The Daffodil Affair (27 page)

‘I really don’t know how you can have come to hear that.’ Appleby did his best to reply with a sort of shamefaced caution.

‘My dear chap, I must really apologize. With so many queer fish about the place – scores and scores of them, I am happy to say – we have necessarily become something of a police state. The staff are all spies by instinct, and they keep a smart eye on newcomers in particular. I fear one of them has been zealously trailing your good self. It is very absurd, of course – but that’s how my little piece of information comes to me.’ He chuckled again. ‘I hope you found it interesting? And not too tiring?’ Wine threw another piece of coal on the fire. He was being very man-of-the-world.

‘It struck me as rather conventual.’

‘Exactly. It is what I aim at over there. With half a dozen or so girls brought up in Mediterranean conditions it seems the best way to cope with what might be a difficult situation. Not that I at all object to their having a visitor from time to time, my dear chap. There is some very promising material over there – I mean from our professional point of view. Some very promising mediums of the lower class. And well-behaved on the whole. Just sometimes I have to threaten to bring over one of the Fathers to give them a talking to.’

‘One of the Fathers?’

‘Our nearest neighbours.’ Wine had hesitated for a moment before he replied. ‘There is a Jesuit mission station about eighty miles due north, over difficult country. Actually we never communicate. But the girls know they are there, and go in considerable awe of them.’

Appleby stared thoughtfully into the little fire. This was news. And clearly it was authentic – something, perhaps, which Wine thought it no longer necessary to conceal. But it would be better not to show too much curiosity. ‘There was the girl called Eusapia–’ he said tentatively.

‘Aha!’ Wine pointed his glass at Appleby with a gay and whimsical gesture. ‘To be sure. Well, well, well.’

‘But I rather wish I hadn’t gone. Coming back I had a queer sort of feeling of something wrong. Not anything to do with those girls. Rather with this house.’

Wine’s eyes narrowed suddenly. ‘Wrong here?’

‘Yes. As if something had happened… I really can’t explain.’ Appleby paused, let his eyes travel uneasily round the little shadowy room. ‘Funny thing, sex. Makes you feel guilty. Only the sense of guilt takes on all sorts of queer forms. Doesn’t it?’

‘I suppose it does.’ It was a cautious rather than the man-of-the-world Wine now.

‘Sometimes you just feel that everything has gone sinister.’ Appleby frowned, nervous and puzzled. Would Hudspith, he was wondering, put up a better show than this? He doubted it. ‘But, come to think of it, I had very much the same feeling earlier in the day. It was when we were walking through that little grove this morning.’

Wine was sitting very still in his chair. But his voice was casual still. ‘My dear chap, it’s probably nothing but liver. I wouldn’t indulge these Freudian notions, if I were you. Guilty and creepy feelings because you’ve been kissing a girl behind a hedge is all nonsense. Have another drink.’ He got up and reached for the decanter. ‘And shall we turn out this lamp? I think few things are more soothing to the nerves than simple firelight. We hardly need warmth tonight, but the glow and flicker are pleasing to exiles like ourselves.’

Exiles. That undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns… From the tessellated hall of 37 Hawke Square, gloomy beneath the frowning landings that led up to the nurseries of Mr Smart, came a faint and rapid whir – the sound of a grandfather clock preparing to strike. And then came the chime. It was midnight.

‘Midnight!’ said Wine. He set down his glass. ‘Perhaps we ought to turn in. Hasn’t the door blown open?’ He twisted round in his chair. The door had certainly opened; it showed as a rectangle of darkness in the dimly firelit wall. And a breeze cool and faintly damp, as if it carried a fine spray; a breeze suddenly strangely chill…

‘Odd,’ said Appleby. ‘The temperature does seem to drop at night. But such a really cold wind–’

He stopped. For the breeze was no longer chill merely; it was an arctic air, a wind chill as on a Russian steppe… And abruptly Wine was on his feet. ‘The smell,’ he said hoarsely; ‘my God, the smell!’

‘Smell?’ said Appleby. There was indeed a smell, a sudden indescribable reek as of the grave, a thick and seeping vapour as of vermiculation and decay. ‘Smell? I don’t notice anything. But it is uncommonly cold. And I do feel damned queer.’

