‘It wasn’t five minutes ago.’
I went into the hall and lifted the receiver – the line was still dead. I looked towards the front door; there was a large opening for letters. I fetched a hefty piece of kindling from the log basket and wedged it shut. Mrs Valentine was watching me all the time as a child might watch a carpenter at work. I looked up the long flight of stairs. ‘What about the rest of the house?’
She looked at me incredulously. ‘Surely they can’t . . .’ Her voice trailed away as if she found the idea too unbelievable.
‘When they come they can go anywhere. I’d like to get an idea of the layout of the house.’ I did not wait for a reply but picked up one of the candles that had been left burning in the hall; I did not want to be left in the dark again if the lights suddenly went out.
‘I’ll show you.’ Mrs Valentine led the way upstairs and along a corridor throwing open the doors on each side as we went past. I noticed that she and her husband appeared to have had separate bedrooms with a dressing room and bathroom suite in between. We went past a narrow flight of stairs leading upwards and I stopped.
‘What’s up there?’
‘The attics.’ She started back down the corridor as if eager that we should move on. I hesitated and then followed her. ‘May I suggest that you have a bath?’ she said. ‘I think you might find that some of my husband’s clothes would fit you. You must be terribly uncomfortable like that.’
She was right. I still had a number of worms about my person that were making their presence felt. The nauseating slime that had attached itself to my face, hands and clothing was also congealing and sticking to every surface that I touched; I dared not think what I must smell like. Was it safe to take a bath? We must have some notice if the worms attacked.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I would like a quick bath.’
She showed me a wardrobe full of suits and indicated a chest of drawers in which she said that I should find all the other clothes I needed. I thanked her and told her to shout if anything happened. The bathroom was next to the dressing-room and the moment she had gone I climbed into the bath and started to peel off my clothes. Soon I was naked and the bath was crawling with writhing shapes wriggling for cover beneath my discarded clothes. Making sure that there were no more worms attached to me I stepped out of the bath and turned on the hot tap. For a terrifying second I thought a stream of worms would pour out but there was only boiling hot water. With grim satisfaction I watched the worms bleached into strips of white ribbon and flushed down the plug hole. When the last pocket had been turned inside out and the last worm scalded to oblivion, I ran in some cold water and rinsed and wrung my clothing more or less dry. I draped it across a towel rail and ran myself a hot bath, pressing down the plug with every ounce of strength that I still possessed.
The feel of hot, clean water against my flesh was a balm but I was in no condition to take full advantage of it. With every second that passed I expected to hear a scream from below, or see some other manifestation of the worms’ presence. I scrubbed myself clean and quickly dried myself with a thick bath towel. One worm had somehow managed to survive the hot water and was crawling down the arm of my suit. I picked up a soap dish and crushed it to pieces.
Satisfied that everything was as it should be, I pressed home the plug in the wash basin and went into the dressing-room. The late Mr Valentine had certainly been well endowed with clothes, though his wife had flattered me when she suggested that we might be about the same size; he had clearly been a larger man than me. I selected a pair of trousers and a pair of shoes and started going through the chest of drawers that Mrs Valentine had indicated.
Socks and underclothes were no problem and I pulled open a drawer looking for a shirt. Three neatly folded piles of them met my eye. I selected one and felt my fingers brush against something; it proved to be a mounted photograph which showed a face I recognized – that of the effigy of Sir Robert de Wicklem. The photograph must have been taken in Blanely Church. The face was gazing serenely skywards, the eyelids closed. What was remarkable, however, was that there was another profile beside it and not that of Sir Robert’s wife. With a sharp intake of breath I realized where I had seen the face before: it was Edgar Valentine, Mrs Valentine’s dead husband, whose portrait I had seen in the drawing room downstairs. I was no expert on photography but it did not look as if the second image had been superimposed on a photograph of the first, so I had been right: the photograph had certainly been taken in the church. It seemed a macabre idea, although the resemblance between de Wicklem and Valentine was astonishing. I wondered if the vicar had known about this and then remembered that he had not come to the parish until after Edgar Valentine’s death. I recalled that the body had never been found and experienced a new tinge of unease. Could Edgar Valentine actually have been dead when this photograph was taken? His eyelids were closed and there was no hint of clothing on the upper part of his body. It was a chilling thought and I looked around the room, almost expecting to see him emerge from a cupboard. Did Mrs Valentine know about this photograph? She must do since she had presumably packed away all her husband’s effects after his death. I put the photograph back in the drawer and slid it shut. I had undone the third button on the shirt when another thought occurred to me: perhaps Mrs Valentine had taken the photograph.
