Spider Light (35 page)

Godfrey Toy had been preparing for a quiet evening, which he thought was owed to him after the horrors of the last twenty-four hours. He was still very upset indeed. He told Oliver this, and Oliver said they were all very upset, and had recommended Godfrey to go to bed early with a hot drink, a good book and a couple of aspirin. He could put the phone by his bed if he was nervous, or even take the dinner bell to ring out of the window to summon help.

Godfrey thought this was unnecessarily flippant of Oliver, but he did think he would follow the first part of the suggestion. He would make himself a nice hot toddy to drink in bed. He might take one of the
Barchester
novels to read, so he could make the old joke about going to bed with a Trollope, but actually he would probably end up with Dorothy L. Sayers. He had always admired Harriet Vane’s angry independence, and he loved Sayers’ depictions of 1930s Oxford colleges.

He was just washing-up his supper things when there was a peremptory hammering at Quire’s main door. His heart skittered into a panic-stricken pattern, because although it was only seven p.m., what with murdered bodies in the music room and hangman’s ropes and convicted killers in Charity Cottage, you could no longer be sure who might turn up on the doorstep.

He waited until he heard Oliver’s second-floor door open, since, if there was some murderous maniac outside Godfrey was not going to confront him by himself, and then pattered down the stairs in the professor’s wake. Faint but pursuing, that was the keynote, although if he really had had a dinner bell he would have taken it with him, and if the caller had looked at all suspicious he would have swung it with vigour.

The caller did not look particularly suspicious; he looked impatient. He was a dark-haired man in his late thirties and he introduced himself as Jonathan Saxon and wanted to know if they could throw any light on the fact that Antonia Weston, whom he had come to see by prior arrangement, was missing. And that Charity Cottage was in darkness, its doors locked, and Dr Weston’s car was nowhere to be seen.

Godfrey was thrown into such a dither by this that he was grateful to Oliver for saying, quite coolly, ‘How do you do. Is it Doctor Saxon, by the way?’

‘It is.’

‘I thought it must be. You were Miss Weston’s boss at her hospital?’

‘I was. Where is she?’

‘I’m afraid I haven’t the remotest idea. I’m Oliver Remus, by the way. This is my colleague, Dr Toy. Has Miss Weston been in touch with you in the last twenty-four hours, Dr Saxon? I mean, to tell you what happened here last night?’

‘I haven’t spoken to Antonia since the day before yesterday, but I know she’s been the victim of some appallingly cruel tricks since she got here. I haven’t come to fight any battles for her, because she’s perfectly capable of fighting her own battles–I’m here because it sounded as if she needed a friend.’

Clearly he did not think Antonia was likely to have many friends in Amberwood, and equally clearly he did not know what had happened last night. Godfrey could not even begin to think how they would explain, and he was extremely relieved when Oliver said, ‘I think, Dr Saxon, that you’d better come in.’

They sat in Oliver’s big comfortable sitting room, and Oliver explained, briefly and succinctly, about Greg Foster’s death.

‘I’m extremely sorry about that,’ said Jonathan Saxon. ‘But it doesn’t explain Antonia’s disappearance.’

‘No, it doesn’t. That’s why I’m about to phone Inspector Curran,’ said Oliver, already dialling the number.

Inspector Curran arrived within ten minutes, and listened carefully to the story of Antonia’s call to Dr Saxon.

‘I suggested I drove up here for a day or so,’ said Jonathan. ‘And Antonia booked me in somewhere–the Rose and Crown I think she said. That’s in case any of you were thinking a different arrangement might apply.’

‘Oh no,’ said Oliver politely, and Godfrey glanced at him uneasily.

‘I don’t care who sleeps in whose bed,’ said the inspector, ‘but I do care about finding Miss Weston. We’ve tried her phone, but it’s switched off–although that might not mean anything. Her car’s gone and, as Dr Saxon says, the cottage is in darkness.’ He frowned. ‘Normally we wouldn’t concern ourselves with a lady who ducked out of a dinner date, but given the circumstances we’d better search the cottage. Have any of you got a key.’

‘No,’ said Godfrey.

‘Your sergeant asked that when Miss Weston reported that business of the rope,’ said Oliver. ‘We didn’t have one then, and we haven’t got one now.’

