Escapade

by Walter Satterthwait

  Cecily had heard it too. Her head was cocked. The smug look was gone. She was listening, puzzled.

  It came again, louder this time. A long frightened shriek. A wail.

  I said, “Give me the key, Cecily.”

  Cecily’s forehead was furrowed, her mouth was open. She closed her mouth and reached into the pocket of her robe. She frowned. She looked at me. “It’s gone.” She dug around in her pocket. “It’s gone!” Her voice had become shrill. “I had it, I know I had it, but it’s gone!” She looked quickly around the room, looked back at me, her face awry.

  Fallen out of the robe when she hit the floor? I glanced around the carpet, didn’t see it.

  There had been no more screams. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad one.

  I said the impolite word again.

  I snatched the handcuffs up into my left hand and stuck both of them, hand and cuffs, into the pocket of my dressing gown. I took a last look at Cecily. She was on her hands and knees now atop the bed, slapping at the bedspread, her short hair flapping frantically as she looked back and forth. I ran to the door and yanked it open and I rushed out into the hall.

  Chapter Six

  THE ILLUMINATION IN the corridor came from dim electric lights set in brass sconces along the stone walls. Sir David Merridale stood in front of the next doorway to my left—the door to the suite occupied by Mrs. Allardyce and Miss Turner. Just as I saw him, Sir David opened the door and plunged into the room. I sprinted toward the door—with one hand jammed in my pocket, it was an awkward sprint.

  I went inside. I stuck my other hand, my right, into the right pocket of the robe. With both hands in my pockets, I might be able to pass for a normal person. Out for a casual stroll.

  By the dim light of the electric lamp on the nightstand I could see three figures in the far corner of the room. Two of the figures had their backs to me. One was Sir David. The other had to be Mrs. Allardyce. Unless there were two or three people under that bulky robe, traveling as one.

  The third figure stood with her back against the stone wall. She was tall. She wore a long pink flannel nightgown and her head was lowered and her hands were covering her face. Her long brown hair was loose and it spilled down over her shoulders. Miss Turner.

  The door to the next chamber was open. A light was on in there.

  “She’s had a nightmare,” said Mrs. Allardyce to Sir David.

  Miss Turner’s head jerked up. “It was no nightmare!” she said. “I saw him.”

  “Saw whom?” said Sir David. He was patting Miss Turner on the shoulder. Paternally. He was also admiring her body, I noticed. I didn’t blame him. The thin pink material clung to the curves and it draped nicely over the hollows. All the curves and all the hollows seemed to be in exactly the right places. Miss Turner, at nighttime, was a surprise.

  “The ghost,” she said. “Lord Reginald.” She looked from Sir David to Mrs. Allardyce to me. “I know it sounds absurd, but he was in there!” she said, and pointed to the open door of her room.

  “Nonsense,” said Mrs. Allardyce. Her make-up was gone and I could understand now why she wore so much of it. She had no eyebrows and no lips. “You’ve had a long day. All this talk of ghosts has overstimulated you.”

  “I saw him!” With her glasses gone, her thick toffee-brown hair streaming free, she looked five years younger.

  “Now Jane, for goodness’ sake,” said Mrs. Allardyce. She spoke with that elaborate patience that always conveys its opposite, and always intends to. “Do stop making a nuisance of yourself. It’s time we all went back to bed.”

  Sir David curled his paternal arm around Miss Turner’s shoulder. “I suspect that the young lady could do with a stiff tot of brandy. I happen to—”

  Miss Turner turned and pushed his arm away with her forearm. She backed up. “Please don’t patronize me,” she said stiffly. “I’m telling you, I saw him.”

  Sir David smiled his bland smile. “I’m sure you saw something,” he said. “Something that appeared to you to be—”

  “I saw a bloody ghost, you fool!”

  “Jane!” said Mrs. Allardyce. “You forget yourself!”

  Miss Turner turned to her. Her hands were down at her sides, balled into fists. “He was there!” she said.

  “Even if he had been,” said Mrs. Allardyce deliberately, “which I do not for one moment believe, there would certainly be no need to use such language.”

