‘You really should be careful who you terrorise, Cal,’ she said reprovingly to the dog.
‘May I come in?’ asked Scott.
‘As you seem to have penetrated the outer defences, I don’t see why an unlocked bedroom door should deter you, Mr. Scott. Please step inside.’
He did not close the door behind him but came almost up to the bedside and stood there, still a little awkward.
‘Mrs. Herbert, your neighbour, let me in. She knows me. And in any case it was the only way to stop Cal beating the door down with his head.’
It was the first time she had heard him call Cal by his name. The dog gave a distant nod of acknowledgement.
‘I was sorry to hear what happened to you last night,’ he went on. ‘Very sorry.’
Emily looked at him curiously. This seemed out of character. And, oddly, what he was saying sounded more like an apology than an expression of sympathy.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It’s kind of you to come to tell me this.’
‘How badly were you hurt?’ he asked.
‘Not bad. I was punched pretty hard in the stomach. It’s still rather stiff.’
For a second she felt an impulse to shock him by pulling back the sheet and displaying the bruise. But the conviction of his basic unshockability as much as anything stopped her.
‘What did he want?’ he asked.
‘Gentleman Jim?’
‘Who?’
‘My attacker. You mean him, what did he want?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve no idea. Not the obvious thing. My maidenly virtue, I mean.’
‘That must have been a blow for you,’ he said, more like his old self.
‘The only blow to me was a left-arm hook to the solar plexus,’ she said. ‘That hurt.’
‘A left-arm blow,’ he repeated.
‘Yes. Why? Oh, I see. Left-handed. I never thought of that. Not that it signifies anything, really. He gave the impression of being able to use any limb very efficiently as an offensive weapon.’
‘Did he steal anything from you? Anything at all?’
Ah, now we’re coming to it, Emily thought with satisfaction. The real reason for your visit. You want to know about your little book. And even you didn’t like to appear callous enough to ask outright.
‘Not that I know of. I mean I don’t know,’ she corrected herself. ‘I haven’t been able to check.’
He looked surprised.
‘Why? Was there so much to check then?’
‘No, Mr. Scott,’ she replied with heavy sarcasm. ‘But what little there was was strewn all over the lane, and I didn’t feel able to pick it all up last night. I daresay it has been picked up since, by Constable Parfrey I shouldn’t wonder. But as it’s still a little early for most gentlemen callers, even the police, I haven’t been able to discuss it with him.’
‘Well, now is your chance, Mrs. Follett,’ said a cheerful voice from the doorway. Parfrey stood there, helmet under his arm in the regulation fashion. How long he had been there it was impossible to tell.
In his other hand he carried a small shopping bag. Carefully he placed his helmet on a chair and came over to the bedside.
‘Good morning, Mr. Scott,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Emily. ‘Mr. Scott just called in to pay his devoirs.’
‘’Morning, Parfrey,’ said Scott, showing no sign of being about to leave.
Parfrey looked at him steadily for a moment, then returned his attention to Emily.
‘Now, Mrs. Follett,’ he said. ‘How are we this morning? Feel up to a bit of talk, do you?’
Emily looked at him in surprise. This was vintage Dixon of Dock Green stuff, quite out of character, she would have said.
All the leopards are changing their spots this morning, she thought.
‘Yes. I’m quite well, thank you,’ she lied politely. She felt a bit better since her breakfast, but still a long way from fit.
‘Good,’ said Parfrey. ‘Now the first thing’ is to check if anything was actually stolen from you last night. Mr. Burgess and I did a thorough search of the area last night, particularly the bottom of the lane where your bag burst open. And I’ve had another look this morning. Here’s what I found.’
He dipped his hand into the shopping bag like a music-hall conjuror, looking faintly surprised at the objects he produced.
‘Leather purse,’ he said. ‘Containing four fivers, two pound notes, assorted loose change. Right?’
‘I think so,’ said Emily.