‘Dr Saxon?’

‘No, I haven’t got a key. Dr Weston isn’t, so far as I know, in the habit of giving people her door key. But if you’re going into the cottage, I’ll come with you.’

‘So will I,’ said Oliver at once.

‘I’d like to have someone from the Quire Trust anyway,’ said Curran equably. ‘We’ll do it now, shall we? Best not to waste any time.’

‘Then you do think something’s happened to her?’

‘I’m reserving judgement, Professor Remus. But we’ve had a
violent death here and we don’t know who’s responsible for it. We’re putting out calls to the nearby railway stations–Chester’s the main one, of course–but if Miss Weston’s gone anywhere of her own free will, she’s gone in her own car. And on that basis, we’ve also notified motorway service stations.’

‘You’ve got the car’s registration, have you?’ This was Oliver.

‘Oh yes,’ said the inspector. ‘We’ve had that all along. It’ll be quicker if we drive to the cottage, I think, and my car’s just outside. Dr Toy, will you stay here?’

Godfrey, appalled at the thought of remaining in the house on his own, said, ‘Well, I thought—’

‘It’s mostly in case Miss Weston turns up here. Or telephones.’

‘Yes, of course I’ll stay,’ said Godfrey, and sat down to plan how they would welcome Antonia back when she was found. Because of course she would be found, perfectly safe and well. Anything else was too dreadful to contemplate.

Inspector Curran broke the kitchen window of the cottage, and Jonathan climbed through and unlatched the rear door. But the cottage yielded no clues at all. There were no signs of a struggle, and no notes left.

‘Would either of you know if any of her clothes have gone?’ said Inspector Curran, surveying the wardrobe in the bedroom.

‘I wouldn’t. I remember she was wearing that jacket when I happened to meet her in the library a few days ago,’ said Oliver. ‘But other than that, I can’t help.’

‘Dr Saxon?’

‘I can’t help either.’

‘Her phone doesn’t seem to be around, which is a nuisance,’ said Curran. ‘I’ll get Blackburn to make a proper search, though, and we’ll get on to the main cell-phone networks and try to find out what calls she made or received in the last twenty-four hours. That might give us something to work on. Oh, and there’s a laptop downstairs–did she have an email account?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Jonathan.

‘I’ll switch on in a minute and take a look.’

‘Isn’t that a bit of an invasion?’

‘Professor, if Miss Weston has been carted off by this killer, nothing’s an invasion. And if she’s the killer herself, it’s not an invasion, it’s necessary evidence.’

There was a brief silence, and then Oliver said, ‘You don’t really think she’s the killer, though?’

‘He might do,’ said Jonathan. ‘He’s probably thinking that she’s killed once, and–how old did you say that boy was last night?’

‘Nineteen or twenty.’

‘Don Robards was twenty-two,’ said Jonathan. ‘On that basis, I should think Antonia’s your prime suspect for this, isn’t she, inspector?’

‘I wouldn’t say that, sir. What I would say is that if those incidents she reported really happened, then there’s a very twisted, very sick mind in all this.’

‘And,’ said Jonathan, angrily, ‘if Antonia made the incidents up–or even set them up herself–then she’s the one with the twisted mind, that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?’

‘She struck me as perfectly sane,’ said Oliver and for the first time Jonathan sent him a quick glance of approval.

‘She is perfectly sane,’ he said. ‘She was a very good, very hardworking doctor of psychiatry, and it’s our loss that she was struck off. She admitted to killing Don Robards because he attacked her, but she shouldn’t have been given a prison sentence. If Robards hadn’t been her patient at the time, it probably wouldn’t have been prison at all.’

‘The law always was an ass,’ said Oliver. ‘D’you want any help with the search for the phone, inspector?’

Antonia was aware that she was starting to tread a very fine line between keeping hold of sanity and tipping over into something that would not be sanity at all.

At times she was afraid she had already stepped over the boundaries. She thought she heard the
Caprice
suite being played
somewhere nearby and for a moment she believed Twygrist’s monstrous clock had wound itself backwards, and she was with Richard again and the nightmare of his death had never happened. She listened, to see if Twygrist picked up the music and spun it echoingly around her head, but it did not, and she thought after all she had imagined it. It faded after a time, but she heard her own voice, and realized with a shock that she was talking to Daniel Glass.

