Ladies’ Bane (4 page)

Ione looked from the window of her taxi. She had been a little disappointed that no one had met her train at Wraydon, but of course there might have been half a dozen good reasons for that-and at least two bad ones. Unlike as they were in most things, she and Allegra had one thing in common, railway timetables just failed to penetrate any intelligence they might be supposed to possess. She did not think that she had given Allegra the wrong time of arrival, but she would not have cared to be dogmatic about it. On the other hand, it was more than likely that Allegra might have read the figures upside-down, or inside-out, or any which way. After all, there was no particular point about being met. She got her luggage into a taxi, learned that it was two and a half miles to Bleake, and gave herself up to an interested survey of the landscape.

The first thing that met her eye was an enormous poster on the hoarding which decorated the station enclosure.

COMING NEXT WEEK

FERRINGTON’S FAMOUS FOLLIES

WITH

THE GREAT PROSPERO

UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY

UNRIVALLED ATTRACTION

The yellow and black of the poster flashed past. She had to lean forward to catch the last of it. They emerged from the station yard upon the ordinary surroundings of a country town, not looking their best in the grey light of a January afternoon. There was an hour of daylight still to come, but it was being economically, not to say parsimoniously, distributed. Sunset and the falling of the dark might have been just round the corner of any of half a dozen gloomy streets. As the houses grew smaller and thinned out, the surrounding country was seen to be of an agricultural nature, but when presently they took a turn to the right they were in a lane with high hedgerows and the ground began to rise.

After quite a steep climb they crossed a main road, entered another lane, and came down into the village of Bleake. Even under this dull sky it was attractive-the village street wide, with cottages set back amongst gardens which would display a bright patchwork of flowers in spring and summer-the church with a low, squat tower and a high holly hedge broken by standards fancifully clipped. So far from living up to its name of Bleake, the place had a quiet sheltered look. The trees grew straight and shapely, with none of that tortured straining to get away from the wind which is the unmistakable mark of the place which is really exposed to stormy weather. It lay in the grey light with an air of content.

They drove right through the village past the church and what was obviously the parsonage, and turned in between grey stone pillars. There was a lodge, but the gates were open. The drive rose a little and came out upon a modest sweep. They had arrived.

Standing there ringing the bell, seeing her luggage off the car and paying the driver, Ione was too close to the house to get any real view of it. She had a general impression of grey walls and tangles of creepers. And then the door was opened by a man, and she came into a square hall with a single small light burning at the foot of a stair going up between dark panelled walls. The man was youngish. He had a sharp hatchet face and light eyes.

She had just got as far as this, when a door on the right of the hall was thrown open and a girl ran out. It was Geoffrey’s ward, Margot Trent. Ione knew her at once. She had been the unwanted bridesmaid at Allegra’s wedding-a lumpy girl in her middle teens with the misplaced sense of humour which runs to practical jokes. She had stuck a drawing-pin through Allegra’s train at the wedding, but had fortunately been detected in the act by one of the Miller twins. She was still plump and still hearty. She advanced upon Ione with a boisterous “Hullo!” and then just stood in the middle of the hall and shouted,

“Geoffrey-Allegra-she’s come!”

They emerged from the room out of which Margot had come, in that order.

Ione felt a quick unreasonable resentment. Everyone in that room must have heard the car drive up, but it was left for a servant to open the door. And after the servant Margot,-Geoffrey who had to be shouted for, and only at the long last of it Allegra.

What was the matter with Allegra that she couldn’t be the first to meet her sister? All the time she was shaking hands with Geoffrey and touching Allegra’s cold hand and colder cheek the question repeated itself-what was the matter with Allegra? She had always been a little creature, small and pale and slight, but now she looked as if any breath of wind might blow her away. The fair hair, thistledown-soft and light, was cut in a square bob to frame the little pointed face. Two years ago there had been a delicate, elusive charm, and the grey-blue eyes had had their moments of being really blue. Now there was a greyness over all the soft pastel tints. Ione told herself that it was the gloomy hall, the sparse lighting, and the stupidly bright lipstick which Allegra had applied to her pallid mouth. But when they came into the drawing-room the greyness was still there, like mould on a sickly plant.

