by Joseph Hone
Their voices drifted away as they went out to the far side of the conservatory. But they were back again in a minute, right in front of me again while Alice took a cutting.
Then she said, ‘Coffee, Superintendent?’
‘No thank you, Miss Troy. As I mentioned in the hall, I really came up about this man who’s escaped.’
‘You think he’s still somewhere here, do you?’
‘Well, I don’t. But some people from London do, from the CID there, that man you told me about down by your lake this morning. They think he may be still hiding out somewhere on your estate. So we’re going to have to go through the whole place all over again, if you don’t mind. In fact, Miss Troy, I have to admit it, the man from London, well, he went back through the little valley down there, after you’d moved him off your land. He came to us then. You see, he found some things.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. You see, he’d brought a dog with him: an Alsatian tracker. He lost it earlier in the morning. But he found it when he went back. It had fallen down a well behind that old pumping-station you have on the far side of the little lake.
‘Yes?’
‘It seems the dog was speared by something, a piece of metal, through the throat, before he drowned. Well, that’s not so important – probably ran into something, an old bit of wire fencing. But then inside the pumping-station we found the remains of some cooking: warm bricks, a few bits of meat, ashes.’
‘Oh, that was me. Yesterday. I’m often down by the lake, bathing. And we sometimes make a barbecue in that old shed. Gets you out of the wind. That was me, Superintendent! Not the man you’re looking for.’
‘Well, that explains that. But then, Miss Troy, another thing: our dogs picked up a scent, just by the shed, of someone, possibly this man, and it led right up to your house here, to the kitchen door in fact. I have some of my men out in the yard now.’
‘So? I was down by the lake myself this morning. That trail must have been mine: I was right at the pumping-shed, then walked straight back here, to the back door in fact, about two hours ago. So that was my trail.’
‘Of course. I’m sure it is. But just possibly not. You see, with our own tracker dogs, we’d given them a scent start with one of this man’s socks. And this seemed to set them off. Took off at once, straight up here. Of course, it’s probably nothing. But we ought to make sure.’
‘You mean?’
‘Well, how long were you out of the house this morning?’
‘An hour. Not more.’
‘And your domestic staff? They were in the back of the house all the time. In the kitchen?’
‘No. Not this morning, now I come to think of it. My housekeeper went to Stow. And her husband’s away. And Mary, the daily help, she leaves before midday.’
‘And your gardeners? They were in the yard?’
‘No. They were thinning wood on the other side of the park.’
‘So there was no one in the house, or the yard, for more than an hour this morning?’
‘No. I suppose not.’
‘Well, I think we ought to make sure then, Miss Troy.’
‘You mean he could have come in here?’
‘You didn’t have your alarm on, did you?’
‘No. I don’t bother. Not during the day.’
‘It’s just a chance, then. You don’t mind us looking round the house? It’s a big place. He could have come up to steal something, and then hidden somewhere. It’s better to be sure. He’s dangerous, Miss Troy. Especially if you’re here on your own.’
‘Yes, I’ve heard. And what happened to his poor child, by the way?’
‘Oh, the little girl is quite safe. Being looked after, in the Banbury hospital for the moment.’
‘Well, of course, if you think it necessary, take a look round. But are you sure?’
‘I’m sure we should take every precaution, Miss Troy, every nook and cranny …’
The Superintendent’s voice faded as they walked out of the conservatory, back into the library, and by then I was out from my hiding-place and moving over towards the big glass doors that opened from the conservatory onto the garden terraces and the parkland to the east beyond. It was time to get back to the woods if I could, I thought. But in any case I had to get out of the house.
Luckily I never opened the door. As I touched the handle I saw two policemen in gumboots coming towards the Manor along the beech hedge which divided the terraced gardens from the yard area behind. I drew back quickly. I couldn’t leave the house by way of the library and the great hall, I could hear people moving out there already, and I didn’t dare stay cornered, with my back to a wall hidden behind the camellias.
