Thorn (35 page)

This was not quite what Oliver had been expecting to hear, but clearly it was going to be difficult to stop these people once they were in full flow. He listened patiently, and presently the conversation touched on Thornacre's origins. You mustn't forget the original owner of the place, said somebody, old Jeremiah Campbell who had built it for his young wife Sybilla, and then cleared off with another woman – or disappeared, anyway – and left Sybilla to go raving mad. Now old man Campbell really had left a black lot of memories behind him, say what you liked.

There was general agreement on this. Old man Campbell's wife had spent thirty years of her life shut up inside the house, screeching her mad curses against the spouse who had long since left her. Prowled around the great empty house at midnight, howling at the full moon like a she-wolf, said one of the drinkers, with unconscious poetry.

‘I heard,' said the speaker who had proffered the Nazi spy theory, ‘as how she lay dead for a month before she was found.' He took a long pull at his beer. ‘Heaving mass of maggots, she was, when they finally found her.'

‘Heaving mass of nothing!' scoffed his auditors. ‘You been at the beer again! Or you been watching those horror videos. Nightmare of the Bone Crunchers and Resurrection of the Walking Dead!'

The conversation showed signs of drifting. Oliver, wondering whether this could possibly have been Juliette's ancestress and unable to remember which of the two had done what, said, ‘But isn't Thornacre a mental home now?'

The drinkers said it was, that was very true. Properly run National Health Service now it was. But all the National Healths in the world couldn't stop ghosts, and there were some odd tales still told about the place. How people saw things there, and how, on certain nights, the ghost of old Jeremiah's lady was said to walk.

‘Maggots an' curses an' all.'

‘Oh, shut up.'

‘My cousin over at Blackmere's doing a job on the heating,' said the drinker who had told about the workhouse side and the supply of children to brothels. ‘Whole new central heating system they're having.'

‘They're being very particular about tarting the place up because of all the stuff on the TV about it being unfit and all the rest,' put in somebody.

‘That'll be that Dr Sterne,' said someone else. ‘They say he's spent no end of money.'

‘Spent no end of
somebody
's money, at any rate.'

‘Well, anyhow, my cousin said it was a revelation what he saw in the east wing,' said the first drinker, determinedly retrieving his share of the limelight. ‘A revelation, so he said.'

‘What kind of revelation?'

‘Well, he had to go into the east wing, see, on account of the old piping. Miles upon miles of old piping there is, and all of it lead. He said you wouldn't believe—'

‘Get to the point,' somebody grumbled.

‘Well, he said in that east wing there's one room where they got people who're hardly human.'

Derisory noises greeted this and doubt was cast on the cousin's reliability as a witness to anything. ‘Pissed as a fart most of the time, he is.'

‘Nothing wrong with his eyes, though. He knew what he saw. They try to keep 'em hidden away, so my cousin said, but he saw them all right.'

‘Your cousin couldn't trace a pig in a poke!'

‘I don't know about seeing inhuman beings,' said somebody else. ‘The tales you hear about Dr Sterne are enough to make your hair curl!'

‘What kind of tales?' asked Oliver.

The conversation, which had earlier shown signs of drifting towards pulp videos, now took a turn in the direction of the lascivious. Women, said the drinkers nudgingly. A
lot
of women. You wouldn't believe the women Dr Sterne was believed to get through in the course of a year. There had been that court case ten, twelve months ago: female accusing him of shagging her while she was under sedation.
And
she'd described in open court what he'd done as well. Right down to the last—

‘I remember the case,' said Oliver hastily. ‘But wasn't it proved that the woman was hallucinating? Sterne was acquitted.'

‘Tied her up and gave it to her four times without stopping, so it was said, and if that's research then I'm the King of China.'

‘Balls! Nobody can do it four times without stopping.'

‘My cousin over to Blackmere once did. When he was eighteen, it was.'

‘Your cousin over to Blackmere can't remember what he did last week, never mind when he was eighteen!'

