Escapade (15 page)

‘They’ll be wondering why you’re late, Sir David.’

He smiled once more, looked deep into my eyes, or, rather, pretended to, and then, with another bow, turned and walked away.

And that, Evy, is the story of the fondling and the proposition.

But I do think I did that rather well, don’t you? ‘A saint would have no need to.’ Mrs Applewhite would have been proud of me, don’t you feel?

He alarmed me, though, I admit it. I saw, for a moment, the cruelty and the evil that lie beneath his surface. There is a great deal more of it, I think, than there is of surface. I wonder how many others have seen it.

But we move now from the swine to the horse. And the ghosts.

Cecily had given me directions to the stable, where a young groom saddled my mount, a gorgeous black gelding named Storm, and equipped me with a handful of sugar lumps to offer as bribes. The horse was lovely. Despite his name, and his size— above fifteen hands—he was a lamb, gentle and responsive; I scarcely used, scarcely needed, the reins. Initially, at any rate.

He and I sauntered out onto the grounds. For a while we drifted lazily along, following the footpath that ambles around the edge of the vast park of Maplewhite. Evy, how I wish I could convey to you the beauty of it all. No; not convey it; somehow present it, actually hand it over to you, physically, so that you might share it with me.

The sun was shining, gloriously. I sometimes believe that we poor English are allowed only a specific (and very small) number of bright, madly beautiful sunny days; and often it seems to me that I spent my entire allowance in childhood. Sunlight sweeps through all my early memories: streams through the lace curtains in the family parlour, dapples the rosebushes in Mrs Applewhite’s garden, rolls in from the flat blue sea at Sidmouth to wheel down that broad green ribbon of meadow along the cliff tops. But since the War, since my parents died, the days seem to have clouded over. The world has gone grey.

I speak here of meteorology, not sentiment. The weather was better then.

Today, however, was spectacular. The sky was a dome of blue, with only a few fluffy white clouds slowly sailing beneath it. Larks trilled. Thrushes and blackbirds flitted between the elms and the maples and the oaks. Squirrels scampered along the tree trunks and played hide and seek with me as I passed. To my left,

Maplewhite rose grey and stately from the lake of emerald grass, like a castle in a dream.

But dreams, in the end, must surrender to reality, and mine finally buckled under to the prickle and itch of the riding habit. Perfectly appropriate to any other day of the year, the black woollen habit hung on me this afternoon like a penitential suit of sacking. I began, as Mrs Applewhite would have put it, to glow. I began, in fact, to melt.

At the very moment that I was thanking Fortune for not flinging witnesses helter-skelter about the landscape, I saw, at some distance, two people strolling toward me on the path. I had put my spectacles in my pocket, for fear of losing them, and I couldn’t identify the two until I was nearly on top of them. They were Mr Houdini and Mr Beaumont.

In the larger scheme of things, I suppose it hardly matters that Mr Houdini and Mr Beaumont should observe my disarray. But, Evy, you know that I tend to live within the (much) smaller scheme of things; and of course it did matter. I resolved to confront the catastrophe with typical British fortitude: by denying it.
This is not perspiration; this is dew
.

We chatted a while, inconsequentially. Anxious to be away, I was somewhat abrupt, I suspect; but I doubt that Americans would notice this.

As soon as I was free, I made a run for the shade of the forest. Some twenty or thirty yards ahead, a small trail led off from the main path, into the trees, and I urged Storm onto it.

The smaller path hadn’t been used in some time. Our progress was slow and unpleasant. Brambles crowded in on us from either side. Spider webs as thick as shrouds stretched like great bats across the track. Gnarled muscular roots with flaking bark twisted from the earth and snaked along it.

At last we came to another, broader path in the looming forest; an ancient road, it seemed, roughly perpendicular to the track. I gave Storm—my brave unflinching mount—some sugar and then urged him to the left.

The forest was dark and silent. In light of what happened, you will claim that, now, retrospectively, I invent the silence. Forests, you will claim, are never silent, no matter what the poets say. Always, birds whistle and chirp, insects buzz and whine and whiz annoyingly about. But, truly, all I could hear was the dry whisper of Storm’s hooves as they moved through brown decaying leaves, and an occasional sharp crackle as they snapped a dead twig.