Geoffrey Trent could not have been more charming. If Ione’s welcome had been momentarily delayed, it could hardly have been warmer now.

“We began to think that you were never coming to see us-weren’t we, Allegra? And she has wanted you so much. You know, we are planning to buy the house if the trustees will let us. It really is an opportunity not to be missed. It is the most delightful place. The dower house of the Falconers, you know. Another of our good old families come to an end. They trace their descent from Robert, Head Falconer to Edward III, who gave him these lands. Pity, isn’t it, but the last poor chap was killed in the war, and there’s no one left but an old spinster aunt. The big house was bombed during the war, and she can’t afford to live here, so she is willing to sell. It’s a case of one man’s misfortune being another’s opportunity, I’m afraid. But of course we should really be doing her a good turn, because she needs the money. Now don’t you call this a perfectly charming room? Put on all the lights, Margot, so that she can see it properly!”

The lights were in the ceiling and in two clusters of candles held by gilt sconces on either side of a white marble mantelpiece. As they all came on, the grey sky outside darkened and receded, and the room sprang into light and faint, delicate colour. A lovely room, with its brocaded curtains, its carpet in soft pastel shades, the loose covers upon its chairs and the deep comfortable couch taking up the dim hyacinth and rose and lilac of the curtains. A very charming room, and one which should have been just the right background for Allegra. And it wasn’t. Amidst all these lovely gradations of tone she was like a false note in a melody-off the note and out of key where she ought to have been in her own right place.

The impression deepened painfully as Ione listened to Geoffrey talking about the house, and about how much Allegra loved it. When he appealed to her she said, “Yes” or “No” in a little flat voice. When Ione spoke to her she answered her with dragging words. Of course she had never been a talker, and Geoffrey talked so much. Ione thought, “He
is
sinfully goodlooking.” It was Elizabeth Tremayne who had said that at the wedding. And a lot more too! “Darling, I wouldn’t marry him for anything in the world! It would be like having to live with the Crown Jewels! I mean,
someone
is simply bound to be trying to snatch him all the time!”

She pushed Elizabeth away with resentment. What a thing to remember! And Fenella had quoted it too-Anyhow it wasn’t any good Geoffrey thinking he could get round her by turning on the charm-not while Allegra looked like a little disintegrating ghost.

Margot came bouncing into the room with a plate of hot scones in her hand.

“Cheer up!” she said with her mouth full. “Tea’s coming! And you’d better start on the scones while they’re hot. There’s real butter in them-I saw Mrs. Flaxman put it in. And here’s Fred with the tea!”

Geoffrey Trent turned a little, put his hand on a plump shoulder, and said in a low but quite audible voice,

“I really should prefer you to call him Flaxman.”

She broke into one of her noisy laughs.

“How snob you are, Geoff! And it’s no use-I’m just not made that way!” She thrust her plate of scones at Allegra. “Have one-they’re scrumptious!”

Geoffrey turned back to Ione with a very creditable smile.

“She’ll grow up some day,” he said indulgently. “It’s a pity she looks older than she really is.”

“She was about fifteen at the time of the wedding, wasn’t she?”

“Not so much. She is not seventeen yet.”

Flaxman had come into the room and was setting down the tray which, with the handsome tea-service it supported, had been Cousin Eleanor’s present to Allegra. Ione thought she had never seen silver better kept. The rather aloof-looking butler obviously knew his job. She reflected that Allegra was lucky. The word dropped out of her mind like a stone falling through water.

