The Yellow Room Conspiracy

by Peter Dickinson

  Tommy was brushing his forelock into the exact shape that he thought suited his profile. He didn’t stop while I told him.

  “You’d better go over,” he said at once.

  “Oh, but …” I began, of course thinking about the dinner table where the numbers had worked out right for once without our having to do anything special about it.

  “Even I have some sense of priorities,” he said. “Take a bag in case you want to stay the night.”

  He really was a lovely man, in his weird way. I put my arms round him and pecked his cheek, taking care not to muss his hair.

  “An illness in the family should cover it,” he said.

  So I drove over, feeling very odd and churned up, but that may have been partly the weather because it was an extraordinary evening, tense as a drum, with a great black lid of cloud sitting straight overhead as if somebody was just getting ready to clamp it down. I could see almost all the way round the edges, a thin strip of clear sky above the horizon, silvery and still, except where the sun had gone down like a furnace in the west. And I thought something must be wrong with my eyes because of the way the light kept changing until I worked out that it was lightning, overhead, not bolts flashing down to earth, but sheeting to and fro out of sight above the car. By the time I reached Blatchards the rain was sluicing down.

  When I got home I let myself in. I could hear a clatter and chatter from along the West Corridor so I knew they were still having supper, but I went up to Miss Bolton’s Room and tapped on the door. He says he called out, but I didn’t hear him. I just crept in. He was lying on his back with his arms outside the blankets and his head propped up. It was pretty dark and I couldn’t see his face properly till I got nearer. Then I saw how gruesome he looked. That afternoon when I’d met him on the lawn he’d just looked jolly tired, but I knew how hard he’d been working so I wasn’t surprised, but now he looked like death, with his cheeks sunk in and his eyes large and strange. I tried to take his hand but he wouldn’t let me. I didn’t have to guess—I knew. Gerry had told Nan, so he’d tell Paul. I couldn’t imagine why, but I was certain.

  Of course Paul had always known he and Tommy weren’t the only men I’d ever gone to bed with, but we’d never talked much about any of the others. Sometimes in ordinary conversation something might come up, like a place I’d visited because I’d spent a holiday there with one of them, or something, and I couldn’t make sense of what I wanted to say without including that I’d been there with someone and it was pretty obviously a man, but I was always as vague as possible about it because he really didn’t want to know, he didn’t want to make the picture in his mind, his Lucy, the girl who’d shown him how to collect the hen’s eggs, lying on the brass-knobbed bed with the sunlight through the shutters making bars across her naked body, and a man—not just a vague shape but a particular man with a face you could recognise, fingers as solid as his own, leaning down over her. Still, I should have told him. It was at least half my fault.

  I took his hand again and this time he let me hold it, but he closed his eyes and when I tried to say something he shook his head. I was still like that when Harriet came up for the tray. I went out into the passage with her.

  “Is anyone sleeping in my room?” I said. “I’ve brought a bag.”

  “No, you’ll be alright there,” she said.

  “What did the doctor say?” I asked.

  “He’s been overworking and he’s got to rest,” she said.

  “Fat chance,” I said.

  “I think he and Gerry must have had some kind of a row by the lake,” she said. “That’s why Gerry didn’t stay with him. In fact I think Gerry probably asked him for money, and that was what the row was about. Gerry tried to touch Bobo, you know, and not just for a fiver either, just before he married Nan. You can imagine what Bobo said about that. Supper’s been dire. The reason it was me called you was that Nan and Gerry were having a set-to in the Yellow Room, so they’ve both been less than the life and soul, and I’d no idea what was going on and couldn’t stop worrying about Paul, and Bobo never wanted to be here in the first place and neither did Teddy, I gather, and all the while Janet and Ben were carrying on as if all was sunshine and laughter and not noticing anything wrong, and in the middle of it all Michael came in soaked to the skin—his taxi had broken down and he’d walked the rest of the way—but still behaving as if he was Louis XIV making a grand entrance at a court ball.”

