The White Room

by L. P. Davies

“Go across the fields?”

  She nodded eagerly, eyes shining. “We make for the main road and then get a lift into Norwich. They won’t be expecting us to do that.”

  “Don’t underestimate them. They’ll have taken everything into account. But even if there was a chance of your slipping away unnoticed—how far is it to the main road?”

  She pondered, guessing at distances. “About five miles from here to the Wymondham road. About twelve from there to Littledene …” Her face fell. “You forget distances when you’re in a car.”

  “In darkness,” Axel said drily. “Across ploughed fields and streams and ditches. Every chance of losing the way. How long do you think it would take?”

  She refused to give up the idea. “Even if it took all night—”

  A futile discussion. Growing impatience got the better of him.

  “There’s a man watching the front of the house, another at the back.” His voice rose. “You know that as well as I do. And that there are God knows how many more of them out there.

  “Look—” He gripped her arm. “Supposing by some wild streak of luck you did manage to get away. Supposing after walking for miles across strange countryside in the middle of the night you did manage to find your way to Norwich. Do you think for one moment the police would believe your story? They might have accepted your uncle’s—he’s a doctor. At the best, they’d be polite to you and show you the door. At the worst, you’d find yourself locked up in some asylum.”

  “You talk as if you had no intention of coming with me,” she said, shaking herself free of his hand, studying his face, her forehead furrowed. “Even if you thought we stood a chance.”

  “I have enough sense to know when something’s hopeless.”

  “Hopeless—” She flung herself away from him.

  “If they want you so badly,” she blazed from the door, “why don’t they just come in the house and take you?”

  “I don’t know,” he said slowly, but she had gone. “I don’t know,” he puzzled softly to himself.

  It was impossible to reach inside the minds of the people behind all this, to try to think as they were thinking, to try to understand their motives, to try to anticipate what their next move might be.

  They were trying to get him back to Barkley House; that was one of the very few things he could be certain about. But there was neither rhyme nor reason to the way they were going about it. They had tried to abduct the girl; they had abducted her uncle. And yet, when they had come to the house last night—four of them—there hadn’t been the slightest suggestion of force being used. Only persuasion. It is your duty to come back … It was almost as if they were afraid to bring pressure to bear on him personally.

  There had to be a reason for that. Axel stared at a flower bed, at a row of yellow flowers—thick golden heads so level they might have been trimmed with scissors. They—these people—were prepared to go to any lengths to get him where they wanted him, just so long as not a hand was laid on his person. And that wasn’t because they were afraid of any resistance he might put up—the two fisticuff incidents must have shown them how ineffective he was when it came to the heavy stuff. Another reason then …

  It was difficult to think. Concentration brought a tightness to his temples, a pulsating pressure on the tender places on either side of his eyes. The over-neatness of the garden was irritating. He wandered into the kitchen. The girl wasn’t there—he didn’t know where she was. He was suddenly hungry. The cold messes in the saucepans nauseated him. He found a packet of biscuits in one of the cupboards. The sound of the door closing brought Louise into the room.

  “Is that all you want?” eyeing the three biscuits he had taken from the packet. “Anything to drink?”

  “No.” He changed his mind. “Tea?”

  “I’ll make some.” By her tone she was still angry.

  “Your uncle will be all right,” he tried to reassure her. “They won’t harm him at all—they have no cause to.”

  “Oh—” She brushed roughly past him. “I’ll bring your tea to the other room.”

  The lounge, he supposed she meant. He went back there. And entering, experienced a frightening moment of instability, a confusion of the senses, the strange feeling that he was looking at the world through someone else’s eyes. It passed. The pulse still throbbed in his temples, uncomfortable more than painful, but enough to warrant taking aspirin if there was such a thing in the house. He went upstairs to the bathroom. The two white wall-cabinets were filled with toilet preparations—talcum, dusting powder, creams, lotions—set out in neat lines, as if on display in a chemist’s window. There were no medicines of any kind. Louise was waiting with his cup of tea in the hall. “I wondered where you’d got to—”

  He told her about the borderline headache. She had something in her handbag—not aspirin, that was old-fashioned-something better. He swallowed two pink tablets, drank the tea, and took the empty cup to the kitchen, where the girl was clearing the pans from the stove, emptying their contents into a plastic bucket.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “There’d be no need to go all the way to the main road. Only to the Swan. Bert would help—he said he would.”