It was the second time Blackmere had been referred to, and Oliver thought it might be used to turn the conversation. He said, ‘You mentioned Blackmere before. Where exactly is it? I'm looking around for somewhere to rent for a couple of months. Any one of the villages hereabouts would do. What's Blackmere like?'

It appeared that Blackmere was quite pretty if you liked that kind of thing. Picturesque, some people called it. It had a few houses that got let, although not generally at this time of year. Several possible addresses were offered for Oliver's consideration. Oh, and there was October House, of course, although that might be a bit large for a single gentleman. Opinions on this were divided. The owner of the place, it appeared, held weekend courses during the summer for people wanting to try their hand at firing pots, him being a potter with a proper studio and kilns and all. He made a good thing out of it if all you heard was right. But he was off lecturing at the moment, and somebody had said the house was available.

Damn, thought Oliver, ready to start again.

‘No, that's not right,' put in the drinker with the cousin. ‘October House was taken a month ago. I know that for a fact.'

‘Ah.' Oliver waited.

‘Somebody from London took it. Woman on her own – a widow with a son just died. Come up here to get over it. She's something to do with publishing in London, they say. Children's books, it is.'

Oliver said in an expressionless voice, ‘It sounds an interesting village anyway. I might drive out there after the Christmas break. Same again all round?'

To begin with, Dan had found the work for Thalia Caudle absorbing.

The first few days in October House had not been so very remarkable. Dan had been watchful and guarded; he had searched the house as far as he dared on the few occasions when Thalia had been out, but he had found nothing. Thalia had made no reference to Imogen or to Thornacre; Dan wondered if this in itself was suspicious. But he thought that while he was here, Thalia was not very likely to put in motion any evil plot against Imogen. And with the framing of this thought, Dan at once began to doubt whether Thalia had any evil plot in mind at all. Would anyone with villainous intent invite a co-writer-cum-lover to the house? Did that mean that Thalia had no villainous intent after all? Yes, but what about the head? demanded Dan's inner voice. Don't forget the head in the deep freeze. I'm not forgetting it, said Dan, crossly.

Whether Thalia had any malevolent intent or not, the first priority was to gain her trust. Dan thought he probably had that already, but it would not hurt to make sure. After that he might go out to Thornacre himself and assess the situation there. And see Imogen again, remarked the sneaky inner voice. Well, all right, it would not be a hardship to see Imogen again.

First things first, then. He drew up a strict work schedule. For the first couple of days he would collate and arrange what Thalia had done. After that he would compile a report recommending different forms in which the legends could be presented: in book-form or anthology, as straight fiction, or as educational books. There could be subdivisions relating to links with genuine historical events and persons, and also suggestions as to which legends lent themselves best to illustrations. That would probably take two or three days, and he would end by mapping out areas for future research. They would probably not actually travel anywhere which would be time-consuming, but they could note down villages and towns of interest, and list local historical societies Thalia might approach, or National Trust centres which should be visited. Locally written leaflets about little-known fragments of lore could often be found in such places. They could use the local phone directory and various tourist guides to help them, said Dan, becoming more and more interested.

But if the work was absorbing, the nights were alarming. Dan had known that this was the unspoken part of their agreement, and he had been prepared for it. He did not like Thalia very much; he was even slightly afraid of her and he was sickened every time he remembered what he had found in the Great Portland Street flat. But she was attractive and companionable and easy to be with; he had actually felt rather pleased to walk into a motorway restaurant for a break during the journey here, and then later into a pub where they had lunch. She was no raving beauty, but she was unusual-looking, and most people, having looked once, looked a second time at her. And feeling sickened at what he had found in London did not seem to be affecting his physical responses. He tried to analyse this and thought it was because he was identifying Thalia so strongly with Margot, and the opportunity to explore Margot's dark seductive mind, to talk to the person he had created and to share her bed, was irresistible. He would defy any writer confronted with one of his characters in the flesh
not
to succumb to that lure! Imagine Tolstoy talking to Anna, or Shakespeare to Lady Mac, or Miss Austen drinking sherry with Mr Darcy. Dan jotted the idea down to be used for something or other sometime or other, and returned to
The Lay of the Last Minstrel
which, considering his own situation up here, struck him as apt.

