by Granger, Ann
‘Please, Gerry,’ his cousin said firmly. ‘For once in your life do the sensible thing.’
He threw up his hands. ‘Oh, all right. I’ll make my way back to The Royal Oak and phone round from there to find myself another room, preferably in Cheltenham itself. If I’m successful, I’ll settle my bill and move out tonight. I’ll let the cops know where I end up. I’ll phone you, too, Serena.’
‘Then I’ll be off,’ Jess said in relief. It was the end of a long, busy day and frankly she’d had enough of Gervase Crown and his problems. She’d go home, have a long soak in the tub and … and what? Fry the sausages that were lying around in the fridge? Fall asleep in front of the TV watching fictional coppers perform miracles of detection? Talk about busman’s holidays. This was the sort of evening when, before Tom Palmer met up with Madison and embarked on what appeared to be a rocky romance, she could have rung him and arranged to go out to eat, or even just for a drink. Now, if she did that, she’d have to listen to the latest on Madison and the proposed job in Australia.
But rescue was at hand. As she got back into her car, her mobile rang.
‘Jess?’ Carter’s voice came in her ear. ‘Millie is keen to go out for a pizza. Would you like to join us? If you can, I’m sure Millie would be pleased. I hope you’ll come or I’ll have to make conversation with MacTavish.’
‘Yes, I would!’ Jess told him, cheering as the image of the dubious sausages receded. ‘That sounds like fun.’
‘Good. I’ll drive out to Weston St Ambrose to collect Millie and then call by your place and pick you up. Around six thirty? It has to be on the early side because Millie gets hungry. It doesn’t give you much time to get ready. Where are you?’
‘I’m at the Foscotts’. That’s to say, I’ve just called on Serena Foscott and Gervase Crown who’s there with her at the moment. If it’s OK with you, I won’t come back, I’ll drive straight home from here. By the way, I’ve got Crown to agree to change hotels tonight. I’ll explain later.’
Gervase left his cousin’s house shortly after Jess Campbell. He’d apologised to Serena for changing his mind about the lamb hotpot, pointing out that he now had to get back to The Royal Oak, phone round for a different hotel, pack up and move and would very likely not be settled before late enough as it was. He was not regretting the lamb hotpot but he was regretting having agreed to change hotels. Throwing in the towel was how he thought of it. But he’d promised Serena and he’d told the lady cop with the red hair and he’d do it. Kit and Petra would be happy to learn what he’d done. He’d make everyone happy. That was a first.
His drive back to The Royal Oak took him within a quarter of a mile of Key House. It was getting really dark now, he had his change of lodgings to deal with, and it didn’t make any sense to detour past the house. But nonetheless, that is what he did. The remains of his childhood home drew him as if with a magnetic pull. He drew in nearby, found the flashlight he kept in the car, got out and began to walk towards the building. The beam of the flashlight played over the blackened walls and fallen internal structure, the cracked beams poking up like the spars of a wrecked ship, the heaps of three-hundred-year-old stone tiles. The remaining walls would have to come down. The structural engineer had phoned through a preliminary report. The walls were not safe. They should be dismantled as soon as possible before they fell down on their own. No official body could possibly make any objections. To restore the whole thing would be a major undertaking, a rebuild, and would only be a pale copy. The most interesting features, the late Stuart wood carving and panelling, had gone for good and couldn’t be replaced. ‘You’ll have to flatten the rest,’ the expert had said.
‘Flatten it,’ murmured Gervase as he stepped carefully around a puddle of water and clambered over a fallen beam. Inside the building the walls provided only partial shelter. Cold night air blew in through the open roof and through the holes where windows and doors had been. It ricocheted around the walls and rustled the cinders, snatching up handfuls of ash and tossing them in the air. Gervase put his hand over his mouth and nose to avoid breathing in ash and grit. By treading through it all he was making it worse. His footsteps crunched the burnt debris to more powder. The wind had a voice, too. It whistled through narrow chinks and sighed around him. There was a constant background movement, odd bits falling and wood creaking and snapping. It was, he imagined, like being at sea in one of the great wooden sailing ships, the fabric a living thing, constantly calling for your attention. He was conscious of the cupboard that had fallen when Sarah Gresham had been here. He’d told her it wasn’t safe here and he should take his own advice.
