House of Shadows

by Iris Gower

  I went over the facts against him yet again. He was a military man, an airman . . . the drawings would have some significance for him. I turned over on my back and then sat up sharply. I could smell smoke!

  I was alert now, and I realized the smoke was curling down the servants’ staircase. I ran to the blue room, calling out, ‘Fire!’

  When I reached the blue room I opened the door gingerly, knowing from the wartime bombing that when air hit flames they could leap and burgeon. To my horror, I could see William kneeling by the blazing fire in the grate, apparently unconscious and overcome with fumes. The fake drawings had fallen from the chimney and begun to burn, setting the room itself alight.

  Guilt engulfed me. I’d taken the electric heater out of the room to put in my room, and William must have tried to light the fire. The false drawings were pushed into the chimney, blocking it, and now poor innocent William was suffering the same fate that the five young maids had – suffocated by fumes!

  But then William groaned. He was still alive!

  Coughing, I dragged William to the door and on to the landing. ‘Help, fire!’ I shouted loudly. ‘Everyone get out of the house!’ I managed to pull William’s inert body to the stairs and somehow bumped him down them into the hall below. Guests were already coming out of their rooms.

  ‘I’ll phone the fire brigade.’ The colonel was in his dressing gown, a ruffled Mrs Ward at his side. She too was in her dressing gown, with her hair awry. In other circumstances I would have been amused by her embarrassment – but not now.

  ‘I’ll phone,’ Mrs Ward said. ‘Fred, you help Riana with the young lad.’

  Soon we were all on the lawn, shivering against the early morning mist. Rosie cuddled her little boy; his dark eyes were wide with lights glowing in them as he looked up to the house, where the flames were beginning to take hold.

  And then the fire brigade arrived, bells clanging, and the police had sent a car which screeched to a halt in the drive. A woman in uniform came towards me. ‘I’ve come because of a suspicious fire, but my intent is also to investigate the death of Mr Mansel-Atherton.’

  I knew that voice. I looked up. ‘Miss Grist!’

  She held a badge towards me. ‘I’m Detective Delia Grist as it happens,’ she said. ‘And we’ve been observing matters here at Aberglasney for some time. You, with your blundering ways, almost ruined things for us.’

  ‘But why were you posing as a librarian?’ I asked.

  ‘It was a cover. I was there merely to observe what you were up to,’ Miss Grist said, ‘and taking the chance to research the old newspapers. And at the same time, you were coming in to do the same research!’ She actually smiled. ‘To be frank, you were nothing but a pain in the neck. Ah, look, the fire is out. An isolated little fire, I’d say. Now, let’s all go into the undamaged part of the house where I can question you all in relative comfort.’

  I ushered all my guests into the sitting room and realized the damage had been confined to the top of the floor, where the blue room had been. I realized then that the only guest missing from the room was young William. The ambulance was still outside so he hadn’t gone to hospital.

  I hurried back to the garden. I could hear coughing from under the yew tree tunnel, and I walked timidly into the darkness, fearing I knew not what. There was a creeping sensation along my scalp, as if all my hairs were standing on end, like those of a frightened cat. I heard soft footfalls behind me, but when I turned no one was there. Gasping with unnamed fear, I stood back against the branches of the yew tree, trying not to breathe too heavily.

  I saw a dark shadow then, coming slowly, inexorably towards me. A misshapen figure in the dark. A limping, heavy-breathing figure as if from some nightmare world. And then a glimmer of light illuminated his face. It was twisted and blackened by smoke, and he looked like a monster . . . not the familiar young William I’d always known.

  ‘William, I thought someone had called an ambulance for you.’ I spoke nervously as he came to stand inches from my face. He smelt of smoke and dust, and he was like a stranger to me.

  ‘I sent the ambulance away. I didn’t want to go to hospital, you interfering witch!’

  ‘But William, I saved your life. I dragged you out of the room and into the fresh air.’

  ‘And you let the designs burn to ashes, you stupid woman. You denied me the chance to make a name for myself. I could kill you!’

  He hit me. The blow was so hard that I fell back on to the dew wet grass. I saw William kneeling over me, his strong hands around my throat. My mind refused to accept the sense of it. I couldn’t believe it. Young William was the one who had attacked me. He had been my enemy all along.

  ‘You silly bitch.’ His tone was venomous. ‘Why did you have to buy the house and invite folk in to prance round the place at will? If you hadn’t come here, I could have searched in peace.’

  He shook me fiercely, his hands tightening around my neck. I was beginning to see sparkles of lights I couldn’t draw in any breath

  ‘You’ve finished me off,’ William growled. ‘My career is over. I’m an engineer, and I was writing a paper on Edwin Mansel-Atherton. I could have made my name if it wasn’t for your interference! Why didn’t you go when I tried to make you? Now I’m going to have to kill you!’

  I was beginning to lose consciousness as his fist slammed into my cheek. I was barely able to see, when a dark figure leapt on William dragging him away from me. And then Tom was there, beating the life out of William!

  My head started spinning with all the chaos and the smoke and the shocks I suffered and I blacked out . . .

  When I came to, the police were taking William away before Tom killed him. Tom knelt beside me and touched my face. ‘All right, Riana my darling?’

  I thought he was going to propose or at least declare his unending love. Instead he said, ‘Where are the designs? Edwin’s designs? Tell me, Riana. It’s very important.’

  My heart sank. ‘They are in my studio, in my folder. Does it matter now?’

