Better still was the suit he had been given for the ball. As they had been expecting Mr. Bennett, whose dimensions differed from Mr. Sawyer’s in almost every particular, they were sorry but the only costume they could offer him was rather eclectic, if not to say eccentric, in composition.
He looked again at the heavy jacket, the tight drabs and the awkward-looking boots.
One thing was certain: whoever wore that was not going to have an easy time wandering freely round the house.
There was a knock at the door and a maid entered carrying his newly-pressed clothes. She was a pretty, red-cheeked buxom girl with an inviting gleam in her eye. He raised himself up on one elbow and looked consideringly at her. It was very possible that she was specially provided by the management. Not that that bothered him. His motto was, first saddle your gift horse then look it in the mouth. But the night was young, there was much to do, and when it came down to it, he did prefer to break in his own mounts.
‘Thanks,’ he said, and relaxed on to the bed once more, not even bothering to watch the girl leave.
Now, Arabella Allen. He really fancied digging his spurs into her noble flanks if time permitted.
It could be a busy Christmas.
Arabella was not conscious of Sawyer’s lusty thoughts. If she had been, they would not have bothered her. She was aware of. her attractions and the physiological effects they had on men. But she was wise enough to relate male desire to its general cause and not be over-flattered by any image of herself as a specially endowed source. She knew many women more beautiful than herself. She also knew many who were plainer and yet generated a much greater sexuality than she did—or wished to do.
So lustful thoughts did not bother her, nor lustful looks either, generally speaking. But this eye in the ceiling, overlooking her like a voyeur god, was beginning to get on her nerves.
She postponed changing as long as possible, sitting in front of the bedroom fire with her dressing gown wrapped round her. To take her superb white gown into the bathroom would be a clear statement that she knew about the watcher. But it was either that or carry on with the pretence of ignorance.
Distantly she heard someone shout. And again. She went to the door and opened it slightly.
‘Joe! Joe! Drat that boy! Sleeping again, I don’t doubt! Joe, boy, where are you,’
It was Wardle, speaking his lines again. But this time she thought she recognised a note of real irritation in them.
She turned back into the room and felt at once the watcher had gone.
The two things came together in the same instant. Wardle shouting, the eye disappearing. Joe. It must be Joe.
The thought made her shudder. To be spied on by anybody was bad enough. But the Fat Boy, that made her skin feel dirty.
But if it was Joe there was the chance of a bit of backtracking here. She had already made a casual tour of the first floor of the house without being able to work out how one got to the attic floor above. There was a whole wing sealed off by doors marked Private. She assumed this was where the offices and the staff quarters were situated and it seemed most likely that the entrance to the upper reaches of the house was contained here. But it would be useful to confirm this, and her suspicions of Joe.
Swiftly she slipped out into the corridor and made her way towards the head of the stairs. Here she would at least be able to note the direction from which the Fat Boy appeared.
So certain was she that her hypothesis would be confirmed that she almost missed him. Only her unusually wide and sensitive peripheral vision prevented her from doing so, for as she passed a short cul-de-sac passageway between two of the guest rooms, she caught a movement of the handle of the linen-cupboard door which stood at the end. Something too slow, careful, deliberately quiet about it made her hesitate.
‘Joe!’ called Wardle from below as Arabella pressed herself into the deep recess of a bedroom door.
Footsteps padded up the passageway and turned right, away from her place of concealment, towards the stair-head. Carefully she peered out, just in time to see the unmistakable shape of the Fat Boy move slowly down the stairs.
The linen cupboard was, forecastably, full of linen. It was more of a room than a cupboard and Arabella moved easily between the rows of shelves, breathing in the warm, friendly smell of newly pressed sheets. All kinds of memories of her childhood were brought back, not all of them happy. But all were quickly dismissed. Nostalgia and regret alike were little regarded in her scheme of things.
The question was, where had the Fat Boy come from? As there was no window, it had to be from above. The outline of a toe-print on top of a pile of sheets gave the clue, and seconds later Arabella was pulling herself up through a well-oiled trap into the attic storey of the house.
It was dark up here and she sat quietly for a few moments to let her eyes become accustomed to the gloom. It would have been wiser, she decided, to have changed out of her dressing gown into something more suitable for this kind of exploration; but if she had wasted time changing, this kind of exploration would not have been taking place.
Shapes, outlines at first but gradually hardening into forms, were beginning to emerge from the darkness. Lines of oak beams stretched away in all directions, solid, reliable, well able to take much more than a man’s weight. Nevertheless someone had built athwart them a narrow cat-walk with a rail on one side. What was more, it was carpeted in some soft plastic material so that there was no chance of a carelessly placed foot causing a noise.
Arabella closed her eyes and tried to work out where her own bedroom was in relation to her present position. It wasn’t easy, but at least she felt sure she had the direction right. Carefully she began to make her way along the walk.
When she reached the area which she believed to be above her room, she dropped down on all fours and began scanning the spaces between the beams for evidence of the suspected peephole. It was wood, not plaster, that she felt beneath her touch and she recalled the panelled ceiling of her bedroom. Doubtless this was common to all the house, but nevertheless she felt encouraged.
