The Fabulous Beast (9 page)

Moretta

‘My God, what an ugly-looking place,’ I said, staring at the photograph. ‘Lucy lived
there
?’

‘Moretta, not Lucy. She liked to call herself Moretta.’

Elaine, my niece, sighed and expanded on this piece of information. ‘It’s the name of one of those Venetian masks, that they wear at carnival time. Black of course. You know Moretta was into the macabre in a big way. Black clothes, black lacy gloves. All that sort of thing.’

‘A Goth?’

‘I suppose you could call her that, though I think she took the thing a step further than just a fashion statement. The house . . .’ Elaine paused. Elaine herself was a university professor. She lectured in economics at the LSE. She was worldly and no prude. ‘. . . you should see the house. You
will
see the house. It’s dreadful. Full of ghastly-looking furniture and ornaments straight out of a horror film. Dracula would have a hard time living there without tripping over a stuffed raven.’

I peered again at the photo. It was, yes, a Gothic-looking mansion on the top of a cliff: dark, brooding, bristling with those corner spires that seem only to appear on seaside town houses. The ocean below it was caught in mid-flamenco. In the distance there was a ruin of sorts, beyond a tangle of brambles and gorse, half-hidden amongst some raggedy pines.

‘What’s this place?’ I asked, pointing.

Elaine peeked over my shoulder. ‘Oh, the old leper colony. It’s no longer in use.’

‘I should bloody-well hope so.’

‘Well, Steve, there are still lepers in the world, you know. Probably in England. Is James going with you, by the way?’

‘Yes, you don’t think I’d go to a house like this,’ I flicked the photo, ‘without a bodyguard.’

She laughed at that. The idea of a gentle creature like James being the tough heavy of the two of us was strongly ludicrous.

‘So, tell me again what happened.’

Elaine sat down on one of her kitchen chairs.

‘About two months ago Moretta was found dead in her bedroom, in her bed, actually. It appeared she passed away in her sleep. However, the autopsy found signs of suffocation – oh, nothing like a pillow over her face, or anything like that – it seemed pressure had been put on her lungs. You know that torture they used to have in the Inquisition? And other Medieval institutions, I suppose. Where they laid heavy stones on the victim’s chest to crush them to death? Apparently that would have produced the same effect. There were no stones of course, nor heavy weights of any kind. Poor dear Moretta. Something had squeezed her to death, but what? The coroner’s verdict was left open.’

‘And Lucy – sorry,
Moretta
left the house to you in her will.’

Elaine shrugged. ‘Yes, to me and Lloyd. My sister was quite conventional in lots of ways, you know, despite her eccentricities in others.’

‘And you and Lloyd didn’t want to sell the house?’

‘We did, but look at it! We’d need to find another Moretta to fall in love with it. And also you must know that the village of Dunwich has been slipping into the sea since the 1400s. There are streets of houses, churches, shops, all under water now. Some say you can hear the church bells sounding on stormy nights. Who would want to buy a house on a cliff in a place like that? You can see by the picture that it’s close to the edge. It won’t been too long before erosion claims another victim.’

‘So you rent it out as a themed holiday home, presumably to lovers of Gothic literature and movies. How do you look after it?’

‘An agency. They send in a cleaner and manage the clients.’

‘But not at the moment.’

‘Not since Mr and Mrs Clements died.’

‘In the same way as Moretta.’

‘Yes. They had been crushed to death. The couple were from the States. California I think. Anyway the police were called in, but nothing untoward was found.’

‘Beyond all the grisly contents.’

We both stared at each other.

Elaine said, ‘You don’t have to do this, Steve. We could just leave the place to fall down or drop into the sea. Lloyd and I don’t actually
need
the money. It would be a waste, but preventing more loss of life must be the priority.’

‘I know,’ I replied, smiling, ‘but what else have I got to do. I’m a retired old major. I don’t like fishing or golf. As an ex-army cryptographer, naturally what I like is puzzles. This will make a change from the daily crossword.’

‘Well, be careful.’

‘Just what your aunt Sybil used to say before I went to foreign climes with a gun over my shoulder. I’m still here.’

‘This is different and you know it.’

‘It’s
intriguing
, I know that.’