There was a sharp tap on the door that made me jump. ‘I’ve made some tea. It’s downstairs when you’re ready. Would you like some cake?’
I was famished and I said I would. I finished dressing and rather self-consciously went downstairs to the drawing room. Mrs Mullins was where we had left her, but I had the impression that Mrs Valentine had done something to her hair. She smiled at me and patted the sofa beside her. ‘Do you take sugar? I can’t remember.’
I said that I did and sat on the sofa. I felt thoroughly confused; there were so many things happening that defied logical explanation. Mrs Valentine’s expression was calmness personified. ‘That pullover looks so much better on you than it did on Edgar.’ She was pouring the tea as she spoke. Her hand did not flinch.
‘I only heard recently about his tragic death,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. It must have been terrible for you.’
Her eyes rose to the portrait of her late husband above the fire; without looking from it she handed me my tea. ‘I never realized how terrible.’ Her voice was suddenly heavy and expressionless as if her own personality had been taken away from it.
‘I know, it’s difficult adjusting to being on your own, isn’t it?’ I sipped the tea and walked to the nearest window. I pulled back the curtain quickly, holding my breath. There was nothing to be seen.
‘He was a strange man.’ Mrs Valentine continued to speak in the same disembodied voice. ‘There was so much good in him.’
I glanced towards the fireplace and Mrs Mullins. Small white bubbles started to appear at the corner of her mouth, and at the same instant her eyes opened wide in an expression of terror. She was looking straight at me and for some inexplicable reason I read a message of warning in her piercing glance. At first I thought it was levelled at the cup that I was raising to my lips. Unnerved, I replaced it on the circular silver tray, next to a plate of what looked like home-made cakes. I resisted taking one. Mrs Valentine was gazing into space. ‘If he had been less admirable I would never have submitted to his wishes.’ She suddenly turned to me. ‘I thought it was just a weakness, you see. If I pandered to it, everything else would be all right.’ I nodded, trying to focus on what she was saying; my attention was still half taken up with the dying woman by the fireplace.
Mrs Mullins’s mouth started to open and her lips pulled apart strips of saliva. I waited for the words that did not come. Her head nodded forward and her eyes opened even wider; inside her was a message she could not deliver. Her head jerked forward again. Then I realized what she was trying to say. She was telling me to look behind me.
I turned my head and cried out in horror. Gleaming against one of the windows where the
curtains were not properly drawn was a waving mass of worms. They clung to the pane and their heads swayed from side to side as if they were probing for an opening. Mrs Valentine sprang to her feet and together we approached the window. Hardly had we time to see that it was safely closed than there was the crash of breaking glass behind us. I spun round to find a curtain billowing away from another window as if thrust back with a lance. A cluster of writhing worms dropped to the floor. As the curtain fell aside, I saw what at first glance seemed like the black foliated antennae of a giant insect protruding through a broken pane of glass. Then I saw that it was the branch of a monkey puzzle tree on which the worms had clustered in such numbers as to force it through the window. Within a couple of seconds the foliage of the branch became unrecognizable under the weight of the invading worms. Mrs Valentine’s expression revealed panic and amazement; I doubt if, until that moment, she had completely believed my story. There was a shattering noise from another part of the house and I ran to see what had happened. At least the lights were still on. I arrived at the inner door of the conservatory and saw that the worms had overbalanced a bird table and forced it to crash through the glass too. It occurred to me that it was not just their concentrated weight that they could use but their excavating skills; in sufficient numbers they were capable of undermining any structure.