Allegra was pouring out. When she lifted the teapot her hand shook under the weight of it and the tea splashed over on to the tray-even the milk-jug wavered. Ione came forward to take her cup and turned with it to see Jacqueline Delauny come into the room. She knew of course that they had a governess for Margot-just that, and the name, which sounded French. But Geoffrey was introducing her as Miss Delauny, and when she spoke her accent was as English as his. She did not quite know why, but she received a shock. She had, perhaps, expected someone older, but Miss Delauny was not so very young. Her voice when she spoke was deep, the words quiet and measured-nothing in fact to give Ione this feeling of having run into something quite unexpected.

She had black smooth hair breaking into a wave or two over the small, finely proportioned ears. Dark eyes with just the suspicion of a slant-or was it only the eyebrows that slanted? A mobile face without any natural advantages of feature or colouring, but all very ably assisted-the skin creamed and powdered to a magnolia pallor, the wide mouth rendered decorative by a shade of lipstick which was new to Ione. For the rest, a plain dark skirt and jumper.

As the talk about the tea-table went on, Ione began to adjust herself. There was no fault to be found in Jacqueline Delauny’s manner. She was pleasant, with just the right amount to say for herself, and she really appeared to exercise a tactful influence upon Margot Trent. If it had not been for Allegra, sitting there like her own ghost with no more to say than an occasional yes or no to a question too direct to be ignored, Ione would have found it all agreeable enough. As it was, she possessed her soul in patience against the moment when they would be alone. Allegra could hardly avoid taking her to her room or going up with her when she went to bed. She did not realize until afterwards that she had used the word
avoid
-not in fact until she was herself alone in her bedroom after the last good-night had been said. She came to it then of neccessity, because not for one moment had she and Allegra been alone. It was Jacqueline Delauny who had taken her upstairs into the room whose gay chintz curtains only partly disguised the fact that it was situated in one of the older parts of the house, and it was Jacqueline Delauny who had just left her now.

“The third door on the left is the bathroom. Margot and I are round that corner and along at the end of the passage. This is a very confusing house until you get used to it. Do you know, there are seven staircases, though it is not at all a big house.”

“Seven staircases!”

Jacqueline’s wide smile flashed out.

“Terrible, isn’t it? Mr. Trent has had two of them shut up. He will want to show you the house tomorrow. It is very interesting. Oh, there is just one thing. Perhaps it would be better if you would lock your door. Margot has improved, but she still thinks practical joking a form of humour, so perhaps-” Ione turned the key in the lock with vigour. Her first impressions about Jacqueline were gone. She seemed a friendly person with a hard enough job on her hands. She found herself wondering if Margot was really quite normal.

She had a bath. The water boiling, a good deal to her surprise. She wondered if it was Geoffrey, or some previous tenant, whom she had to thank for that. It cost a pretty penny to provide new plumbing and an up-to-date heating system in a house which has started life somewhere back in the fourteenth century. Geoffrey had announced the date with pride at dinner. Now, as her hot bath began to run away, Ione wondered how much of his, and how much of Allegra’s money had also gone down the drain.

She told herself it wasn’t her business, and went back to her room. As she opened the door, a large wet bath sponge fell on her head. Since she was wearing a bath-cap and a towelling-robe, the chief damage was a horrid dark patch on the carpet. When she had rubbed it as dry as she could, it still looked rather too much like a bloodstain to be comfortable. You wouldn’t think of such a thing in any ordinary room of course, so why think of it now? And the carpet wasn’t even red, but a soft brownish pink. It was only where the water had darkened it that it looked as if the stain was blood.

Completely out of temper with these ridiculous fancies, with herself for having them, and with Margot Trent for having provoked them, Ione re-locked the door and got into bed. It was then, with the light turned off, that she became aware of the silence in the room. The country can be anything but quiet, but here in the Ladies’ House an extraordinary silence prevailed. The walls were so thick that each room contained its own sounds. You would not hear a step on any of those seven stairs. You would never know whether anyone moved above, or below, or even in the very next room. Each chamber as the sounds within it ceased would become its own deep well of silence in which thought and movement slowly petrified.

It didn’t really seem to matter if they did. The tides of sleep flowed in.