Wine sat down again. ‘You notice the cold, but not the smell?’ he asked. In the flicker of the flame Appleby could see him frowning in some final effort of the dispassionate intelligence. Was the cold veridical – an objective fact? And was the smell a subjective concomitant? The fragmentary scientist that was in Wine could be seen on his features, doing battle with dismay. Everything was very quiet. From somewhere beyond the blackness of the open door came a long, deep sigh.

He was on his feet again and had swung round. ‘Did you hear that?’

‘I can’t hear anything.’

‘Look!’

There was a glimmer of greenish light in the doorway; it concentrated itself, took form and was a man. Or it was the phantasm of a man, immobile and framed in darkness. It was, thought Appleby, very like a good conjuring trick – dangerously so if the spectator’s mind was cool. ‘Wine!’ he cried. ‘What the hell are you staring at? Wine!’

The room reeked still. The phantasmal Hudspith advanced. Water dripped from his muddied and blooded tropical suit; one side of his face was a ghastly mush of orange and blue. Slowly, he was raising an arm.

‘Can’t you see?’ Wine was clinging to the back of his chair.

‘See?’ Appleby stared blankly at the door. ‘You’re mad. I see nothing. There’s nothing to see. Your blasted laboratory and your experiments have driven you out of your mind. Why couldn’t you keep to the racket, you poor mutt, and leave tinkering alone? Radbone credulous. Bah!’

The phantasm was pointing. And it spoke. ‘I was murdered,’ it said in a deep voice. ‘I was murdered, Appleby, murdered–’

Wine screamed – screamed with his eyes strangely fixed on the phantasm’s head. Part of the head was missing, as if it had been smashed or blasted or gnashed away. And yet not missing… for a great fragment of skull, as if reluctant to accept dismemberment, floated in air above the wound, ‘I was murdered,’ said the phantasm; ‘murdered by–’

Wine screamed again; he turned and stumbled towards a desk. He grabbed; he held a revolver in his hand and was firing; he was pulling the trigger wildly while the shaking and reeking barrel pointed aimlessly at the floor. There was a crash from behind Appleby and another door burst open. Two men were in the room; one of them the dark-visaged man who had trailed him all day. Heedless of him, they ran towards Wine; Wine was now lying on the floor; outside the nightmarish and flickering room the whole crazy house sounded of tumult and confusion. After all, thought Appleby, its whole constitution was such that it would go quickly on the jump… He turned and slipped quickly into the darkness of the hall.

‘It’s only a rowing-boat,’ said Hudspith. ‘We might have managed to get one of the launches. But we’ll be quieter in this.’

‘I don’t know that quiet is much needed.’ Appleby mopped his forehead in the darkness as they pushed off. ‘There’s the deuce of a row.’

It was true. As if panic had propagated itself by mysterious means, the whole group of Happy Islands was in tumult. The clamour struck up to the stars and everywhere were strangely moving and darting lights. They pulled powerfully at the oars.

‘Jacko’ – Lucy’s voice came from the darkness of the stern – ‘your Italian friend did you proud.’

Appleby laughed softly. ‘She certainly did. And on credit too.’

‘What do you mean, on credit?’

‘Never mind. How did she manage that cold wind?’

‘Mr Hudspith understands it.’

‘Ether.’ Hudspith was peering anxiously up the river. ‘Ether stolen from the medical stores and stood before a big electric fan. The alligator-stink disguised the smell.’

‘And the alligator-stink?’

‘Lucy will answer that one.’

‘Never mind,’ said Lucy.

They rowed on. Wine’s collapse had caused a confusion almost unaccountably abundant; all the darkness was filled with tumult and cries and splashing. Appleby frowned into the night, opened his mouth to speak, changed his mind and was silent.

‘I think it’s the next creek,’ Hudspith said.

‘Good heavens! Wasn’t it risky leaving it as close as that?’ Hudspith laughed shortly as he tugged at his oar. ‘Not half so risky as trying to pilot the thing any farther.’

‘Taxiing a hydroplane isn’t all that difficult.’

‘Lucy will tell you what it felt like.’

‘It felt like death,’ said Lucy briefly.

‘Or like driving a racing car fitted with skates through a maze in the dark.’ Hudspith turned round and peered ahead once more. ‘Easy, all.’

They had taken two turns up a broad backwater, and the nearest island was now some distance behind them. But still the night was mysteriously alive and moving; the sky flickered oddly; there was a great deal of shouting from directions hard to place.

