She opened the car door. She shivered. She crossed the gravelled yard. She mounted the three broad, stone steps.
One half of the double-door was ajar, the wedge of shadow in the gap as black as velvet.
Edith jabbed the bell button set in the wall beside the entrance. When no sound came from inside the house, she pushed hard, leaving her stiffened finger there for several seconds. Still no ringing.
She rapped on the closed side of the double-door, knuckles instantly reddening with the force she used. When again there was no response, Edith reached in and swung the other door wide. The black velvet barely retreated.
‘Hello?’ she called, poking her head inside. ‘Hello? Can anyone hear me?’ She almost smiled: she had nearly asked, ‘Is there anybody there?’
Her head flinched as the stench hit her, a noxious smell of age and damp and . . . and other things. Oddly, one of those things was charcoal.
Curious, Edith slid sideways through the open doorway.
Because it was dusk, it did not take long for her eyes to adjust to the inkiness of Edbrook’s interior. It was as if parts of the velvet had become threadbare.
‘Oh dear God . . .’ she said under her breath.
And further along the spacious hall, from a doorway beneath the stairs, a shadow rose as if summoned by her quiet cry.
26
Ash leaned both elbows on the bar and showed his empty glass to the landlord. ‘Another large one,’ he said.
The landlord took the glass, eyeing the man warily. Drinking for this one wasn’t just a social event: it had a more serious intent. He turned his back on Ash and pushed the glass under the vodka optic. ‘And a bitter, too?’ he asked over his shoulder.
Ash stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray. ‘Why not? I’m not driving.’
The inn had more customers now, although it was far from full; the night was too bleak to stray far from home comforts. Conversations were low-key, a general murmuring broken only by the muted cries of frustration or elation from the darts players in the smaller and starker public bar next door.
The vodka was put before Ash and his empty pint glass taken away. The landlord pulled the bitter pump, watching the dishevelled man as he did so. ‘You say you’re staying locally . . .?’ he ventured.
Ash dipped his hand into the ice bucket. ‘Local enough. A bloody long walk though.’ He dropped ice into the vodka.
‘Out of the village then, is it?’ The landlord slowly eased up on the pump.
‘Yeah, about a hundred miles.’ Ash summoned up a weary grin to show the other man he was joking. ‘No – a couple of miles, I think. It just feels like a hundred. Out at Edbrook. You know it?’
‘Edbrook?’ the landlord said with mild interest. ‘Yes, I know the place.’
‘With the Mariell family.’ He shook his head, smiling to himself.
The landlord put the pint on a mat and leaned forward on the bar. ‘Out of the way little spot all right. You staying there long?’
‘Not if I can help it.’ He handed over two pound coins. ‘I’m thinking of getting the train back to London tonight, as it happens. If it wasn’t for . . .’ He shrugged and took a swallow of vodka.
‘So you’re not enjoying your visit?’ said the landlord conversationally and was surprised at his customer’s grim laughter.
Ash shook his head, grinning a drunk’s grin. ‘I suppose you might call the Mariells eccentric.’
‘The Mariells?’
‘Yeah, all of them. Robert and Simon, dear old Nanny Tess. Even . . . even Christina.’
The landlord straightened and his tone became less than friendly. ‘Maybe you ought to take it easy on the vodka. If you’ve got to get back there tonight . . .’ He left the sentence unfinished as he went to the till. When he placed Ash’s change on the bar he added, ‘Of course, if that is where you’re staying.’
With that the landlord walked away leaving the investigator to frown after him. Ash shrugged again and drank from the pint glass. He sifted through the coins before him with one finger. Picking up a 10p, he drained the vodka and left the bar; his journey across the saloon may not have been unsteady, but it was concentrated upon.
Outside in the vestibule he went to the public telephone, balanced the coin on its appropriate slot and lifted the receiver. He dialled a number and waited.
‘Come on, Kate,’ he muttered to himself after a while, ‘where are you when I need you?’
Still no one answered at the other end. He sighed impatiently and leaned against the wall, aware that he had been swaying.
At Kate McCarrick’s apartment a key was turning in the front door as the telephone shrilled its double bleep. The door opened and Kate hurried in, dumping her briefcase on the hallway floor as she headed for the phone.
She snatched up the receiver. ‘Hello?’ she said breathlessly.
There was a click as the line went dead at the other end.
Kate scowled. ‘Sh—’
—it!’ cursed Ash as he slammed down the receiver.
He slumped back, head against the wall, face raised towards the ceiling. He rubbed his forehead and eyelids with his fingers, then stayed there unmoving for several moments, his temples pounding from fatigue and the alcohol consumed. Leave them to it, Ash, he told himself. Let them play their bloody games with someone else. What the hell does it matter to you?
‘Yeah, what the hell,’ he mumbled aloud.
Was he over-reacting? Was he merely angry because Christina had gone from Edbrook without leaving any message for him, no acknowledgement of the intimacy they had shared the night before? He remembered her hunger for him, even fiercer than his was for her, and the passion she had spent upon his body. And how eventually he had responded in kind, at first almost overwhelmed but soon an eager and equal partner in their lovemaking, drawn in by her salacity and quickly apace with it. Even the memory was seductive.