The tiled floor of the conservatory was already a squirming sea of pink and I noticed that smaller numbers of worms were entering through the openings in rotted window frames and faulty closures. In an old house like this there was no way of keeping the worms at bay; every crack and cranny that would let in a draught would let in a worm. I ran to the back of the house and saw that worms were coming in beneath the kitchen door and in even greater numbers through the damp courses. The speed of their build-up was terrifying. Flood water could scarcely have spread faster or been more impossible to control. I was already treading them underfoot as I returned to Mrs Valentine, who was in the hall holding a bundle of candles. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she shuddered. ‘I think I must be going mad.’
‘You go upstairs,’ I told her. ‘I’ll try and bring Mrs Mullins.’
‘No!’ She suddenly gripped my arm hard. ‘Leave her. She’s as good as dead.’
I thought at first that her concern must be directed at me. ‘We can’t abandon her,’ I said.
‘Yes! She is an evil, wicked woman. This is God’s will.’ The expression on her face was so intense as to be frightening. shook myself free of her arm and entered the drawing room. If I had wanted to save Mrs Mullins I was already too late; her features were unrecognizable under a seething mass of worms. Her body was a moving mound. The writhing carpet was quickly unrolling across the rest of the room towards the doorway. I looked up at the portrait above the chimneypiece; perhaps it was the reflection of the light but Edgar Valentine appeared to be smiling. I turned away from the horrible sight and felt something cold and clammy against my ankle. A trail of worms led to the front door where they had found a way through beneath the lowest hinge. I took the candle from the hall table and started up the staircase to where Mrs Valentine stood. ‘You see?’ she said. ‘There was nothing we could do.’ She was white but composed.
I did not answer but looked down the stairs behind me. The trail of worms from the front door had joined that from the drawing room; they were converging on the staircase. ‘We must go to the attic,’ I said. ‘I imagine there’s only one opening to the rest of the house?’
‘Yes.’ Her voice had a quality of resignation about it, I observed amid a confusion of other thoughts. I remembered how she had hurried past the staircase leading to the attic on our tour. Why had she described Mrs Mullins as an ‘evil, wicked woman’? There was certainly something bizarre and frightening about Mrs Valentine that I had never noticed before.
My shoulders brushed against the side of the attic staircase and the boards creaked underfoot. A sharp turn and a steep rise brought me face to face with a latched door. I pressed the catch and had just stooped to enter when the lights went out. Lit only by candlelight, our surroundings seemed doubly claustrophobic and menacing. I pushed open the door and was relieved to feel it scraping against the floor; the tighter its fit the better, I thought, pushing it closed again, although I knew from my experience at the cottage that it would only be a matter of time before the worms breached it. However, time might be of the essence. Colonel Fraser had spoken of a pesticide that was being sought for use against the worms; if we could hold out until this was procured then we might have a chance.
With stooped shoulders I advanced to the centre of the attic where I could stand without discomfort. There was a skylight through which I could see stars and two large water tanks. Pipes, some of them lagged, curved round the floor at knee height. It was very cold. My eyes began to grow accustomed to the gloom and I placed my candle on a beam. One side of the attic was packed tight with dust-covered furniture and I selected a small marble-topped dressing table and dragged it to the door. Mrs Valentine expressed no surprise when I braced it against the door and piled every object within reach on top of it.
‘This is so ghastly,’ she said. She sounded as if she was talking to herself.
I picked up one of a line of paintings propped against the wall and paused; at first I thought that the haughty man depicted was Edgar Valentine but the side whiskers and cravat spoke of an earlier era. What caught my eye was the coat of arms prominently displayed beside the head. In the bottom left-hand quarter was the insignia that I had seen on the tomb of Sir Robert de Wicklem in Blanely Church. ‘Who is this?’ I asked.
‘Edgar’s father.’
I looked back at the coat of arms and suddenly felt the same chill that I had experienced in Blanely church. ‘So you mean that your husband was a descendant of Sir Robert de Wicklem?’