  For a moment Miss Turner’s blue eyes flashed and her wide lips parted. It seemed to me that Mrs. Allardyce was about to learn something interesting about language. Maybe I could have picked up a thing or two myself. But then Miss Turner shut her mouth and bit her lip and looked away.

  I said, “What did he look like?”

  She turned to me and frowned and she narrowed those dazzling eyes as though trying to figure out what I was up to. Finally, hesitantly, she spoke. “He was an old man,” she said. She turned to

  Mrs. Allardyce. “Just as you said.” She turned back to me and took a deep breath. I don’t think she really cared whom she talked to, so long as it was someone who listened. “He was very old. Ancient. And thin. Skeletal. His beard was white, white and yellowish and long, like his hair.”

  “You had the light on when you saw him?”

  “Yes. I switched it on as soon as I heard a noise. I wasn’t sleeping.”

  “What noise?”

  She frowned, remembering, trying to get it right. “A sort of clicking sound,” she said. “Like claws on stone.” She put her hands to her shoulders, holding herself, and she closed her eyes.

  “What was he wearing?”

  The blue eyes opened. She took another breath. “A long white gown. A sort of nightgown.”

  “He was tall? Short?”

  “Tall,” she said. “Not so tall as you, but tall. And his head was bent over to the side. Tilted. Twisted.” She shivered again. “It was horrid. It made him seem demonic.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “He said—” She caught herself. She shook her head. “No. He said nothing.”

  For the first time I got the feeling she was lying. She had imagined the ghost, maybe. But if she had, she had also imagined him saying something. “Did he do anything?” I asked her.

  Once again she shook her head. Once again I thought she was lying. “No,” she said. “But he was there!”

  “Gentlemen,” said a female voice. I turned. It was Mrs. Corneille in a belted red silk robe. Her heavy black hair was still sleek, still perfectly groomed.

  “I suggest,” said Mrs. Corneille in that dark furry voice, “that you all return to bed and permit me to care for Miss Turner.”

  “For some reason, Vanessa,” said Sir David, “I have a difficult time imagining you as Florence Nightingale.” I thought I could hear irritation in his voice, running through it like a tight thin wire.

  “For some reason, David,” she said, “I have a difficult time imagining you as Dr. Livingstone. Miss Turner? Would you like to come with me? I should imagine that you’d rather not attempt to sleep just yet. And, if you feel you need it, I’ve some brandy, as well.” She smiled sweetly at Sir David. He smiled blandly back. To Miss Turner she said, “And there’s another room in my suite. You’re quite welcome to it.”

  Miss Turner glanced toward the open door of her room, looked around at the rest of us, finally turned back to Mrs. Corneille. She raised her head. “Thank you. Yes. It’s very kind of you. I would like a brandy. But I must fetch my robe.”

  Mrs. Corneille said, “I’ll be happy to fetch it for—”

  “No, no,” said Miss Turner. “Thank you.” She dropped her arms to her sides, turned, and walked into the door that led to her room. She kept her head held high, as proud as an Egyptian queen. And Egyptian queens almost never wore pink flannel nightgowns.

  Mrs. Allardyce said in a stage whisper, “You really shouldn’t encourage her.”

  Mrs. Corneille smiled pleasantly. “I’m sure you’re ri
ght, of course. But what harm can it do if she gets away for a bit? No doubt she could do with a few moments to pull herself together. She seems basically a sound young woman.”

  Mrs. Allardyce frowned. She was dubious but she would go along. Maybe because Mrs. Corneille was being sensible, but more likely because Mrs. Corneille somehow outranked her. “Very well,” she said. “But I’m not entirely sure that I approve of brandy at this hour.”

  Mrs. Corneille smiled again. She was better at that than I would have been, if I’d been the one smiling at Mrs. Allardyce. “You needn’t worry,” she said. “Only a thimbleful.”

  Sir David started to say something to Mrs. Corneille but just then Miss Turner returned to the room. She was wearing her glasses now and she was buttoning up the front of a shapeless gray bathrobe. None of Miss Turner’s clothes lived up to her blue eyes. Not many clothes could.

