Sorcerer's House Page 2

  He looked round the raftered room with approval. There was a soothing atmosphere of rest and peace. It had enveloped him when he stepped out of the train at the little railway station and it had remained with him during the drive through the winding leafy lanes and twisting white roads. His father had been right, he thought. It’s got everything…

  Even a haunted house...

  He got up and went over to the window. Beyond the veil of rain that glistened in the light from the lamp was dense blackness. He could see nothing of Threshold House now, but he had seen it. A great gabled house in a half screen of trees on the brow of a hill, momentarily visible in the blue-white glare of the lightning. It had been so clear that he had seen the window of the Long Room, which almost directly faced him, half hidden by a smother of ivy...

  The gutters were gurgling and water was splashing somewhere from a blocked drainpipe, but the air was blessedly cool and fresh after the abnormal, prickly heat of the day. He pressed out the stub of his cigarette in a little beaten brass ashtray. He didn’t feel like sleeping, but there was nothing else to do but go to bed. The Onslow-Whites had gone an hour ago— Flake had gone to bed early. By now she was probably fast asleep…

  Flake…?

  When she had told him her name, she had seen his eyebrows rise and laughed.

  “I was called Flake because my name’s White,” she explained. “It’s a kind of English humour that I expect you’ll find hard to appreciate.”

  He had not found it hard to appreciate Flake.

  He liked her soft, black, glossy hair and the way she had of crinkling her nose when she laughed, and the neatness of her feet and ankles. He had been told that the majority of Englishwomen had clumsy feet and thick ankles, and generally lacked the smartness of the American woman, but, even before he had met Flake, he had decided that this was an exaggeration. He had seen plenty of smart women during his two days in London.

  Only Flake had an appeal for him that these had not.

  She was so cool and fresh—like the English countryside with the dew on it...

  He wandered about the room smoking and thinking of Flake and trying to make up his mind to undress and get into bed. A moth flew in through the open window and bumped against the lampshade. Its shadow, huge and distorted, was reflected on the white-washed wall. He paused to watch it as it crawled up the shade, with wings fluttering busily, and then flew round and under, banging itself again and again against the naked bulb, A gust of wind bellied the flimsy curtains and he looked round, startled, to stand suddenly rigid.

  There was a light in the window of the Long Room…!

  He stared out through the curtain of rain at that dim oblong of light shining in the darkness, while the moth battered itself uselessly against the lampshade.

  There must be some mistake, he thought. There couldn’t be light there. His eyes were playing tricks, or had he mistaken the direction of Threshold House…? But he very quickly realized that there was no mistake. There was a light, dim and misty, but unmistakably real.

  And it came from the window of the Long Room…

  He glanced at his wristwatch. It was nearly one o’clock. The story told to him by Flake and her father came surging up in his mind, and once again he heard Avril Ferrall’s odd remark ‘There was a light in the window last night. I wonder who is going to die this time…?’ And suddenly an overwhelming desire to know took possession of him.

  Hurriedly he put on a pair of thick shoes and struggled into a raincoat. He would find out what caused that light; see for himself what there was in the Long Room of the ruined house...

  Quietly he opened his bedroom door and slid out into the darkness of the passage. The whole house was still and he paused for an instant to get his bearings. The staircase was to his right... He guided himself towards it with his fingertips lightly touching the wall, felt with an exploring foot for the first stair, and descended cautiously.

  It took him some time to draw back the front door bolts and unfasten the chain without making a noise, but he managed it, and opening the door, stepped out into the rain. It wasn’t quite so violent as it had been but heavy enough. He groped his way to the gate, and stood for a moment irresolute. There was no sign of a light, now, to guide him. The window of the Long Room was not visible from ground level. However, he knew roughly the direction in which Threshold House lay, and he set off as quickly as he could through the drenched darkness.

  The rain got in his eyes and blinded him, and he splashed through puddles and semi-liquid mud. He bore to the left, which he knew was the direction he should go, and blundered into a fence. The impact made him gasp, but he recovered himself and with difficulty clambered over. On the other side was a steep and muddy bank down which he slithered, and found himself ankle-deep in water. Floundering through it he came to long grass and, although he could see nothing, guessed that he was in a meadow. His hair was hanging in wet streaks over his forehead, and he brushed it out of his eyes. His shoes and trousers were sodden and the water was trickling down his neck in cold rivulets.

  The meadow ended abruptly, and he was suddenly in the middle of a thicket that tore at his coat and scratched his hands and face. Brambles twined about his ankles and nearly tripped him up, and then the ground began to slope upwards, and he knew that he must be getting near his destination. He peered through the rain, striving to catch a glimpse of the light which had brought him out on this lunatic errand, but there was nothing but darkness—a darkness that was so intensely black that it looked solid. He felt that another step forward would bring him sharply up against it like a wall. With his arms stretched out before him to give warning of any obstacles in the way, he stumbled and groped his way onward. The ground rose under his feet more and more steeply, and presently he actually came to a wall. The weeds grew thickly at its base and it was covered with ivy, but his fingers felt the brick beneath.

