by L. P. Davies
“They knew where I was yesterday. They could have put it in my hands then.”
“I’m only guessing.” She moved her shoulders. The dressing gown parted.
“Louise—” Axel fumbled for words. “I can’t remember any time in my life when anyone has done anything for me. I’ve always had to fight my own battles. Now someone has helped me, and I don’t know the right words to use. I’m grateful to you. Grateful—” He tested the word. “No, I think it’s more than that. They didn’t take everything away from me. They left something.”
He leaned forward, resting his fingertips on the back of her hand. The girl drew back a little, pulling the edges of her gown across her breast.
“Because I’m married?’’ Axel smiled sardonically. “But you forget—there’s no such place as Barkley House. The people who live there are only shadows. There’s no such person as Romaine. Or aren’t you certain after all?’’
“I’m not certain of anything.’’ Louise shook her head. “I’ve only told you what I think has happened to you. I think— No, I’m almost sure of this: you are two different people. One is the real you. The other—I don’t know what to call the other. A fantasy, perhaps. Am I making sense, Axel?’’
“I’m listening,’’ he told her.
“I don’t know which of those two I’m talking to now. Romaine exists, is flesh and blood, for one of you. One of you is in love with her.
“If—” She moved her free hand in a gesture. “I don’t know how to say this. I would only be taking her place for a little while. A substitute. Don’t you see, Axel? It would be Romaine, not me. Her face and body, not mine. I couldn’t take that.”
And at the door, hand ready on the switch, imploringly: “Do you understand, Axel?”
“A fantasy,” he said harshly. “A shadow like the rest of them. And how long since I was last with Romaine? A few short weeks? Or ten years? Can you tell me that?”
* * *
They met in the passage, Axel on his way to the bathroom, Louise, in red silk jersey and black slacks, on her way downstairs. A few words that meant nothing, no mention on either side of the previous night, and the new day had started.
While she saw about breakfast, he went into the pink and gold room, there to stand by one of the windows and gaze out over trees hazy with sunshine, fields to which night-mist still clung—no signs of life at all out there, not even the top of a roof, not even a thread of chimney smoke, nothing but trees and bushes and fields, the drive and the grey ribbon of the lane.
The phone rang just as he was on his way to the kitchen, answering Louise’s call that breakfast was ready. Frilly apron incongruous over austere slacks, she came into the hall. “Perhaps I’d better take that, Axel.” He stepped aside for her to pass, heard her opening: “Green Ladies.” And then the rising inflection of her surprised: “Oh, it’s you, Uncle Vince—”
He continued to the kitchen. She was on the phone for only a few minutes.
“As you probably gathered, that was Uncle Vince,” she informed him upon her return.
“You didn’t tell him I was with you?” he demanded sharply.
“No.” She motioned to a chair. “Sit down. I’ll bring your plate.”
And, when he had seated himself: “No, I didn’t, Axel. For a change I let him do most of the talking. It seems he rang the Swan last night, Bert told him I’d left—by the sound of it, there was no mention of you—so Uncle Vince guessed where I’d gone and waited till this morning before calling. He said that a man called him last night. A doctor by the name of Sibault—” She paused expectantly.
“Sibault…” Axel stared at his plate.
“Julius Sibault.”
“I’ve heard it before somewhere.”
“Oddly enough, so have I. Not that he’s all that well known. But when reading gets scarce on St. Anatole I turn as last resort to Uncle Vince’s medical journals. And that’s where I first met Julius Sibault. It’s the sort of name that sticks in the mind. He’s a psychiatrist, Axel. One of his specialities is corrective treatment under deep hypnosis.”
“Hypnosis.” Axel looked up. “We’re back to that again. What did he want with your uncle?”
“It’s all right. He wasn’t on your trail. He was on mine. Eat your breakfast before it gets cold, Axel. Sauce?”
“On your trail?” He pushed the cruet impatiently aside.
“Asking about me. What kind of person I was, if I’d had much to do with medicine, what was I like at handling people. That sort of thing. Only unobtrusive questions, Uncle Vince said, just dropped in here and there during the conversation. But still obvious enough, thinking about it afterwards, to make him want to ask me if I’d been up to anything out of the usual since last we’d seen each other. I managed to set his mind at rest without having to tell any real lies.”
When he had finished eating, Axel went into the front room again, leaving the girl to clear the table. She joined him there fifteen minutes later, dark-red cardigan draped loosely over bright-red jersey, handbag under her arm.
“I’m going to try the public library at Norwich, Axel. There should be directories and registers in the reference section. If not, I’ll have a word with one of the staff. It was just Mosaic—nothing in front?”
“Just Mosaic. If you do talk to anyone, Louise, try to avoid any mention of my name.”
“I will,” she promised. “Anything I can get for you while I’m in the big city?”
There was. He had his wallet out. A change of clothing. A brush and comb. Cigarettes.
“A shipping order.” Head on one side she assessed his size. “About Uncle Vince’s build.” She helped herself to money. “This should be enough.” And: “Now we know why these notes are different to those the bank gave me. These must be the ones that were in circulation before you went over to decimal currency. Nineteen seventy-one, was it? Some years back, anyway. They thought of everything when they gave you your false background. But why bother about altering your time by ten years? I mean, that only complicates things without seeming to serve any purpose. And why have they made you look older when it should be the other way round? I mean, if they pushed you back ten years, they should have tried to make you look that much younger.”
