‘Nature’s way is best,’ said Mrs Wrythe.
The hot water hissing from the chrome cone pattered on the shower curtains. Monique closed her eyes and stood in the centre of the shower, feeling her body glow. By the time she came out of the shower, Mrs Wrythe had already changed and put on her white coat. She was writing at a small table, unperturbed, professionally remote. By her side was an open card file. Monique stood in front of the dryer, rubbing herself gently with the heated towel. Mrs Wrythe finally put down her pen, placed the card back in the box, screwed the top on her pen and replaced it in her pocket.
'While you are with us you will not need sleeping pills,’ said Mrs Wrythe. 'When you came,’ she continued, 'you were given an injection. That was to help you relax. But there will be no further drugs.’
Monique was silent. The gap in her memory was partly explained, but she doubted if the injection had been solely intended to make her relax. She thought, apprehensively, vaguely, without much knowledge, of what could be done with drugs.
'You can read until eleven,’ said Mrs Wrythe. ‘But we have a rule that all lights must be out after that time. Please ring if there is anything you require. You will find the discipline rather difficult at first after the kind of life you have been living but everything we do here is for your own good and is based upon natural law.’
Monique’s gown and nightdress were on a radiator. Mrs Wrythe indicated them and Monique obediently put them on.
‘I’ll show you to your room. Tomorrow we will go into your treatment.’
The single bedroom to which she was taken was on the same floor. The room was small, with parquet floor, white walls, a bowl of flowers on a bedside table. She recognized her suitcase on a small luggage grid. She could not remember whether she had left it there or not. She found the gap in her memory annoying rather than alarming.
'We have a regular discipline,’ said Mrs Wrythe.
‘Discipline is of great importance. We try to create a rhythm to which the body will respond. Try and sleep now.’
Monique waited until she heard Mrs Wrythe’s footsteps recede down the corridor and then went across and opened her suitcase. The sleeping pills were still in the container in her handbag.
She looked at her watch. It was ten o’clock. She lit a cigarette and wondered whether to try and do without a sleeping pill and eventually decided that she might as well and went to bed. She lay smoking for some time before putting out the light. She wondered if there was a rule against smoking.
Her body felt good after the massage but she could not enjoy the sense of physical ease and pleasure, lying relaxed between the cool sheets, because her brain was too active and too many thoughts were going round in her head. She was conscious that she had done so many things that were absurd and foolish. She wondered if what she was doing now was right and when she would be at peace and if ever one was at peace. Then she began to wonder about the child.
About two o’clock in the morning she was still awake. She put on the bedside light and wondered whether to ring the bell or whether to take a pill. Something made her get up and open the curtains.
Moonlight flooded into the room. The moon was full and large and very bright. She found her cigarettes, lit one, put out her bedside light and sat in the window. The sky was full of shoal clouds, small and silver, like phosphorescent fish in a dark pool.
Looking out over the garden in the bright moonlight she could see the windows of one wing, the ivy and the wisteria on the walls, part of a terrace, stone dogs, steps leading down to a lawn. Beyond were fields. In the distance was the glint of water. It was very peaceful and utterly still. Down by the yew hedge something moved.
She could not see what it was. There was a shadow which was deeper than the rest but as she stared the shadow dissolved. She had just decided that the light was playing tricks when something — a branch or a footstep — scraped on the terrace. This time she was certain there had been someone in the garden, who had come up under the shadow of the yew hedge and on to the terrace.
She remained alert. There was a balcony outside her room which obscured her view of the terrace immediately below. One side of the balcony was in shadow and in this shadow appeared another. There was a slight rustling, a scurry of movement on the balcony and a man eased himself over the window sill. Even in the breathtaking suddenness of his arrival she recognized the tilt of the head and the hard line of the chin.
‘Don't move.’
Holmes' urgent whisper was barely loud enough to be heard.
‘There's someone patrolling the grounds and they’ve got a dog. We could see you for miles when you switched the light on. Go on smoking. Let them see the glow from your cigarette.'
Holmes was standing in the shadow of the curtain, watching the lawn. He waited until he seemed satisfied he had not been seen. There was a click and something glinted in his hand.
‘Get up,’ he said. ‘Walk to the bed. Put on the bedside light. Come back and draw the curtains.’
His voice was a whisper. By the time she had drawn the curtains he was moving rapidly and silently about the room, intent on something which at first she could not understand. The mattress was turned over, the bed moved, the base of the bedlight examined. He proceeded with the same deliberate purpose to take out the drawer of the bedside cabinet, examining the inside. Apparently satisfied, he replaced the drawer and looked round the room, frowning. There was a metal strip along one edge of the parquet floor.
There was a swift movement of his right hand and a knife blade gleamed. He prised up two of the wood blocks, exposing the coloured wires in the channel. He worked quickly, expertly, cutting them, and at length stood up, the floor blocks back in place. He smiled at her wryly, self-consciously. 'Who are in the rooms next door?’
There’s a massage room on one side.’
'And the other?’
‘I don’t know. What were you looking for?’
'Microphones.’