  He couldn’t argue with her any more. “I’m going to he down for a while,” he told her.

  She followed him anxiously into the hall. “Are you all right, Axel?”

  “It’s only a headache.”

  She watched him climb the stairs. At the top he remembered something, calling down to her: “Bolt the front door and put something against that window.”

  He chose a small room, not lavishly furnished like the rest, with a bed that had no padded satin and frills. He lay down just as he was, not even bothering to take off his shoes.

  Louise returned to the kitchen to continue the work of disposing of the wasted food. After a while she tiptoed upstairs to find the room where Axel lay sleeping peacefully enough. He looked better than he had a while ago, his features relaxed, the strain lines no longer there. She went softly back downstairs.

  His idea—it must be his idea—was to stay in the house, doing nothing, all through the night and tomorrow, the Wednesday that he seemed so sure was the day when he was to kill someone. And after that, once that day was over— she didn’t know. She had no intention of waiting to find out. By some means or other she was determined to go to the police and make them believe her story. Getting to the Swan and talking to Bert would be the first step. No—making sure there was a way out of the garden was the first thing to do. Make sure of that by daylight so that there would be no blundering about in the dangerous darkness. Like Axel—the thought came to her—on his first tour of a house that didn’t exist—noting where things were so that he could lay his hands on them in darkness.

  Opening the lounge window, Louise stepped out onto the terrace. Eyes might be watching her now in the same way Axel had felt invisible eyes on him. His watchers had left him to his tour in peace. Hers now might do the same, assuming, she hoped, that she had only stepped out for a breath of fresh air. All she had to do was make sure no one came between her and the open window. She walked slowly, senses alert, across the lawn towards the bushes.

  # # #

  Axel woke gently, naturally, no hand on his shoulder, no voice in his ears, no dream-memory of white walls. The daylight seemed to have faded. Sitting on the side of the bed he looked at his watch, finding the time was almost nine o’clock. The house was silent. His headache—he remembered it as he went down the stairs—had gone, but the unpleasant sensation of tightness of his forehead, His whole head, still persisted.

  The kitchen was empty. So were all the other rooms on the ground floor. The french window in the lounge was open. Lie closed it and then had to lean against it while he fought a sudden spasm of dizziness.

  He was alone in the house; he could sense its emptiness. Louise had gone. That was as far as his thoughts would go. When he tried to take them further the vertigo returned, bringing with it the hove
ring, terrible emptiness.

  Swaying a little, he returned to the hall. It was much darker there now, a dusk that had descended too quickly. He must have stood by the window much longer than he realised.

  Louise … He didn’t know whether he had called her name aloud or if the sound was only inside his head. Hands pressed against his temples, he tried to think. Deep inside his mind something clamoured to be let out. The throbbing band tightened around his head. The emptiness came nearer. Dark dusk became swirling, drifting greyness. Shadows moved through it, voices called from it. Then he was falling, falling into the abyss of the waiting emptiness. And then the inexpressible relief of oblivion, the silent tumult over.

  Axel opened his eyes.

  To look up into the face that was bending over him. Gregson’s face. And past that face to the ceiling above. The ceiling of his bedroom in Barkley House.

  12

  A dream, Axel thought.

  Gregson stepped back, one hand to his mouth, using the obsequious cough that was as much a part of his servant’s uniform as the black suit, black bow tie and discreet triangle of white in breast pocket.

  “You’re awake, sir,” he said. “I was just about to rouse you. It is almost quarter past six. Mrs. Ibbetson will be here at seven o’clock.”

