He said yes, he would enjoy a cup of tea, and went through into the drawing room.
As the double doors closed behind him he realized he was in a mausoleum of the past. The enormous room was filled to cramming point with objets d’art: busts, sculptures, stuffed birds of prey in domed glass cases, huge screens and lanterns, four immense bookcases, piles of unsorted books on every level surface, a hand-wound trumpet phonograph, a tall birdcage holding several brightly coloured parakeets, two pianos, one of them a concert grand, a harpsichord and several wind and string instruments, two or three music stands, a variety of thick-piled carpets with oriental designs. Swords, lances, shields and ancient firearms were mounted on every wall. In the spaces between were the trophy heads of wild animals: a cheetah, an antelope, an antlered deer. Bric-a-brac had been placed on every remaining surface. The air was suffused with a rich, clean smell: furniture polish, good wood, leather, paper, varnish.
He saw two large armchairs and a settee placed around a hearth. The fireplace was dominated by an enlarged black-and-white photograph of a man in old-fashioned clothes. O’Leary wound his way through the elegant clutter of the room, sat down in one of the chairs, and awaited the arrival of Madame de Morganet.
The house, the circumstances, were not entirely what Dennis O’Leary was expecting, although there had been a clue in the address. This was a select area of Sussex, the strip of land between the South Downs and the Weald, wooded and fertile, with several large houses. An undefined sense of financial well-being had always been detectable in his exchanges with Madame de Morganet, but the opulence of her home was still a surprise.
A middle-aged unmarried man, O’Leary was often lonely when not touring, but loneliness was not a habit he wanted to keep. His career had become a sequence of mild successes – he was a good-enough illusionist and his skill brought pleasure to his audiences and a more or less steady income. He still depended on bookings at clubs and business functions, because he had not done well on television. Two or three of his tricks were unique to him, so he guarded their secrets with care. They were his most valuable properties, but he could not live on secrets.
When not touring, he lived in a small room at the top of a terraced house in Leicester, his car and trailer parked at the rear by arrangement with his landlady. Rick, contentedly married but always hard up and complaining about the meagre wage O’Leary paid him, lived close by. The previous winter, during one such break in work, he had happened upon Mme de Morganet on one of the more restrained internet contact sites (Responsible Adults seeking Mature Friendship). At first he had deliberately not selected her link – her self-description made her sound eccentric, or desperate, or weird, and probably all three, while her photograph was ambiguously shadowed.
Rick, when he found out, egged him on. “At least she sounds exotic,” he said. “Might cheer you up a bit.”
After paying the fee, O’Leary exchanged several tentative emails with her. They elicited enough information from each other to feel a meeting should follow. It took several weeks to arrange, because soon after they made contact, O’Leary began a tour in the north of England. She was a harmless distraction while the work went on. He grew fond of her sometimes bizarre messages, which came as a welcome change in his workaday life.
O’Leary told her all the facts about himself that he knew to be true: that he was unmarried, not rich but not hard up, healthy, sane, not saddled with onerous debts or obligations, and that he was at an age she might consider suitable.
He learned that she was a childless widow, that she had been grief-stricken by the loss of her husband, but that he had left her well-provided-for with a house and an investment income from family securities. She described herself as interested in O’Leary’s skill as an illusionist, and said she would love to learn from him. More touchingly, she said that she was lonely and anxious to find a long-term partner. O’Leary told her, shyly, much the same.
Sitting alone in her drawing room, surrounded by the huge collection of antiques, he felt more ill at ease than he could ever remember. But then, unannounced and without any fuss or sense of ceremony, Mme de Morganet entered through the double doors. A gust of warm air followed her in and circled around him, bearing with it the merest hint of patchouli. He stood up to meet her.
They shook hands conventionally, exchanging names, then Mme de Morganet drew back from him. They stood apart, regarding each other frankly and intently, but not discourteously. Both smiled. Neither of them appeared to feel uncomfortable with this exploratory staring, nor that they were embarrassing the other.
That she was a handsome woman was instantly in no doubt. She appeared to be in her late thirties, although at first sight O’Leary could not be sure. Her raven hair, with a touch of silver, was set off by a bold streak of purple. Her stance was upright but informal, her long gown of dark-grey satin made sombre but also more feminine by black and purple ribbons. She wore a veil, pushed back above her face so that it rested on her hair. She wore black satin cocktail gloves, fingers exposed, with long lacy armlets. Her fingers were heavy with rings, all of them white gold or silver. Their claw settings held dark gems. She had put something on her face, too pale, while her eyes were lined too darkly. Her lips were glossed and deep red.
“Well, Mr O’Leary,” she said soon enough. “This is my house and I am pleased to welcome you to it.”
“Thank you,” he replied. “I am delighted to meet you at last. I’m sorry it has taken so long to arrange, but I enjoyed your emails.”
“And I yours. Please, let’s dispense with formalities. You must call me Louisa, and I shall call you Dennis.”
He nodded his acceptance of this and they smiled broadly. In spite of the attempt to break the ice, she spoke in measured, almost formal tones, as if reciting aloud, or addressing someone who might not understand. However, far from being intimidated by her, now that he was standing close to her O’Leary felt a sudden mad urge to sweep her into his arms.