‘A lipstick. A steel comb. A compact, rather bent. It must have hit a stone. A bunch of keys, seven in all. A ball-point pen. Driving licence and insurance certificate in a leather case. And that’s the lot. Anything missing, Mrs. Follett?’
Emily thought hard, very conscious of Scott who had been watching Parfrey’s performanace with a saturnine disinterest.
‘I think so,’ she said. ‘No. Wait. There should have been a small leather-backed notebook with a brass clasp. Belonging to Mr. Scott here.’
‘Oh?’
‘You left it in the bar,’ she said to Scott. ‘I picked it up. I was going to give it back to you next time we met.’
She found herself flushing before his quizzical gaze. ‘There was no sign of a book, sir,’ said Parfrey, looking steadily at Scott.
‘It was of no importance,’ said Scott. ‘Not worth stealing. Certainly not worth this kind of assault. It’ll probably turn up in a ditch. The main thing is that Mrs. Follett’s all right.’
‘Yes, that’s the main thing,’ agreed Parfrey. ‘Perhaps I can have a word with you later.’
‘Certainly. You can usually get me in the hotel bar, during hours, of course.’
‘Or at the college.’
‘Certainly. Yes, of course. At the college.’
Scott again seemed faintly amused.
‘Well, good day to you, Mrs. Follett, Constable.’
He left with the easy swiftness of movement Emily had noticed before. Parfrey followed him to the door and held it ajar till the outside door slammed. He stood, as if uncertain whether to go himself, and it was Emily who broke the silence.
‘Tell me, Mr. Parfrey. I don’t mean this to sound impertinent, and I am in no way dissatisfied, but isn’t it usual for a case like this to be handled by a plain-clothes man, someone from C.I.D.?’
He nodded slowly.
‘Why yes, it is. Of course it is. And some of our detectives will be wanting to question you. We’ve just got a very small establishment down here, you see, and H.Q. relies on people like myself to do a great deal of the ground work. But don’t worry, Mrs. Follett, in a serious matter like this the full machinery of the law is at your disposal.’
He said it so solemnly that Emily smiled, thinking of the rather olde-worlde style of her Solway history. Idly she picked the book up from the counterpane where it had been lying during the interview. Parfrey took this as a gesture of dismissal and, standing up, went to retrieve his helmet.
Disliking her accidental rudeness, Emily fumbled for something to say.
‘Tell me, Constable,’ she said finally, holding the book up so he could see what it was. ‘Do you know anything about Wolsty Castle?’
‘A little,’ he said. ‘I’m a member of a local archaeological group. When I have the time, that is. There’s nothing to see at the site now, except the outline of the foundations and the moat. It was finally knocked down in the seventeenth century. If you like, I could probably put you in touch with someone who knows a great deal more about it than I do.’
‘Oh no. No,’ she disclaimed. ‘No, I just thought that if you were looking for Michael Scott’s book that might be a good place to start.’
He looked at her in puzzlement, finally coming across to take the proffered book from her hand.
‘Oh,’ he said, reading. ‘That Michael Scot.’
‘Do you know anything about him?’ asked Emily.
‘A litt
le more than I know about our Mr. Scott,’ said Parfrey, then seeming to decide he had gone a little beyond his constabulary brief, he coughed apologetically, as though to obscure the remark.
‘I’ll be off now, Mrs. Follett. But don’t worry. The matter is being thoroughly investigated. Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye,’ said Emily.
My, she thought. An archaeological policeman. Everyone seemed to be connected with and searching for the past round here. Except herself. She was seeking to bury it, not dig it up.
But, coming back to Parfrey, she almost felt she could have risked telling him about the green man. He had seemed rather uninterested in the appearance of the second mystery man, even when she hinted there had been some resemblance to the intruder in the cottage.
‘Your eyes were full of pepper, Mrs. Follett,’ he had said reasonably.
So greenness had not seemed a good topic for discussion.
Strange, Sterne had once said to her, the more sensible a woman is, the greater is her fear of being dismissed as an hysterical woman. Therefore the less sensibly she acts.
