned!’ said Nick explosively. ‘The old coot must have heard us pottering round hunting burglars, and he hasn’t even raised a finger to help us or to find out what all the activity was about. Useful sort of guardian for our slumbers. Ask him if anyone has passed him, Val.’
Valerie leant over the banisters and spoke to the old man in Urdu. He answered her in the same tongue, and Copper saw her start and jerk back, frowning.
‘What does he say, Val?’
‘Nothing; only some nonsense.’ Valerie was plainly disturbed and not a little angry.
Nick said: ‘The point is, could anyone have come up those stairs tonight without that whiskered Methuselah spotting them?’
The old man shifted his gaze to Nick, and spoke in slow, accented English: ‘Who should enter? The Sahib sees that the door is barred’ — he gestured with a claw-like hand towards the massive front door with its heavy iron bolts. They caught a glimmer of light from the guard room through the glass panes of the side door, and heard the sentry on duty ground the butt of his rifle on the stone flags outside.
‘Don’t beg the question,’ snapped Nick. ‘Could anyone have come up these stairs since Harcourt Sahib came home?’
‘Assuredly,’ said the old man gravely. He turned again to Valerie and spoke swiftly in the vernacular.
Nick began to lose his temper. The hands of the hall clock pointed to a quarter to three; he had had very little sleep and his experience in the storm had not been pleasant. Above all, Copper’s panic had awakened something in him that he had as yet not stopped to analyse. ‘See here,’ said Nick dangerously, ‘if I find that you or your pals have been trying any funny stuff in the house tonight, I’ll come down and wring your neck. First you say that the door is barred and no one can come in, and then that someone could have come up these stairs. Well, there was someone up here five minutes ago, and you’re coming up to help find out just who it was!’
‘The Sahib is angry,’ said Iman Din gravely. ‘He does not understand. But I will show that no man passed this way.’ He started to mount the shallow stairs, and Valerie gripped Nick’s arm: ‘No,’ she said breathlessly. ‘No, let’s go back to bed, Nick. We’ve looked through the rooms once. Go back, Iman Din.’
‘Rubbish,’ said Nick curtly. ‘Come on up. And you two clear off to bed. Iman Din and I will scoop in this sleepwalker.’
Iman Din, continuing his ascent, put his foot upon the top step of the staircase, and, as always, it creaked sharply.
‘There!’ said Copper. ‘That’s the first sound I heard. Somebody did come up these stairs.’
‘Of course there was someone up here! And I believe this old devil knows who it was. What did he say to you, Val?’
‘Nothing. Just native rubbish.’
Nick caught her by the shoulder, and swung her round to face him. ‘Well, let’s hear it. You’re being damned irritating, Val, and for two pins I’d smack you. Odd as it may seem I could do with some sleep. But as long as people are going to perambulate up and down the hall the minute the lights are out, I can’t see myself getting any. Come on, out with it.’
‘Oh, very well,’ snapped Valerie. ‘If it’s any help to you, he says it’s a ghost.’
There was a short and pregnant silence. Then: ‘Ghost, my Aunt Fanny!’ said Nick angrily. ‘No ghost could make the floor vibrate like that, or weigh enough to make those boards creak. Don’t be a mug, Val!’
Iman Din’s wise old eyes travelled from one to another of the three faces before him, and then past them to the doorway of the darkened drawing-room. He let his breath out in a little sigh and said: ‘The Sahib says one pressed upon the board which speaks. Look, and I will show____’
He led the way into the ballroom, and stopped before the open doorway. ‘Will the Sahib walk through?’ Nick complied, frowning. There was no sound, and Copper said: ‘Of course it didn’t creak that time. He didn’t tread on it. He stepped over it.’
‘And why so, Miss-sahib?’