She sat down on the settee with a deep rustling of satin, indicating he should sit beside her. He did so, but stayed at the far end. They began to converse, at first remarking conventionally on his journey and the unusually cold weather. The woman who had opened the door to him came in with a tray of tea things. Her tweed cap had disappeared. As they started on the buttered scones and delicate little cakes, O’Leary felt the atmosphere growing more cordial by the minute.
A quiet joy was rising in him. Louisa de Morganet was a mature, beautiful and intelligent woman, a romantic individualist in the way she liked to dress, but obviously modern and open-minded in outlook. Years of experience, and his own deceptive profession, had taught him never to accept at face value anything seen or quickly learned. He resolved to keep this in mind for the time being.
They asked questions about each other. O’Leary had rarely spoken about himself to anyone before. His harmless revelations about his past felt awkward and unnatural at first, but Louisa’s manner was so welcoming and candid that his inhibitions began to fade away.
She was in return forthcoming about herself. She told him how she had met her late husband, François, a Frenchman who worked in the London City branch of a Parisian bank. She indicated the framed photograph above the fireplace. François had a moustache, goatee beard and long sideburns, and was posed stiffly wearing a dark frock coat and with a cane in hand. He looked irritated by being photographed, and glared at the camera, ill at ease.
François, she said, had swept her off her feet, married her, taken her to his family home in Provence, where she discovered he came from a long line of aristocrats. They went on an extended tour of European countries, far to the east – Roumania and Bessarabia – thence to countries bordering the Mediterranean: Lebanon, Turkey and Greece. It was, she said, from meeting members of his family that she developed her taste for knowledge, the learning from others of practical and artistic skills. The de Morganets were academics and professionals, all polymaths. The family was extensive and widely dispersed.
François de Morganet had contracted tuberculosis while they were on their travels. It afflicted him severely and he died within a year of their return.
Louisa looked mortified by her memories. “He was in so much pain, day and night, terrible discomfort. And the blood – so much blood! I shall never forget, never! Mon pauvre mari, mon chéri!”
She was staring into her lap, but then she raised her head, looked at the photograph above the fire.
O’Leary saw tears welling in her eyes, unnerving him, so he left the settee and wandered around the crowded room, easing his way between the many pieces. Soon, Louisa composed herself. She was standing when he turned back to her. She lightly touched his hand as they resumed their seats, and encouraged him to sit a little closer.
Outside, the dark of the evening had closed in, the wind blustering around the gables and roof pinnacles. The open fire, a mound of logs, blazed cheerfully. The serving woman quietly entered the drawing room and went around lighting the lamps, a number of gas mantles, but there were candles too. Once these were alight more scented essences drifted through the room.
“Mrs Acland – did you show our guest to his room?” Louisa said.
The woman was about to leave the drawing room. “No, madame, I brought him straight in here, as you asked.” She nodded, then closed the doors.
“Why don’t you let her show you where you will be sleeping?” Louisa said to O’Leary. “You must need a rest after your journey and then we will meet for dinner. You will hear the gong.”
O’Leary wanted to say that he was not feeling at all tired – indeed, he was energized and alert – but he decided against it.
“Do you like to dress for dinner?” He shook his head, but vaguely, feeling his way. “I prefer to,” Louisa went on. “But it’s up to you.” She glanced at his case of magical effects and apparatus. “I assume this is not your overnight case?”
“No. These are the tools of my trade. What you asked me to bring.”
“Excellent. This evening we shall relax after we have dined, and come to know each other more. But tomorrow I shall be intent on learning about your conjuring. You need have no worries about secrets. I honour all confidences in my quest for knowledge.”
“You wish to become a magician?” O’Leary said.
“I intend to add the art of illusionism to my atchievements.”
She pronounced the word deliberately, her tongue briefly touching her teeth, making the small but distinct dental sound of the ‘t.’ She was looking closely at him, as if to judge his reaction.
O’Leary headed for the stairs, clutching his case of magic. Mrs Acland, who had been standing in the hall, courteously swung the doors open to allow him to pass through. She led O’Leary to the room on the top floor where he would sleep.
A log fire had been set in the grate and was burning cheerfully. A gas mantle gave a steady but weak white light into the room. As he entered, O’Leary groped instinctively for an electric switch. One was there on the wall beside the door, and a shaded fitting hung on a flex in the centre of the ceiling, but no light issued from it.
A change of his own clothes was laid out for him, in fact the sharply cut suit that he wore when he was performing. Never normally to be worn in daily life, the royal-blue suit had an inner lining that was a secret network of hidden pockets and slits, loops of thread, elastic bands.
The bedroom was under the steep roof of the house, well-proportioned, clean and furnished in traditional style. The bed stood high off the floor. The dormer window, built out of the sloping roof, was heavily curtained with dark green damask, satin stripes worked into the thick fabric, reaching to the floor, tasseled. A small shower room and toilet lay beyond a white-painted door.