How nice, she had replied. How nice to understand everything and yet never feel obliged to act with understanding.
And her reply had seemed as cheap as all her outbursts did in the face of his dignified, detached composure.
Fiercely she turned to her book again. There was little more about Michael Scot except for the suggestion that he was buried in the abbey of Holm Cultram.
So we have his body and his books both, she reflected lightly. But the section on myths and superstitions ended with a glance at place names in the district which, in the suggestive mood in which she found herself, dampened her levity.
‘Wolsty’ probably derived originally from words meaning the ‘wolf’s path’, or ‘wolf’s haunt’, and Skinburness she read with a fascination deeper than the bare, scholarly outline of the etymology involved, when broken down into its three Old English component parts, meant simply ‘the headland of the castle of the demon’. She had known this before, but forgotten. She remembered now who had told her. It was Sterne.
5
The rest of the morning went passed t slowly. The doctor called, prodded her professionally, gave her some pills to take at frequent intervals, and pronounced himself well satisfied.
Mrs. Herbert descended from above with coffee and comfort for a short time, and Emily found herself wishing the old woman had been able to stay longer. Cal was little use as company. He plainly felt they should be out and about and made his feelings clear by letting out occasional reproachful barks and attempting to drag the bedclothes on to the floor.
After one particularly loud bark, she got up, wrapped her robe around her and escorted Cal to the front door.
‘Go and find a playmate!’ she commanded. ‘And for Godsake pick on someone your own size if you’re feeling amorous.’
It was nice to be out of bed, but her legs felt surprisingly weak, as if she had been bedridden for weeks instead of a couple of hours. And she found it difficult to walk upright, but inclined forward slightly to ease the ache in her stomach muscles.
She found herself wondering what had happened to Burgess. He had said he would be away for only a very short time. But that was three hours ago and both Parfrey and the doctor had been and gone long since.
Illogically she found herself resenting his absence, as though she had some real call upon his person. Even as she laughed at her own illogicality, she found herself thinking, But he did say he would be back quickly. I didn’t ask him to. He said it of his own accord.
Finally this childish possessiveness made her try to take a clearer look at her relationship with Burgess. The shadow of Sterne was still too dark over her for her to be able to contemplate entering into any real intimacy with another man. And the hard fact of her marriage, with all the problems of divorce still to face, made this even more undesirable. Sterne believed in bargains. If he did not feel she had kept to hers he would not make things easy for her. That was all she could be certain of. Not that she cared all that much now somehow.
But Burgess now. She liked what she knew of him, though she was sure she did not yet know all of him by any means. She had a distinct impression of him as a man who would have to struggle for any independence he wished to achieve, while the Scotts of this world moved surefootedly on, confident in their own powers and purposes.
The vehemence of her attitude to Scott surprised her once again.
In any case, she thought, decisively, I’ve had this place. One more night to let the tummy get back into shape, then I’m off, no matter what.
Where to? she asked herself.
Anywhere. Who cares? Somewhere where there aren’t any green men spying on me. Or thugs beating me up. So it’ll be goodbye, Burgess, and Scott, and Parfrey, and Uncle Tom Cobley and all.
Her thoughts had come full circle and she was about to return to bed and try one of the doctor’s little pills when the phone rang.
The sound jarred on her nerves and she snatched the receiver up with unnecessary violence before it could ring again.
‘Yes?’
‘Mrs. Follett?’
The voice was distant, not so much in physical terms, though it seemed that too; but the speaker sounded detached, far away. As if pitched past some pitch of despair Emily could only imagine.
It was a woman’s voice. And familiar for all its strangeness.
‘This is Mrs. Follett speaking.’
‘Listen, hon, this is Mandy Castell here. I’d like to speak with you if I may, Mrs. Follett.’
‘Why certainly, Mrs. Castell,’ replied Emily in some surprise. ‘What is it you want to talk about?’
