Haunted Summer

by Joanna Mansell

  She saw him visibly wince at the shrillness of her voice, and was pleased that she was managing to hurt him in some way.

  'What happened was entirely your own fault,' he said tersely. 'I didn't ask you to come here.'

  'Oh, but you did,' Rose told him, and was very gratified by his sudden change of expression.

  'What do you mean by that?' he asked abruptly.

  But Rose was beginning to shift around rather restlessly. It had been a long night, and that cellar had had very little to offer in the way of facilities.

  'I need to use your bathroom,' she said in a defiant tone. He looked as if he would like to refuse. She was sure that what he really wanted to do was to push her out of the door, and then simply forget about her. That wasn't going to happen, though. Rose was quite determined about that. By the time she had finished with him, he was never going to forget what he had done to her.

  'There's a bathroom at the end of that passageway,' he said at last, gesturing to his right with grudging reluctance.

  Rose quickly set off in the direction he had indicated. She soon found the bathroom, which was small but very clean and well equipped. She didn't see why she should hurry, and so she spent more time than was necessary washing off the dust and dirt from that cellar.

  She couldn't do much about her grimy clothes, except try to sponge off the worst of the dirt. When she had done the best she could, she shook her tousled hair into place; then she studied her reflection.

  'You look like someone who's just spent the night in a cellar,' she told herself with a grimace. 'And that man's definitely going to pay for his barbaric behaviour!'

  Her eyes began to blaze with anger again as she left the bathroom. No one had the right to treat another human being like that, and get away with it. When she returned to the passageway where she had left him, she found the man had gone. The cellar door still stood open, and she hurriedly looked away as she walked past it. That was one place she certainly never wanted to see again!

  Rose went on through to the kitchen, but there was still no sign of him. The back door stood open, and she walked through it and out into the small courtyard.

  The sun was blazing down out of a clear blue sky again, and it was already quite hot. Rose wasn't in the mood to pay any attention to the weather, though. Her gaze had already swung round to rest on the man who was standing on the far side of the courtyard.

  She walked directly over and planted herself right in front of him. His eyes—which were slate-grey— rested on her without much interest.

  'I thought you'd gone,' he said, his tone clearly telling her that he wished she had gone. As far as he was concerned, she was just a nuisance. He wanted to be rid of her as quickly as possible.

  'No, I haven't gone,' Rose replied in a taut voice. 'You see, before I leave, there are a couple of things that I want you to know. Firstly, I am not a reporter. And secondly, as soon as I do leave here, I intend to go straight to the police and report exactly what you did to me.'

  She was rather annoyed to find that he didn't seem in the least perturbed by her threat.

  'If you're not a reporter, why did you come here yesterday?' he asked her.

  'You put a card in one of the local shops, advertising for a gardener. I came to Lyncombe Manor because I wanted to apply for the job.'

  His dark eyebrows gently rose. 'You don't look like a gardener to me.'

  'Gardeners don't have to be old men with cloth caps and green fingers,' she retorted. 'I know about plants, I'm strong enough to handle a lawnmower and dig flower-beds, and I'm not afraid of hard work.'

  To her surprise, a glimmer of amusement briefly showed in those slate-grey eyes.

  'I get the feeling that you're not afraid of anything much at all,' he commented. 'All right, you can have the job.'

  For a few seconds, Rose just stared at him, hardly able to believe that he had just said that.

  'Do you really think I want your lousy job any more?' she said incredulously, at last. 'As far as I'm concerned, you're more than a little crazy. No one in their right mind would even think of doing what you did yesterday. And there's no way I'd ever work for someone like you!'

  Her outburst seemed to leave him completely unmoved. Instead, he merely shrugged. 'Then there's not a lot more I can say.'

  Rose drew herself up to her full height, which was a fairly impressive five feet, eight inches, and glared straight into his irritatingly expressionless features.

  'I should think there's a great deal more you can say,' she hissed at him. 'You haven't even apologised for what you did.'

  He met her gaze unblinkingly. 'I've already explained that leaving you down there all night was just an unfortunate mistake. I meant to lock you in for an hour or two, no more. I had a little too much to drink yesterday, though. I fell asleep and forgot about you.'