“Pushed back—” She echoed her own words, her eyes widening. “Pushed forward?” she breathed, and then shook her head, angry with herself for ever having allowed such a thought into her mind, such a stupid, ridiculous notion as—
“Time travel,” she said, smiling now, smiling at herself for her foolishness. “Now you can see what a state my mind’s in, Axel. You’ve come from the past. Nineteen sixty-nine last Friday, then whoosh—into nineteen seventy-nine. And the odd thing is, that would explain so many of the weird things about you: why your house is no longer there—it could have been pulled down. And maybe, ten years ago, Bridford was known as Grenfelle. It would explain the dinner party with a dead man sitting at your table, the old money you carry, the reason they tried to make you look older than you are.”
She stopped smiling. “It ail fits,” she whispered.
“Louise—” Despite himself, Axel found laughter from somewhere. “In my present confused state of mind I’m open to suggestions of any kind. But God, one has to draw the line somewhere.”
His amusement hadn’t brought her smile back.
“All right.” He became serious again. “If such a thing were possible—which it isn’t and never will be—that isn’t the answer now. For one thing, I know too much about the present. It’s alive and real. You were right last night when you said I was two different people. Part of me is living here in the present; the other part is living ten years in the past. When I was on the bus I could accept it as being both a modern vehicle and an antiquated one. When you first introduced me to your car, part of me agreed with your description that it was as old as the hills. The other part saw it as being of recent design. And once I had got over the initial shock of seeing the year printed on the cover of that ha
ndbook, part of me was immediately ready to accept that this is the year nineteen seventy-nine. And yet I’m equally ready to accept that it is only nineteen sixty-nine.”
“And that,” Louise stated, “is about the first time you’ve tried to explain just how you feel. My time travel idea wasn’t wasted after all. But why on earth, when they fitted you out with that fake background, did they have to push it ten years into the past? I mean, they must have messed you about for some very special reason.”
“According to you,” Axel said, “to dispose of somebody for them.”
“That’s how it seems, Axel. And it’s just as if they’d said to you: ‘Go back ten years into the past, kill the person we’ll point out to you, then come back again to the present.’ It just doesn’t make sense.”
“But you’re so good at solving puzzles.”
“That was uncalled for.” She smiled sunnily. “I won’t be away long.”
He went outside with her, standing by the door while she went down the steps to her car.
“The lane ends at Compton Basset,” she offered, hand on door. “There’s no through traffic. The only people you’re likely to see will be villagers.”
“If some unsuspecting salesman does happen to find his way here,” he said with suitable gravity, “and unwittingly lets fall the fatal phrase, I’ll try to restrain myself from throttling him to death.”
“Thank God you’re able to joke about it,” Louise said.
When the car had gone he looked at his watch. Barely half past nine—too early to use the phone. The back-street City office he intended contacting didn’t come to life much before ten-thirty.
Axel smelled the sweet freshness of the country, looked out over fields from which the sun had already warmed the mists away, over trees that had become the cut-out cardboard shapes of stage scenery. Like a picture …
And another picture. His study in Barkley House, himself seated at his desk. Carla standing there, waiting. The door opening, Kendall coming in. Carla speaking. What are you going to do, Axel? His hand, his own hand, moving of its own volition, opening the drawer, taking out the gun, levelling it, firing—
That was how Carla had intended it to be. That was how it would be if ever he was to go back there again. Not the gun brought here to him, as Louise thought, but the other way round, he taken to the gun.
If he was to go back home again he would be forced to play out the charade and so become a murderer. And deep inside him, all the time, steadily growing, the driving compulsion to find his way back to Barkley House, a compulsion so strong that soon the time must come when he would be unable to resist. He would be forced to find his way back through time to a house that no longer existed.
About to turn, to go back indoors, Axel saw a flicker of movement through the bushes that separated garden from lane. The car—for a moment he thought it must be Louise, coming back for something she had forgotten—came slowly and silently, engine barely audible. It stopped alongside the open gates. A man climbed out, hatless and coatless, a small man, not yet middle-aged, with a small face but a deep and wide expanse of forehead, black hair sparse, what little that still remained combed carefully sideways to cover as much head flesh as possible. A stranger, Axel felt certain he had never seen him before, yet doubt stirred somewhere at the back of his mind.
The man came slowly up the drive, uncertain of himself by his lagging steps, by the way one hand reached up nervously to caress his chin.
He came to a halt when still paces away, wondering doubtfully: “Mr. Champlee? It is Mr. Axel Champlee?”
Axel stared at him through narrowed eyes. “Who are you?” The other took the absence of denial as answer enough to his question. Relief, certainly unfeigned relief, spread across his face. He relaxed, coming closer.
“I couldn’t be sure it was you, sir. I’ve only ever seen the one photograph of you—not a very clear one. I don’t think my name will mean anything to you. I’m only a very small cog in your machine. Nolan, sir. Howard Nolan.” He made to put out his hand but changed his mind. “I’m a director of Towton Engineering, one of your subsidiaries.”