‘Because of the water, of course____’ began Copper; and stopped, catching her breath sharply. For she had suddenly seen what the old man had seen before her … There had been a leak in the roof just above the drawing-room door, and a spreading pool of water saturated the floorboards. But when the three of them had searched the house the lights, as now, had been on, and because they could see they had avoided the various bowls that dotted the floor and stepped across the wet patches. But someone walking in the dark would not have seen that wet stain, and so would have walked into it instead of over it. And the board would have creaked under their feet. Yet it was not this that had driven the blood from Copper’s face. She had, in the same instant, seen something else. Something they could all see now____
‘Ah!’ said Iman Din. ‘Now the Sahib understands. When a foot is placed upon that board it speaks in the darkness. But the wood is wet — the Sahib sees how wet. Yet no mark leads beyond it, though the floor is polished!’
Copper and Valerie started back from the gleaming stain and stared at the smooth, polished floorboards. Nick did not speak, but he placed his foot squarely upon that wet space, which creaked beneath his tread, and walked back to join them.
There was no need for words.
Four clear damp footmarks patched the strip of floor that he had walked across.
‘The Sahib sees,’ said Iman Din softly. He drew a sudden, hissing breath between his yellowed teeth, and flung out a skinny, pointing hand: ‘Look there, Sahib! There — where the storm returns!’
The three whirled about to stare where his gnarled forefinger pointed across the darkened drawing-room to the verandah beyond. And as they looked a vivid flash of lightning bathed the inky sky beyond the expanse of window-panes in a livid radiance that silhouetted, for a fraction of a second, the figure of a man who stood in the angle of the dark verandah. A small, wizened figure who appeared to be wearing about his neck a ragged scarf, the ends of which fluttered out upon the draught.
With a sob of pure terror, Copper flung herself frantically at Nick, burying her face against his shoulder. ‘What — who is it?’ quavered Valerie, gripping his arm. Nick shook himself free and raced across the drawing-room and into the verandah.
It took him a full minute to find the verandah switch, and it was a further two or three minutes before he returned, walking slowly across the drawing-room, his hands deep in the pockets of his dressing-gown and a puzzled frown between his brows.
Valerie and Copper had vanished, but the old chaprassi stood where he had left him, silent and motionless.
‘You saw it, Iman Din. What____ Who was it?’
‘Sahib,’ said Iman Din, ‘it is One who returns, seeking vengeance.’
10
‘Christians awake, salute the happy morn!’ caro
lled Charles, entering the breakfast room. ‘Sorry I’m late, sir. Happy Christmas, darling — and here’s your present. I know you chose it yourself, but let’s have expressions of rapturous surprise, just for the look of it. Morning, everyone. Happy Christmas!’
Valerie had invited Charles to have breakfast with them on Christmas morning, but the storm was responsible for the unusually large assembly in the dining-room, and Charles alone appeared to be in good spirits.
John Shilto, looking if possible even more pasty as to colouring and morose as to expression than usual, was helping himself to kidneys and bacon and ignoring the timid conversational efforts of Leonard Stock. Mrs Stock, who had recovered sufficiently to put in an appearance, was seated, freshly rouged and curled, between Nick and Dan Harcourt, while Sir Lionel, a man who preferred to eat his breakfast in a ritual silence occupied by the perusal of three-weeks-old newspapers, was moodily sipping coffee and turning at frequent intervals to glance at the clock as though help might be forthcoming from the blandly unemotional dial. He had responded without animation to Valerie’s kiss and her ‘Merry Christmas, Dad’ and made no attempt to return the conventional greeting.
He’s probably got the right idea, thought Copper, avoiding Nick’s eye and helping herself to grapenuts. It certainly can’t be called ‘merry’ at the moment!
Copper was suffering a reaction from the night’s alarms; though curiously enough it was not the remembrance of the mysterious prowler that was disturbing her. The terrors of the dark hours seemed less alarming and even a little foolish by the cold light of morning, compared with her own frantic clinging to Nick, and Copper flushed angrily at the memory of her fear-stricken abandonment. And more than angrily at the recollection of Nick’s treatment of it. He pulled me off him as if I’d been a nasty type of leech, she thought resentfully, and he probably thinks I did it on purpose; like Ruby, clinging round his neck like a ton of chewing-gum last night — and then I do exactly the same thing a few hours later! I expect, decided Copper forlornly, that he’s used to it.
