Fellow Passenger (3 page)

‘A mere working hypothesis,’ answered the elder. ‘We all know we’ve got the universe upside down, only none of us dare say so.’

Instead of noting disturbances they spent the next quarter of an hour arguing about the second law of thermodynamics. It was interesting. I love to listen to the learned so long as they avoid algebra; and I never knew that the case for poltergeists was quite so good. I concentrated furiously on their debate, for I had to keep my mind from brooding on the probability of a sneeze. The dust under those basket chairs was getting into my nose.

At last they set their thermocouple by the light of a small pencil torch, and went downstairs.

I must admit that after being mistaken for something that went bump in the night I was not as relieved at being left alone as I might have been. I put myself in better heart by the thought that if the other creator of disturbances was also a Howard-Wolferstan we had at least so much in common. After extracting myself from the chairs with the least possible noise, I examined the instrument left on the floor. The thermocouple at once recorded the heat of my torch on its revolving cylinder, so I made some little pattering noises to prove to the listeners below that poltergeists sent the temperature up, not down. It was the least I could do for the second law of thermodynamics.

I made a last thorough examination of the chimney just to ensure that I had not overlooked an envelope, a key or anything tiny but promising, and then, no longer buoyed up by the hope of capital gains free of income tax, set imagination to the duller task of removing myself to London. I did not dare tackle the creaking stairs again while two ghost-hunting scientists were on the floor below, wide awake and timing every sound. At my third attempt I found an attic window which would open quietly, and went through it on to the leads.

The manor was an oblong, late Georgian house without wings or additions, and as simple as if it had been built out of a child’s box of bricks. While running up the main staircase I had clearly seen both ends of the landing on the first floor; and on the second floor, where I had more time to explore, I confirmed that the ground plan was as I thought. Now the house, seen from the roof, appeared larger outside than inside, but I put that down to the vague profusion of attic dormers, low gables and chimney stacks. In any case I was in no mood for cool measurements. My whole enterprise had gone wrong. Instead of wandering freely about the house as an amiable stranger in a dressing-gown, I was in the most unwelcome position of a cat burglar on the roof.

A handy drain-pipe at the extreme west end of the house would have offered a route from the parapet to the ground if only it had not struck off at an angle half-way down. I can tackle a perpendicular pipe as well as my neighbour, but not a sloping one. However, the perpendicular stretch passed close to a balcony on the floor below There were french windows on to the balcony, and they were open. I listened. The room was dark, and a sound sleeper gave an occasional heavy snort. I scrambled down the pipe, losing a slipper on the way, gained the balcony and peered into the bedroom. It was occupied by a tousled, an immense, a very major scientist. I averted my eyes - for one should never allow one’s illusion of woman to be destroyed by a mere accident - and fled through her door into the passage beyond.

It was lit by the usual ministerial naked bulb, and horribly empty of cover. The position was becoming plain. There were female scientists - dozens of them perhaps - and this west end of the manor was their nunnery. The ends of the landings had been blocked up, precisely to keep out gentlemen in pyjamas and dressing-gowns. The Lord only knew what might happen to me if I were caught, or how many psychiatrists might be turned loose upon me with indecent questions.

At that moment a door opened, and an extremely intellectual female - I judge her only from her hair, her vertebrae and a far too transparent nightdress of revolting green - began to say soft and interminable good nights to someone within. I panicked. I turned very quietly the nearest door handle, popped inside and closed it behind me. The room was pitch dark. The curtains were drawn in spite of the heat. A most attractive voice, with a shade of merriment in it, said:

‘Horace, you
have
been long.’

What on earth was I to do? One answer was obvious. But I have never been able to believe those delightful fourteenth-century stories where the hero takes the place of husband or lover in the dark. At any rate, I trust that few other lovers could ever be mistaken for myself.

There was no time for any thought. The only deliberate act I remember was wiping my hands, all dusty from the drainpipe, on my dressing-gown. I can only attempt to analyse - and that at a regrettable distance - my instinctive deductions. Horace was a bore. Horace hadn’t really been expected to come. He had perhaps been dared to come. Something of the sort I guessed from her voice. And she? Probably forbiddingly scientific, but certainly not cold. A little quick tenderness was indicated - to kiss her hair or something, on my way to the window.

I tried it. I never said a word. Lord, but Horace wasn’t going to be allowed to get away so easily! I responded. What else could I do? She was delicious, and the May night was amorously scented. It seemed as if Boccaccio must be right after all. But perhaps Horace had never kissed her before, and she hadn’t much to go on. I did not dare say a word except the lightest breath of a whisper. The pace slackened, and it looked as if I would have to say something at last. That had to be avoided at all costs. I did what I hoped Horace would have done. This supple and passionate scientist had something of the scandalous attraction of the dedicated. She was startled rather than offended. She suddenly pushed me away and said:

‘Peter, you beast!’

Contempt? Mingled with amusement? It was hard to tell. But if I had been Peter I should have thought the tone highly propitious. Perhaps this wing was where he was bound when he pretended to be up in the attic looking for rats. I was about to do my very best for his reputation when the door began to open. I ought to have had half an ear listening, but the complications were too absorbing. I jumped behind the curtains a little too late. Peter? Horace? Which of them was it?

It was Horace.

‘I heard something,’ he remarked stolidly. ‘Is this a joke?’

She was marvellous. I shall never again say a word against the higher education of women.

‘How dare you come here?’ she whispered fiercely. ‘Just because I said I wished we could go on with our talk! You must be mad!’

‘There’s a man behind those curtains,’ said Horace.

His lack of tact was really astonishing. He had no right whatever to be there - or only, let us say, the very smallest - and it was no business of his if she liked to have ten men behind her curtains. Also he was about to commit the extreme indecency of turning on the light. I bounded out, hit him hard in the wind and vanished through the open door.