~

By evening the next day, James and I were on the train heading towards Ipswich, where we intended hiring a car to drive to Dunwich. I like East Anglia, with its rugged evocative coastline. It has an oldy-worldly feel about it, especially places like Orford and Shingle Street, which are out on the very tip of the end of nowhere. And Dunwich, of course. Suffolk and Norfolk are a shotgun blast of villages, with only the odd town or two of concentrated life. They are said to be the least inhabited of the English counties. On top of this, once we were in the car we found out that there are very few street lights in Suffolk, even now in the 21st Century, in this amazing Technological Age.

‘Why is that, do you think?’ I asked James, as I concentrated on hurtling the vehicle into the pitch blackness.

James was an ex-telecoms man, not BT, but a firm called Cable and Wireless, a company who operated mostly in countries abroad. We had met at the London-based ‘Hong Kong Society’, having both spent some years in that wonderful Oriental city, with its mystical undercurrents and effervescent street life. Suffolk was a million miles away from one of the most densely populated places on the planet.

‘The villagers don’t like street lights,’ he said, emphatically.

‘The reason being?’

‘Once you get street lights, the council starts putting in double yellow lines. They can’t do that without the street lights being there in the first place. You can’t see yellow lines in the dark.’

‘Interesting. Canny people, these Suffolk yokels. Ah, here we are in dear old Dunwich.’

I drove down a slope and found myself in an unmade car park near the pebbled beach. All roads lead to the sea from Dunwich. We left the car there and with backpacks on and torches bravely beaming, we set off along a track which led up to the top of the cliffs.

After about a quarter of a mile of walking along the path between the forest and the sea, we came to the house. Moretta’s place. I had looked up my niece’s new name on the internet. A
moretta
was an oval mask of black velvet with a fringe-veil at the bottom, worn all year round by women in Venice visiting convents, as well as at Carnival. Perfect for a drama queen like Lucy, who seemed to have taken up the macabre in her fifties the way some women take up voluntary work.

It was indeed a ramshackle-looking place. Godforsaken, one would have called it, even in the 19th Century, when presumably it was built. The windows were small, twisted and mean, no doubt to keep out the fierce North Sea gales, and the misshapen doors had obviously been swollen by the constant dampness fed by sprigs of sea-spray coming up from the sea below. The chimneys were right out of Gormenghast, sprouting at odd angles from slick-tiled roof full of dips and rises. There were all sorts of porches and gables, and dormers, and a weather vane shaped like a terrified man in flight. My torchlight ranged over lumps and bumps in the exterior, which at one time had been intended for decoration, but now looked like canker growths and galls on oak branches. A wind from the ocean was causing a wild stirring amongst the glass panes, loose in their frames. They rattled and shook as if trying to escape their prisons. In silhouette, with the starlit sea shining behind it, I have to say the dwelling looked quite uninviting.

‘Let’s go an stay at a pub tonight,’ I suggested, ‘and come back in the morning.’

‘Scaredy-cat,’ replied James, but he turned as he did so and we headed back along the track towards the village.

I was indeed a little unnerved. There are those who expect ex-army majors to be pragmatists with little sensitivity in their bones. Actually army majors are as mixed in temperament and character as the rest of the population. There are those who have no imagination, no depths to their soul, so to speak. But I was not one of them. I had a very fertile mind and had owned a quixotic streak since childhood. The army needs both kind of men: those who walk in straight lines and those who like to look around the corner first. Since Hong Kong, where I had met Chinese businessmen who I greatly admired, men who firmly believed in the supernatural, I was not always ready to discount an aberrant solution to a problem that did not appear to have a logical one.

So, yes, my little friend was right, I was scared. I had a healthy respect for the state of fear. You do not ignore it just because you want to look a bold, nerveless commander frightened of nothing. Too many of those types have led their men into terrible firefights and lost not only their own lives, but also the life of many a good ordinary soldier.

James and I found a goodly tavern, had a nice meal, then went to bed.