I looked up at the Juliet balcony with its slim Gothic balustrades high above me. And then I saw, just to the side of this, a dozen cast-iron rungs that had been set into the wall of the house leading up to it – part of some old fire escape, I imagined. That was the only answer.
I climbed up fast, pulled myself over onto the balcony and opened a glass door that led onto the Minstrels’ Gallery that ran all round one side of the library and the hall, but which gave off immediately to my right into a long corridor I’d not seen before. And then I was running soundlessly, in the soft moccasins, down the carpeted landing of this unknown house, wondering where to hide in such a vast place – yet a place whose every nook and cranny was about to be exposed.
This first-floor bedroom corridor ran northwards, towards the back of the house, before turning left and giving onto a small half-landing, part of the back stairs which led up from the kitchen area. From a window here I saw the two policemen again, out in the yard. But this time they had a tracker Alsatian with them. If they brought the dog in I was done for. But in any case I would have to go upwards – to the second floor, the attics? Perhaps I could hide behind an old water-tank beneath the eaves – or better, get out onto one of the many haphazard roofs that, given the generally bizarre design of the house, could well hide me completely from the ground below. I heard the tramp of feet on the lower floor; doors opening, furniture being moved. There must have been half a dozen men combing the place beneath me. I ran on.
This servants’ staircase led up from the half-landing to the second floor into a narrow twisting badly-lit corridor. And here the elaborate restoration of the house had come to a full stop. The landing was in considerable disorder and there was a slightly musty smell in the air. The heavy varnish had been stripped from the panelling, and whole panels removed, leaving damp patches, old water-marks on the rough plaster behind. Repairs had been started here and then abandoned. And now the corridor had been turned into a long storeroom, it seemed. It was littered with expensive Victorian bric-à-brac of all kinds, like a room in Sothebys before some important sale of nineteenth-century effects. There were pictures stacked against the walls: lesser pre-Raphaelites, nude slave girls and piping Grecian dancers. There were great, elaborate cast-iron fireguards and fenders, magnificent brass telescopes on huge tripods; early, but essentially decorative, scientific equipment, wind gauges and strangle mechanical devices beneath great glass domes. And there were Victorian display-cases everywhere, of butterflies, moths and wild flowers; and larger boxes filled with stuffed fish and animals: a huge pike, two wildcats fighting, a golden eagle. It was more a museum than a corridor, where the objects had all been assembled but not yet put together.
I had to move carefully now, in this crowded gloom, clambering over half-opened packing cases, coming towards a sinister shape: it was a magic lantern, I found when I squeezed past it, set on a tall stand that looked at first like a man with one great Gorgon’s eye, wearing a stovepipe hat. And then straight in front of me – I couldn’t avoid stepping on it – was a crocodile, ten feet long, lying out along the floor, its snout raised, teeth bared below two beady eyes. My heart thumped like a drum as I veered sideways trying to avoid it. But I couldn’t, and as my foot touched it I waited for the searing pain as its teeth sank into me … Of course it didn’t
move. It was dead, perfectly preserved, some Victorian memento from the Nile.
The landing got darker as I went further along it, pushing myself slowly and much more gingerly now through this strange debris. Without more light I couldn’t safely or soundlessly go much further. I opened a door to my left. It was a nursery. Or at least it was filled with a lot of old nursery toys: a wooden steam-engine big enough for a child to sit on, with two canary-coloured carriages linked behind; a rocking-horse, prancing wildly, front feet splayed out dramatically on the long runners. A collection of Victorian china dolls in lacy dresses and red ribbons stared at me with big blackberry eyes, sitting neatly, mutely, all tight together in a line along a miniature sofa, and there was a vast dolls’ house, sufficient almost for a child to live in, over by the window.