Allegra did not appear at breakfast. It transpired that she never did. Remembering Cousin Eleanor’s spartan upbringing, Ione found this disquieting. When she suggested taking up Allegra’s tray she got a smiling shake of the head from Geoffrey.

“There is no need. We are quite civilized-daily maid from the village to eke out the Flaxmans. And Allegra doesn’t really care about talking until she is dressed. She won’t be long, and meanwhile I am going to show you the house. It’s well worth seeing.”

It was. And there was no mistaking Geoffrey’s pride and interest. He had to catch himself up once or twice.

“I expect I sound silly, talking as if it were a kind of ancestral possession, but do you know, that is the way I began to find myself thinking about it. I’ve always had a fancy for old houses, and absurd as it may sound, this place has got me. I feel as if I had roots in it, which is of course quite ridiculous.”

It was said in a very disarming way with a rueful sparkle of the blue eyes, a humorous twist of the handsome mouth, Ione had to smile too and agree that it was ridiculous, but that places did get hold of you like that.

Geoffrey laughed.

“Well, as long as you don’t mind my getting away on my hobby horse! You see, this is really the original Manor House, built by Robert the Falconer or his son Robert-there seems to be some doubt which. Of course there are modern additions. The drawing-room and Allegra’s bedroom over it are only seventeenth-century, but take those away, and you have a compact fourteenth-century manor house with no less than seven staircases-easy access between the floors for purposes of defence-cellars under the house with a well that never runs dry, and a useful dungeon or two. Of course the windows have all been changed and enlarged, and what the house-agents call modern conveniences have been contrived. As a matter of fact we have struck it very lucky indeed. Some wealthy Americans had a lease of the house in the thirties. They wanted to buy, but young Falconer wouldn’t sell, though I believe they offered a fabulous price. As a matter of fact, both he and the American were killed in the war, and the widow went back to the States. But before all that happened they had put in some absolutely first-class plumbing, so we’ve got central heating and a continuous supply of hot water, which is more than you can say about most old houses, and a good few modern ones.”

He went on talking about the house.

“The furniture isn’t all period, thank goodness. I should draw the line at fourteenth-century chairs, and besides, don’t you think that furnishing to a period is all wrong? No one wants to go back into the dark ages and stay there, but if a family has its beginnings there, and then has the luck to go on living in a place like this for hundreds of years, they would have their old things and go on adding to them and keeping the best of what they added until every period had left its mark.” He spoke with a quick boyish enthusiasm which was very attractive.

Up to now she had neither liked nor disliked Geoffrey Trent. She simply had not known him. He was a stranger whom Allegra had met at a house-party and married within three months of that first meeting. Ione could count on the fingers of one hand the times when he and she had met. There had been a round of visits, and then the rush and scramble of the wedding. Cousin Eleanor had been too ill to have them for more than a brief week-end, but they had gone the rounds of relations of Allegra’s-friends of Geoffrey’s! Aunt Marion and Aunt Hester, Uncle Henry, and old Cousin Oliver Wayne. But on Geoffrey’s side not a single solitary relation except Margot Trent. Masses of friends of course-but a sinfully good-looking bachelor with money would certainly not lack for friends. Parties for the races, for this, for that, for everything conceivable-they simply never stopped. Allegra had been completely worn out before the wedding day. But she oughtn’t to go on looking as if she had just used up the last drop of her strength.

Right in the middle of Geoffrey showing her one of the staircases he kept locked-and a horrid dark, precipitous affair it was-she found herself saying,

“What is the matter with Allegra?”

He stopped half way through a sentence, appeared to have some difficulty in deflecting his attention from the medieval stair, and repeated his wife’s name in a tone tinged with surprise.

“Allegra?” Ione could have stamped her foot. She restrained the impulse. She had too many impulses, and she was always having to restrain them. It made life varied and interesting, but if you didn’t watch out, it could land you in a mess. She certainly didn’t want to have a row with Geoffrey, and about nothing at all. She looked at him frankly and said,

“Aren’t you worried about her? I think you ought to be. She looks dreadful.”

