Dearest Enemy
Page 5
He said nothing, letting her dream.
“I couldn’t tell what period she was. Five hundred years ago, or a thousand?”
“Women have waited for men who never came back from the day war was invented, I imagine.”
“Yes, but she—who was she? I want to paint her.”
He looked at her closely for a moment. “Are you saying you think she was our ghost?”
The question startled her out of her reverie. “What? Oh! No, I wasn’t... No. Anyway, this one’s not a ghost. She just...stood there so long she left a trace. Do you know what I mean?”
“I do,” said Math.
“I feel that, sometimes. Usually I can’t put a finger on it so firmly. I just feel something and want to paint it. But her—I really felt her, not just as an idea, but as a personality.”
She could feel the picture forming in her mind now, and realized she didn’t need to see the woman more clearly than she did at this moment, because she would be...an eye behind the grey stone of an arrow slit? Or a distant figure on the ramparts. Something like that. It was something else that mattered, not the colour of her hair.
They were walking across the thick green grass of the ancient courtyard to the smaller ruined structure set into what was left of the perimeter wall. This one had several wooden boards and a Danger No Entry sign nailed across the door space. Elain paused to peer through the bars. “Is it falling down?”
“There’s a bit of subsidence. It’s been out of bounds since the war, when someone fell into a hole and broke a leg. It’s probably a well, so whoever fell in was lucky to get out again. We have tourists coming up here from time to time, so I don’t risk leaving this open.”
Elain pushed her head between two boards and looked in. It was a much smaller structure than the central keep, and here there were no subdividing walls. “What do you—ohh!” She broke off as the board she was leaning on gave way under her hands, and fell forward with a little scream of surprise.
It might have been worse—if she’d fallen against the board below, she’d have been badly winded at the very least—but Math caught her around the waist from behind and held her firmly as the board clattered to the ground. “I think you’d better keep away from this part,” he said as, flustered, she stepped back and straightened up. “I don’t want you spending the night down a well.”
“I wasn’t trying to climb inside!” she said. “The damn board gave way under my hands! I’m not an idiot!”
She was reacting more than his comment called for. She felt nervous and discomfitted. His hand had hit her Walkman as he caught her, and had he felt the vibration that meant it was recording? His hands were still wrapping her waist, his left arm across her back, his right on her right hip. She looked over her shoulder up into his face. His eyes were very dark.
“Sorry,” she said, before he could speak. Her heartbeat was suffocating her, but she had no idea why she was so afraid. If Math knew who she was, even if he were guilty of arson, he would hardly hurt her. That would be worse than stupid.
And it was stupid to feel he must be physically dangerous to her. So why was her heart hammering as if there were an imminent danger of him hitting her over the head and throwing her down the well?
Chapter 4
“She’s at it again,” Rosemary announced.
“Is she?” Jeremy yawned. He didn’t like getting up early, but the reduced guest list at the White Lady meant reduced staff, and that meant there was no one to sneak breakfast to his room at ten o’clock any more. His aristocratic cousinship had never impressed Jan.
“That woman—that ghost,” Rosemary enlightened Elain for free as she poured a cup of coffee and firmly stirred it. “Soot from the bedroom chimney fell right in my face this morning. I tell you, she’s malicious.” Davina was nodding in emphatic agreement, her mouth too full of hot buttered toast and jam for her to speak.
Jeremy reached for the coffeepot. “Whatever were you doing in the chimney?” he asked in mild surprise. Elain choked on a crumb and began to cough.
“There—I thought I heard a bird caught in the chimney. I looked to see.”
“Maybe it was the bird who knocked the soot in your face,” Elain offered. Rosemary seemed so unlikely a person to be arguing for the existence of a ghost ahead of all rational explanation. When Rosemary irritably shook her head, she asked, “Why do you care so much about the ghost? What are you afraid of?”
Davina swallowed. “Well, you see, my dear, we feel quite certain that the ghost deliberately caused the fire. We are afraid there may be another incident, perhaps fatal this time. There was, thank God,” she added, her voice dropping to a lower pitch, “no one killed in the fire.”
Elain’s hand had already found the On button on her Walkman. Meanwhile she raised her eyebrows. “You think the ghost caused the fire? Is that possible?”
“Of course it’s possible. It isn’t only poltergeists, you know, who are capable of manifestation on the physical level. Ohh, no. There are those who may be said to have poltergeist properties and propensities, but who are a different, more complex spirit form than the term ‘poltergeist’ implies. These are the ones who are at particular risk of Tuhning.”
The coffeepot had come round to Elain, and she poured herself a cup. “Are you a medium, Davina?”
“Ah. I didn’t realize you didn’t realize. My dear, I am a psychic. I am attuned to spirit presences.”
“Like Madame Arcati.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You know, that fabulous film with Margaret Rutherford playing the—”
“I am well aware of who Madame Arcati is,” Davina said icily. “I am not a medium.”
“I’ve got a roommate in—” Elain cleared her throat “—who’s a real film buff. She’s got a huge collection of videos. I got really hooked on old English films of the thirties and forties. I love Margaret Rutherford, don’t you? Especially in Blithe Spirit.”