Howard Nolan … The name rang a faint bell in Axel’s mind. The name of the firm meant nothing at all.
“I wonder—” Mr. Nolan said diffidently, nervous again, hand back to his chin. “Would it be possible for me to talk to you?” Indoors, added his eyes, moving from Axel’s face to the house behind.
“How did you know where I was?”
“I was afraid you were going to ask me that, Mr. Champlee. It’s a long story’ and one that doesn’t show me up in a very good light. My secretary is a friend of one of your servants —Gregson. It was through me that he cultivated the acquaintanceship—”
Axel smiled thinly at a picture which was immediately crystal clear. “Scraps that might fall from the table.”
“I’m afraid so, sir.” Nolan’s embarrassment was painfully obvious. “But I never benefited in any way. If Gregson did learn anything about your business affairs, he kept the knowledge to himself.”
“Confession,” Axel said drily, “is supposed to be good for the soul. I wonder—would you have been so open now if you had gained financially through your fifth-column activities? No—” He held up his hand. “Let it go, Nolan. So it was through Gregson that you managed to find me here?”
“Partly, sir. It was from Gregson I learned you had left Barkley House, taking no luggage with you. My secretary was lucky enough to sec you board a bus. I tracked it to its destination, talked with the conductor, traced you first to the Swan in Littledene, then here.” Nolan paused. “No one else knows, sir. Not even my secretary.”
“And why was it so important you had to trace me?”
“Perhaps I wasn’t being strictly truthful when I told you Gregson had never passed any useful information to me. He did in fact tell me something of what transpired on Friday when your sister came to visit you. He overheard enough of your conversation to realise that I should be informed for my own sake. And I think, too, he had some idea of trying to help you.
“You see, Mr. Champlee, Gregson knows that all my capital is invested in Towton Engineering. If your brother-in-law, Kendall Ibbetson, is successful in breaking you, I will myself be both ruined and out of a job. If you go down, sir, then so will I, only much further. It’s as simple as that. I came here in the hope I might be of some use in preventing Mr. Ibbetson from finishing what he has set out to do.”
“You’d better come inside.” Axel led the way indoors. lie chose the room with the bookcases, motioning to a chair, looking round. “I’m afraid I can’t offer you anything, Nolan. If there is anything drinkable on the premises, I don’t know where it’s kept. I’m very much a stranger here.”
“Friends of yours, sir?” Seating himself, Nolan looked curiously around the room.
“You could call them that.”
“And you’re alone here?”
“For the time being.” Axel went to stand with his back to the window, his face in shadow, his visitor’s in bright light. “So you came here because you wanted to help. How?”
“I had some idea you might need the services of a go-between, sir. And perhaps in other ways. I have the feeling that there’s more to all this than meets the eye. Apart from anything else, it didn’t make sense to me that you should leave Barkley House instead of staying to fight back from there.”
“More than meets the eye …” Axel was still feeling his way, still not sure about Nolan. “And had Gregson no ideas to offer as to why I should have run out the way I did?”
“There was only the one explanation he could think of. The shock of hearing from your sister of the gravity of your position had been too much for you. But for a man of your calibre and experience—” Nolan shook his head, smiling. “Neither of us believed that for one moment, sir.”
“I may have misjudged Gregson,” Axel said slowly, warily. “I was certain he must be in it with my sister.”
“In what, sir?�
� The other seemed genuinely puzzled.
“The plot to drug me.”
“Drug you?” And no man under the sun could possibly have feigned the stunned expression that shattered Nolan’s features, the shocked incredulity of his voice.
“I am almost sure it was some kind of hypnotic. Whatever it was, it dulled my senses to such an extent that I was unable to think rationally. I left the house because I was afraid that in my condition I might have done something that I would never have done while my senses were clear.”
“I see—” Nolan was taking some time to recover from his shock. “But your sister—Carla—you mean, you think she was responsible?”
“I don’t think, I know. And I know why. But that is unimportant now. You can help me.”
“I’m glad, sir,” Nolan said earnestly, eagerly. “I was afraid you might have found somebody else. Just tell me what you want me to do.”
“I have a list of all the firms which I control, but not the details of my holdings. It was my intention to work with what I have. I was on the point of contacting the City when you arrived—”
“Contacting—” Nolan was puzzled. “This morning, Mr. Champlee? Will there be anyone there on a Sunday?”
Axel looked along the lines of books. Louise, replacing the handbook last night, had left it with one yellow corner protruding slightly. He moistened his lips. “The drug must also have confused my sense of time. I was under the impression today was Monday.”
“Sunday, sir,” the other said respectfully, and then went on to sort the thing out in great detail. “You left Barkley House on the Friday evening. Friday night and all of Saturday you spent at the Swan at Littledene. You came here late last night—Saturday night.”
Mr. Nolan, whoever he was, had dipped his hand in his pocket and brought out the lost twenty-four hours. Just like that. Perhaps in another pocket, Axel thought, he would have the missing ten years.
“How long have you been with your firm?” he asked.