  “Where is he now?” I said. I couldn’t bear the idea of meeting anyone, especially him.

  “He piled himself a mountain of cold chicken and Gerry took him up to the Yellow Room,” she said.

  “I don’t want to come down,” I said.

  “Tell Nan I’ll keep an eye on Paul. Just give me that tray.”

  I went to my room and finished Paul’s supper, which he’d hardly touched. Then I crept along to his room and asked if he wanted anything but he just shook his head and when I kissed him good night he didn’t stir, so I went away feeling utterly wretched. Nan was waiting for me, looking pretty washed-out.

  “He doesn’t want anything,” I said. “What’s happening with Michael? I suppose you can’t throw him out of the house for me?”

  She managed to smile and shook her head.

  “Not the moment,” she said. “I think it may be alright. I was listening behind the secret door, but I only heard bits.”

  “Do you think they knew you were there?” I said.

  She shrugged.

  “I bet Michael did,” I said. “He’s a nightmare like that.”

  “I don’t think it matters,” she said. “Gerry started, and he must have been saying what we’d agreed, because Michael broke in with his mouth full and said, “You’ll get twelve years, at least,” and Gerry said, “Five, and about three for you, and Nan will stand by me, what’s more.” We’d talked about that, you see. The whole point was to make Michael understand that Gerry wasn’t afraid of going to prison if the worst came to the worst. After that Gerry did most of the talking, but I couldn’t hear what he said. Michael yelled at him several times, telling him he was a total idiot, risking everything they’d worked for, but Gerry stuck to his guns. Then Michael said, “Let’s have a drink. I’ve got to think about this.” He always brings a bottle. He says our brandy’s not fit for cooking. Gerry said no –I’d told him he must, till it was over. Then Michael said, “Alright, let’s look at some figures.” Then there was nothing for a bit, and then Michael said, “This is a bloody stupid notion and it won’t work and you’ll finish up in the shit, and you’ve let me down badly, but you can go to hell your own way provided you don’t take me with you. I’ll sort the details out Monday morning. Now I’m going to bed, and I’m going to have a much better time rogering young Ben than you’ve ever had with that bitch of yours.”

  “I told you he knew you were there,” I said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “As a matter of fact Gerry and I have pretty good times when we’re on speaking terms.”

  “What did Gerry say?” I said.

  “I don’t know. He locked himself in,” she said.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “It’s alright,” she said. “He does that. He’ll have a couple of brandies and pass out, but he’ll wake up in the small hours and come to bed. He’ll tell me what happened in the morning.”

  I still wasn’t happy about it, and I don’t think she was either.

  “Well, good luck,” I said. “But watch out for Michael. He’s totally ruthless.”

  “So am I,” she said.

  When she’d gone I went to bed and read till getting on midnight and then went and looked in on Paul. His bed was empty and his clothes gone from the chair. I was rushing off to look for him but it was getting chilly with the rain after the heat-wave so I went to my room for a coat to put over my nighty and I was just coming out when I heard the fifth sta
ir creak the way it always did, so I lurked behind my door and saw Paul come creeping past fully dressed, with his shoes in his hand. I tip-toed along to check but I heard the key turn in his lock so I went back to bed and tossed and turned and listened to the rain sheeting down, and prayed that Michael had got wet enough to catch pneumonia and die. Just as it was getting light I fell asleep, deep, deep, like a drowned man, and what felt like an instant later I was woken by the fire alarm.

  PAUL X

  August 1956

  It was impossible to sleep. I lay in the dark. The lightning flashes continued through the rain, by now a steady, drenching downpour. Lucy came back once but I refused to acknowledge her presence—mean-minded of me, as I could sense her distress, but I was unable to cope. My sole thought was to leave, to get clear away, without having to talk again to any of the Verekers or anyone else connected with them. I listened for the movement of doors, and as soon as I was sure that everyone on my floor at least had gone to bed I rose, dressed and stole in stockinged feet along the corridor and down the stairs. There was a telephone in the old butler’s pantry, well out of earshot of any of the bedrooms, but to my dismay it turned out that raising a taxi at almost midnight on a wet Saturday night in Bury was not a practical possibility, though I offered all the money I had on me. In the end I was forced to accept an offer to collect me from the drive gates at half past seven next morning, for a fee of twenty pounds on top of the fare.