  He paused, a little breathless from his exertions. He had no idea how high the wall was. With his arm stretched up to its full extent he could feel no sign of the top. His best course would be to follow it in the hope that he would come across an opening of some kind.

  He moved along by the wall, touching the ivy every foot or so to make sure that he had not strayed away from it in the dark.

  The ground was rough and uneven, and once he fell over a piece of rubble and smothered himself from head to foot with mud.

  The rain had increased. It was coming down again in a cataract of water that drummed and hissed around him and splashed up from the sodden earth. It seemed that he had been following the wall for miles before his finger suddenly touched wet and rusty iron and he knew, from the feel of it, that it was a gate.

  He pushed, and it opened stiffly and unwillingly. Beyond, in that cavern of blackness, he concluded, there must be some sort of path up to the house—probably the main drive, judging from the size of the gate. The falling rain was less heavy here and he thought that this was probably due to the thick foliage of overhanging trees. He pulled out his lighter and snapped it on, sheltering the feeble flame in the cup of his hand. He caught a glimpse of wet bark and a dense shrubbery with a curving weed-grown drive vanishing into it, and then the flame of the lighter went out as a raindrop fell on the little wick.

  But he had seen enough to show him the way, and pressed forward.

  He hoped that he would know when he came in sight of the house by the light, but nothing dissipated the intense darkness. It occurred to him that he might have lost his sense of direction and come to the wrong house, but he remembered the momentary sight of the neglected drive before the lighter went out, and decided that it was unlikely there would be two empty houses of such a size in close proximity.

  And then there was a sudden flicker of lightning and he knew that he had come to the right place…

  The house rose up before him less than ten yards away, ivy-covered, with broad, broken steps leading up to an overhanging porch. The darkness swallowed it up again but he had seen enough to b
e assured that he had made no mistake.

  The window of the Long Room must be round at the side. As near as he could tell, that would bring it in a direct line with Bryony Cottage.

  The drive divided in front of the steps, going right and left. Alan took the left, and found that his calculations had been correct. The thick shrubbery and trees ended abruptly, and out of the waste of blackness, bleary from the falling rain, shone a lighted window—the window of his bedroom at Bryony Cottage, in which he had left the lamp burning.

  But there was no light from the dark mass of Threshold House.

  It blended with and was lost in the night. Whatever had originally caused that dim, uncertain glow in the window of the Long Room was no longer there....

  He stood looking up with the rain beating down on his face, trying to distinguish the outline of the gable from the surrounding darkness. He must, he thought, be standing almost under that oblong window from which the light had glimmered, but he could see nothing…

  He took a step forward, wiping the water from his eyes with a wet hand, and stumbled over something that was soft—like a sodden sack filled with grain. His heart jumped in his chest and he felt suddenly breathless.

  Like a sodden sack of grain but different…

  He stooped, groping frantically in the darkness. His hands felt a cold face and wet hair and the slimy chill of a wet mackintosh…his fingers touched something about the head that was a different wetness…

  He crouched motionless, and a coldness that was not of the rain crept stealthily up his spine.

  The tramp who had died…from a smashed-in skull.

  He fought the panic of fear that suddenly came over him. This thing that lay soaking in the rain and mud was real. It had substance…

  A sound reached him—a sound that was superimposed on the beating and hissing of the rain—and he jerked up his head and listened.

  Somebody was coming up the drive...

  A flicker of a light shone among the dripping bushes, and he called sharply and curtly, “Who’s there…who’s that?”

  “Is that you, Mr, Boyce?” came the answer, and he realized, with a flood of relief, that it was Flake.

  “Yes,” he said. “Don’t come any further. Stay where you are—”

  “What’s the matter?” Her voice was high pitched, betraying the state of her nerves.

  “There's been some sort of an accident,” he answered. “There’s somebody here—on the path. It’s a man, I think—”

  He heard her sudden gasp.

  “Do you…mean he’s dead?” she asked.

  “I…don’t know. I can’t see. If you give me your torch I’ll have a look...” He straightened up and moved towards her.

  “Where is he?” she said as he came into the light. “Under…under the…window?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Give me your torch and stay where you are…”

  She thrust it into his hand and he retraced his steps. The torch was not very bright, but it was bright enough. A man lay sprawling on his back, his eyes wide open to the wet sky; the sodden ground red under his head...

  It was Paul Meriton.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Alan Boyce felt suddenly sick. The light of the torch wavered over the wet ground, and the thing that lay there, as his twitching nerves reacted to the shock.

  Paul Meriton…

  He steadied the light with an effort and forced himself to look at the upturned face.

  “What’s the matter? Why don’t you say something…?” Flake’s voice, with a queer little catch in it, dispelled the wild images that were forming in his mind.

  “I’m coming,” said Alan. He walked unsteadily over to where he had left her. “Where does Dr. Ferrall live?” he asked abruptly.

  Her dark eyes, curiously enlarged and luminous in the white oval of her face, looked up at him inquiringly.

  “Dr. Ferrall? Why? Has there…?”