‘If we can get it airborne,’ said Appleby, ‘we shall do something.’ His voice was anxious; the plane was their one hope; and still he was obscurely unable to feel faith in it… The little boat drifted round a final gentle bend and he rubbed his eyes. For there the plane was – authentic, real and waiting. Only there was something odd about it. The night was starry as always, but here in the backwater it was very dark. What was odd about the plane was that it was
visible
.

It was silhouetted against a dull red glow. And in the sky were points and trails of light, shooting arcs of reddish fire. A cluster of these rose, fell. A tongue of flame shot from the tail of the plane; another rose beside it; there was a third in the cockpit. The plane was blazing.

And behind them as they rested on their oars there was a splashing in the river; Appleby turned to see a half-circle of dark bobbing heads. That, of course, was it. The general tumult was explained – as was the destruction of their only likely link with the outer world. But it was not a moment for reflection. He tapped Hudspith on the shoulder. ‘Into the bank!’ he cried. ‘And out and up.’

The little boat grounded in mud; in a few seconds they were scrambling in a
monté
of tree-fern and bamboo, and it was very dark. But back a little from the water the terrain would be clearer, and it was necessary to see even at the risk of being seen. They were not being pursued, unless it was stealthily – and in that night’s operations the period of stealth seemed to be over. From the Islands the clamour was now indescribable, and from somewhere farther along the bank came a savage and exultant singing. They stumbled on and were climbing; they were on the brow of a little hill, bare save for one vast tree, spreading and shadowy. They staggered under it and, momentarily safe from espial, looked back. Hudspith grunted. Lucy gasped and laid a hand on Appleby’s arm. It was an extraordinary sight.

Very clearly the assault, so strangely timed to coincide with the shock of domestic confusion on Europe Island, had been completely successful. The heritage of Schlumpf, the dominion of Emery Wine, was everywhere going up in flame; the sky already glowed as from one vast bonfire; a pall of smoke was gathering over the river. The windows of 37 Hawke Square glowed luridly – glowed as with an indignant glare at this second night of outrage within a mere fragment of time. The peace of the Augustans had seen its birth; it had known the long, strenuous tranquillity of Victorian days; now flame and destruction had pursued it from continent to continent.

The savages were intent to destroy. But they were not, it seemed, intent to kill. Clearly on the nearest Island – and distinguishably on Islands farther away – they could be seen bearing off, violently but with a sort of strange and ritualistic respect, the abundant and various stock-in-trade of Wine’s now fallen and ruined enterprise. Naked and in groups, dark-skinned and powerful, they bore away billowy women and frightened girls and bewildered men. Mediums and palmists, thought-readers and scryers and astrologers; they were being borne away as by devils in an old window; were vanishing in a confusion of contorted limb and frantic gesture, like Sabine Women in a tapestry unrestrainedly Baroque. The clamour of the strange pervasive rape echoed over the river and the pampa; the flames waxed and mounted; the stars were dimmed.

‘Look!’

Lucy was pointing. Just below them, and nearer the river, was another low hill. And in a sudden flare of light – it was probably the flame reaching the petrol in the plane – they saw a single figure standing immobile, surveying the scene.

‘The witch,’ Lucy said.

And it was Hannah Metcalfe. She stood very still and watched the bonfire with slightly parted lips. On Beaglehole and his whip, on Wine and the isle of Capri, she had achieved her revenge.

Hudspith stirred sharply. ‘My God!’ he said. ‘She’s demented. Only a devil would plot such a thing.’

Appleby nodded. ‘Perhaps so. And only a very powerful and talented person could carry it out. I believe–’ He stopped and laid a warning hand on each of his companions. ‘Listen,’ he whispered.

The sound was very close. It came from the other side of the great tree. And it was the neigh of a horse.

In the flicker from the distant fires the creature showed cloudlike and uncertain. There was a flare of light, and they saw it clearly; it was erect, prancing and magnificent. Suddenly Lucy called out; of the three of them her senses appeared to be the keenest. ‘Jacko, look!’

Appleby turned. The backwater was still behind them. And now, in front and steadily advancing, was a great sickle of dancing flames. Its significance was clear: a long line of savages was converging upon them with lighted torches, and there was no line of retreat. They must have been detected by those bobbing heads in the water; now they were to be rounded up. Appleby eyed the distance. ‘Five minutes,’ he said; ‘we haven’t got more than that.’ There was a jerk at his shoulder; he turned and eyed the great horse; the animal was tossing its head strangely in air. ‘One, two,’ said Appleby; ‘three, four, five – by the lord Harry, it’s Daffodil!’