He directed the beam of the torch in his other hand around the floor area and the bright arrow of light targeted Sarah’s flowers, sadly wilted amid the fragments of cupboard. The sight of them reproached him. He wasn’t responsible for the actions of a maniac. But in some way, he was sure, those actions were linked to him, and he was linked to the house like a Victorian jailbird to his ball and chain.
‘Why didn’t I think of putting a match to the damn place years ago?’ he asked himself aloud.
As if in reply, he heard a new sound, not like the others. He turned his head and swept the immediate area with light. The flickering beam picked up details of the wrecked surroundings but nothing more. Probably the sound had just been yet more debris settling, yet he had the curious feeling he was not alone.
He waited for a repetition that would help him pinpoint whence it came. The strange sound was not repeated. Instead there was a soft wheezing of moving air quite different from the earlier sighing of the wind. He could not immediately identify it; then he did. It was laboured breathing. Someone or something was in here with him. His heart leaped painfully and he fought the instinctive panic.
‘Is somebody there?’ he called sharply, his voice sounding louder than anticipated on the night air. ‘I can hear you, and if you’re trying to frighten me, you’ve failed,’ he added with more confidence than justified. ‘Just come over here and stop prowling around out there in the dark. It’s bloody stupid. The place isn’t safe.’
‘No …’ the word drifted through the night air towards him, little more than a moan.
It froze his blood. He shook his head to clear it. He didn’t believe in ghosts. They were stories like the one he’d invented to scare Kit so long ago. But a man had died here very recently, practically on this spot: a nasty, a brutal, cruel death, and something moved out there, something shared this space with him.
‘Stop playing silly buggers!’ snapped Gervase. ‘If you’ve got something to say, speak up!’
This time the voice, barely a whisper, asked, ‘Gervase?’ The final sibilant trailed away.
It was still so faint, he couldn’t be sure he was not imagining it. Perhaps it did emanate from somewhere inside his head. It was so difficult to tell from which direction the ghostly voice could have come. The darkness was disorientating. He flashed the beam around again to no avail. Where? And who?
He called again, ‘I know someone’s there! Kit? Is that you?’ He held his breath. No response, not even the laboured breathing.
‘Whoever you are,’ he said more loudly, ‘come out here!’
The darkness itself seemed to be moving, a kind of undulation of shadows. But the torch couldn’t pick up any intruder and by using it, he signalled his exact location to the other person here. He switched the beam off, plunging the area back into darkness. He was alert now, as alert as when taking on the rollers surging towards the shore at Guincho. Something was going to happen. Anything might. It had already begun. He had to judge the moment.
There was a movement at his shoulder. The breathing was close now, hoarse and animal-like. He felt the breath brush his cheek. He fumbled to switch on the torch again. He should not have switched it off. Keyed up to react as he was, so expected, yet so sudden was the attack when it came that he could no more than strike out with the still unlit torch. It made contact with something, someone, but he could be sure
of no more than that, before intense pain sheared through his brain accompanied by an explosion of tiny glittering diamonds. He dropped the torch and staggered forward, sinking to his knees in the rubble and dirt.
Chapter 17
Roger Trenton stood at the window gazing into the gathering dusk.
‘How long till dinner?’ he asked.
‘What?’ called his wife from the kitchen. ‘Can’t hear you!’
‘Dinner!’ shouted Roger. ‘What time?’
‘Normal time, about seven, it’s spaghetti Bolognese!’ came back the information, followed by a clatter of something falling on to the tiled floor. ‘Damn!’
‘What was it?’ he shouted again.
‘What was what?’
‘What fell down?’
‘Saucepan lid.’