But the fire! The thought snapped into his mind as if to scold him. Yet the fire was no more than the phantom flames of his imagination. That couldn’t be, that really couldn’t be! He hadn’t imagined the heat, the awful clogging smoke fumes. God, what had happened to him in that cellar? Leave now, the voice urged. Let them wallow in their own wretchedness.
Ash shoved himself away from the wall and walked doggedly towards the door that would take him out into the sharp freshness of the night. It opened as he was grasping the handle, a young couple coming through, the youth’s arm around the girl’s waist. Ash stood aside and the youth nodded, barely glancing at him. They disappeared into the saloon bar, the girl tittering at something her escort was whispering to her.
Ash stepped out into the high street, pulling the lapels of his coat up around his neck once more as the chill bit. The inn door slowly swung shut and with it went the warmth of its light.
He stiffened when he saw the old Wolseley parked at the kerbside. Christina’s shadowed face watched him through the windscreen.
He lingered, undecided. Then he strolled over and opened the passenger door, the vehicle’s metal hinges groaning as he did so. Leaning forward, he peered in.
‘Why did you leave?’ There was anger in Christina’s question.
Ash was taken aback. ‘Why did I—? Oh Christ, I don’t believe it.’
‘You didn’t tell anyone where you were going.’
His anger was equal to hers as he got into the car. ‘There was no one to tell! What happened, Christina? Why was the house empty?’
She reached forward and switched on the engine.
‘I asked you a question,’ Ash said evenly.
‘I let you sleep. You were exhausted, I could see that.’
‘I asked you where you were,’ he persisted.
She engaged gear and the Wolseley pulled away from the kerb.
‘Hey, wait a minute – where d’you think you’re going?’
‘Back to Edbrook, of course,’ she replied, eyes on the road.
‘I’m not sure—’
She looked
quickly at him. ‘You’re not running out, are you? After last night?’
His temples throbbed and he squeezed them with his fingertips. ‘What happened between us . . .’
‘Was good. Don’t you remember how good it was?’
‘It’s difficult to . . . I’m confused, Christina. I’m bloody weary and I’m confused.’
The car sped through the village, swiftly reaching the outskirts, the darkness taking on substance beneath the trees where moonlight could not reach.
Ash angled himself in his seat so that he could look at her. ‘What’s happening at Edbrook, Christina? I don’t understand what’s going on. Are you and your brothers playing some lunatic trick?’
She was silent, concentrating on driving, the car’s speed steadily increasing. He could smell the oldness of the Wolseley now, and a metallic dampness that suggested rust lurked between joinings and wheel arches.
‘There is no ghost, is there?’ he went on. ‘It’s something you all dreamed up. For some sick reason you wanted to get at me. Tell my why. Please tell me.’
The car rounded a curve in the road, tyres protesting against the pressure as speed was maintained.
‘For God’s sake answer me. Tell me what you’re up to, Christina.’
Her foot pressed the accelerator pedal down further.
‘You never had a twin sister, did you? It was all a lie, part of the act.’
‘You wanted to leave before completing the investigation,’ Christina said.
‘Aren’t you listening to me? Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? You never had a twin who died when you were kids. There was no such sister. I believe one thing though: there is a schizophrenic among the Mariells.’ He gripped the back of his seat as the car lurched round another bend. ‘It’s you, isn’t it, Christina?’
She was taut, staring straight ahead, her profile, save for her brow which remained in shadow, pure and unblemished in the moonlight that shone through the windscreen.
Frustrated by her lack of response, Ash reached in his pocket for his cigarettes and lighter. He managed a grin, but it was sardonic.
‘I should have realized. All that talk about the Mariells, how private their family affairs were through each generation. Madness isn’t something you acknowledge, is it, let alone discuss?’
He flicked out the lighter and noticed Christina flinch from the flame. The nervousness in her sideways glance gave him a childish satisfaction. Let the flame burn.
‘Have Robert and Simon always protected you, Christina? Nanny Tess, too?’
He moved the lighter closer to her face, perhaps to see her more clearly, perhaps to torment her. The car slowed and turned into a smaller lane, passing the telephone box Ash had tried to use earlier that day.
Christina cringed away from him now, but still she faced the front, continuing to drive, the Wolseley picking up speed once more. Occasionally, as if the tiny fire had some irresistible influence, her eyes would dart towards it. Just as fast they would return to the road ahead.
Ash, although conscious of his malice, enjoyed her discomfort. Blame it on the booze, he reassured himself as he taunted Christina with the lighter. Regard it as a small repayment for the nightmare she and her family had given him.
‘I don’t know how you did it, Christina, how you and your brothers created those effects – the fire in the cellar, the . . .’ he flicked his other hand in the air in a hopeless gesture ‘. . . the girl I . . . I thought was in the pond. But then, you’re all very clever, aren’t you, all pretty smart? But not quite right . . .’
He thrust the flame closer to her cheek.
Christina recoiled, turning her face aside, and the car swerved dangerously. He grabbed her wrist with his free hand to steady the wheel, afraid they would crash.
There was something peculiar about the flesh he held.