“Would you pass me the butter, please, Jeremy,” said Davina.
Rather belatedly, it dawned on Elain that she had offended Davina. “Well, of course, it’s a comedy,” said Elain lamely. “But she did do it, didn’t she? I mean, she really worked it so the wife came back.” Then she remembered that that wasn’t quite true. Hadn’t it been the maid, who was unconsciously psychic?
“Quite,” said Davina.
“My sister takes her work very seriously,” Rosemary said, apparently taking pity on Elain.
“Are you here professionally? I mean, did Math call you in to give advice or something?”
“No.” It was Rosemary who answered. Clearly Davina needed time to recover. “We came to the White Lady for the first time a few years ago quite by chance, on holiday, and heard about the ghost then. Last year we returned for another holiday. We often spend our summers in Wales, and we particularly like this area. At that time, although we said nothing, my sister became slightly alarmed at what she felt were changes in the ghost’s emanations. But it was early days to deliver a warning, especially as she hadn’t been consulted professionally and no one even knew that she was a psychic. It’s not something we talk about, of course.”
“Of course,” said Elain, thinking that they were certainly talking about it now.
“We came back this year because my sister is researching a book on the ghosts of Britain. She wished to include this one, and particularly to note whether the changes of the kind she expected had indeed occurred. If, in fact, this ghost was Tuhning. We arrived to find the place a ruin.”
“So no one had called to warn you, either?”
“You see, we had been travelling.” Davina took up the story. “There was nowhere we could be contacted. When we arrived, there was still the smell of smoke.” She shuddered. “It was dreadful. I don’t think I’ve ever been so horrified in my life. It burnt so quickly! One forgets how fast old places, even stone buildings, catch. How lucky the whole place didn’t go up!”
“That was mostly Math’s doing,” J
eremy interposed. “I helped, of course. It was damned hot work, it was indeed, until the fire truck arrived. I, for one, certainly despaired of our being able to contain it.”
“How did the fire start?” Elain asked, gently placing her hand on her Walkman to be sure that it was running. Once she had got a wonderfully incriminating conversation going and discovered later that she had somehow turned off her tape. Once was enough. “How does a ghost start a fire?”
“It started in the cellar of the other wing,” said Jeremy. “Underneath the lounge. The insurance people were poking around for days trying to decide how.”
“What did they say?”
“I don’t know what they said exactly, but they still haven’t paid the claim. Math wants to get to work rebuilding, but until they pay he can’t.”
“Don’t they know how it started, then?”
“Apparently there was some petrol stored in that part of the cellar, which no one knew about.” This was Rosemary. “Two large cans. They had been there since the war.”
Vinnie Daniels came into the room like a fresh breeze, making Elain aware how close the atmosphere had become. “Good morning, everyone,” she carolled. “I’m afraid I overslept.” She sat down beside Elain, smiling kindly as she picked up a delicate cup and saucer. “Would you be so kind as to pour coffee for me, my dear?”
“Of course.” Elain filled the porcelain cup, and offered her cream and sugar. “We’ve just been talking about the fire. It seems amazing that that stored petrol didn’t go up long ago.”
Vinnie spooned a quite startling amount of sugar into her cup and stirred vigorously. “What is amazing is how it got there in the first place. I am sure there was never any petrol stored in the cellar. Certainly not as long ago as the war, because my father cleared it out when he bought the place in 1948,” she said briskly, as though repeating something she had said before. She looked at Rosemary, and then at Elain.
“Perhaps you don’t know, my dear. My father bought the house after the war and converted it into an hotel. My husband had been killed at Arnhem, and so I came here with my parents. I sold to Math three years ago when it began to get too much for me.”
This certainly cleared up a couple of points that had been confusing Elain. “But you still holiday here?”
“I live here permanently,” Vinnie replied. “It’s the only home I’ve known for nearly fifty years. Math agreed to let me stay on until I die.”
“There may have been petrol there that you didn’t know about,” Rosemary insisted. “That old part of the cellar is so dank and small I suppose no one ever went into it. The insurance people found the cans after all. Or the remains of them.”
“There were no petrol cans in that part of the cellar,” Vinnie repeated firmly.
Rosemary frowned at Vinnie as though the older woman might be going senile. “They were of a design last manufactured in 1942. Isn’t that what Math says the man told him? How on earth can that be explained away?”
“What do you think happened, then, Rosemary?” Elain asked.
“One of the cans must have begun leaking. I think heat or a spark ignited the petrol.”
“And spirit presences are quite capable of generating heat on this plane,” said Davina.
“Oh, absolutely,” Jeremy offered. “They generate cold, as well. Ghosts often cause cold drafts and cold spots, don’t they? Althorpe has got ghosts, of course. I used to meet one as a child.”
“Children often do,” said Davina, beaming on a prize student.
The insurance company was going to have trouble swallowing all this, Elain thought with an inward laugh. But Raymond wanted a thorough job, and if that included ghosts, it wasn’t up to her to edit them out.
“Do you think the ghost used to live here? When she was alive, I mean?”
“Undoubtedly,” said Davina.