The bedlight glinted on the long wicked-looking steel blade in his right hand. There was a click, a sudden movement of his wrist, and the blade vanished. He held out a silver cigarette case. 'You and I,’ he said easily, ‘had better sort out those stories you told to Colonel Lamb.’
Her throat was dry. 'I don’t know what you mean.’
'You know what I mean.’
‘I do not.’
He seated himself on the bed. 'If it is any consolation, I would probably have done the same thing in the circumstances.’ He made a sympathetic gesture. ‘I suspect you didn’t know who they were until after you were committed.’
‘Committed?’
‘To work for them.’
Holmes snicked out the bedlight. ‘Just a precaution. We don’t want to attract visitors.’ They sat in semi-darkness.
‘It’s somewhat complex.’ He sounded friendly. ‘The best thing is to tell us everything.’ There was no reply. He hardly expected one. He was searching for something that would break through her defences. He said:
‘You’re shielding someone. We know why you’re doing it. We know your motives. But it won’t work. It never works.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said.
‘You know very well what I mean. What you’ve got to realize is they’re making use of you. They won’t keep their promise. They never do.’
'No one’s made any promises.’
'Listen to me!’ He spoke with a sudden flare of impatience. She could feel the passion in his voice. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing. You’ve been trapped into something far bigger than you realize. God knows exactly what you're playing at or what you're thinking of but one thing is certain from what we know of these people — once they've got what they want they'll drop you flat.' He was still seeking the way through her defences. Suddenly it came.
‘What have you done with that small boy of yours?'
He heard her indrawn breath.
‘It's nothing to do with you.'
‘It’s going t
o be,' he said, brutally. ‘If you’ve been such a fool as to get both of you involved in this someone will have to get you out. We don't want another corpse floating down river.'
Her hand caught him on the side of the neck, just below the ear, making his head sing. She was swearing and it sounded vicious. He flung himself back and sideways to avoid her. Instinctively his knee came up but at the last moment checked, so that the jab in the groin which would have stopped her was never delivered and she was on him, tearing with her nails, beating and pulling, spitting and swearing. Something gauzy — her nightdress — was tangling his hands and he was sprawling half across the bed under her. He got his hand round one wrist, twisted two ways to muddle her reaction and then pulled. Her shoulders and breasts slid over his face and as she came over him the nightdress that had been tangling him up in its folds tore with a sharp crisp sound. She writhed and gasped as his fingers, sliding up her wrist, found a lock on her thumb. He increased the pressure slowly until she lay still, unable to move. She had stopped cursing at him and was gasping with pain. The violence and savagery of her attack had been unnerving. He could feel blood on his cheek, warm and trickling, and his muscles ached with the effort of holding her. He eased his position a little, raising himself, still holding her thumb with her arm twisted underneath her so that she could not move. In the semi-darkness, in the faint light of the moon showing through the gaps in the curtains, he could see where her nightdress had been torn. He could see, dimly, the white breasts, rising and falling extravagantly in the exhaustion which followed her struggles. The sound of her breathing was very loud, or seemed so in the darkness of the bed. But through that sound was coming another, an alarming sound, footsteps, brisk, light and determined, coming along the corridor outside.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Fish Tank
Monique released her breath in a long shuddering sob, a sound that seemed to go on and on. She turned over, face down on the pillow, putting her arms up underneath the pillow so that she was holding on to it to stifle her sobs, something to hang on to.
The footsteps went past the door. They receded briskly down the corridor. There was a long silence. A faint line of light came at one side of the door and widened inch by inch, light sweeping into the room. She knew what was happening. She wanted to stop it. She wanted to get up and stop him and make him talk. She did nothing except lie on the bed, hugging the pillow, watching the light widening and spreading.
He moved through the door, slowly and gently, and again she thought how silently he moves and she had a feeling that it was unsafe out there in the light and again wanted to call him back, this time more urgently than before, and yet she went on hugging the pillow and watching and doing nothing. It was the massage, she thought, and losing her temper when he had talked about someone else drowning, and lying awake without sleeping pills or tranquillizers to dull the emotions.
Holmes was closing the door behind him. He had gone out without saying a thing, without a glance. Absurdly, she felt piqued, defrauded of something, of another scene, an argument, a demand for an explanation. Her mood changed. She switched on the bedlight, got up, unscrewed the bottle of sleeping pills and took three. If she had had whisky she would have drunk whisky as well. Three pills would put her out for a long, long time.
Holmes moved quickly but with infinite caution down the corridor in the direction from which the footsteps had come. It was a matter of luck now. If someone else was walking the corridors, or if the other person returned, there was no chance of cover.
He went down the main staircase. A tread creaked badly and he waited but nothing happened. The clinic was probably accustomed to nocturnal movement either by nursing staff or patients. He went on down into the hall. The ashy grey remains of a log fire glinted red in a wide stone fireplace. A thick-filament lamp glowed dully at the foot of the stairs. There was enough light to see three or four doors leading off the hall. One of the doors was open.
It was a sitting-room of sorts, large and lofty, furnished with elaborate and large upholstered chairs and settees. Holmes’ pencil torch gleamed out and the light fell on a side table on which were piled copies of illustrated magazines. There would be nothing here.
