Why am I bothering to dismiss Arthur so lightly for this youngster’s benefit? Emily asked herself.
‘His friends?’ queried Miss Pettle. ‘I don’t follow.’
God! she scents a true-love magazine-type romance, sighed Emily inwardly.
‘I mean the people he should have been here with. The ones who had to cancel,’ she explained patiently.
‘Oh no,’ said Miss Pettle firmly. ‘You must be mistaken.’
‘Must I? Why?’ Emily was still at the stage of being amused.
‘Because I took Mr. Burgess’s booking myself. By telephone. Just for one. There were no cancellations.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Emily, puzzled. ‘I’m sure he said…’
‘Absolutely sure,’ affirmed Miss Pettle. ‘Would you like me to check?’
‘No, don’t bother,’ said Emily. ‘No. On second thoughts, I would, if you don’t mind and it’s not too much trouble.’
‘No trouble,’ grinned the girl. ‘I’ll do it now. Won’t be a sec.’
She plainly scented a mystery now, which was obviously even better than a romance. Everyone had romances, but mysteries were the preserve of the few.
She’s welcome to mine, thought Emily.
‘I’m right,’ said Miss Pettle on her return. ‘Booked by phone the morning of the 19th. Arrived that afternoon. He was lucky to get in. Room 32 next to the noisy geyser. We always keep that to last. No other bookings. No cancellations.’
‘Thank you very much, Miss Pettle,’ said Emily slowly. ‘Let me buy you another drink.’
But her thoughts were racing madly away to unimagainable horizons, but always returning to the single plain fact that Arthur Burgess had lied to her and had arrived in Skinburness on the selfsame day that she had taken up residence in Solway Cottage.
6
Emily spent the afternoon sitting on the foreshore watching a couple of fishermen. She was perched on the ruins of an old tree-trunk and for a while she toyed with the imagining that it might have been uprooted from the great forest which legend had it was buried fathoms deep out from Beckfoot. But even broad daylight did not make this reminder of her own brush with Solway mythology in the forms of green men any less disturbing. In any case, daylight was not so broad now. High up the sky was a solid fell of dark grey cloud and much lower a ragged streamer of black was being blown diagonally across the Firth. Criffel had long disappeared and the fishermen leaned into the wind as they tried in vain to get a decent length of cast.
It was a good atmosphere for brooding on things that moved and had their being outside the normal schemes of nature. But Emily’s thoughts for the most part were concerned with the wide range of personal problems which troubled her and which sunshine and fair weather could not have changed. Perhaps they might have kept the self-pity at bay.
Suppose, she asked herself, suppose I had to go now to one person whom I could trust and call friend without reservation, just one person in the world, where would I go?
Cal, who had been lying at her feet watching her unblinkingly through his good eye, yawned modestly. Emily laughed and this did her some good.
‘I accept your offer,’ she said. ‘Perhaps if I kiss you, you’ll turn into a one-eyed prince.’
Cal rose and lumbered away towards the water.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘Who wants a one-eyed prince, anyway?’
‘Who indeed?’ said a familiar voice behind her. She started in surprise and turned quickly. The round jolly face of Mr. Plowman peered down at her. He carried a trenching tool over his shoulder and slung round the handle so that it hung down his back was a small haversack.
‘Did I startle you? I am sorry,’ he said, his smile turning to a look of concern. ‘Your nerves have been troubled enough.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Emily.
‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pry. But I heard about last night. It was a terrible thing, terrible. Who would want to do a thing like that? I asked Mr. Inwit.’
‘Where is Mr. Inwit today?’ she asked.
‘Resting,’ said Plowman solemnly. ‘He overdid it yesterday. I rather left him to do it all himself, you remember. He strained his shoulder, I think. So I told him to take a rest, begin the work of tabulating our findings.’
‘And what have you found?’