This conversation, thought Roger in irritation, was going nowhere as, increasingly, conversations with his wife of some five and thirty years were inclined to do. Roger was aware this was unsatisfactory, but had anyone ever suggested that his marriage was in any way imperfect he’d have denied it indignantly. They were a model couple, he reflected now. Possibly a trifle unadventurous? Roger would not have considered using the adjective ‘boring’. Even ‘unadventurous’ was not, to his mind and in most circumstances, a bad thing.
Thus he was surprised to find himself wondering now whether his wife was happy. At once he dismissed the notion that she could be anything else. How could she? She had a nice home. He was a considerate husband. She appreciated his reliability, his even temper, his excellent gift for organisation, his financial acumen. If I died tonight … he thought and amended that immediately to if I died tomorrow … because he didn’t feel like dying tonight. That is to say, he felt perfectly well. So, if he died the next day, due to some unforeseen and unforeseeable event like a meteor strike, Poppy would have no worries. She’d be financially secure, have a roof over her head. She’d miss him, of course.
Even so, he regretted the futility of any hope of a decent conversation with Poppy about things that mattered (to him): the government, the European Union, potholes in the road from last winter still unrepaired and, until recently, the condition of Key House. But Key House, even in ruins, remained a problem. He wouldn’t put it past young Crown to take himself off back to Portugal and leave the place a ruin. Not, thought Roger grimly, if I have anything to do with it! All this led him to make a decision. There was time before dinner.
‘I’m just going up the road to check on Key House,’ he announced.
This was greeted by silence followed by footsteps and Poppy appeared in the doorway.
‘Why?’
‘Someone should. It’s unsafe. What’s more, it’s a crime scene. It ought to be kept under surveillance in case it’s disturbed, contaminated … or deteriorates.’
‘Who’s going to disturb it?’
‘The same sort of people who got in there before.’
‘They’re not going back now with it in the state the fire’s left it,’ argued Poppy.
‘We can’t be certain. These are not people who think like you and I, Poppy.’
Poppy was looking at him in a way that could be described as exasperated. The old girl was clearly worried for his safety.
‘If you go trampling over it, you’ll be contaminating a crime scene,’ she said. ‘The police put tape round it. You can’t go in. As you’ve just said, the walls look very rickety now. They might fall down.’
Roger was uncomfortably reminded of his earlier use of a meteor shower as an example of a fatal mishap.
‘I won’t go on the property, I’ll just check the exterior,’ he promised.
‘It’s dark,’ she said crossly.
‘I’ve got a torch.’
‘Take the car, then,’ advised Poppy, turning back kitchenwards.
As it happened, Roger’s intention had been to take the car. Now he felt bound to declare, ‘I’ll walk!’
‘Suit yourself!’ floated from the kitchen.
Well wrapped up against the chills of a November evening and carrying the largest torch he could find, Roger set off. He had not gone far when a bend in the road cut him off from the supporting glow of light from his own house. It was not only very dark out here but it was cold and it was lonely. Just how lonely he had never appreciated before. The countryside at night was a black hole into which he might be sucked at any moment never to be seen again, or that’s how it felt. Meteors, black holes: he had astronomy on the brain tonight. Perhaps he ought to take it up, buy a telescope, study the stars. Roger glanced up at the sky, trying to remember what he’d been taught as a boy about the Great Bear and Orion’s Belt and all the rest of it. But the night was overcast. He couldn’t see much in the way of stars and even the moon was obscured by scudding drifts of dark grey cloud.
His footsteps sounded unnaturally loud. He tried to walk more quietly but found himself tiptoeing along like a blasted ballet dancer. In an effort to counteract that, he began to march along with his feet striking the road surface with the precision of a regimental sergeant major. There ought to be a footpath along here so that he need not walk in the road. If some road hog, imagining that an isolated country road was a racetrack, came roaring along here, he wouldn’t see Roger until far too late. There wasn’t anywhere to jump to safety, only into a ditch or a hedge. Worse, he was passing by a traditional low stone wall edging a field. A footpath was needed. He’d write to the council about it. He’d write about the potholes again too. Roger flashed the torch ahead of him along the surface, seeking out any possible trap. He might put a foot in one of those and go flying, break his ankle. The list of possible calamities was endless.