He could not gain a signal on his mobile; no text messages had arrived since he left Brighton earlier. He pressed the handset to the window, hoping to enhance whatever network signal there might be, but there was nothing. He had wanted to contact Rick, tell him how things were working out, but it was not to be.
He booted up his laptop, but there was no wi-fi within range. He looked around the room for a cable connector, without success. He knew that Louisa had repeatedly emailed him, so there must be a landline connection somewhere in the house.
He sat on the edge of the bed, his legs dangling. A stuffed owl, inside a glass case on a low shelf, stared at him with wide orange eyes. O’Leary could still smell patchouli, where a trace of it had transferred to his hand. He ran his fingers beneath his nostrils, smiling to himself. He rolled back across the bed and pedalled his feet in the air with pleasure.
An hour later, when he heard the gong sound from the stairwell below, O’Leary walked downstairs for dinner, dressed in his stage suit.
There was nothing to be seen of Louisa the next morning when O’Leary went early to breakfast. He ate alone, sitting at a long, highly polished oak table. It was in a windowed conservatory, heated by circulating pipes and filled with exotic trees and shrubs. They stood in calm array around him, while outside the trees in the garden and in the woods beyond were bent and battered by a chill, sleet-bearing easterly wind.
When Louisa appeared later in the drawing room, she made no comment or apology. He went in to join her, as she went to the grand piano. She raised the lid, momentarily adjusted the height of the stool, then began playing. She played from memory, without sheet music. Within moments she was entranced by the music, rocking her head to and fro, her eyes tightly shut. O’Leary sat down a short distance behind her, unable to recognize the piece but astonished by her virtuoso skill. At the end she identified it as Liszt’s first Liebestraum nocturne.
She moved to a music stand, put some music in place, clearly hand-drafted, then picked up a violin. After briefly checking that the instrument was in tune she opened with a dazzling solo, a series of darting clusters and arpeggios, each counterpointing the one it had followed. The piece ended with a shift to a slow, melodic lament, exquisitely beautiful and melancholic.
O’Leary clapped his hands, but Louisa smiled him to silence.
“I am not a show-off, Dennis,” she said. “But I want to tell you that I composed and arranged that piece myself. I am not trying merely to impress you, even though the composing and performing of music is one of my many attainments, my atchievements.” Again, the deliberate dental sound of the extra letter. “It is important to me that you understand the nature and extent of my atchievements.”
He said, “Well, I am extremely impress –”
“No – allow me to demonstrate more. I do have a purpose, to help you understand what might become possible between us.” She carefully laid aside her violin, closing it inside its case. “I am a woman of many attainments. I am an avid and successful learner. I executed most of the paintings you can see on these walls. I am an adventurous cook. I am a mathematician, a geologist, a strong swimmer. Would you care to witness my skill as a sharpshooter?”
“I think not.” But she was intent upon this purpose. Nothing that passed between them, during the long evening they had spent together the night before, had given him any idea she would act or perform in such a way. Yesterday she seemed gentle, sensitive, enquiring about him, quietly interested in everything he said. Now she was assertive, dominant. “I should love to hear you play again,” he said. “Do you know any more instruments?”
She reached behind her, then held out a flute in one hand, an oboe in the other.
“Enough of music,” she said, laying the instruments aside again. “I am adept in six European languages and can make sense of half a dozen more. I fashioned many of the collectible pieces you see in this room: I am a skilled potter and porcelainist. I am also a cabinet-maker, and for example I built the side-table on which you are now resting your hand.”
She moved towards him and raised her face towards his.<
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“My dear Dennis, if I may speak to you candidly. I am not seeking to impress you. I am trying to clarify the position in which I have found myself, and now in which you find yourself.” Once again he heard the weird incantation of her formal way of speaking, at odds with the more relaxed words they had exchanged yesterday, not to speak of her body language, which he found provocative.
“I am, as you know, a widow,” she went on. “In the common parlance of the world I knew with my husband, I would be called a house to let. I seek a partner to join me, because the house I have to let is haunted. Yes, haunted by the past, Dennis! I must find someone to be with me, to protect me from the past. Until then I remain in mourning. I am required to wear the widow’s weeds, this purple, this black, these shrouds of grey and silver.
“Outside this building I display, as you noticed when you arrived, my atchievements. Inside, as a house to let, I work constantly to perfect the skills and acquire fresh ones. Until I find the right one to join me, I collect accomplishments.” Her face grew ever closer to his and her voice became softer, a bare whisper. “I am a wealthy woman and I seek attainments. I do not mind what I have to spend to make these atchievements. I also seek a partner in life, a shield against the past. Could that man be you?”
Her parted lips were almost upon his. He could feel her breath on his cheek, the light touch of her fingers against his, the closeness of her delicious flesh wrapped in the satin gown. Her dark eyes were narrowed, her lips were moist.
“Yes, I believe so,” he said quietly.
“Then what you wish for will be yours! Anything at all, no matter how expensive, or how profound, reckless or shocking!” She swept back from him, staring intently at him. “Teach me how to atchieve the secrets of magic.”
House of Fear Page 27