Each night, with the work finished and a meal eaten and wine drunk; with the curtains drawn against the bleak northern nights and a single muted light illuminating the room, he was drawn helplessly down into a sensuous shadowland place where nothing existed save the whisper of skin on skin, and where little silk-mittened, velvet cat-claws travelled across his body, sometimes scratching and drawing blood, and where tongues and teeth licked and bit, and bodies jerked into helpless and frequently exhausted climaxes.

But even while his body was reacting with such violent arousal, even while his mind was drinking in Margot's strong invisible aura, he was aware that Thalia or Margot – or perhaps both of them – were edging him nearer and nearer to the line that divided intimacy and perversion. It was so far so good, thought Dan, but if there should be any attempt to drag him over that line he would baulk and then the spell would shatter. It would no longer be a question of, ‘Then exercise your craft and your sullen art in the still night, Lady,' or even, ‘Down, wanton, down.' It would be more a case of, Let me get the hell out of here.

But nobody tried to drag anybody anywhere. Nobody crossed any Rubicons and nobody forded any rivers – Jordan or otherwise. The allotted week slid into ten days almost without him minding.

And then, on the night before he was intending to leave, with his case packed in the hall, and a farewell supper eaten, she caught him with a ruse so ridiculously simple that Dan did not see through it until it was too late. Something caught in one of the attics, she had said, coming into the kitchen where Dan was pouring the coffee to drink after their meal. Something fluttering about up there. A bird, probably. Poor thing. She had sounded indifferent.

‘We ought to let it out,' Dan said, looking up. ‘If it's trapped it'll die.'

‘All right. Will you do it or shall I?'

She had known, the bitch, that he would offer to do it. She had known he would go up to the dark gusty attic in the dark, taking a strong torch, treading warily and softly up the narrow creaking stair, trying not to alarm the bird or the squirrel or the baby owl that might be trapped and flapping about.

She had followed him, and as he stood in the attic doorway she had given him a sudden hard push – her hands had been strong and he had been taken off guard and off balance. He had fallen forward, and before he could right himself, she had slammed the attic door hard.

There was a grating sound as the lock turned and then there was the sound of a bolt sliding home. As Thalia went back down the narrow stairs, her mad laughter filled the dark attic.

Manipulating Dan Tudor, and finally trapping him, had been immensely exciting.

Thalia had been drugging him ever since his arrival in order to take the edge off his awareness and quench any suspicions he might have. She had done it carefully and subtly and he had not guessed. John Shilling had prescribed the sedatives when Edmund died to help her sleep, and Thalia had given Dan a double measure each night, crushing the pills in soup or in their after-supper coffee. Once or twice he had looked vaguely disoriented, and once or twice he had appeared to lose the thread of a conversation, but that was all. It had certainly not blunted his sexual awareness.

The work he had done on the folk legends was brilliant; after he was dead it could be presented as Thalia's own, which would give authenticity to her excuse for being in Northumberland.

With Dan safely locked up, she would sleep in the bed that would be Edmund's now; in the large room where the pear tree cast its latticed shadow on the walls. She felt nearer to him there than anywhere else now.

As she drifted towards sleep, she began to plan her next move, which was to find what would probably be her last accomplice. The Porter woman had served as an accomplice of sorts, she had been useful, but she was another whose usefulness was ending. Someone different was needed now; there were things that had to be done that required more physical strength than Thalia possessed and which required less squeamishness than Dan possessed. There had been a time when she had considered involving Dan but he was too fastidious. Once or twice during their times together Thalia had sensed a mental flinching.

What was needed now was a jackal, a stooge. Ideally it should be someone who could be dominated, or who could be bribed or coerced or just plain terrorised into doing what she wanted. Someone whose actions might seem a little mad to the rest of the world but who would actually have a very serious purpose indeed. And if you wanted someone whose actions would seem a little mad, where else did you look but inside a madhouse?