  Not a dream. Too real for a dream, too solid, too full of detail. Axel pushed himself up against the pillows. He was lying on top of the bed, covered with only a single sheet.

  “I took the liberty, sir,” Gregson said, “of removing your jacket, tie and shoes. I trust you feel refreshed.”

  He went soft-footed over to the wardrobe, opening it, taking out a black dinner jacket, draping it professionally over his arm while he brushed it.

  Axel’s gaze moved slowly round the room. His headache had gone, and the tension on either side of his temples was now so slight as to be virtually nonexistent. There was still some small confusion of his senses, but he was able to think clearly enough, able to reason out what had happened.

  They had played their cat-and-mouse waiting game without result. Time had started to run out for them. Tuesday evening had come with only a few short hours left to go. And so they had finally had to resort to force. They had entered the house —what had it been called? The name eluded him for a moment. Green Ladies. They had drugged him and brought him back here to Barkley House. To fill the role they had designated for him.

  They would try to keep him docile, acquiescent, until the actual moment arrived. They would have explanations for everything, answers to every question …

  “How long have I been asleep?” Axel asked.

  Gregson looked up from arranging the jacket over the back of a chair. “You slept right through from two o’clock, sir,” he said, and returned to the wardrobe. His back was towards Axel now, but the side of his face was reflected in the mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door.

  “What day is it?” Axel asked, watching the mirror.

  “The day—” Faint puzzlement came to the reflected face. Was he that good an actor? “Friday, sir.”

  “And the date?”

  The servant turned, a pair of black trousers over his arm, concern replacing the perplexity on his dark features.

  “The eighth of August, sir,” he said.

  So that was it, Axel thought. They were taking him back to the day on which it had all started, the day on which Carla had come to tell him about Kendall. Not Wednesday, sir—Friday. That was a game two could play at.

  “I must have slept very heavily,” Axel said easily. “It’s left me—muzzy.”

  Gregson’s concern faded. He busied himself brushing the trousers.

  “It is unusual, certainly, for you to sleep at all during the daytime, sir.” He smiled. “The rest will have done you good. You had a much busier morning than usual. Mrs. Ibbetson is right, sir, if you will forgive me for so saying: you ought to take a break. Perhaps join Mrs. Champlee in Spain as she suggested.”

  So Romaine was now in Spain—not on Norville’s yacht at Cannes.

  “Is Kendall with her?” Axel asked. “Pm never sure of his movements.”

  “Mr. Ibbetson is still in America, sir.” Gregson frowned slightly as he laid the trousers carefully across the seat of the chair. “I understand he will be over there for at least another month.” He straightened. “Which shirt shall I lay out for you, sir?”

  Shirt … Axel looked down at the one he was wearing. Not the one he had worn last night, one of those Louise had bought for him in Norwich.

  “Any will do,” he said.

  “Very good, sir.” Opening one of the wardrobe drawers, Gregson lifted out a white rectangle. “The rest of your things are ready, Mr. Champlee. Will there be anything else?”

  “No.”

  “Thank you, sir.” The other made his usual slight inclination of the head. “You have plenty of time before Mrs. Ibbetson’s arrival, sir,” he said from the doorway.

  When he had gone Axel slid his feet to the floor and sat for a few minutes on the edge of the bed, looking about him. Everything here seemed so—normal. Everything was as it should be. The events of the past few days were already beginning to assume the quality of a dream.

  Was that all it had been?

  Or was that what they wanted him to believe?

  Coming to his feet he went to the wardrobe to open both doors. His face in the mirror was his face as it always had been, no lines that shouldn’t be there, no subtle differences.

  He couldn’t remember which suit he had been wearing when he had escaped from the house. He went through all the pockets of all the jackets that hung there. The list was in none of them. His wallet and keys, along with a clean handkerchief, were on the bedside table, laid ready there by Gregson. The wad of notes in the wallet seemed to be of the same thickness as always, not thinned by those he had given Louise.