Mrs Valentine nodded. ‘That’s where it came from, the evil that was in him.’ She gestured with her hands. ‘It pains me to think about it but there was a side of him that was depraved. In the building where you now live he would forge objects of metal with which to pinion and abuse me. He would snare birds, and decorate me with their bloody feathers before he—’ She shuddered and shook her head as if the truth was too horrible to repeat.
I knew that I stood poised on the threshold of further revelations. ‘What about Mrs Mullins?’ I asked, suddenly convinced I was about to understand the mystery of the silver teaspoons.
‘She was a part of it all. First Edgar made me submit to the gardener whilst he watched, then the Mullins woman was brought into it. The vile soon became commonplace. Each new excess had to be worse than the last. Even the setting.’
‘The church,’ I said, thinking of the photograph I had found in the drawer.
She nodded. ‘That was the last straw.’
‘So you killed him,’ I said.
A note of wariness entered Mrs Valentine’s voice. ‘His boat was found off the point. It was empty.’ She sounded as if she was reading from a newspaper report. I waited for her to continue.
‘With Edgar’s death I thought I was free. Then came the blackmail. Wilson and Betty Mullins . . . They had some photographs.’
As I listened I understood why she had lied to protect Mrs Mullins in the affair of the teaspoons; she had known that the woman was stealing but dared not say anything.
I thought I heard something pressing against the door and hurried to it with one of the candles. I was trembling. Everything she had said reinforced the terrible evil of the place. I passed the candle around the outside of the door. There was nothing to be seen.
I turned and found Mrs Valentine standing in front of me, the ivory letter opener in her hand. It was pressed against her lower abdomen with the blade pointing upwards. Her fingertips brushed against it. ‘I think we are two of a kind, you and I,’ she said. My blood ran cold. What did she know? She smiled at me mockingly. ‘Wilson told me that he overheard you having an argument with your wife. She didn’t want to come and live here, did she
?’ I said nothing; I could feel the prickling of cold sweat on my forehead. Had I survived so much to be once again at the mercy of another human being?
Mrs Valentine took a step towards me so that our bodies were almost touching. ‘Tell me the truth.’ She smiled again, and in the half light her face looked as soft and appealing as it must have done twenty years before. With a shudder of distaste it occurred to me that the sexual degradation she had suffered at the hands of her husband might not have been as repugnant to her as she laid claim. Either that or she had been thoroughly corrupted almost without her knowing. I tried to draw back but she followed me. Her face was close to mine; there was a soft fuzz on her cheek like that on a peach. Her lips were full and sensual. She must have been very beautiful when she was young, young and innocent.
‘What did you do to your wife?’ she murmured softly. ‘Did you push the concrete onto her?’ The words struck me as if they had been a blow across the face. I brought up my hands and thrust my persecutor back against one of the water tanks. She threw out an arm to save herself and for an instant it hovered above the tank; she snatched it away and I caught a look of real fear in her eyes. It was as if there was something in the tank that she would rather have died than touch. Icy fingers of terror traced a path down my spine but I was unable to restrain myself. Steeling myself, I walked slowly towards the tank and peered over the edge.
What I saw froze the cry of terror in my throat. A shrivelled body stared up at me through eyeless sockets. A parchment skin clung to the top of the head but the rest of the face was a skull with a nasal cavity and two rows of grinning teeth; swollen papier mâché fingers protruded from the sleeves of a dust-impregnated dinner jacket, and the mummified flesh was pock-marked with worm holes. I stood silent with revulsion, knowing that I was looking down upon Edgar Valentine and that he had died by the hand of his wife who was standing but a few feet away from me.
I jerked my head away and turned to Mrs Valentine. Her eyes were wide and her fingers tightened around the knife. My heart was thumping so hard that it seemed about to leap from my body. And then I heard the noise. Like a wet finger being drawn across a window pane. I looked up and saw a coiling mass of worms spilling across the skylight above my head. Pressed against the glass the worms turned it into a mirror and I found myself staring at the terrifying apparition of Edgar Valentine’s corpse which lay below. It was as if the top had been prised off a tomb and a long-interred body revealed.
Worms Page 15