  “Yes,” he nodded. “Your friend Meriton’s over there…”

  “Paul?” She sounded suddenly shrill with surprise and alarm.

  “Yes. He’s…dead, I’m afraid… No, don’t go....” He stopped her as she made a movement forward. “It’s not a very nice sight...”

  “How—” she said in a voice that now had a peculiar flat quality, “how did...he die?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered evasively. “That’s for the doctor to say—”

  “How do you think he died?” she insisted.

  He remembered the sticky feeling of the head under his touch, and the red pool in which it lay…

  “From a smashed skull,” he said. “Look here,” he added quickly, taking her arm, “hadn’t we better find Ferrall? We ought to do something... at once...”

  “Yes, I suppose so.” She was staring into the darkness beyond him with a look so intent that, involuntarily, he half turned. “I wonder what he was doing here—?”

  “Maybe he saw the light, too,” he suggested, and she nodded.

  “You saw it, didn’t you?” she said. “That’s why you came.”

  “Yes, I was curious...”

  “I heard you go out,” she went on, almost as though he hadn’t spoken. “I guessed you were coming here and followed you. I was curious, too...”

  “You saw the light from your window?” he asked and without waiting for her answer: “There was no light when I got here...”

  He felt her give a sudden shiver.

  “Let’s go,” she said, turning sharply.

  They hurried down the dark drive, the falling rain glistening in the light from the torch.

  “Which way did you come?” asked Flake as they reached the gate, and he explained as far as he was able.

  “I know,” she interrupted him. “I came the longer way round. It’s longer but it’s easier… No, not that way. I’ll show you...”

  She bore to the right outside the gates, along a rutted road that dipped steeply.

  “This takes us straight down to the village,” she said. “Dr. Ferrall’s house is on the Green...”

  The road was little more than a series of rivulets in semi-liquid mud. They had to walk on the rough grass verge, and even then it was so slippery they found it difficult to keep their feet. Flake was wearing tennis shoes with crepe-soles, sodden and mud-stained.

  “How do you think it happened… Paul, I mean?” she said, breaking a short silence. “How could he have hurt his head like that?”

  “It looks to me,” answered Alan slowly, “as though he had fallen from the window...”

  “Like the tramp,” whispered Flake. “Just like the tramp....”

  “There must be a natural explanation,” he said. “Anything else just isn’t possible—”

  “That’s what I thought. I didn’t believe there was anything in the story of the light...”

  “Go on believing there isn’t,” said Alan. “Meriton may have gone to have a look over the house for some reason or other—after all it was his property, wasn’t it? That would account for the light...” He felt that it was rather a lame suggestion, and Flake evidently thought so, too, for she said:

  “On a night like this—at one o’clock? Don’t be silly!”

  “It’s not as silly as believing in ghosts,” he retorted. “Supposing he did go there. He could quite easily have fallen out the window in the dark.”

  “But why should he go there at all?” she said.

  He tried to think of a reasonable explanation and failed. “What’s the good of speculating? He did go there…and he met with an accident in the dark...”

  “Avril won’t believe it was an accident,” she said. “Not when she hears how…how it happened.”

  “Stop thinking about it,” said Alan, almost roughly. “There’s nothing to it, I tell you. Only a coincidence—”

  “You’re not really trying to convince me,” she said with unexpected shrewdness. “You’re trying to convince yourself...” The denial that came swiftly to his lips remained unuttered. Was she r
ight? Was he trying to convince himself that Meriton’s death had nothing to do with the local superstition?

  “I understand how you feel about it,” Flake went on. “It’s not a practical explanation, is it? And you’re very practical...”

  “I suppose I am—in some things,” he admitted. “I don’t like my credulity strained too far.”

  She was silent. They came out through a short lane to the fringe of the Green.

  “Dr. Ferrall’s house is over there—on the other side,” she said.

  They crossed the Green diagonally. The rain was falling heavily and running in little streams from the rats’-tails of his hair. Flake’s transparent mackintosh looked as if it had been dipped in oil. Somewhere, a long way away, thunder was still rumbling at intervals.

  “Here it is,” said Flake.

  They stopped before a closed wooden gate set in a neat hedge. Beyond he could see a short-flagged path between beds of flowers. He pushed the gate, and it swung open. He held it for Flake to pass through.

  “They’ll be asleep,” she whispered.

  “He’s got a ‘night bell’, hasn’t he?” said Alan, and she nodded.

  He let go of the gate and it shut on a spring with a thud. The porch of the house faced them; an oblong black smudge that changed into a green-painted door, with brass knocker and letter box, under the light from the torch. Two brass bell-pushes labelled ‘day’ and ‘night’ were set in the right-hand frame.

  Alan pressed his finger on the ‘night’ push, and waited. After a little while, as nothing happened, he pressed it again. Almost before he could remove his finger, the door opened and orange light flooded them.

  “Who is it?” demanded the voice of Dr. Ferrall curtly, and then:

  “Flake! What the devil are you doing here? Is—?”

  “Something’s happened to Paul,” interrupted Flake breathlessly. “Can we come in for a minute?”