Caroline Minuscule

by Andrew Taylor

  He returned to the hall. It was chilly and smelt like a grave. His teeth wanted to chatter. His mind lined up reasons for him to leave: there was nothing to find, even if he knew what he was looking for; he was running a pointless risk by being here; he needed the warmth and light of the hotel, not to mention Amanda’s down-to-earth company . . .

  Plop! The noise came from upstairs – for all the world as if someone had put a finger in his or her mouth, pressed it against the cheek, closed the lips to make the mouth airtight and sharply withdrawn the finger.

  After what seemed like half an hour, the sound came again. Dougal tried to persuade himself that it must be the pipes in the house; old plumbing was notoriously unpredictable. The trouble was, he could hardly run away now. He could hear himself explaining later, ‘Well, I heard a plop, you see . . .’ No, he would continue his methodical survey of the house, despite the plumbing.

  He opened the next door and found a windowless closet, empty except for a roll of linoleum leaning drunkenly across one corner.

  The stairs were next – a wide flight with shallow treads ascending into darkness. Dougal nerved himself.

  The first floor contained four bedrooms, a bathroom and a lavatory. Dougal contented himself with giving the rooms the most cursory of glances. The removal process seemed to have gone further up here than downstairs – it was impossible even to work out the bedroom which had belonged to Vernon-Jones. The curtains were down; the carpets rolled up; and the mattresses lay askew on the bare springs of the beds.

  A much narrower flight of uncarpeted stairs led up to the attics. As Dougal was about to climb them, he heard the noise again: plop-plop-pause-plop – it sounded like Morse code. He forced himself to go up and found two bedrooms with sloping ceilings perched under the eaves of the house. By the amount of dust, they had been disused for years. Each room had a meager, cast-iron fireplace, solid with rust. In one of the rooms was a bedstead with broken springs and no mattress; and in the corner was a small puddle. Even as Dougal stood in the doorway a drop of water fell from a sodden patch in the ceiling and sent ripples careering across the surface of the water. The plops were explained, and he returned to the hall in a much more cheerful state of mind, hardly bothering to walk quietly.

  There were two doors remaining to be opened before he could legitimately depart by the dining room window. The first led to another lavatory, with the pedestal raised on a regal dais. The second, the green baize door, opened into a short passage, flanked by pantries, which ended in what must be the kitchen door. Dougal’s torch rapidly swept over the pantries’ shelves and found a cluster of empty jam jars and a discarded fork. He turned the beam towards the kitchen door two yards away. It took a moment for his mind to accept what his eyes were seeing.

  The doorknob was slowly but unmistakably revolving.

  10

  Dougal snapped off the torch. Sweat was breaking out under the hair on his temples. Was the door closing or opening? Fear possessed him so absolutely that movement was out of the question.

  The door sighed on its hinges. A draught billowed out from the kitchen, carrying the foul smell of an unwashed body. If the owner of the smell came two paces forward, he would walk into Dougal.

  Metal chinked on stone: the smell increased. The listening darkness seemed to coil itself round Dougal’s mind, gripping and squeezing his thoughts like a python. The panic eliminated every other consideration except one.

  The need for light.

  Dougal didn’t decide to switch the torch on – it seemed to happen of its own accord. There was a blur of movement in the kitchen doorway, and a frantic scuffling in the darkness beyond, as if a nocturnal animal had been disturbed in its burrow.

  The light converted Dougal’s panic to bravado. Without thinking, he kicked the door fully open and swept the torch beam across the kitchen. Simultaneously, his mind began to work again. Whoever was in there was more afraid of Dougal than Dougal was of him. Dougal himself must be invisible behind the light. And what was this second intruder doing in Bleeders Hall?

  The beam picked out a huddle of old clothes in the space between the Aga and the right-hand wall. Dougal trained the light on the corner and moved towards it with deliberate slowness. Five feet away he stopped.

  At first his eyes took in only the details: cracked and mud-stained army boots, trousers which appeared to be held together with string, the shabby black material of an overcoat, a greasy tangle of grey hair, and the top of a case of some sort.

  A violin case.

  The details clicked together: it must be the tramp who had been busking in the marketplace. The man’s face was shielded from the light, jammed under his overcoat in a bizarre parody of the pose of a sleeping bird.