  I went back to my room, locked the door and lay down in my clothes, taking the precaution of setting my alarm for half past six. I did in fact then sleep for a while, but woke soon after first light, and wrote a note for Nancy, apologising for leaving and saying I would arrange to collect my car and case later. Though still deeply miserable I was feeling physically almost normal, but I wasn’t prepared to risk carrying the case the length of the drive. I longed to write a note for Lucy, but I could think of nothing I could bear to say, so I left it at that and crept once more downstairs.

  I realised now that I was hungry enough to raise the possibility of my collapsing again on the journey. The chances of finding anything to eat in Bury on a Sunday morning were nil, but I remembered from my telephone call last night that the remains of supper had been cleared on to the pantry table. I found an electric kettle, tea in a cupboard, milk in the fridge, bread rolls, butter and cheese. It was half past six by the time I finished. I now felt fully up to the journey—in fact if Bobo had not taken my key I would have paid off the taxi and driven myself to London. The risk of harming some other road-user at that hour would have been negligible.

  By now I was anxious to be gone. There was a risk of someone else coming down for an early snack, or of Lucy waking and going along to my room to check on me. But the rain was sheeting relentlessly down outside the window, and again, after what had happened the evening before it would have been stupid for me to wait half an hour at the gate in weather like that without protection and then journey soaked to London. I needed an umbrella, a raincoat, boots. Luckily I knew just where to find them, in the Gun Room close to my way out. It was a hundred to one, knowing the habits of the house, that Lord Vereker’s boots, which fitted me, would still be there. Almost cheered by the neatness with which matters were now arranging themselves for my escape, I stole back down the West Corridor, across the central hail and straight on towards the main door under the porte-cochère, turning left just before I reached it down the shorter corridor that led to the Gun Room and the East Stairs. The boots were exactly where Gerry had found them for me after Lord Vereker’s funeral. Probably I was the last person to wear them. It took me a short while to choose an umbrella and raincoat that wouldn’t be needed for a few days. Nervous now that I might meet someone and have to argue with them about my determination to leave, I paused at the Gun Room door and listened. Perhaps some primal instinct of the hunted caused me at the same time to sniff the air. I think so, because I immediately smelt something of which I had perhaps been vaguely aware before, a definite odour of gas.

  I paused, sniffed again and was sure. The house, it will be remembered, was heated by its own gas-plant, a Victorian device whose intricacies only Mr Chad understood. It was located in the cellars below the East Wing. Clearly there must be a leak. I felt I had to investigate. It might be extremely dangerous, and whatever my own urgencies I couldn’t leave a house full of sleeping people like that. The smell seemed to be coming from my right, and grew stronger as I turned in that direction and stronger still as I climbed the East Stairs. By the time I reached King William’s Room it was so powerful that I felt it would be dangerous to go on. (This was old-fashioned town gas, which contained a proportion of lethal carbon monoxide.) I retreated, hurried down the stairs, and ran, still in gumboots and raincoat and grasping the umbrella, back to the central hall, up the main stairs and on to where Nancy and Gerry slept. I hammered at their door with my fist and tried the handle. The door moved, but then was almost pulled from my grasp and Nancy stood there, fully dressed. She stared at me, took in umbrella, raincoat, boots.

  “There’s a gas leak,” I panted. “In the Yellow Room, I think. It was so bad I stopped at King William’s Room.”

  She too seemed to take it in absolutely at once. She pushed past me and ran down the corridor, which spanned almost the full width of the house on that floor. I followed but lagged behind. When I reached the cross-corridor at the far end she had disappeared, but the false specimen—case on the right wall was hinged out. The cavity opened on to the spiral stair down to the secret door in the Yellow Room. As I reached it I heard thumps, and Nancy’s voice crying, “Gerry! Gerry!” The gas smell here was strong too.