The women at the other end laughed, shortly, without humour.
‘No. I mean I’d like to speak with you personally, hon. Could you come up to see me at the hotel?’
‘Well, to tell you the truth, Mrs. Castell, I’m a little indisposed at the moment.’
‘Yeah. I heard.’
For a moment Emily felt hotly indignant at the woman’s demands, knowing as she seemed to what had happened the previous night. Then memory of what had happened to Amanda Castell herself the previous day flowed back into her mind, and indignation vanished.
‘It’s important, hon. It is to me, at least. And it’d be better if you could come here.’
Emily made up her mind.
‘All right, Mrs. Castell. When?’
‘Soon as you can, hon. And don’t make a noise about it, huh? I mean, you needn’t wear a mask, but don’t get the manager to page me or anything like that. I’m room 22. First floor.’
‘I’ll come as soon as I can.’
‘See you.’
The phone went dead.
Now what on earth, Emily asked herself as she replaced the receiver, was all that about?
Suddenly she was very intrigued and bustled back into the bedroom to get dressed. She rubbed some of the doctor’s balm gently into her stomach before putting her pants on, but even the pressure of her own fingertips made her wince. Strangely, she felt extremely guilty, as she had done as a child when, confined to her room either to do homework, or as a punishment, she had sneaked out without permission.
And the shock she had always felt when caught in the act by her father or mother was also re-experienced when she quietly opened the front door and almost bumped into Arthur Burgess.
‘Well hello!’ he said with exaggerated surprise. ‘You’re up.’
‘It’s not exactly a case of Lazarus rising,’ replied Emily tartly, annoyed at her own fright. ‘Where have you been?’
She immediately regretted the question. It implied that she had some call upon his time, and special relationships she knew always run two ways.
His reply reassured her to some extent.
‘Something came up at the hotel. A personal matter. I had to make some phone calls. Otherwise I’d have been back sooner. But the doctor’s been, hasn’t he?’
His tone was casual,
almost off-hand. The warmth of his concern for her the previous night was very well concealed. She was reminded of the way he had seemed to cool off after their dinner at the hotel.
Blow hot, blow cold, I don’t care, she told herself. And was amused once more at her own inconsistency.
I want it all ways, she thought. To be adored without being bothered!
‘The doctor has been?’ Burgess repeated.
‘Oh sorry,’ she said. ‘Yes. Clean bill of health except for a bit of bellyache.’
‘Good-oh. If you’re going for a walk, I’ll join you if I may. I’m still a bit stiff myself from that couch last night!’
‘No. I’m going up to the hotel.’
‘Oh. The hotel.’
Oh dear, thought Emily. That does sound like another snub. He has been good and does deserve rather better treatment.
‘I’m going to pop up and see Mrs. Castell,’ she said. ‘Perhaps we can have a drink afterwards? My round.’
‘Mrs. Castell?’ he said.
Emily felt her initial annoyance at his echoing tactics returning.
‘I shouldn’t bother,’ he went on. ‘I gather she is resting under pretty strong sedation. There’s still no sign of her husband’s body. But I’ll gladly accept your drink.’
Sedation. Perhaps that’s why she sounded so far away.
‘After I see Mrs. Castell,’ she said firmly. ‘If she’s awake enough to telephone me, she’s awake enough to talk.’
She set off down the little path. Burgess stepped ahead of her and opened the gate.
‘She phoned you?’ he said casually.
‘Yes, just now. Did you see Cal on your way down?’
‘I think I saw him distantly along the shore.’
They walked together side by side across the grass. The weather looked as if it was breaking up. Fistfuls of cloud were being hurled high up through the blue sky above them by a stiff breeze which drifted Emily’s long yellow hair like a net over her face. And the sky across the other side of the Solway was already solid grey, the line of land practically invisible.
‘It’s raining in Scotland,’ she said.
Burgess was looking thoughtful. Now he stopped and slapped his pocket.
The Castle of the Demon Page 8