‘A burglar!’ she yelled. ‘Stop him! Stop him!’

She had not seen my face. She still thought I was Peter. And of course she was reckoning that Peter would be able to get clear away before the hunt started, and that then he could join in it. I do not think she would have aroused the whole manor if she had known how gravely it would embarrass me. My first impression of her was - admittedly on slender evidence - that she was a woman of taste and that she should never have been confined to a routine where her heated imagination had only scientists to dwell upon.

Horace was after me with the speed of light as soon as he had straightened himself out. I expect he was glad that such a very awkward situation had ended in a chance for him to play the hero. Meanwhile I was charging down the private staircase of the nunnery, and using my faithful towel as well as I could to hide my face.

On the ground floor I ran into a dear old boy, full of distinction in spite of his heavy flannel pyjamas, who peered out of his room and asked me what all the excitement was.

‘Trouble up in the harem again,’ I answered. ‘Just listen to this!’

And I took him by the arm and led him back into his bedroom.

‘The harem! Ho, ho!’ — he had a laugh like the bark of a small terrier enjoying itself - ‘that’s very good. And my poor room at the foot of the staircase. The chief eunuch. Ah, well!’

Someone dashing down the passage shouted rudely that it was that little bitch of a metallurgist again.

‘Bitch?’ protested my rescuer thoughtfully. ‘Bitch? Well, I suppose we must admit it. But when you are my age, Mr ... er ... you will find that bitches are so much more polite to you than the others.’

‘And we must all remember,’ I added sternly, ’that she is an excellent metallurgist.’

‘You would really say so? Is that your branch, Mr ... er ... ? I am afraid that without my glasses I find it increasingly difficult to recognize faces.’

I told him that, yes, indirectly it was my branch. He seemed satisfied. His rooms were highly civilized - a comfortable study lined with books, and a bedroom and bathroom leading off it. I had a feeling that he was a good deal senior to anyone else in the place: a sort of unofficial dean, perhaps, or an occasional and eminent visitor from one of the universities.

Outside this pleasant oasis of scholarly peace, the hostel was humming. I have noticed that those who are bored with living by their brains usually seize upon any opportunity to prove themselves men of action. The scientists were baying and rampaging all over the manor. I did not hear the voices of any females. Possibly they had their own opinion about that burglar. My delightful little metallurgist was unlikely to be popular with colleagues of her own sex.

‘It all began,’ I explained to him, ‘with those two young idiots ghost-hunting in the attics.’

‘Ah,’ he chuckled, ‘the second law of thermodynamics! And did they alarm the harem?’

‘They did indeed.’

‘And so - forgive me if I jump to conclusions - you were compelled to decamp so hurriedly that you left behind a bedroom slipper with the Scheherazade of the moment?’

This mixture of acuteness and wanton imagination was alarming.

‘Sir,’ I said, ‘I trust to your discretion.’

‘Sir,’ he replied with an echo in his voice of Dr Johnson and senior common rooms, ‘you might well do so if I knew your name.’

I hesitated a shade too long over my reply. He had a window opening on the lawn, and all I wanted was to open it and run.

‘May I give you your glasses?’ I asked. ‘And then, I think, you will recognize me.’

A bit mysterious, perhaps. After all, I was not very likely to be the Minister of Supply himself or the Director of Military Intelligence. Still, it kept the ball rolling, and gave me a chance to stroll in the direction of the window.

‘Certainly,’ he replied. ‘Thank you. They are on the ledge in the bathroom.’

His voice sounded so courteous and natural that I actually went to the bathroom instead of the window. And then he slammed the door on me and locked it.

He started calling for Peter. Peter again! This random personality dogged me. I might have guessed what he was. Who else would be checking up rats in the attics? Who else would have a perfect right to wander about the nunnery passages after dark? The security officer, of course!

Peter let me out of the bathroom with a damn great pistol held unobtrusively - so far as it could be unobtrusive - in his fist. A fine figure of a man, certainly. But her impulsive guess that I was Peter could never have lasted more than a few seconds. Even in the dark he would have smelt of snooping. I am quite sure she could never have said a word which would allow him to think that on his nightly round he might open a door which had been left unlocked for a friendly and comparatively innocent chat with Horace.

My dressing-gown and pyjamas seemed to bother Peter. He insisted on knowing where my clothes were. I was tempted by the vision of him searching very tactfully for my trousers through every blessed bedroom in the nunnery; but it wouldn’t do. I had to behave responsibly. So I offered to tell him where my clothes were on condition that he sent someone to fetch them and allowed me to put them on.

I think the case might have been dealt with quite informally if I had admitted an overwhelming passion for atomic scientists. It might not even have been necessary to specify the sex. It was obvious, however, where suspicion would fall, and I could not possibly allow a government metallurgist to be so badgered with questions that she would mistake uranium for platinum, and plutonium for a bit of grandmother’s bedstead.

‘My name,’ I said, ‘is Claudio Howard-Wolferstan. My family were at one time lords of this manor of Moreton Intrinseca, and I am here to recover certain family property.’

‘And exactly how did you propose to recover it?’ asked Peter, with a nasty lift of his voice at the end of the sentence.

‘By the only means open to me,’ I replied.

‘What were you doing in Dr Ridgeway’s bedroom?’ Horace asked.

I had seen just enough of him - while he hesitated at her door - to recognize him, but he was worse than I imagined. I could not conceive how I, dark, eager, and of bronzed complexion, could be mistaken for a pale, sandy streak of futility. However, to the touch we might have felt alike, for we were both clean-shaven, narrow-faced and smooth-haired.

I said I had not been in any blasted doctor’s bedroom.

‘Dr Cornelia Ridgeway,’ he explained, stressing the Christian name.