‘Sadly very little. My fault again I fear. I’m too haphazard. Dig a trench here, sink a shaft there. It’s hit-and-miss stuff, I’m afraid. And we seem to be missing. Today I thought might be the day. But no. And when I saw the weather closing in, I thought, enough’s enough. Going back empty-handed is one thing. Going back wet-footed is quite another. How long are you staying, Mrs. Follett?’
‘Just till tomorrow,’ replied Emily, startled by the suddenness of the question.
‘Tomorrow. Fine, fine. We shall miss you, I’m sure, but you’re right, you’re right. This is no place for the young and beautiful. I firmly believe there are some places where the past clings much more tenaciously to the present than elsewhere, and this is one. And the past feeds on youth and beauty. I’m safe! Oh yes, I’m safe. And Inwit, why, he’s even safer. But it’s no place for you, my dear. Goodbye. I hope we may meet again; in one of your places, perhaps, where I shall be at peril!’
Chortling to himself, he went off, his short legs moving him with surprising speed over the tummocks of sea-grass.
Another glad to see me go! thought Emily. That’s one thing about Arthur. He at least seemed to be sorry I was leaving.
Still brooding on Plowman’s obscure warning, she herself rose now. There was a thin flurry of rain, over in a moment, but threatening worse to come, and she had no desire to get caught in it.
‘Come on, Cal!’ she called.
She had decided to take the car into Silloth to fill up with petrol and have her oil, tyres, water and the rest checked preparatory to her journey the following day. The car had been standing in the open unused for the past three days and she knew from past experience that this could bring on a fit of temperament.
Sitting in the driver’s seat twenty minutes later she was glad of her foresight. Turning the starter key produced no result whatsoever, not even the old dying rattle which was the familiar symptom at such times. She tried again twice, but still absolutely nothing.
Half angry, half self-congratulatory, she finally climbed out and lifted the bonnet. The limit of her expertise on these occasions was to clean and dry out the plugs, but as this generally proved effective, she felt she was mechanically reasonably competent.
One look at the sight that met her under the bonnet was enough to tell her that this time the limits of her competence were long, long past. Everything that could be loosened was loosened. Everything that could be bent was bent. The fan belt had been cut in half and hung loosely over the twisted distributor. The casing on the plugs was cracked almost to powder. The radiator hose was oozing water in a dozen places.
‘Damn, damn, damn, damn!’ said Emily, her anger relatively subdued under a wave of sheer amazement. And some little way behind this, still faint but clearly recognisable, came a crest of fear.
Why? she asked herself. Why?
Not why? she answered. Leave ‘why?’ Let’s concentrate on who? Someone who did not want her to leave, obviously. That narrowed things down a lot In fact there was only one person who had not been openly enthusiastic about her departure. Burgess. As she phoned the garage, the name kept on running round and round in her head, never quite resolving itself into a recognisable figure.
It was me who approached him first, she told herself.
But he certainly didn’t want me to leave.
He’s taking me out to dinner tonight.
I told him about the car at lunchtime.
Perhaps he is madly in love.
Perhaps he is mad.
If there’s one thing that’s certain, she told herself finally, it’s that I cannot sit at a dinner table with him tonight wondering if he wrecked my car. Asking him direct is out of t
he question. I’ve already asked him one very odd question today. But there is something odd about him. Perhaps it’s me, I don’t know. But I must try to find out.
The outline of a plan began to form in her mind.
The mechanic sent by the garage whistled when he looked under the bonnet.
‘It’s a mess,’ he said.
‘How long will it take?’
‘All tomorrow certainly, I should think. We’ll ring you.’
‘I’ll ring you,’ said Emily firmly.
The mechanic grinned. ‘You do that. Every hour on the hour. It’ll still take a lot of work. You told the police?’
‘I’ll deal with it,’ said Emily.
‘Some yobbo,’ said the man. ‘Envy, that’s usually the reason. Buy yourself an old banger. They’ll never touch it.’