  I waited, getting my breath back. There was no point in two of us crowding down there and being overcome, and if she didn’t return soon I might have to try to haul her out, but the thumps and the calling stopped and she came climbing back, white-faced.

  “He didn’t come to bed,” she gasped. “We’ve got to wake everyone up. Then we’ll try again. You do this floor. I’ll do upstairs.”

  She rushed away. I had no idea which rooms were being slept in so would have to try them all. From the main stair I heard a tinkle of glass, followed by the clamour of several electric bells. Fire alarms. A door opened at the other end of the cross-corridor and Harriet looked out, still in her night-dress.

  “Yellow Room’s full of gas!” I shouted. “Gerry’s in there. Tell Bobo to come and help. Get everyone else out of the house.”

  She too seemed to understand at once, and vanished. Not for the first time I was thankful for her unimaginative practicality. Anyone else would have hesitated, checked that they’d heard right, or something. I ran back to the spiral stair and down, lifted the door-handle and flung my weight against the door. It seemed totally solid, and the twist of the stairs precluded a proper charge. There was nowhere for leverage. I climbed the stair and found Bobo in the cross-corridor wearing grey flannel trousers over his pyjamas and pulling a jersey on as he came towards me.

  “That door’s locked,” I gasped. “We’ll have to try King William’s Room. It’s full of gas.”

  I ran but he overtook me on the stairs and led the way. I followed with relief. I am not a man of action. Bobo was. Indeed he already seemed to have a plan. At the foot of the stair he picked up the short bench that had always stood there and hefted it onto his hip. The gas smell was now sinisterly strong.

  “Right,” he said. “First thing is air. I’ll go and get a window open upstairs. You do that one there. When I call, take a good lungful and then hold your breath and come on up.”

  I saw his own lungs fill. Still carrying the bench he climbed purposefully up the stairs. I followed him to the landing, loosed the catch of the landing window, slid the sash up and leaned out, breathing the rain-washed air. In a few seconds I heard his call and followed him on up. He was kneeling on the bench, which he had climbed on to reach the window-catch, and had his head and shoulders out into
the open. As I joined him I could see the raindrops beginning to gather on his already sparse blond hair. Mercifully the draught was inwards.

  “Christ,” said Bobo. “Did you smell it in here? Must be solid gas in the Yellow Room. I tried a squint through the key-hole, but the key’s in the lock. Stupid bugger. He’ll be a goner all right, if he’s in there. Ready? We’ll use this bench as a ram. You take that end. Five swings and back to the window. I’m not going to kill myself for bloody Gerry.”

  We swung the bench rhythmically against the lock with Bobo grunting the time. At the third strike something splintered. At the fifth the lock gave. Bobo booted the right-hand leaf and propped it open with the bench. He barely glanced inside before inspecting the other leaf. He found the bolts and slid them free, then gestured me back to the window. Over his shoulder I saw that the curtains were drawn in the Yellow Room but the lights were still on. A pair of legs, presumably Gerry’s, were visible. The body itself, slumped in the armchair on the far side of the fireplace, was hidden by a draped table on which stood a decanter and siphon. Bobo followed me back to the window.

  “Looks like a piece of cake,” he said. “I’ll go in and get him out. You stay by the door. Don’t come in unless you can see I’m having trouble. If anything goes wrong, get me out, not him. He’ll be a goner. Grab a fresh lot of air before you try anything. If you don’t think you can do it alone, go and get help. But it’s not going to come to that. Soon as I’m out, get some air, then go in and turn the gas off. Keep counting while you’re in there. Soon as you reach twenty-five, head for the door. More air, go back, get the windows open. Just don’t try to do any more in one go than you can. And for God’s sake don’t touch any switches. I’ll be back as soon as I’ve got him outside. Right? We’re off.”