  Dougal let the silence linger. The only sound was the tramp’s harsh, shallow breathing. He was surprised, and rather shocked, to realize that he was enjoying the novelty of the situation. The man was demonstrably scared of him – usually it was the other way round. For the first time that evening, he felt as if he was in control.

  The memory of being scared by a leaking roof seemed mercifully distant.

  He took a step forward and nudged the tramp with his foot.

  ‘Look up.’ His voice sounded huskier than usual.

  The bundle in the corner rustled and gave a brief panic-stricken snuffle, but no face appeared.

  ‘Look up.’ Dougal repeated the words, speaking slowly and unemotionally.

  This time the tramp peered cautiously into the beam of the torch. Dougal recognized the thin, unshaven face, and wondered whether the man would be able to recognize him if his face caught the light. Better not to risk it.

  ‘I can’t see,’ the violinist muttered, with the suspicion of an aggrieved whine. ‘Hurts me eyes.’

  ‘Shut up. There’s no need for you to see. What’s your name?’ God, thought Dougal, he hadn’t spoken to anyone like this since he was a probationary house prefect.

  ‘I done nothing.’

  ‘Name.’

  ‘Cedric.’ There was a pause. ‘Mills. Everyone knows me round here. I don’t do no harm. Look, mister—’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Dougal had a sudden distracting thought that Cedric’s mother might have wept happy tears over Little Lord Fauntleroy and named her son after the eponymous hero.

  ‘I been kipping here. No harm, honest. Old reverend used to let me sleep in the shed in the garden sometimes. He snuffed it. Bleeding cold lately and I been sleeping here, see? Not good for a house to be left empty.’

  ‘I don’t see. How did you get in?’

  ‘Window in there, guv.’ Cedric jerked his thumb towards the dining room. ‘And he said it’d be all right for me to doss down here—’

  ‘Who did?’

  There was a pause in the conversation. ‘Old parson,’ said Cedric, squinting up at the torch. ‘He useter—’

  ‘Liar. He couldn’t have done. Not unless he talked to you from the grave. Who was it?’

  ‘Bloke in a pub, flash bloke from London. Look, I done—’

  ‘Oh, shut up.’ Could it have been Lee or Tanner? ‘Tell me about the man. Where and when you met. What he said. Anything you know.’

  Gradually, by further questions and the occasional nudge with his boot, Dougal worked the whole story out of him. Or as much of it as Cedric wanted to tell.

  Cedric had met someone who might well be Tanner, though it was difficult to be sure because his descriptive powers were limited, in the Black Pig, a pub down by the Nonconformist chapel near the river, a couple of nights before. The man had bought Cedric a couple of drinks and pumped him. At first the questioning had been general – about Rosington and petty crime there. Then the stranger had led the conversation to Vernon-Jones. Cedric had known the Canon as one of the less repulsive local do-gooders. Vernon-Jones had visited him once or twice at the local police station and occasionally let him sleep in his garden shed. He had given Cedric both the violin and the overcoat, and Cedric consequently felt an
almost proprietorial interest in his benefactor. He had sometimes done odd jobs for the Canon in the garden.

  It took further footwork and interrogation on Dougal’s part to discover exactly what the stranger had wanted Cedric to do.

  ‘Then why did he tell you to break in here?’

  ‘Nah, he never. Slipped me a fiver, didn’t he, and said there’d be another if I kept an eye on the place. Said a mate of his had been left the old bloke’s furniture and thought someone would nick it . . . what’s it all about, guv?’

  They had reached a conversational stalemate. Dougal refused to enlighten Cedric and Cedric replied to all further questions with ‘Dunno, do I,’ and an expression of impenetrable stupidity.

  It was perfectly possible that Cedric’s store of knowledge had been exhausted. Probably Lee had set Tanner to trawl for gossip in the seedier pubs of Rosington; and Tanner, realizing that Cedric knew Bleeders Hall, had acted on his own initiative and secured the services of a watchdog for a modest outlay. Alternatively, Lee might have known that Vernon-Jones had known Cedric, though this was less likely if Hanbury had been right in believing that Lee did not come to Rosington.