The clouds moved away from the moon and in the silver gleam of light bathing his surroundings he saw, ahead of him, the stark shape of the walls of Key House, standing up against the night sky like some ruined castle. Relief flooded him. He’d got here. He’d take a quick look round the exterior and then set off home.
He had crossed the road and stepped over the police tape, despite assuring Poppy he wouldn’t, and had begun to play his torch beam over the outer walls when he realised that the beam was shining back at him, like a reflection. That wasn’t possible, surely? No, it wasn’t. It was another torch beam, not his, flickering about over there inside the house.
Automatically Roger switched off his torch. He was sure whoever it was had no right to be there. Poppy was wrong. The druggies or tramps, whoever it might be, had come back. It was one thing to confront them in daylight, quite another to tackle them in the darkness. He couldn’t see how many of them there were. He stood, rooted to the spot, and watched as the point of light within the house disappeared and then reappeared, moving around the internal area like some will-o-the-wisp. For a brief moment he wondered if it could be no more than some natural phenomenon. Marsh gas, it was called, wasn’t it? But it was not marshy hereabouts.
Then he heard a sound. Someone was walking in there, feet crunching on the rubble. Now he heard a voice. He couldn’t identify it, even to say if it had been male or female, but he was sure he’d heard one. The light flickered again and then was abruptly doused. There was a cry and a crash, then silence.
Roger waited. What to do? Go and investigate? He’d come here to check things over and something in there definitely deserved to be checked. He began to move cautiously forward, feeling his way in the darkness, holding the unlit torch on high as a weapon.
‘Anyone there?’ he called.
His voice on the night air quavered uncertainly. He tried again, more robustly.
‘Is anyone in there? Are you all right?’ It might be as well for whoever was there to believe Roger was not alone. He added, ‘We are coming in!’
Something moved in the shadows, but not inside the house now. The shape stood beside an outer wall, blacker in the gloom and without clear definition. It – something, someone – moved.
‘Who’s that?’ The annoying quaver was back in his voice. ‘I – I’m armed …’<
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Oh Lord, he should have listened to Poppy. He should have stayed home. Why did he trouble himself over a house that didn’t belong to him and now hardly existed at all? He didn’t care who was in there. If a whole coven of witches had occupied the place to conduct satanic rites, they could carry on without interference from him.
He thought he heard footsteps, a series of muffled thuds, but further away, retreating from him. Someone was cutting across the field behind the house. First relief and then new courage flooded Roger’s veins. He’d frightened off whoever it had been! Someone had almost certainly been up to no good. Wait until he told Poppy about this! Or perhaps, on second thoughts, he wouldn’t tell Poppy. She’d fuss.
Buoyed by relief and the thought that the other person had fled, Roger switched on his torch again and moved confidently forward. ‘I’m coming in there!’ he announced.
To his horror his words, which he’d been sure would have fallen into silence, called up a response. Not a voice, but another movement. Now, within the house someone was stumbling about on the rubble, so noisily it couldn’t be dismissed as mere wreckage settling. In the empty doorway, a figure appeared. Roger turned the full beam of torchlight on to it and gave a cry.
It was tall, appeared misshapen, black. It staggered forward with raised arms, making for him like an iconic Frankenstein’s monster. Roger let out an involuntary squeal and stepped back. The creature lurched forward and crashed to the ground at his feet to lie still.
His heart beating wildly, Roger remained where he was for a few seconds – though it felt like much longer. At last he moved forward again and asked hoarsely, ‘Who are you?’
The inert figure at his feet did not move. He shone the torch down on to it and saw a face, blackened with soot and unrecognisable. He stooped over and reluctantly stretched out his hand. It touched human hair. Roger snatched his hand away. His fingers were sticky. He shone the torch on them and it picked up dark fluid. ‘Oh, my God, blood!’ he whispered.