The following morning we returned to the house. In the light of day it didn’t look so forbidding. In fact it looked a little ludicrous and I mentally chastised myself for the previous evening’s show of funk. This time we used the giant door key to enter a world of dried bats dangling from cotton threads, stuffed ravens, strangely-dressed mannequins, books on the occult including fiction by Bram Stoker and other predictable authors, hats and masks, puppets, weirdly-shaped objects that might have been anything or nothing, purple walls and doors, cobwebs real and unreal, spiders real and unreal, stuffed rats, instruments of torture and degradation, and a whole host of paraphernalia connected with the dark arts and gruesome magic. The musty smell almost knocked us over each time we entered a new room. Clearly Moretta had spent a lifetime collecting the black, dusty carrion of human endeavour, which must have been such a comfort to her in her loneliness and solitude.

James, in offering me his feelings on the place, also decided to go for irony.

‘Nice and cosy,’ he murmured. ‘There’s a very pleasant under-odour of alley cats. Lunch?’

We undid our packs and took out sandwiches, standing by one of the filthy windows we munched away.

‘So, who’s going to use the murder room tonight?’ he asked.

‘We’ll both sleep in there.’

‘There’s only one bed. I don’t want to share it with a great hulk like you. You jerk around in your sleep.’

We had indeed shared a two-man tent on Ben Nevis once and indeed, my dreams were usually fuelled by old combats.

‘I’ll use the armchair.’

‘Fair enough.’

On reflection, it should have been me in the bed. James was half my size, a little frailer in his constitution, and anyway it was my job to find out what was happening in this house. The beds had been made up by the agency’s cleaner woman, but James was not eager to turn in, that much was true. When he did, he had managed to make himself so fatigued he fell off to asleep right away. I moved an armchair on the far side of the room and flopped in it, prepared for a wakeful but vigilant night on watch. Of course I fell asleep, probably not long after James himself did, being of tired mind and slightly whiskied.

I was woken by the noise of a furious storm, which had no doubt come in from the Atlantic. It raved and crashed over the cliffs. Thunder ripped across the night sky and forked lightning flashed dramatically illuminating the windows. The old house seemed very vulnerable under such an attack. Surely it would crack apart?

However, it withstood the battering for at least half an hour, then it lowered in volume enough for me to hear the screams which must have been coming from James for some time.

Panicking, I grabbed for the torch in my pocket, but as I pulled it out it slipped from my grasp. I stood up in the blackness and felt for the wall behind me, trying to find the light switch. It took me a good minute or two. James’s screams had turned now to choked gasps. After turning on the light there was a distinct impression of having disturbed something. A shadow flitted past my light-blinded vision. However my attention was all for James, who was clearly in deep trouble.

My friend was lying there on his back, his arms outside the covers, struggling for each shallow breath.

On his bloodless face was a look of absolute terror.

‘James! James!’

I rushed over to him, but he was obviously in agony, and was clearly in no condition to answer any questions. I didn’t dare touch him, in case I injured him further.

‘Don’t worry, old chap,’ I told him, soothingly, ‘I’ll get help immediately.’

I called emergency services on my mobile.

It was some while before I heard the sound of the ambulance outside and during that time James had done nothing but fight for each breath. And no wonder. The paramedics suggested that he might have one or two broken ribs. Possibly one had punctured his lung. They took him away on a stretcher. James was able to say a few words before they drove him off along that rugged cliffside track.

‘I saw it,’ he croaked, his eyes bulging. ‘When the lightning flashed – I saw it.’

The back of my neck bristled.

‘Saw what? Who?’

But James was unable to elaborate.

Later, with a cup of coffee in my shaking hands, staring into that murderous bedroom, I pondered on his words. Nothing further had come from his poor tortured throat. I had to be content with knowing that I was not alone in the house. Since we had been the only people in the place, who was the company? Who had James seen, that was not present now? I stood and pondered on this question for quite a while and though I could find no rational explanation. James had been attacked and severely injured by a seemingly invisible assailant.

Clearly he had still been under attack when I had turned on the light. Then the aggressor had fled, but so rapidly I had only caught a glimpse of something so flimsy and insubstantial it was less than a wisp. Unless there were indeed people hiding behind the wainscot, the intruders had to be other than a human. What could possibly crush a man in his own bed? I did a very thorough square search of the house to ascertain that we had indeed been alone and found no evidence of another person in the dwelling.