  Lee was certainly thorough. Dougal shivered and the torch beam wavered. Perhaps Lee had arranged to have the watcher watched. No, that was being paranoid. But he had to remember not to underestimate Lee.

  He looked down at Cedric. It was bitterly cold in the stone-floored kitchen. He wanted to leave, but what the hell was he going to do with Cedric? The tramp might well get a clue to his appearance somehow – and when he reported back to Lee it would not be too hard for them to work out the identity of the evening visitor at Bleeders Hall.

  Nor would Cedric hold his tongue; the trouble with threats and bribery was that Lee was far more expert in their use than he, Dougal, could hope to be. Maybe he could tie Cedric up and win time for him and Amanda to escape back to the anonymity of London . . .

  The light of the torch dimmed for a moment, then brightened. That battery must be a dud if it was running down already . . . He thought quickly: best to keep Cedric moving and dispose of him while the light lasted.

  ‘Get up, Cedric. Time for a little walk.’

  ‘Where?’ The whine had an unmistakable edge of truculence now. The man’s eyes flickered from side to side.

  ‘I want to see the rest of the house. Including the cellars.’ A house like this must have cellars. Perhaps there would be somewhere to put Cedric under lock and key. He wouldn’t come to any harm. An anonymous call from London to the local police – or even Lee – in twenty-four hours’ time would get him out.

  Cedric slowly hauled himself to his feet, using the Aga as a support. His coat chinked as he did so, and Dougal realized that there was a bottle in one of those capacious pockets.

  ‘Where do these doors lead?’ Dougal gestured with his torch towards them.

  ‘That one’ – Cedric jerked a thumb at the one at the far end of the wall behind him which contained the Aga and the window – ‘goes to the back door. Little room with a sink. And a toilet.’ He paused and wiped his nose with the back of his hand, an action which had a surprisingly scornful air about it. ‘And that one there’ – next to the dresser on the wall on Dougal’s right – ‘goes down to the cellars.’

  ‘Right,’ said Dougal sternly. ‘We’ll visit the cellar first.’

  Cedric remained where he was, clasping himself with his arms like a caricature of man trying to warm himself.

  Dougal grew impatient and stamped his foot angrily. ‘Come on! I’ve not got all night. Move yourself.’

  ‘Another door over there, guv.’ Cedric pointed over Dougal’s left shoulder.

  ‘Where?’ Dougal half turned. There was a blur of movement and he ducked backwards instinctively. The blow thudded down on his right shoulder, tearing a grunt of pain from the back of his throat.

  The torch was now directed at the floor – fortunately the blow had not made him drop it – and by its light Dougal dimly saw that Cedric had raised his arm again. He dodged away and put the kitchen table – a large and reassuringly solid piece of furniture in the middle of the room – between himself and Cedric.

  His first conscious thought was how unbelievably stupid he had been. He had categorized Cedric as an elderly alcoholic; and had failed to realize that the man scraped a living by his wits. He had probably survived dozens of fights like this.

  But Dougal still had the torch. He shone it on Cedric and was shocked by the change in him. The pert sparrow had given way to the bird of prey. The little man’s head was thrust forward over the collar of his overcoat. His nose probed towards Dougal like a beak. His lips were pulled back in a soundless snarl, revealing yellow, predatory teeth. His beady, close-set eyes gleamed in the light.

  In his right hand was the sherry bottle which had missed Dougal’s head by inches. His left hand was in the pocket of his coat and, as Dougal watched, he pulled out a wooden handled kitchen knife, its six-inch blade honed to a glittering edge, its point masked with a cork.

  Cedric gripped the cork with his teeth, pulled it from the knife and spat it on to the floor. He laid the blade on his cheek and scraped it lovingly against his stubble. Dougal could hear the rasp.

  ‘Now, sonny. Gonna change yer tune?’

  He began to move round the table, his weapons poised.

  Dougal edged away from him. In a moment Cedric would be between him and his only means of escape – the green baize door and the dining room window. If he could delay Cedric—

  He snapped off the torch and desperately shoved the heavy table in the direction of the tramp. His bruised shoulder protested but he hardly felt the pain. The table skidded over the flagstones and jolted against Cedric.