  “Come along, then,” said Mrs. Corneille. She took Miss Turner’s left arm and patted it. She turned to the rest of us. “Pleasant dreams.”

  Miss Turner glanced at all of us again but she said nothing.

  They walked off. They made an interesting pair—Mrs. Corneille sleek and glossy in her red silk, Miss Turner taller and stiffer and almost drab now in her gray wool. You wouldn’t think it was possible for someone to look drab and proud at the same time, but Miss Turner somehow managed to pull it off.

  Without looking back, the two of them walked out the door into the hallway.

  I said to Mrs. Allardyce, “What was it, exactly, that woke you up?”

  She blinked. She was surprised, I think, by my asking. “Why, that awful screaming, of course. The silly girl gave me a horrible start. I thought my poor heart would stop.” She put her hand on her heavy chest. Probably she had a heart and probably it was in there somewhere.

  “Miss Turner screamed twice,” I said. “Which scream woke you up?”

  “The first one. It would’ve awakened the dead. ”

  “When you heard the scream, what did you do?”

  “I sat up and I switched on the electric light.” She frowned. “Why on earth do you ask?”

  “An excellent question,” said Sir David. “What are you playing at, Beaumont? Amateur sleuth?” He was annoyed at Miss Turner, I think, for calling him a fool. And probably at Mrs. Corneille, for plucking Miss Turner away. He was taking his annoyance out on me, probably because I was a witness, and a male. I could live with that for a while, if I had to.

  “Mr. Houdini will want to know,” I said. “This is the kind of thing he came here to investigate.” It sounded reasonable to me, but it seemed to bother Sir David.

  I looked at Mrs. Allardyce. “You turned on the light as soon as you heard the scream?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Well, the—the poor girl screamed again, a dreadful scream, absolutely pitiful. ” She was on her best behavior now. She was assisting the Great Houdini with his research. “I had no idea what to think. But I got out of bed and I put on my robe—I was concerned about Jane, you see, and I thought I should go and have a peek at her. And then she came running through the door. She was completely hysterical.”

  “You didn’t see anybody else coming from her room.”

  “No, of course not. Only Jane. There was never anybody else in her room. Jane’s a charming person, good-hearted, but clever, of course, and terribly imaginative. It’s all those books she reads. And last night, you see, Lord Purleigh told us all some truly horrifying stories about the ghost who’s supposed to haunt this part of the manor. An ancestor of his, the third Earl, Lord Reginald Fitzwilliam. Far be it from me to criticize, Robert’s a dear sweet man, but really, he ought to have known better—anyone can see that Jane’s an excitable person. What must’ve happened is that after hearing all that, Jane dreamed she saw Lord Reginald, and then, of course, because she was sleeping in a strange bed, she was disorientated. And so she thought the dream was real, you see.”

  I nodded. “You heard two screams,” I said.

  “Yes, didn’t I just say so?”

  “Uh-huh. You mind if I take a look in Miss Turner’s room?”

  If she’d had eyebrows, she would’ve raised them. Instead she raised the ridge of her forehead. “Is that absolutely necessary, do you think?”

  “Absolutely. I’ve got to make sure everything’s okay. Mr. Houdini will ask about it.”

  She frowned. “Well, if you think . . .”

  “Thanks.” I walked through the doorway.

  It was the same set-up as the Great Man’s room—first a bathroom and a toilet and then the sleeping area. There was no one in it, anywhere. The bed was a tangled mess and one of the pillows was on the floor, near the door. There was no one under the bed and nothing in the wardrobe except Miss Turner’s clothing and the clean smell of talcum powder. The floor was wooden and the walls were made of stone. The window was too narrow to let anyone in or out.

  Sir David had followed me in. Like mine, his hands were in the pockets of his dressing gown. Maybe he was hiding a pair of hand-cuffs of his own. His smile had gone from bland to ironic. He said, “Searching for clues, are we?”

  I glanced once more around the room. “Right,” I said.

  “Aren’t we going to produce our magnifying lens?”

  I looked at him. “You think it was a really small ghost?”

  His smile became bland again. “As an American,” he said, “you probably wouldn’t know this. But a gentleman never enters a lady’s room without her permission.”