Beside the path ran a narrow brook, its water clear but tinted the colour of rust, as though some large creature had bled away its life upstream; and even the brook was soundless.

I’ve whimpered often enough about the noise and bustle of London, but I found this stillness unsettling. The trees, with their black, deformed trunks, seemed to grow taller, wider, blacker and more deformed, and to edge more closely together, and closer to the path. Overhead, the dense netting of limb and leaf seemed to grow denser. My brave unflinching mount, perhaps sensing its rider’s unease, twitched his ears and flicked his head from side to side. He whickered—nervously, I judged. I was about to turn him back, return to the comfort and safety of the manor, when I saw that, up ahead, the path opened onto a sunlit clearing. I kicked Storm lightly, and he trotted reluctantly forward.

We stopped when we reached the light. In the clearing was a pond, perhaps fifty feet across, smooth and glossy in the sunshine, but as black as a pool of tar. Grey rushes sagged along its banks.

To the right, some twenty feet away, crouched an old mill house.

It was a ruin: the grey thatched roof was torn and tufted, the grey stone walls were crumbling, the big grey wooden wheel, collapsed from its shaft, lay atilt in the murky stream, buckled and smashed.

Beneath that gaudy sun, under that taut blue canopy of sky, the ruin should have seemed quaint, rustic, picturesque. It did not. It seemed to me (and again you will claim that I invent) ominous, even sinister. The exposed ribs of the roofing, gaunt and rotting, seemed somehow grotesque. The grey stones of the disintegrating walls seemed to radiate a kind of bitter, empty cold. One got the feeling, I got the feeling, that the mill had been abandoned because of some long-ago, horrific death which took place here: some slaughter or pestilence.

I suddenly realized that this was the old mill Cecily had mentioned at dinner. The old mill where came, so she said, the two mysterious ghosts, the mother and the small boy.

I glanced to my left, and there, across the pond, was the willow tree, its pale branches draped over the black water like a woman’s hair over a basin. And there, in the shade beneath it, as real and as substantial as everything else, as real as anything I have ever seen, the two of them stood. A tall slender woman and a slender young boy.

Do you know the opening to Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor? Those three abrupt notes from the organ, so swift and harsh and chill? When I saw the two figures silently standing there, exactly where they ought to be, but could
not
be, I felt those notes hammer through me, blood and bone, as if my spine were an organ, and some demented organist were flailing at it.

They were there, Evy. I saw them. They were there, under the willow tree, the woman and the young boy.

At first they were gazing at each other, the woman’s hand along the boy’s cheek. She was wearing white, he was wearing black. Then, as I watched, she dropped her arm and the two of them turned toward me. They gazed at me from across the glistening, pitch-black pond.

I feel that, whatever my faults, I am a woman of basically sound mind. Or so I once felt, before I arrived at Maplewhite. At any rate, my reaction, when they turned to me, was less stalwart than I should have hoped. And certainly less so than Mrs Applewhite would have demanded of me.

I panicked completely. I tugged at the reins, snapping poor Storm’s head around. As he spun about, lunging back down the path, I raked his flanks with my spurs. I whacked at him with the crop, again and again, like a maniac.

But how we raced! Storm was a marvel, swift and strong and powerful, and we thundered over the earth like some mythological beast. Trees whisked by us, the path spun away beneath. It’s been years since I’ve had a horse under me: if I hadn’t already been reeling with fear, I should have been reeling with excitement. I think that perhaps I was, even so.

I rose higher in the stirrups and turned around, to look back. This was an error. A low-hanging branch smashed into my shoulder and I toppled, buttock over bonnet, from the saddle.

I cannot remember alighting. I was unconscious for a time—I couldn’t say for how long—and then I was lying on my back and something was thumping me in the side.

Storm.

I attributed his concern, at first, to a laudable equine loyalty; but realized, when his nose nudged at me again, that he was after his sugar. I clambered to my feet and determined that I was more or less intact. No bones appeared to be broken.

The horse, big boorish brute, was still prodding me. I gave him a few lumps of his damnable sugar and then climbed stiffly back into the saddle.

Speed seemed less crucial now. No ghosts pursued me. My body throbbed all over. I let Storm walk at his own pace for a bit, and then, when we came to a path that looked as though it led back toward the manor, I eased him onto it. I didn’t see the snake until Storm reared up and nearly tossed me from the saddle again.