  Tom was running like a deer across the lawn and into the house, and I put my hands over my mouth, unaware that my eye was swelling and turning black. My head was aching with the smoke and fumes, and my throat closing up so much that each breath was an agony. The worst of the whole horrible episode was that I now knew, without doubt, that Tom only wanted me for what he could get out of the designs.

  I felt hands lift me to my feet, which helped me to drag more air into my lungs.

  Eventually, I was led indoors by the faithful Mrs Ward, who’d come looking for me. ‘My poor house,’ I croaked.

  ‘Aberglasney isn’t badly damaged, Riana, so don’t worry about the house. Just worry about your poor little face.’

  As we got into the hall, Tom was coming down the staircase, my folder clutched awkwardly to his chest. He flung it open and, discarding my precious sketches, found the papers. ‘These are the originals?’ He waved them in my face.

  ‘Yes. I did copies and stuffed them back up the chimney in the maids’ room,’ I said hoarsely. ‘Those are the ones that burned.’

  ‘You clever darling!’ He kissed me soundly, and I winced as his fingers touched my bruised cheek. He helped me move, rather shakily, to a chair, and Miss Grist came to my side just as I was about to accuse Tom of being a spy and a traitor. In truth, I didn’t care about any of those things though. All that mattered was that he’d played fast and loose with my feelings to get the damned designs for a stupid engine design, which were probably useless now anyway.

  ‘There will be an investigation, of course, but if I’m right then the discovery of these papers up the chimney proves Edwin Mansel-Atherton is an innocent man,’ Miss Grist said. ‘The maids died because the chimney was blocked. They would have died from carbon-monoxide poisoning,’ she explained. But then she added, self-importantly, ‘All this should have been reported to the police, of course.’

  ‘The police were here plenty of times – including you, Miss Grist.’ I w
as very aware of Tom standing beside me with the plans in his hands. ‘You even tried to ruin my business – so you could search for the plans all the better, I presume?’

  ‘Luckily for you I was here,’ Miss Grist said, ignoring my accusation, ‘or you might not be alive now,’ Her tone implied I was stupid and interfering and if I had been strangled then it would have been better for everyone.’ She sniffed and added cattily, ‘It’s well known that carbon-monoxide poisoning causes visions and hallucinations, by the way, Miss Evans. Ghosts indeed!’

  At this, everyone – including Justin and Diane, the colonel and Mrs Ward, and all my other guests – gathered around me in support, and I felt ashamed of mistrusting any of them. I looked up at Tom. ‘And what is your part in all this?’ My tone was hostile. ‘Are the designs that important to your precious American air force? More important than I am?’

  ‘I had to get them, honey, don’t you see? Even though searching for them myself put me in danger from my own colleagues. The designs make Carl’s death the responsibility of the United States Army Air Force, you see. These plans – the originals – prove that the plane Carl was testing wasn’t built correctly. The engineers didn’t have Mr Mansel-Atherton’s complete designs, and so they screwed it up.’

  He kissed me, and I stared at him, breathless with love and bewilderment.

  ‘There will be compensation due for his child.’ Tom looked at Rosie as she stood, holding the baby close. ‘You, Rosie, and your little one, will be cared for always.’

  He put both his arms around me and kissed me again. I saw the colonel wink at Mrs Ward, and she had a smile on her thin face.

  ‘More importantly –’ Tom drew my attention – ‘with the designs out of the way, I knew you would be safe, Riana my love. Not only British and American soldiers, but also an independent searcher wanted the plans badly – someone who wasn’t afraid to kill. Until the drawings were found, you stood in the way. You were in danger all the time!’

  ‘That independent someone being William, but why?’

  ‘He’d taken an engineering degree, but he never really made the grade. He’d heard and read a little about the missing designs in an engineering magazine, and he wanted a good look at them. He probably photographed them before he put them in the chimney and lit a fire.’

  ‘But they were the false ones I drew anyway. What good were they?’

  ‘William wouldn’t have known that. Not until he’d studied them in detail. He would have plagiarized the bits that he’d thought valuable so he could write a paper on it himself.’

  I glanced at stony-faced Miss Grist. ‘And this lady?’ I asked Tom.

  ‘We worked together on this case, that’s all,’ he said. ‘We did it so we wouldn’t blow Detective Grist’s cover. Didn’t she explain things when she took you to a police safe-house that night of your art exhibition? I knew that some soldiers had plans to search your house, and I wanted you out of the way and safe while they did so, so I asked Detective Grist and her colleagues to take care of you.’ He folded me close to him again, and I saw Miss Grist’s sneer. I remembered events rather differently. So it had been Miss Grist that night who had interrogated me about my relationship with Tom and threatened me with starvation! She had wanted Tom for herself, but like a man he never saw it. I snuggled into Tom, but Rosie’s voice interrupted my delight and relief.

  ‘Look, there’s a ghost! There’s really a ghost!’ Rosie gasped with fear.

  I turned in Tom’s arms, still holding on to him, and laughed. ‘That’s only Beatrice,’ I said. And then Beatrice walked towards the big stone wall that surrounded the garden leading to the graveyard beyond. She waved her little hand and then walked right through a solid stone wall.

  ‘She’s gone home,’ I said softly. ‘Beatrice has at last been able to join her dear Edwin.’ And I felt a moment’s grief at losing her, but strangely no shock.

  Then Tom turned my bruised and battered face gently towards him and possessed my lips gently but commandingly. And as tears of happiness came to my eyes, my ghost hunters – my true friends – cheered and clapped, and I knew there was no need any more for words.