  Her own eyes glittered back at him. 'Well, I intend to make you very sorry that you've got such a bad memory!'

  He gave a resigned sigh. 'All right, what is it going to take to put this right? Money?' He pulled a chequebook out of his pocket. 'How much is this going to cost me?'

  'A great deal,' she threw back at him with fierce anger. 'And you're not going to be able to buy your way out of it with a big cheque!'

  With that, she turned her back on him and walked angrily out of the courtyard.

  She glanced round only once, to see if he was following her. She was suddenly frightened in case he decided that he didn't intend to let her go. He hadn't moved an inch, though. He was still standing on the far side of the courtyard, a man who was lean to the point of thinness, his dark hair shaggy and in need of a good cut, and his slate-grey eyes curiously expressionless. For just a moment, Rose's gaze locked on to his, and her skin suddenly prickled in an odd way, as if something were warning her to be very careful of this man. Don't worry, she told herself grimly. I've no intention of setting eyes on him again—unless it's in a court of law!

  She turned away from him again, hurried round the side of the house and made her way towards her car. To her relief, it started first time. She crunched it into gear, trod hard on the accelerator and roared away from Lyncombe Manor. And she had no intention of ever coming back.

  A quarter of an hour later, Rose pulled up outside the small house where she was staying for bed and breakfast. Mrs Rogers, who owned and ran it, opened the door as she walked up the front path.

  'I've been so worried about you,' she said, her face creased into anxious lines. 'When you didn't come back last night, I didn't know what to do. At first, I wondered if I ought to call the police. Then I thought you might have met someone, and—well—decided you wanted to spend some time with him,' she finished tactfully. 'I'm ever so relieved to see you, and know you're all right.' Then she saw the dishevelled and grubby state of Rose's clothes, and an anxious look crossed her face again. 'You are all right, aren't you?'

  'Well, I'm not hurt,' Rose assured her. 'But I'm definitely not all right,' she added, with a dark scowl.

  'Come on inside,' said Mrs Rogers. 'I'll make you a cup of tea, and you can tell me all about it.'

  Rose let herself be ushered into the kitchen, where Mrs Rogers clucked over the state of her while she bustled round making the tea. Rose had sometimes found Mrs Rogers' motherliness a little irritating during the couple of weeks she had been staying here. This morning, though, she was rather glad of it. She felt badly in need of a little kindness and attention.

  'Where have you been since yesterday?' asked Mrs Rogers, as she poured out the tea. 'Not that I want to pry into your private affairs,' she added hastily. 'But I worry about you, a young woman travelling around all on your own. And I expect your parents can't sleep at night, wondering what's happening to you.'

  'I dare say my parents sleep very well,' Rose said drily. 'They always think I'm quite capable of looking after myself. And usually I am. But then, I don't usually run into the sort of man I met yesterday.'

  Mrs Rogers eyes instantly gleamed. 'A man?' she echo
ed. She loved gossip of any kind. 'I thought it would turn out to be something like that. Whenever there's any kind of trouble, it's nearly always a man who's the cause of it.'

  'Well, this particular man certainly caused me enough trouble!' Rose said darkly. 'And as soon as I've finished this drink and had a bath, I'm going straight to the police.'

  'The police?' breathed Mrs Rogers. 'Good heavens! Whatever did he do?'

  'He kept me locked in a cellar all night! You see, I went to Lyncombe Manor to apply for this job--'

  'Lyncombe Manor?' interrupted Mrs Rogers. 'Where that nice Mr Hayward lives?'

  Rose looked at her in surprise. 'You know Lyncombe Manor?'

  'I've never been there,' Mrs Rogers told her. 'But my brother—he's a plumber—went there a couple of weeks ago to do some work. Something to do with the boiler, I think. When he came round to see me last week, he told me who lived there. Of course, he made me promise I wouldn't tell anyone. Mr Hayward likes his privacy. I suppose he's had enough of reporters and the Press, and you can understand that.'