He frowned.

“She was tired last night.” Ione shook her head.

“Has she seen a doctor? What does he say?”

“She has seen two-one here, and one in town. They both say the same thing-she is not very strong, but there is nothing wrong with her.”

She drew a long breath of relief. She was aware that he was watching her.

“What did you think was wrong?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen her like this-no life, no interest. She didn’t even seem glad to see me.”

He gave rather a rueful smile.

“Too bad-and I’m afraid it’s all my fault. The fact is we had had a bit of a tiff, and you arrived before we had time to make it up. All over now and nothing to worry about, but Allegra is like a child, she can’t be happy if she thinks I’m vexed.” Ione felt herself put in the wrong-very charmingly, kindly, even gaily. She was a maker of mountains out of molehills. She was that immemorial butt of all comedians, the visiting in-law who is determined to find something wrong. She had a very good sketch on those lines herself, and it always went down well. She turned on what she hoped was a friendly smile and said,

“How tactless of me not to come by a later train and give you time to put things right. But I don’t see how I was to know.”

He laughed cheerfully.

“No need to worry. Our quarrels never last very long.”

He was locking the little dark stairway as he spoke.

“I think it’s better to keep it shut up-don’t you? It’s of no real use, and it’s so near this other one that anyone might make a mistake and perhaps get a nasty fall. Now, you see, this one isn’t nearly so steep.”

Like the other it was closed in by its own door and ran down between dark walls. It was certainly less precipitous, and perhaps-but she was not entirely sure upon this point-it did not smell quite so strongly of mould. It came into her mind that a medieval house might be terribly interesting to visit, but she could think of nothing she would dislike more than to have to live in one. As she followed Geoffrey up and down staircases and along narrow and most bewildering passages, the impression deepened, and she found herself dwelling passionately upon the mental picture of a perfectly modern house full of windows and without a dark corner in it anywhere.

“Now,” said Geoffrey, “this is the real gem of the place.” He opened a door, not this time upon one of those horrid enclosed stairways, but upon a flight of stone steps going down, a long way down, into a tiny banqueting hall. Barely twenty feet long, it had the height of two floors and a beautiful arched roof, the windows just glass slits in stone walls which were covered in panelling.

The first opening of the door took Ione by surprise. It was like standing on a cliff and looking down. And the place was full of shadows.

And then Geoffrey lifted his hand to a switch and all the lights came on, ten down each side of the hall, candles held in iron sconces set against the panelling, and above them in the middle of the right-hand wall, shining in red, and blue, and gold, the crest and coat-of-arms of the Falconers. The colours were bright and fresh without being garish. Geoffrey was explaining how carefully they had been restored.

“That American knew quite a lot about it. He didn’t mind how much trouble he took, or what he spent. What he kept saying was that he’d got to get everything just dead right.”

The stone steps had no railing. Ione came down them carefully. She waited until she had reached the bottom before she said,

“How do you know? About the American, I mean.”

He laughed.

“Nothing mysterious about it-Miss Falconer told me. The last survivor, you know-the one I’m trying to buy the house from. She lives here in the village in one of the cottages. Rather a come-down after this place, poor old thing, but she says she prefers it.” Ione had a warm feeling for Miss Falconer. As an alternative to living in the Middle Ages on practically nothing a year, one of the cottages which she had seen as she drove through the village sounded rather cosy. There would at any rate not be a torture chamber under the kitchen floor. As she was quite determined to be tactful, she kept these thoughts to herself, admired the old fireplace-“in its original state”-the massive stone slabs which formed the floor, and the long refectory table which with its dozen massive chairs had, so Geoffrey assured her, been here at least since Tudor times.