  Dougal leapt for the kitchen door and was through it in an instant, with Cedric scrabbling behind. There was a fleeting satisfaction to be gained from the thought that Cedric was probably even less at home in the dark than he was, after having the light in his eyes for several minutes. He groped frantically for the handle of the green baize door.

  The delay was nearly fatal. Just as he realized, or rather remembered, that there was no handle – the door was designed to allow tray-laden servants to shoulder it open from either direction – Cedric cannoned into him. The bottle flailed blindly – Dougal could feel the wind of its passage – but the arc of its swing was too small to do any damage. Dougal heard the scrape of steel on stone: the knife on the wall.

  He half turned towards his assailant and drove his right knee up into the darkness. It connected and Cedric screeched; it sounded as if his mouth was only inches away from Dougal’s ear.

  Cedric grabbed the leg as it descended, clinging to it like a lifeline. The two men fell heavily to the floor. The bottle shattered and the confined space of the passage was thick with the smell of sherry.

  For several nightmarish seconds their bodies thrashed together, wriggling, clawing and elbowing. Dougal was thrust violently against the wall but managed to use the hard surface as the launching pad for a blind dive towards the jagged sound of his antagonist’s breathing. By a miracle he found himself on top – Cedric, his tiny body pinned to the ground, blaspheming obscenely beneath him.

  His right hand was weighing down Cedric’s left arm: the arm, Dougal hoped, with the knife at the end. Dougal inched his grip towards Cedric’s wrist. He could feel something twisting into the heavy material of his duffel coat. With a shock, he realized it must be the top of the broken bottle: the classic weapon of the pub brawl. He pushed out with his left elbow and Cedric’s grinding stopped abruptly.

  His right hand had reached Cedric’s left. Dougal curled his fingers around the hand that clutched the knife and began to squeeze it. Cedric’s smaller hand tightened on the handle of the knife. For a second, Dougal’s pressure and Cedric’s resistance achieved the strained and fragile equilibrium of Chinese wrestling.

  Dougal relaxed his grip fractionally. Cedric’s arm moved uncontrollably away. The man shrieked then, as if he kn
ew what that momentary loss of muscular direction had cost him. Cedric squirmed over on to his side in a frantic effort to regain his weapon. Dougal’s wrist was suddenly sandwiched between Cedric and the floor. A stab of pain seared up his arm and he lost his grip on the knife.

  Cedric jerked wildly. Dougal rolled off, away from the deadly point of the knife. As he did so, Cedric shrieked: the sound began high up the scale and trailed down in pitch and volume to a low whimper.

  A faint bubbling sound came from the region of his face.

  Dougal was alone in the house.

  11

  ‘Can’t say I see much in this modern music, myself.’ Lee bulldozed his way through the last of the Saturday night drinkers in the hotel bar and set the drinks down on their table. ‘Your lady wife and me were agreeing that there’s more noise than melody, if you know what I mean. I like something with a bit of a tune to it.’

  ‘Time, ladies and gentlemen, if you please,’ cried Mrs Livabed behind the bar.

  ‘It was a bit boring,’ Dougal admitted cautiously. ‘Bloody cold. I could’ve done with a few more jumpers.’ He wondered whether he looked as white and strained as Amanda did. A pulse was jumping erratically in his eyelid; he knew from experience it wouldn’t be visible – it just felt as if it was. ‘It wasn’t worth missing dinner for. I kept wondering what you were having.’ The memory of Bleeders Hall was trying to suck him down, like a bog.

  ‘Carré d’Agneau.’ Amanda looked at him; he could smell the garlic on her breath. She smiled demurely. ‘Thought you might be hungry so I got you some peanuts.’

  She was annoyed, Dougal realized: perhaps she had been worried about him. He tore his way into the blue packet and forced himself to offer the contents to Amanda and Lee.

  ‘How’s the program coming on?’ asked Lee.

  Amanda answered, effortlessly embroidering their cover story, leaving Dougal marooned among the sea of unpleasant thoughts. God, he thought desperately, how he hated Lee for looking at Amanda as if he thought she was finger-lickin’ good . . . the hair sprouting from the man’s nostrils was really obscene . . . he mustn’t think about Bleeders Hall, no, not yet . . . he felt sick with apprehension, the whisky was setting his stomach on fire . . .