Right, thought Emily grimly. Even if it’s not ready till midnight, the minute it is, I’m off out of here. I’ve waited long enough. But first, Mr. Burgess, let’s see what makes you tick.
She assumed Burgess would come for her at seven. To be quite safe she set off at six and positioned herself behind the hedge at the bottom of the lane, close to where she had been attacked the night before. The memory of that adventure had almost faded alongside this new excitement and the pain in her stomach muscles was now just an ignorable ache.
Cal she had reluctantly left behind. He was too lively and too bulky for the cloak-and-dagger stuff.
Burgess came early, just after half past six, and she was glad of her own foresight. She let him get about fifteen yards towards the cottage, then slipped out of concealment and hurried round the comer, up the lane.
Miss Pettle was back behind the reception desk. She looked up as Emily approached and was obviously eager to talk. But Emily forestalled her.
‘Could I have Mr. Burgess’s key?’ she said lightly. ‘I have to get something from his room.’
Miss Pettle’s eyes lit up. Mystery and/or romance was again in the air. She lifted key number 32 from its place on the board, but did not hand it over immediately.
‘Shall I come with you?’ she said.
‘Oh, don’t bother,’ said Emily. ‘I won’t be a second.’
She leaned over the counter and tweaked the key from the girl’s hand.
‘Thanks,’ she said, and trotted rapidly up the stairs.
The room was on the second floor. On the first-floor landing she noticed that Miss Simpson seemed to have abandoned her post outside Amanda’s room. For a second she hesitated, then made up her mind and carried on up the next flight.
Room 32 was right at the end of a corridor. As she reached it she thought she heard a door open and close behind her, but when she turned there was no one there. She had foreseen a crisis of conscience at this point, or at least of courage. Now she marvelled at the easy speed with which she turned the key in the lock and slipped into the room.
Now, she realised, came the real crisis. What on earth was she looking for?
‘I’ll know it when I see it,’ she told herself firmly, echoing words she recalled hearing her mother use when asked for a description of a lost umbrella at a police station. The memory ridiculously brought sudden tears to her eyes.
Fiercely she started pulling open drawers in the tall-boy which occupied half a wall. Socks, handkerchiefs, underclothing. In the wardrobe, shirts, suits. He did himself quite nicely thank you. It was all fifty-guinea stuff and she recognised the name of the tailors. She had once gone there with Sterne.
A couple of suitcases, matching, calf-skin. Empty.
A pair of very sexy red silk pyjamas under the coverlet. Martin Chuzzlewit (leather bound, one of a very expensive set) on the bedside table. She smiled. That fitted him somehow. She suddenly felt oddly affectionate towards Burgess.
Perhaps it was the red pyjamas.
Now she was beginning to experience the crisis of conscience. And of courage.
Brightly she whistled a couple of notes of ‘Whenever I Feel Afraid’. And let out a bitten-off scream as the tune seemed to be taken up by some monstrous bubbly tuba whose notes reverberated all around her. It took her half a minute to identify the source of the noise as the troublesome geyser which made the room so undesirable.
Shakily she sat down on the edge of the bed and tried to manage a laugh.
‘I see what you mean, Miss Pettle,’ she said. ‘And, Arthur, if there is anything odd about you, which I begin to doubt, you can’t be blamed. Not with that next door!’
She glanced at her watch. It was time to go. She automatically adjusted her hair in the dressing-table mirror before her. It was a simple table with only two small side-drawers. She opened the right hand one. Cuff-links, diamond solitaire.
He did himself very well for a personnel officer.
In the left-hand drawer was a little address book.
She thumbed through it rapidly. There weren’t many names in it and none of them meant anything to her.
In the last few pages were some telephone numbers without names.
She had closed the book and was putting it back in the drawer when something she had seen completed the slow journey from the sighting part of her brain to the sorting area. Slowly she sank back down on to the bed and opened the book again. It only took her a moment to find it.
Two telephone numbers bracketed together, one London, one a local Silloth number. The local number meant nothing at all to her, but the London number did.