She found what she was looking for in the third interstice. Not a common or garden peephole but something more sophisticated. A narrow metal cylinder with a lens in it. Like a telescope. In fact, she found that it pulled out just like a telescope, and lying full length on the cat-walk she applied her eye to it.
She found herself looking at her bedroom door, which seemed an odd thing to look at. She jiggled the eyepiece between her fingers and her view changed rapidly from the bedroom door to the wall opposite. Fascinated she experimented and discovered that the instrument gave her a field of one hundred and eighty degrees clear vision up to about seven feet off the floor.
Clearly what was set into her ceiling was not a simple spyhole but a complex optic lens working through refracted light. The picture given was tremendous in its clarity and a certain amount of magnification was attainable by turning the eye-tube like a normal telescope. She remembered how she had lain almost naked on the bed and shuddered to think of the Fat Boy gloating over his close-ups.
But next moment all thoughts of Joe were swept from her mind. Below, the bathroom door opened and two people emerged from it. She recognised them instantly. It was the Burtons, the Yorkshire couple she had met at lunch.
But why the hell are they searching my room? she asked herself. And (even more incredulously) what are they doing now?
For Mrs. Burton had slipped off the kimono-type robe she was wearing and Mr. Burton was attempting to establish a hand-hold on the ample bosom thus revealed. He was repulsed, but affectionately, as the truth dawned on Arabella.
It wasn’t her room she was looking down into. There was no sign of her dress hanging outside the wardrobe, or of any of her gear on the dressing table. It was the odd viewpoint which had deceived. This was obviously the Burtons’ own room.
Below, Mrs. Burton’s resistance was clearly being eroded by constant pressure. Suddenly aware of the awful temptations of this
kind of vantage point, Arabella took her eye away from the viewer. She could almost feel sympathetic towards Fat Joe! Almost.
She tried to reset the instrument exactly as she had found it, then began to crawl back along the cat-walk, confirming her suspicions as she did so. Every room below had one of these ingenius spy-viewers fitted. Such expenditure of effort and money obviously meant there was more than just a Peeping Tom’s pleasure at stake. Sexual enthusiasm was one thing. This was much more sinister.
When she reached the linen-cupboard trap she hesitated. It would be pleasant to return to the normality of life below, if an attempt to turn the clock back a century and a half could be called normal. On the other hand the cat-walk stretched invitingly, or rather challengingly, ahead. The linen-cupboard was not its starting point, she was sure. It lay somewhere before her in the direction of the private part of the house.
In for a penny! she told herself and, standing up, began to stride with steady determination along the cat-walk.
It was almost disappointingly easy. The walk ended at a door which opened on to a narrow flight of stairs. Cautiously she descended and opened the single door which faced her.
She was in a corridor, but quite unlike the old corridors which wound their way around the Dickensian sector of the house. This one was lit by strip lighting and carpeted with the same yielding material that had muffled her steps along the cat-walk. It was the kind of corridor you might find in any modern office block. Rather too functional for even a modern hotel.
Several doors opened off it. Instinctively she kept on course for the one at the end. The door swung open silently at a touch and she entered.
The room she found herself in was large without being grand. A fire was dying in the pleasant old-fashioned fireplace. In the middle of the room was a solid rectangular table, set with blotters, freshly sharpened pencils, glasses and water jugs. She had seen this kind of table a hundred times before during her time with Cerberus Chemicals, had helped to get it ready. A board-room meeting; top-level business conference; anything of that ilk.
Somewhere there should be an agenda. Somewhere. But where? Even the waste-paper bins were empty. The grate, she noted, contained a lot of blackened paper ash. The fire was obviously there to provide more than just heat.
Swiftly she checked the blotters. All clean. Not so much as a single-pressure indentation visible. Whoever tidied up after this lot did a first-rate job. There was nothing here to tell what was going on.
With a sigh, she turned to the door through which she had entered. It would have to be one of the other rooms then.
Distantly she heard a door open and stopped in mid-stride. Someone was coming, but from what direction it was hard to say. Her ears were not as ultra-sensitive as her eyes. She retreated to the table and considered the room’s three doors. One she knew about, but the others might lead anywhere. A store cupboard, perhaps, or a room full of gamekeepers with twelve-bores. She had been mad to venture this far. And in a dressing gown!
It was the door she had come in through! She was quite certain, not because of any noise outside but because of that highly refined intuition which had told her she was being watched. For a moment she thought, absurdly, of crawling under the table, but even as the thought formed she had moved across the room to the first of the other doors.
A store cupboard! Shelves packed with stationery. She caught a badly stacked pile of paper as it slid slowly out against her breast. Quickly she pushed the paper back. Another two strides took her to the other door. As she reached it, she heard a noise and turning saw the store-cupboard door, not properly shut, swing quietly open and the volatile stack of paper topple slowly out.
It was too late to do anything about it. They might think it was an accident. But at the moment flight was the only answer! She stepped through the second door and closed it behind her.