‘You helped me through the agoraphobia thing once or twice, Daniel, you seemed almost to be with me when I went out, so how about helping me again now? I don’t quite know how you could do it, but there must be something…’

It was at this point she discovered she was speaking aloud, and her words were swooping above her head in the darkness.

Drag me through the worst, Daniel…The worst, the wor-s-s-t…There must be something, s-s-something, there must, there MUST…

Antonia clapped her hands over her ears to shut out Twygrist’s evil echoing voice, but that made the silence and the darkness so absolute she could not bear it. Even the inexorable ticking of the clock above her was preferable.

She sat down with her back against the wall and tried to think logically. If she could not get out she would die from hunger or thirst. Dying from thirst was a particularly unpleasant death–didn’t you go mad at the end? How did I end up here, in this dreadful place, entirely on my own, facing madness and death? But I won’t believe I’m on my own: I’ll believe Daniel’s here. No, stop that, Antonia. Keep a grip. But what if that woman who knocked me out means to come back? That’s a nasty possibility. But I ought to be able to match her if it comes to a fight. Except that she’s clearly mad, and she’ll have the strength that sometimes goes with it…No, I’d better not think about that. I’d better focus on the practicalities of the situation. How long have I been down here, I wonder? It feels like quite a long time but for all I know I’ve lost all sense of time. The air’s reasonably fresh–does that mean it’s getting in from outside? How? From where?
Think,
Antonia. It’s not coming
from those doors–I’ve felt every millimetre of them and they’re as tight-fitting as they could be. Then where else?

For a moment there was only the thick darkness and the thudding of the clock, but she forced herself to think back, to that day in Quire House when she had looked at the sketches and diagrams of Twygrist’s interior. All the levels had been neatly depicted, all the way down to the underground rooms: the garner floor, the chute for the grain, the kiln room where they used to light fires to dry grain spread out at the top of the chimney vent…

The chimney vent. Hope surged upwards, because if this really was the old furnace room–and Antonia thought it must be–then the air could be coming in through the chimney vent. Did that mean part of it had fallen in? And if so, might it be possible to get out by climbing up the chimney itself? Sanity teetered again, because it sounded like something out of a farce. Escaping up the flue. I don’t care how farcical it is if it gets me out, thought Antonia. And what a tale it would make–the kind of tale I could have told around a table with Richard and the friends we had all those years ago. For a moment an image of the big comfortable bungalow swam in front of her eyes, and the ache for Richard was as painful as it had ever been. She pushed it away angrily, got up, and began to feel her way along the wall again. After a few feet she stumbled over something lying on the ground, grazing her ankles, and making her head throb all over again with the impact. When she explored with her hands, she discovered she had fallen over a jumble of old bricks, and the thin curl of hope strengthened slightly. Had the bricks fallen out of the chimney wall? If so, it ought to be possible to knock more out; she could use one of her shoes as a hammer.

The surface of the wall suddenly changed under her hands: from being stone it became brick. The start of the chimney wall? Yes, surely it was; it jutted into the room exactly as most chimney walls did, and here, about three feet up from the ground, was an unmistakable oblong of metal–steel or iron? Antonia felt all
round it; as far as she could make out it was an oblong door, about four feet wide and about three feet high.

Showers of rust broke away away as she pulled on the handle, but despite her efforts it refused to move. Despair gripped her. She took a firmer hold of it and this time something in the door’s mechanism yielded slightly. Antonia threw her entire weight onto the handle and, with a sound like human bones crunching, it turned and the door came partly open.

Light came in: a dull clogged kind of light which might have been daylight or evening, it was impossible to know. But to Antonia it was the most wonderful sight in the world.

She grasped the door’s edge and forced it back, and there was a slithering movement from within that made her jump backwards as if she had been burnt.

Clouds of evil-smelling dust billowed outwards, and with them came something that had been huddled against the oven door–something that was pale and brittle and infinitely sad. It tumbled onto the floor, and Antonia backed away, gasping and shuddering. A human skeleton. Stupid to mind about such a long-dead body, such a dried-out remnant of humanity, but she did mind. The skull was turned slightly towards her, so the empty eye-sockets stared beseechingly at her, and the finger bones seemed to be reaching towards her.