It belonged to her past, present, but she hoped not future, husband, Sterne Follett.
The geyser bubbled again, Wagnerian in style now. But even without its covering concert it was doubtful whether she would have heard the bedroom door open.
And even the voice which spoke now lacked the power to startle her, so deeply lost in a maze of thought and memory she was.
‘We must have missed each other in the lane, Emily. It was thoughtful of you to come up here.’
She turned to look at Burgess. For a moment she thought he was going to pretend that nothing odd had taken place. But the twisted grin on his face underlined the gentle irony of his words. In any case, she was in no mood for pretence.
Holding the book out to him she said, ‘What’s your connection with my husband, Arthur?’
Gently he closed the door behind him and almost as an afterthought turned the key in the lock.
‘It’s quite simple really, Emily,’ he said. ‘Sterne’s my employer. Not that I’d dare call him Sterne to his face. Mr. Follett, sir. I work for him.’
‘In what capacity?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t have an official title. Mr. Follett doesn’t believe in labelling his personal staff. Flexibility is all important. It’s only degrees of efficiency that interest Mr. Follett.’
His voice changed, became soft, reasonable, beautifully modulated.
Closing her eyes, Emily recognised the parody of Sterne being dogmatic. If any doubts had remained, this would have convinced her that Burgess knew her husband.
‘I’m an agent, really. I represent Mr. Follett’s interests in whatever capacity he thinks suitable.’
‘And in this case?’
‘I suppose you would call me a kind of spy.’
Burgess spoke quite unemotionally. Emily opened her eyes in surprise at hearing the word she was planning to use in a minor role somewhere in the great outburst of abuse she felt building itself up in her. Not that it mattered. There were plenty of other words.
‘How long have you been spying on me?’
‘Me personally? Oh, just since you came to Cumberland. But before that there was someone else. Your every move since you left him will have been closely charted.’ Emily thought carefully. ‘You got here the same day as I did?’
‘Yes. Orders arrived. Drop everything. Go to Skinburness and spy.’
‘It was you who searched the cottage.’
‘Guilty again, I’m afraid. I thought I’d done a good job there. You were sharp to spot it.’
‘What were you look
ing for?’
‘Something Mr. Follett seemed to think you might have. A piece of communal property perhaps?’
Emily didn’t pursue this. Another thought had come into her mind.
‘Was it you later as well?’
‘Oh no,’ Burgess demurred. ‘I’m not your green man. If he’s on the payroll I haven’t been told.’
‘How much were you told?’
‘Next to nothing. Just to keep an eye on you and report what you were up to. Mention anything out of the ordinary. You know the kind of thing.’
‘No. I can’t say I do. What about getting to know me? Having dinner?’
Burgess shrugged and a shadow of what might have been pain passed over his face.
‘No. That was my idea. Spur of the moment stuff when you started to talk to me on the beach.’
‘Initiative. Was it commended? Did you get a bonus, a mention in despatches?’ Emily’s voice took on an ugly jeering note.
‘No,’ said Burgess quietly. ‘I was told it must stop.’
‘Stop?’
‘That any further attempt on my part to get to know you better would be frowned on.’
‘So you stopped. That explains your blow hot, blow cold act. But then you started again.’
‘That was after you were hurt.’
‘I see. Orders again.’ The sneer was back. Burgess did not reply. He had remained standing by the door during all the conversation. Only his lips moved.
‘You did my car too?’
‘I’m sorry about that. I had to. You were so uncertain at lunchtime that it seemed possible you might just take off into the blue on an impulse. I couldn’t let that happen.’ ‘You mean your efficiency rating might suffer? You were scared to lose me?’
‘Yes,’ he said, so quietly now she could hardly hear him. ‘I was scared to lose you.’
His tone of voice made her pause for a moment, but only for a moment. There was too much anger inside her to be turned aside by a whole regiment of soft words.
She returned to the attack.
The Castle of the Demon Page 10