But it was the window that I really noticed. It gave out onto a lead guttering with an interior slated roof rising up to the left a few yards away. I opened the small sash. But just as I did so my heart bolted again: there was a sudden, terrifying, unearthly shriek from immediately outside. A great bird rose up right in front of my face, its wings brushing my hair: a huge, mythical thing, it seemed, a multi-coloured nightmare in shimmering blues and greens with a long tail. Peacock-blue. It was a peacock, I saw, as it flew off the ledge down towards the flat top of a great cedar tree in the garden below.
But at least from here, I saw now, I could get out and look around for some completely hidden part of the roof. Or perhaps I could even get down to the ground from the big tower which I could see now, too – Alice’s tower where she had her rooms – which rose above another taller roof near the centre of the house.
I closed the window behind me after I’d stepped out onto the narrow ledge, and after that I managed without difficulty to pull myself up the side of the roof in front of me. The tower lay immediately ahead. And sure enough, there was a fire escape, or at least some wooden steps, leading up to a door at the top of it. The only problem was reaching the tower, since, from my perch on top of this small gable end, I found myself looking down into a large glassy-covered well in the centre of the house, the sloping top lights set above the big dining-room, on the ground floor, I imagined. And there was no way across this wide gulf, other than by three narrow stone bridge-buttresses that linked and supported both the interior walls of the house, at this point a good twenty feet above the glass.
I could stay where I was, of course. But on looking back I saw that, on top of this roof, I was no longer hidden from the ground. And if I returned to the ledge outside the nursery window, the police – perhaps having heard the peacock’s commotion and coming into the room to investigate – had only to open the window to find me. I could at least test the stone buttresses beneath me …
I slid gently down the edge of the roof to the first of them, nearest to the front of the house and thus almost completely hidden from the overlooking windows. The stonework was at least a foot wide to begin with, and firm as a rock as I straddled it. But the buttress narrowed gracefully as it rose to a bridge in the middle, and I wasn’t certain that it would support my weight at that point. On the other hand, since it was built in the form of a bridge, with a keystone in the middle, I thought it should quite naturally take the increased strain.
I moved very slowly out over the glass, legs soon dangling in space to either side, edging forward along the buttress inch by inch, never looking down. The sun was suddenly very hot on my neck and shoulders and I started to sweat, unable to move a hand to mop it up. The salty moisture soon came down in beads in front of my eyes, over my nose, into my mouth.
Towards the apex of the buttress, when I was riding up it, my head and shoulders hunched down over the bridge like a man on a galloping horse, I thought I heard a stone shift, the minute sound of something giving, beginning to crack. I froze for a minute, sensing the sharp glass beneath, a great pit opening in my stomach. But nothing moved; there was no other sound and I inched my way down the far side without mishap.
And now it was an easy journey up the corner guttering of the roof opposite and down the far side to where the big square tower with its pagoda roof rose up into the dazzling summer sky like an irresistible Victorian command, pushing its way imperiously through the other fantastic Gothic excrescences, the eccentric roofs and turrets, the miniature spires and stone pineapples which covered the top of the manor like barnacles.
The railed steps down from the tower, though, I saw now, didn’t lead to the ground. They were part of some interior fire escape, if anything, and led straight to a small doorway in one of the gable ends, which of course would only lead me straight back into the house again. Perhaps I might be safe in the tower?
I climbed up the steps, unseen from the ground below since they faced inwards, and the door at the top opened at once. There was quite a large, perfectly square room inside, with four expected Gothic arched windows – but with a quite unexpected domed ceiling covered in blue-and-white tiles, an eastern mosaic of turbanned gentlemen smoking hookahs with camels in the background, and Arab lettering picked out in long scrolls that ran right round the circumference. The view was stupendous from this height, right across the rim of beech and oak which normally hid the estate, giving out over half the North Cotswolds.