He tried several rooms, one after another, equally fruitlessly. One was a consulting-room, another a dining-room, a third was almost completely filled with a large-size billiards table and glass-fronted cases containing a dozen or more fishing rods.
The fishing rods were puzzling until Holmes remembered the lake in the grounds. He examined the rods with some care and a professional interest. One or two were old green-heart rods, probably fifty years old or more, others included one or two six-foot split-cane fly rods which seemed either brand new or barely used. They would not be the kind of rods which a man who knew anything about lake fishing would buy. They were light brook rods.
Holmes went out into the hall again, moving towards the back of the house. The kitchen, a large one, modern, designed for catering for a large number of people, yielded nothing of interest to his enquiring torch. The cupboards, scullery and larder were opened in turn. The last door he came to — the cellar door — was locked.
It was, he noticed, with a sudden interest, a mortice lock of the kind that one would hardly consider putting on a door which led to a cellar unless it was a wine cellar and this was not the kind of house, he felt, where there would be a wine cellar. Perhaps stout or cider? But one would hardly lock a cellar unless there was a bin of Chateau Gonthier or something of that kind to be preserved and he doubted the existence of a Chateau Gonthier. It did not seem to be in character. Why, then, was the door locked?
He searched the likely places for a key but there was no key. Then he had another look at the lock. The snatch-fall mechanism could be forced only with noise and difficulty. It might be worth going outside to see if there was a window low down in the wall which might lead to the cellar. On the other hand whoever had put a double mortice lock on a cellar door would hardly be likely to neglect boarding a window. It would mean exploring in the open. He looked at his watch. It was nearly three o'clock in the morning.
He stood for some time staring at the cellar door. Not a dozen hairpins nor half the skeleton keys in Scotland Yard would have been much good with a lock of that kind. On the other hand, there were always hinges, and this seemed more promising. There were in fact two hinges, bevels outward, and an overall gap between door and frame of about a quarter of an inch on each side.
It was taking a risk. It was staking all his cards on the cellar to the exclusion of perhaps a dozen other rooms where there might be something of interest which he had not yet seen, but the more he thought of the double mortice lock, the more likely and the more attractive the cellar became. He flicked out his knife. The point splintered the surface paint and sank into the wood behind the bevel of the lowest hinge.
Holmes began to sweat. There was a stove in the kitchen and the room was intolerably hot. He was flicking out splinters of wood little bigger than matchsticks. It took a long time until he felt the point of the knife grate on the screw thread. The second screw was exposed more easily but the two of them took nearly half an hour. The top hinge was in harder wood and there was a knot in the way which he had to cut round. By now the sweat was running into his eyes, his clothes were sticking to him and his wrists felt like lead. He was working in the dark, having given up holding the torch in his mouth, working only by touch. Then he felt the door move. The knot, which had been in his way, had also masked a weakness in the wood which had splintered just below the last screw. He found a heavy carving knife in one of the kitchen drawers and worked the point into the gap between the door and the frame, levering outwards. The door swayed and moved, a fraction of an inch at a time, opening on the hinge side of the frame. At the same time the bolt of the lock was being moved gradually out of the socket which contained it. First one side of the door and then the other was levered. There was a slight click and a sudden lack of resistance. Holmes caught the doo
r and moved it gently to one side, resting it against the wall. The opening of the cellar yawned darkly in front of him.
There were twelve steps down, wooden steps which creaked horribly, but they were well built and strong, and after the last step he felt a flat stone or brick floor under his feet. In front of him was a brick wall. The tiny circular beam of light from his torch travelled along the wall and swept round the cellar, which led off to his right. In the light something moved. It was a fish.
The fish, a trout, was perfectly poised, mouth and gills moving slowly, the tip of the pectoral fins languidly waving to keep it steady, poised in what seemed like mid-air. But it was water. Holmes shone the light round. He was looking into a glass fish tank, a very large glass tank, the length of a man, several feet wide and deep. It was half full of water and several dozen rainbow trout. Some of them were big.
Under the tank was a workbench. On it were bottles, test tubes, retorts, tins and containers, lengths of rubber tubing, a mass of splintered wood and electric wiring. There were also three or four round black balls, like ball bearings or marbles, but with matt surfaces which did not reflect the light. He had no idea what they were but he supposed they could be of importance. He picked one up and put it in his pocket.
On the far side of the cellar there was a control panel of some kind whose purpose he could not make out. There was a horizontal panel, slightly tilted, with a number of coloured flick switches, like those on a private telephone exchange. At the back of the panel were a series of dials, needles at zero, and on a vertical panel rising from this there were more switches and dials.
He went over and examined the panels and the controls more closely but there was no indication what they were. It was not a telephone exchange nor was it a broadcasting transmitter, though it seemed in its dials and switches to have affinities with both. Underneath the panel was a jumble of wood shavings, old sacks and broken cardboard cartons, piled together. On the floor was a pair of headphones, a headset of the kind used by radio operators. Holmes picked it up, plugged it in to what seemed an appropriate socket, and began playing with the dials and switches. Nothing happened. The needles remained resolutely at zero.
The Shepherd File Page 13