  I nodded. “Then I guess we’d both better leave.” He stood in my way, so I walked around him and back out into Mrs. Allardyce’s room.

  “Thanks for your trouble,” I told her.

  “Not at all,” she said. She put her hand to her chest again. “Will Mr. Houdini wish to speak with me?”

  “Sure he will,” I said. “Count on it. Thanks again. Good night.” I nodded to Sir David. He didn’t return the nod.

  But I could feel someone behind me as I walked out into the hall. I took a few steps down the corridor and he called out, “Oh, Beaumont?”

  I stopped and turned. “Yeah?”

  He approached me. His handsome face was thoughtful. “You know,” he said, “I don’t think I care for your manners.”

  “No? You in the market for a new set?”

  He nodded as if that was pretty much the answer he had expected. He stroked the left side of his mustache with the tip of his index finger. “Perhaps we’ll have an opportunity to discuss this at some other time.”

  “Look forward to it,” I said. “See you later.”

  “ORGHH.”

  “Harry?”

  “Orgh.”

  “Harry?”

  “Whumph?” In the light from the open doorway I could see him tug up the silk blindfold and stick it to his forehead. He unscrewed the wax from his ears. “Humph? What?”

  “Sorry to wake you up,” I said.

  “No no no. I was merely resting my eyes.” Probably the wax had kept him from hearing the snores.

  “Okay if I turn on the light?” I asked him.

  “Yes, yes, certainly. What is it, Phil? What is wrong?”

  I turned on the light and held out my left hand. “I was wondering if you could get these off.”

  Cecily must have slipped away from my room while everyone was talking next door. If she had found the key to the handcuffs, she hadn’t left it for me.

  The Great Man looked at the handcuffs dangling from my wrist. He raised his eyebrows, surprised. “A Mueller and Kohl spring-loaded. An antique. Where did you find it, Phil?”

  “A long story, Harry. Tell you in the morning. Can you get it off?”

  He smiled. “Phil, a child could remove those. Here. Observe.” In less than a second, the cuffs were off.

  The Morning Post

  Maplewhite, Devon

  August 18

  Dear Evangeline,

  You’ll be appalled, I kn
ow. You’ll be disgusted with me. I can scarcely blame you: I’m thoroughly disgusted with myself. I’ve been an absolute and utter fool. If the earth suddenly groaned open before me, I would leap immediately into the smoking chasm and I would feel, I promise you, nothing but intense gratitude and relief as I whistled down toward the Abyss.

  Oh, Evy, I’ve been such an idiot! If you had seen me standing there, half naked, with all those people gaping at me! If you had heard me babbling like a lunatic about the ghost—

  Yes, the ghost. A real ghost, or so he seemed at the time, slathering and foaming and hissing obscenities. Those wild eyes, that leering mouth, and that monstrous thing of his rampant and red!

  But now, as the light of dawn begins to sift through the window, pale and cold and relentless, I begin to suspect that I must have suffered some attack of mania.

  I’ve returned to my own room. The ghost is gone, if indeed he was ever present. In the room beyond, which reeks of her mint bonbons, the Allardyce sleeps, as always, the sleep of the just. One of the other guests, Mrs Corneille, was kind enough to offer me a brandy and, had I wanted it, the extra room of her suite. She’s a wonderful woman, but I knew that wherever I might be I shouldn’t sleep at all tonight, and so I returned here, determined to write to you and describe this fantasy that terrified me so. For a fantasy it must have been.

  And yet, Evy, he seemed so very real! I can still hear his beastly cackle and the dreadful, filthy things he said. I can still taste the fear in my mouth, stale and slippery and bitter, like old pennies.

  I’m babbling again. I shall do this properly.

  Ah well. I’m afraid the ghost must wait. I hear something

  stirring next door. Either the Allardyce is awakening or a hippopotamus has wandered into her room in search of a place to wallow. If he spies the Allardyce, he will no doubt attempt to breed; the clamour will unnerve the entire household. In any event, I must go. I shall get this in the morning post, and I shall send its continuation to you this afternoon.

  All my love, Jane