  He went out of the bedroom and into the dining room.

  The table was laid for dinner—two places, and a bowl of roses because Carla liked roses. He went through to the lounge. The painted faces of the Champlees of the past gazed down at him from the wall. They were real. They were the foundations of this house now. This house that Louise had tried to make him believe had no existence.

  Louise … It was an effort now to bring her face back to mind. When it came it was blurred, colourless, lacking definition. A face out of a dream.

  Axel went to stand in front of the massive fireplace. Six pokers there, three on either side of the empty grate, propped at precise distances apart against the grey stone. The six that had always been there, none of them shaped like a sword, not one of them with a blade thin enough to slide between the join of double doors.

  He moved across to the doors that led to the hall. They opened ac the turn of the handle … Doors that showed not the slightest sign of ever having been forced, no splintered wood or wrenched handles, no dented wood.

  He went into his study. The telephone, when he tested it, was alive. Friday, the desk calendar told him; August 8, 1969. He pulled open each of the desk drawers in turn. As he had expected, the gun was in none of them. It was still where he had put it long ago, after Carla had talked him into buying it, tucked away at the back of the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. It was clean, certainly, but then it had been in a place where grime never penetrated. Recently oiled? He examined his fingers, held the gun to his nose. No smears, no unusual smell. It was loaded—he checked the magazine—but then it had been loaded when he had bought it—the shopkeeper had seen to that. Lie weighed it on his palm …

  A small sound made him look up. The maid, Hazel, had come to stand in the doorway, duster in hand. By her expression she had expected to find the place empty, was disconcerted by his presence.

  “I’m-I’m sorry, sir,” she stammered. “Gregson said you were in your room.”

  “It’s all right, Hazel.” He knew why she was here with the duster. Carla had a way of trailing exploratory white-gloved fingers over projecting ledges. He smiled. �
��Don’t forget to go in the corners.” He put the gun on the desk.

  She dimpled. “No, sir,” and stepped aside for him to pass. He paused at a thought.

  “How long will it be since Mrs. Ibbetson last favoured us with a visit, Hazel?”

  “It’ll be about three weeks ago, sir. When she brought those people from Feed the Hungry.”

  He couldn’t remember. But then he always avoided such occasions as much as possible. Carla often brought groups of earnest-minded people to the house, working on the assumption that dining under the Champlee roof set some kind of seal on whatever work they were engaged upon. He would suffer being introduced, smile at anonymous faces and then make his exit as soon as decently possible.

  “My sister’s doers of good,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.” She was anxious to use her duster.

  Axel, with another thought, had another question.

  “Can you recall a man named Clive Heston coming to the house?”

  She could—“Isn’t that the writer, sir?”—but put the query into the wrong context. “He has been here, sir, but he wasn’t one of Mrs. Ibbetson’s people. They were ordinary people—not well-known. There was a Mr. Towton from the Salvation Army, a Mr. and Mrs. Loveday, Miss Gorton from the hospital—”

  A name meant something.

  “Loveday,” Axel said. “His first name wasn’t Bert by any chance?”

  Hazel furrowed her pink forehead. “I think his wife did call him that, sir.”

  “And who else was with the party?” He watched her face. “Anyone named Salter?”

  “I think there was, sir.” She frowned meditatively into the past of three weeks ago. “That’s right, sir. A girl. She came with a relative—not her father—an uncle, I think. lie was some sort of doctor. They were foreign—no—not foreign, but they’d come from another country. The girl was wearing slacks—” Hazel smiled fleetingly at a memory. “Mrs. Ibbetson doesn’t like women to wear men’s clothes.”

  “I’ll leave you to your dark corners,” Axel told her, and walked slowly across the lounge to stand by one of the tall windows. So Louise and her uncle were real people, faces he had seen for a brief while and then forgotten. Until his memory had resurrected them to play their parts in a dream.