“There is no question that this used to be her home,” Vinnie agreed. “Quite unmistakable.”
“Oh, of course.” That was Rosemary.
“But why would she want to burn down her own home?” Elain asked Davina. “Where would she go?”
This question seemed to catch Davina off guard. “Well, she—” she began, and broke off.
“Exactly,” said Vinnie with a snort. “There is no reason for her to become sinister, and none at all for her to attempt to burn this house to the ground. She has, in any case, far too much sense of humour to do anything so stupid.”
“It is the intelligent ones who are most likely to Tuhn,” said Davina nervously, almost pleadingly. Clearly, Vinnie’s determined common sense made her uncomfortable.
“I should think that a most unlikely proposition. In any case, how could it be proven?” said Vinnie, calmly drinking her coffee.
“Perhaps Davina should devise an IQ test for ghosts,” Jeremy suggested.
* * *
In her room later, Elain played the conversation again on her Walkman. The advent of the “personal sound system” had, Raymond often said, been a real blessing for undercover operators. It meant you could walk around permanently wired for sound without looking suspicious.
Elain’s Walkman looked like, and on one level was, an ordinary cassette tape player, in which Elain always carried a language-learning tape. She generally made sure people knew she was studying Italian, a not unreasonable preoccupation for an artist who hoped to go to Italy one day to paint. The sound of voices from her Walkman, if anyone overheard, wouldn’t seem odd.
But the machine also had a secondary cassette deck, with an independent, disguised set of controls; it was on this that Elain recorded conversations.
When she was working for Raymond on a case, she always carried the Walkman, with the headphones—that contained the mike—around her neck or on her ears. People generally got used to thinking Elain a person always glued to her Walkman, and ceased to see it.
She was getting pretty proficient at Italian, too.
She made notes of the conversations she had had, playing the breakfast-table tape all the way through, but there wasn’t much there that would interest Raymond’s client. They must already know what had caused the fire, and anyone less likely to buy into the theory that a ghost had manifested sufficient spark to set the petrol alight than an insurance company, Elain couldn’t imagine.
A more interesting issue was Vinnie’s insistence that there had been no petrol cans in the cellar. Was it this denial that had made the company suspicious of Math Powys?
She noted the date and time on the label and dropped the tape into a pocket of her small valise; she never wiped any recording until the case in question was completely finished. You never knew what might turn out to be evidence.
Then she picked up the other tape, the one she had made up at the fortress talking to Math. There was nothing on that of any relevance, but she would keep it, nonetheless. She noted the date and time on another minuscule label and pressed it onto the tiny cassette. Then, about to pack it away, too, she paused, and instead slipped it into the player and rewound it.
“What’s his name?” she heard her own voice, loud as usual because of her proximity to the mike.
“Balch.”
Why had she begun recording here? There had been no chance of turning the conversation on to the fire just then. What had made her feel she ought to push the button?
“...Welsh for proud.”
The resonance of his deep voice lost nothing for being right in her ears. Elain shivered and turned the machine off. She wasn’t going to listen to that voice any more than she had to.
* * *
“They’re all out of a movie,” she said. She was calling from the pay phone in the village. There was no phone in her room, and the lobby phone was impossible.
“Really? Which one?” said Raymond.
Elain laughed. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I think the title should be It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, or has that been done?”
“Been done. What’s mad about them?”
“Depends on the place. Bedlam probably had a few more than its share.”
The trouble with Raymond was, he could always go you one better. And he had the dry delivery that was part of what she liked about the English sense of humour. Elain wasn’t verbal, she got tongue-tied. Perhaps that was why she admired articulateness so much in others.
“And there’s a ghost,” she said. “Name of Jess. A few centuries old, I understand.”
Raymond sniffed. “Oh, well, not a suspect, then.”
“But that’s where you’re wrong,” Elain gurgled. She outlined Davina’s theory of the fire.
“Nice,” said Raymond, “but not good enough. I doubt if we could legally prove the ghost was acting as a party for the insured, even if she was.”
She said suddenly, “Vinnie Daniels is the previous owner, do they know that? She says the petrol cans weren’t in the cellar. Is that what made the insurance company suspicious?”
“No,” said Raymond. “They’re not saying, exactly, but I think it was a tip-off.”
So he had an enemy, then. One way or another, there was someone who wanted Math Powys hurt.
* * *
In the afternoon she took her easel and paints up to the ruined fortress and settled down in the warm sunshine to paint. She sat looking down the hill to the White Lady and the valley beyond. On the other side, Cadair Idris rose up against the sky. It was true what they said about the Welsh mountains. They might not be high, but they were perfectly proportioned, perfectly beautiful. There was no other word for Cadair Idris than mountain.
This was the view the woman in the keep would have had, as she walked the battlements, or stood watching out the tiny window. Except for the house immediately below, the view probably hadn’t changed very much since the days the woman had watched and waited. Had there been sheep on the hillsides then? Fewer of the fields would have been cleared, and there would have been no conifers, though there would have been many more acres of forest—oak, ash, beech, elm, rowan, larch.... Almost she could see the army of green beauty marching across the valley....