  Rose was thoroughly confused by this time. 'I don't think I understand anything of this at all,' she said, with a touch of exasperation. 'And who is this "nice Mr Hayward"? I'm sure it can't be the same man I met yesterday!'

  'He writes songs,' said Mrs Rogers. 'At first, I didn't recognise the name either. Then my brother told me some of the songs he's written, and I knew quite a lot of them. And of course, I knew that pretty blonde girl he used to write for, only they've split up now—in fact, about a year ago it was. And there was such a lot about it in the papers, week after week it went on, so it's hardly surprising Mr Hayward got sick of it, and went in hiding from the Press.'

  Rose was still trying to take all of this in. 'Are you talking about Nathan Hayward? The songwriter? The Nathan Hayward?'

  'That's him,' agreed Mrs Rogers. 'I thought you'd know the name. He's quite famous, really.' Then a small frown crossed her face. 'But why did he lock you in the cellar?' she asked in a puzzled voice. 'That doesn't sound like the kind of thing Mr Hayward would do. My brother was quite impressed by him. Said he didn't say a lot, but he let my brother get on with the job without any interference, and paid his bill very promptly—which is more than a lot of people do,' she added in a disapproving tone. Rose felt the colour rise in her face. She already owed Mrs Rogers some money for her food and board, and right now she didn't have any spare cash.

  'Oh, I didn't mean you, dear,' Mrs Rogers said quickly, seeing Rose's embarrassment. 'I know you'll let me have the money as soon as you've got it.'

  'I'm trying very hard to get a job,' Rose assured her. 'In fact, that's why I went to Lyncombe Manor. Only Mr Hayward—well, I suppose it was Mr Hayward—caught me looking round the house, and he thought I was a reporter.'

  'Well, I expect that would explain his behaviour, if he didn't treat you very well,' said Mrs Rogers. 'A lot of things they said about him in the newspapers weren't at all nice. If I were him, I wouldn't be at all polite to someone I thought was from the Press.'

  'But he shut me in the cellar!' said Rose, with a quick surge of her old indignation. 'And then he forgot I was there. He left me there all night!'

  'That wasn't a very nice thing to do,' agreed Mrs Rogers. 'But I think the poor man has had rather a bad time. People often behave quite badly when they've had a lot of upsetting things to cope with.'

  Rose thought that Mrs Rogers probably wouldn't be so charitable if she had been the one who had been locked in the cellar. All the same, she was beginning to see the whole thing from a slightly different point of view. That didn't excuse his behaviour, of course— nothing could do that, as far as she was concerned— but it did explain his pathological dislike of anyone he suspected of being a reporter.

  Nathan Hayward—Rose was rather out of touch with the current music scene, but his name was definitely familiar. He wrote beautiful songs that sounded deceptively simple, but in fact had complex underlying harmonies that always made her nerve-ends tingle responsively whenever she heard them.

  She hadn't recognised him when she'd seen him, but that was hardly surprising. He had been the background figure in his partnership with Jancis Kendall, the 'pretty blonde girl' Mrs Rogers had mentioned. As a team of songwriter and singer, they had made a small fortune and sold records all round the world. Until just over a year ago, that was, when they had split up in a great blaze of publicity. Nathan Hayward had seemed to disappear from sight soon afterwards. Only it seemed he hadn't vanished completely. He was at Lyncombe Manor, just a couple of miles from here...

  'Are you still going to the police?' asked Mrs Rogers, a little anxiously. She obviously didn't want to get too involved with any resulting unpleasantness.

  'I don't know,' said Rose slowly. 'I need to think about this.' She got to her feet, still trying to take it all in. 'If it's all right with you, I'll go up and take a bath.'

  'Have a good long soak,' advised Mrs Rogers. 'You'll feel much better afterwards.'

  After a hot bath and a change of clothes, Rose certainly looked much better. She was still very mixed-up inside, though. And she hadn't stopped being angry at that man—no, she couldn't call him that any more, she reminded herself. He had a name, now. Nathan

  Hayward. A name she knew. A man who was exceptionally talented, and whose songs she had always enjoyed and admired.

  Yet, he had locked her in a cellar all night. Should he be allowed to get away with that?