He looked down at her hand and the unlit cigarette fell from his lips, for the fingers that curled around the steering wheel were no more than blackened bone, streaky mounds that might have been crisped meat clinging to them. The gristle beneath his grip seemed to flake as his hold involuntarily tightened.
Christina’s head slowly came away from the side window it had rested against. He saw her smile in profile before she had completed the turn towards him. Moonlight illuminated the other side of her face.
He screamed.
For her skin was charred and withered, the fleshy lids that should have been around her eye rotted away so that the eyeball was incredibly large and staring. Her scalp was bare and glistening on that side, long single strands of hair hanging in wisps. The lips at the corner of her mouth had been burned away, exposing her teeth and dark gums, so that her smile had degenerated to a grotesque grin.
Ash dropped the lighter in shock, the flame immediately snuffed. But in the moonlight, the huge eyeball continued to stare at him from the silvery reflection of what was once her face.
27
The Wolseley careered erratically, yet did not decrease its speed along the narrow lane. Thin branches of hedges flayed the side windows as the car’s tyres chewed grooves in the grassy shoulders. Still Christina – or the thing she now was – kept her foot firm on the accelerator.
Ash had shrunk away from her, his back rigid against the passenger door. She was once again in profile and he could see the sweetness of her half-smile. But his mind could see the mutilation hidden from view on the other side.
The stone pillars of Edbrook’s gates loomed up and the car rushed through them, scarcely losing speed in the turn. Ash was thrown forward, his head crashing against glass; he hardly felt the blow. The dark shape of the house at the end of the drive grew rapidly in the windscreen.
He opened his mouth – whether to scream or to protest was of no consequence, for no sound came from his constricted throat – as they roared past the gardens on either side of the drive.
The Wolseley screeched to a side-sliding halt outside Edbrook, spraying gravel against the stonework, and Ash almost tumbled to the floor.
He twisted round to fumble for the door handle, refusing to look at the dreadful thing beside him inside the old vehicle, desperate to be away from such close and enclosed proximity to it. He drew in a sharp breath that might easily have been a sob when he found the handle.
Almost falling through the open door, Ash launched himself into a staggering run, in his panic failing to notice the other vehicle nestled beneath the low branches of a tree on the far side of the forecourt. He thought he heard a dry rasping laughter, the kind that might be forced from a scorched throat, coming from the Wolseley behind him.
He climbed the three stone steps, tripping on the last one so that he collapsed heavily against the double-door of the house. Using one of the brass doorknobs for support, he hauled himself up, thumping against the wood with the flat of his fist as he did so.
On his feet once more, he looked over his shoulder towards the parked vehicle. The driver’s door was opening. He could hear a scratchy kind of chuckling.
Ash flailed at the front door with both fists, ignoring the juddering shocks that ran through both arms, trying to call out but the terrible tightness in his throat muscles preventing him from doing so.
Although he dared not look directly again, his head half-turned as if irresistibly drawn, so that he perceived movement in the periphery of his vision. Christina was emerging from the car.
His chest heaved with what could be nothing other than a terrified wail; his blows against the door became slower, less hopeful. He wanted to run from there, to escape before the approaching figure reached him. Yet he suddenly felt so languid, so weary, a dread-filled heaviness sinking through his limbs, dragging at his strength. He knew, without looking, that she had reached the first step. His scream was stifled within his breast. He heard the scraping of a shoe against stone.
He almost lost his balance as the door before him yawned inwards.
There was nothing welcoming in Nanny Tess’ demeanour; she grimaced, began to say so
mething. But he had already pushed past her before any words could form, and had slammed the door behind him so that the aunt could only stand back in surprise, whatever she had meant to say already forgotten.
Trembling so violently that his fingers scrabbled against the lock, Ash turned the key, the metallic clunk satisfying but not reassuring enough. He crouched to shoot the bolt into its floor socket, repeating the process on the neighbouring side. He rose and leaned his back against the barrier as if to add weight.
Ash could not help the low moan that escaped him when he saw the changed condition of Edbrook.
The lights were even dimmer than before, like grey candle-glows, as though they, too, were part of the degenerative process; but they were strong enough to reveal the grime on the ceilings and walls, the dust-filled cobwebs, the mould that spread from corners and recesses, the long, dark cracks in the wood panelling. Strips of tattered wallpaper hung loose above the oak panels, and scraps that might have been fallen plaster from the ceiling littered the hall floor. And all-pervading was the pungency of decay, the redolent perfume of emptiness.
Robert and Simon Mariell watched him from the stairs.
His speechlessness at last broke. ‘For God’s sake – Christina!’
The two brothers smiled.
There came a quiet tapping from behind him.
Ash spun around as if he had been touched; he stepped away from the threshold.
The tapping stopped.
He cried out when the double-door was shaken in its frame by thunderous, powerful blows. The barrier strained against its hinges, the wood seeming to bow inwards, as though something were pressing from the other side; small jagged cracks appeared on the surface, joining to form a hairline pattern.
Ash slowly backed away, his eyes riveted to the bulging wood, its creaking groans abnormally loud.
Abruptly the pressure from without ceased. There was total silence.