“We must give a dinner-party whilst you are here, and let you see it in all its glory. There’s a serving-hatch in that corner, so the food does get here hot, but those steps down from the second floor are the only way in and out unless the great doors at the end are opened, and apparently there’s a heavy tradition that that is only done for the marriage of the heir or at his funeral feast. As I told you, the last poor chap was killed in France and buried there. But Miss Falconer kept to the old custom. She had a memorial service for him in the village church, and after it the big doors were opened and all the villagers came trooping up for bread and ale, just as they had always done when the lord of the manor died.” Ione felt a shiver go over her. The place was as cold as a well. But the rest of the house was warm.

“Doesn’t the central heating get as far as this?”

“I’m afraid it doesn’t. Miss Falconer absolutely refused to let anyone touch this room, and I must say I think she was right. It’s the perfect fourteenth-century banqueting hall in miniature, and it would be sacrilege to lay a finger on it. It’s a case of piling up the old Yule log on that enormous stone hearth when we throw a party. We must get some people in whilst you are with us. But I needn’t keep you here if you’re cold. Come along up the steps again, and we’ll just go down one of our many staircases and have a look at the cellars.”

The cellars were really not so bad. The American had had them whitewashed, a triumph of common sense over the historical variety, and as the furnace which supplied the hot water system was right in the middle of them, they were neither cold nor damp. Doors stood open to allow the warm air to circulate, and there was plenty of bright electric light.

But with the opening of an arched door at the extreme end of the last cellar cheerfulness vanished from the scene. The door itself was immensely old, immensely thick, and in addition to a portentous lock there still hung from rusted staples the two iron bars with which it could be made secure. Geoffrey lifted one of them and showed her how it fitted into the slot on the other side. When the door swung back a breath of appalling cold and damp came up out of the darkness. And then, with a click, there was light striking up from below, making odd shadows on the worn stone steps. They must have been very old, or they must have been very much used.

Ione descended them with reluctance. If she hadn’t made up her mind to be tactful at all costs, she would have seen Geoffrey at Jericho or in one of his own dungeons before she would have abandoned the American’s warm and whitewashed cellars. If it hadn’t been for Allegra, she would just have stamped on one of the stone flags and said no. As it was, she went down, and it was quite the horridest place she had ever been in. Walls and floor were of stone, and they ran with a cold sweat. There were slimy trails on the stone. There was air to breathe, but it was heavy and unwholesome. Two doors stood open to the space into which the steps came down. Prison and torture chamber, as Geoffrey informed her in a robustly cheerful voice. But when he proposed to conduct her into these revolting apartments her tact gave out and she assured him with some warmth that she would take his word for what they were, and that she absolutely refused to set foot in either of them. As this appeared to amuse him, there was no harm done, and she consented to let him show her the well.

And then wished she hadn’t.

It was at the far end, and the mouth of it was covered by a heavy oak lid, but when Geoffrey drew this aside, there was no parapet, no defence against a sheer black drop. It just went straight down to its own deep hidden spring.

Geoffrey was telling her how deep it was.

“A hundred and eighty feet, and it never runs dry. That would be why Robert the Falconer built his house over it. Nobody knew when they might have to stand a siege in those days, and if you hadn’t got an unfailing spring inside your defences, you just couldn’t stay the course. Here-listen!”

He pushed a hand into his pocket, came up with a penny, and leaned forward over the middle of the well to drop it in. It was a long, dizzy time before Ione heard the faint, the very faint, sound it made when it touched the water. She said with conviction,

“Horrible! Geoffrey, I’m sorry, but I can’t do any more wells or cellars. I’ve never liked underground places, and you make it all much too vivid. So if you don’t want me to begin to scream for help-”

“Nobody would hear you if you did, my dear girl,” he said. But he was laughing and he looked pleased, so she hadn’t put her foot in it. And whether she did, or whether she didn’t, she couldn’t have endured another five minutes in this frightful place.

From half way up the steps she looked back to see Geoffrey pushing the heavy oak cover into position. She was glad to know that she need not think of the well with its black mouth gaping in the darkness when they were gone.

Geoffrey stood up, took out a handkerchief, and rubbed his hands. He came running after her, still with that laughing look on his face.