  Of course not, Rose told herself firmly. But what could she do about it? Now that she had calmed down, she really didn't want to go to the police. That had been just a spur-of-the-moment reaction. What alternative was there, though?

  She finally decided that there was only one thing she could do. That was, to go and see him again. Perhaps she would feel better if she got a proper apology out of him, instead of just a rather weary show of indifference. She conveniently forgot that she had sworn that she would never set foot in Lyncombe Manor again. At the same time, she was willing to admit that she was rather curious to see Nathan Hayward just one more time, now that she knew who he was.

  One short visit, she told herself. I'll stay just long enough to make him apologise; then I'll put this whole thing behind me. I'll forget it ever happened.

  And she honestly thought she would be able to do that.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ROSE decided to go to Lyncombe Manor that same afternoon, while she could still remember how very angry she had been at Nathan Hayward's completely uncivilised behaviour. If she left it another day, she might calm down completely. Worse than that, she might even act like a rather star-struck teenager when she finally came face to face with him. She definitely didn't want that to happen!

  She set off after lunch, although she very nearly changed her mind at the last moment. Something seemed to be warning her that it wasn't at all a good idea to go back to Lyncombe Manor.

  If she stayed away, though, it would mean that Nathan Hayward would get away with the outrageous way he had treated her. And Rose didn't intend to let him get away with it. She lifted her head with new determination and headed the car in the direction of Nathan Hayward's beautiful house. The narrow, winding lane that led to it was just as deserted as it had been the day before. The sun was blazing down again—it looked as if a long spell of hot, dry weather was setting in—and Rose wound down the car windows, and pushed back her thick mop of hair.

  When she finally reached Lyncombe Manor, she was struck all over again by its picturesque charm. The roses seemed to be blooming even more brightly and prolifically than yesterday, and their scent drifted towards her on the warm, balmy air as she got out of the car.

  The house itself looked as deserted as it had on her last visit, but Rose wasn't fooled this time. She had made the mistake of thinking it empty once before— she wasn't about to do it again!

  Nor did she make any effort to walk round to the back of the house. Instead, she marched firmly up to the front door and thumped loudly on the
heavy knocker.

  No one opened the door and there wasn't a sound from inside the house. Rose frowned. Perhaps he really was out this time. She hammered on the knocker once more; then she stood back and looked up at the windows. As they had been the day before, they were closed, despite the heat of the day. The man didn't just live like a recluse—it looked as if he wasn't even very fond of fresh air and sunshine!

  She began to walk slowly away from the house, aware of an unexpected sense of disappointment. She knew she wouldn't come back again. Unless she carried out her threat to go to the police—and, by now, she was fairly certain that she wouldn't do that—Nathan Hayward would get off scot-free. An unexpected sound interrupted her thoughts and made her come to a stop. Her brows drew lightly together. What had it been? And where had it come from?

  She was just beginning to think that perhaps she had imagined it when it came again. And this time, she realised at once what it was. It was someone shouting.

  Although she couldn't be certain, it seemed to come from the back of the house. And she didn't want to go round there again! That maniac might jump out, accuse her of trespassing, and bundle her back into the cellar!

  She heard the shout ring out for the third time, and gave a small sigh. She supposed she couldn't just walk away until she had found out what was going on.

  Keeping her eyes carefully peeled for any sign of Nathan Hayward, she cautiously made her way under the arch at the side of the house; then she headed towards the gardens at the back. She still couldn't see anyone, and the shouting seemed to have stopped now. The grounds stretched out in front of her, wildly overgrown and yet still beautiful, while behind her was the small courtyard, with its tubs of ferns and its air of tranquillity.

  'Hey, you down there!' shouted a familiar voice. 'I need a hand.'

  Rose nearly jumped out of her skin as the voice echoed round the courtyard. Her head jerked up, and her eyes squinted a little as she stared at the figure silhouetted against the bright sunlight that blazed down on to the roof. Then her gaze returned to the courtyard. There was a ladder lying on the ground on the far side. She realised that it must have fallen down—leaving Nathan Hayward stranded on the roof!