A big wooden loom stood in the middle of the room, skeins of variously coloured wools to one side of it and lengths of lovely finished tweed on a day-bed in one corner. There was a telephone on a small but this time well-cluttered desk. I saw an open diary – another large engagement diary, but again with no engagements in it. Glancing at the top of the page I read: ‘… awful thing – that he won’t let me touch his hands even …’ There was some crockery, cutlery and a small fridge filled with tubs of yoghurt, pots of honey and a half-bottle of champagne. I could have done with a cold beer. Even though one of the windows was open it was very hot, with a hot, baked smell of wool and dried pine from the floor and wooden loom. It was a marvellous retreat, a hermit’s eyrie, high on the land, quite cut off from the world. And indeed, that was the problem. There was no access to, or escape from this tower as far as I could see other than the steps I had come up. It seemed a wilfully inconvenient place to have a workshop.
But then I saw what must have made it much more habitable. In one corner was a heavy, ecclesiastically carved panel with a wooden handle beneath carved in the shape of a big cigar. I lifted it up. There was a dumb-waiter behind, the serving shelves presently in position. And then I realised: of course, the cigar-shaped handle, the desert Arabs smoking hookahs on the tiled dome of the ceiling. This turret retreat had obviously been built as a smoking-room originally, where the Victorian grandees, the more agile of them, the youngsters perhaps, could get well away from the ladies and freely indulge their fumes, their vintage port, their risqué jokes. And if this was so then the dumb-waiter would certainly lead down to the dining-room, or to the pantry, and perhaps below that to the cellars where the butler could the more readily load cargoes of Fine Old Tawny on board for the bloods on high.
I could get right down to the bottom of the house in this way, I thought: it was worth the try. The opening into the lift was quite big enough. The ropes inside were new. If I lowered the serving box down a few feet I could get inside the shaft, stand on top of the box and then, working the return rope, let myself down to the ground floor or basement.
The police were searching upwards through the house, I knew. But if I doubled back on them in this way, and got into the cellars which they’d have checked out by now, I might finally be secure.
As I thought about it I heard a sound on the roof beneath and, looking out the window for a second, I saw the door in the gable end which led out to the tower steps beginning to open. The police had reached the top of the house, but still weren’t finished. I needed no further prompting.
I pulled the lift down to below the level of the floor and, gripping fast onto the return rope, I levered myself quickly into the dark hole, closing the serving-hatch behind me. The shaft was hardly mo
re than two feet square. But everything had been perfectly built and carpentered here and I slipped down gently, soundlessly, through the guts of the house, down this dark gullet, without any problems.
I passed a chink of light in the wall, where the dumb waiter gave out onto the kitchen or dining-room or pantry. But there was still a further drop in the shaft; it went deeper. Eventually the lift came to a halt in complete darkness. I must have been at the bottom of the house, in one of the cellars. I felt in front of me with my fingers. There was nothing but open space. The sleeve of wooden panelling which all the way above had enclosed the lift shaft must have been absent in the cellar at least in front of me, for I found then that I was still hemmed in to either side. But in front I was free: sitting on the serving box: free, but in complete darkness. Lowering myself very carefully, my feet eventually touched the floor. And then I saw a very faint crack of light ahead. It came from beneath a door and I groped around the sides of this looking for a switch. Finding one at last, I turned the light on.
I was in a cellar, certainly, a big cellar with arched stone alcoves all about me, filled with pyramids of dusty claret, fine brandies, vintage port. But the cellar door, naturally enough, was firmly locked on all these riches. And there was nothing I could see inside that would help me open it.
Nine
Of course, I was safe enough now, I realised, in the locked cellar. The police, if they’d bothered to check it at all, must have done so some time before. On the other hand, unless Alice came to fetch some of the fine wines, which was unlikely, I was incarcerated here. Letting myself down on the dumb-waiter had been easy enough: the pressure on the mechanism had not been extreme. But tugging the whole thing upwards would be another matter altogether: the ropes and pulleys would probably take the strain on any return journey, but I would hardly have the strength for such continuous effort.