I haven’t the faintest idea what sort of snake it was. It was no adder, I believe, and it was perfectly harmless, and far more terrified than I.

But not more terrified than Storm. His forelegs came pounding down and he thrust his head forward and bolted up the path, muscles pumping, hooves thudding. The reins slipped from my grasp. I was only barely holding on, one arm around his wide slick neck, the other groping frantically for the reins, when we burst from dimness into sunshine and green. I realized that we were on the pathway that circled Maplewhite; and, just then, finally, I managed to snag the reins.

When I had the horse under control again, I discovered that my return to civilization had not been effected in altogether the privacy I should have preferred. Ahead of me, in an excited group by the side of the pathway, beneath a big copper beech, were Lord Purleigh, Mrs Corneille, Mr Houdini, and Mr Beaumont. And, of course, the Allardyce.

As soon as I was near enough, they all began to hurl questions at me. I couldn’t find my voice, Evy. I could only stare at them, hopelessly, and mumble.

And then, off to my left, there was a bright quick flicker of light, and a sharp explosive crack. I believed—in a kind of delirium, I suppose—that my two ghosts had stalked me all this way, followed me back to the manor, and that now they were
shooting
at me. And so, with the quickness of mind common to all gothic heroines, I fainted dead away.

Enough for now. My hand is cramping. I’ll post this and I’ll write again, later.

All my love, Jane

Doyle crossed his right leg over his left knee, and again a small wince flickered quickly across his lips. He puffed once more at his pipe and then took it from his mouth. “To begin with,” he said, “I think that in these matters we should defer to Mr. Beaumont s expertise. He is, after all, the professional here. I am merely an amateur, a simple scribbler.”

“Come, come,” said Lord Bob, sitting back. “Don’t be modest, old man. Whole country knows how you saved that Hindu fellow’s life. Nuralji, Moralji, whatever.” He turned to the Great Man. “Poor devil was arrested for maiming some animals. Cattle, dreadful thing, all the locals in an uproar. Shropshire, this was. Bloody police needed a scapegoat, ran this fellow in, no real evidence. Bloody court convicted him. Typical capitalist cockup. Then Doyle got onto it. Sniffing about. Just like that Sherlock Holmes chappie of his, eh? Deductions right and left. Digging up clues and whatnot. Proved the fellow innocent. Got him released, eh, Doyle?”

Doyle looked over at me and smiled sadly. “I’m afraid that Lord Purleigh overstates both my efforts and their results. By the time I took an interest in his case, George Edjali had already been pardoned and released. He was completely innocent, of that I had no doubt. But I was far from being the only one who felt so. I merely attempted to persuade our Home Office that his conviction should be quashed, and that he should be paid some compensation for having been unjustly imprisoned for three years.’

He put the pipe back in his mouth. “Unfortunately,” he said, puffing smoke, “I was unsuccessful.”

“No surprise there,” said Lord Bob. “Typical capitalist bureaucracy, eh? Protecting themselves and their lackeys. Gutless swine, the lot of ’em. Still, you’re the one found the evidence. Saw the proper direction to take, eh? That’s what we need here, Doyle. Bit of direction. Be grateful for it, don’t mind telling you. Crazed magicians, assassins, not my thing at all.”

Doyle smiled and puffed again at his pipe. “But neither, really, are they mine. As I say, this is Mr. Beaumont’s parish. And I must admit, Lord Purleigh, that I believe he’s entirely justified in insisting upon informing the police.”

“Bob,” said Lord Bob. “But look here, Doyle. Local police simply haven’t enough men to do us any good. Told Beaumont the same thing. And what men they do have are dolts. Won’t have those louts tramping across the lawn, tracking muck about, pestering the guests. My guests, Doyle. My responsibility. Being spied on by the police, not what they came here for, is it? Wanted a bit of company, relaxation, spot or two of fun with that medium of yours.”

Doyle took the pipe from his mouth, rested his hand on his thigh. He frowned thoughtfully and he said, “Lord Purleigh, I know your feelings regarding Spiritualism. However much I may disagree with them, I do, of course, respect your right to express them. But I really must point out that Madame Sosostris is a gifted and remarkable woman, possibly the most remarkable woman I have ever met. She has come here at your invitation, and at no small sacrifice to herself. She believes, as I do, that Spiritualism—”