She was in an ante-room, boasting a small cocktail bar and an electric hot-plate. Clearly refreshments for those meeting next door were served from here. But there was no time for refreshment now. Someone was in the conference room behind her.
The next door took her into a corridor, not the modernoffice type as before, but a continuation of the Dingley Dell style. The door at the far end about sixty feet away was, she was convinced, the door marked Private which had ended her exploration of the first floor. Almost sobbing with relief she sprinted down to it, regardless of the slapping of her slippers on the polished wood floor.
The door was heavily bolted. It took precious seconds to slide back the solid bolts. She turned the handle.
It was locked.
Behind her a door opened. Instinctively she pressed herself into the nearest doorway, fumbling for the handle behind her back. She found it, turned it, and stepped backwards into a darkened room.
No time for sight adjustment now. She closed the door quietly and stood in pitch-blackness, trying to hear noises outside through her own gasping breaths.
Nothing.
No. Something. Doors being opened and shut. She stepped back, frightened, bumping up against something which startled her. Turning, she explored it by touch.
Just a table. A plain wooden table by the feel of it. With something on it. Something cold. A piece of statuary? Her mind was exploring faster than her fingers and had reached its conclusions a moment before the door swung open behind her and dropped a rectangle of light over the thing on the table.
It was the small dark man who had been wheeled down from the hillside during lunch. He did not look reposeful in death.
‘Looking for something, Miss Allen?’
She turned. In the doorway, his face twisted into an expression of mock deference, was the Fat Boy.
He looked potentially even less reposeful than the corpse behind her.
6
I really cannot allow this matter to go any further without some explanation.
MR. SAMUEL PICKWICK
‘Thanks,’ said Arabella, meaning it, as she took the large Scotch-and-soda Boswell had poured for her.
Boswell smiled pleasantly at the girl before him, looking defenceless in her dressing gown which, pulled tightly around her, merely managed to accentuate her excellent design. The eyes which met his gaze over the rim of the heavy crystal glass did not quite fit in with this picture of defencelessness.
He groaned inwardly. She was without doubt a problem. But what kind of problem he had as yet no idea. And how to solve it was even more remote from his mind.
‘Right, Joe,’ he said to the Fat Boy who stood expressionlessly by the little cocktail bar. ‘I’ll deal with this.’
Joe did not move; his little beady eyes, sunk deep in the fleshy face, flickered from the man to the woman. Then he nodded, quite a feat for someone almost without neck.
‘You’re the boss,’ he said, and left.
‘So you’re the boss,’ said Arabella. ‘What of?’
Boswell laughed.
‘A figure of speech,’ he said.
‘A pretty gross figure,’ she said, nodding at the door Joe had left through. ‘Are you that blubber’s boss?’
‘He can’t help being fat!’ protested Boswell.
‘No. He can help wanting to spread his fatness over me,’ said Arabella.
‘Good Lord! You’re not going to turn out to be one of those neurotic women who think every man wants to rape them!’
Arabella shrugged, untouched by the gibe.
‘I suspect he’d have had me on the table alongside that poor dead man. But that’s just conjecture. I know he’s been getting an eyeful of my feminine charms ever since I arrived here.’
‘A cat can look at a queen.’
‘Through a hole? In the ceiling? While the queen’s getting dressed?’
Boswell poured himself a Scotch.
‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about that. How did you notice?’
‘I just got the feeling and put two and two together.’
‘Interesting,’ he said, looking at her closely. �
�A good technique for survival.’
‘Whose survival are we talking about, Mr. Boswell?’
‘Call me Boz,’ he said with a laugh. ‘And I’ll call you …’
‘Miss Allen, till we sort this lot out. Well?’
‘Well what?’
‘I’d like an explanation.’
‘Technically,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘You have been trespassing, you realise that? With burglarious intent too. You went through the cupboard next door, didn’t you?’
‘Minor offences,’ said the girl, ‘compared with invasion of privacy, intimidation and not reporting a murder.’
Boswell looked at her with sudden decision.
‘Perhaps I’d better explain.’
‘It would be appreciated.’
He settled himself comfortably in his chair and began.
‘You’ve probably guessed that for some of the guests here this is more than just a Christmas holiday. And the number of guests from abroad isn’t just caused by an international love of Dickens.’
‘You amaze me,’ she murmured. He ignored her.
‘What’s going on here is in the nature of a business conference, one which involves a number of top industrial and commercial interests throughout Europe. There are proposals under consideration for the setting up of a huge international consortium which would have far-reaching effects throughout Western Europe.’
‘What are they going to do? Level the Alps?’
Boswell looked serious.
‘I’m not at liberty to tell you the nature of the enterprise. But it is large, many billions of pounds could be involved, and naturally any venture as grand as this has political overtones too. It could be a major factor in shaping our futures!’
‘So you meet for a Dickensian Christmas!’
‘Why not?’ said Boswell. ‘At this stage, secrecy is essential. When you worked for Cerberus Chemicals you must have known how much damage premature leakage of information could do to even a relatively small project.’
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