Thorn (37 page)

It could not be helped. Oliver shrugged himself into a duffel coat, wound a scarf round his neck, found his glasses for driving, and went down the stairs. From the bar came the sounds of revelry, and in the small oak-beamed dining room several family parties were assembling. The entire ground floor was redolent with the scent of cooking. Roast turkey and all its accompaniments.

His car had been standing outside in the rain for a good eighteen hours and it took a bit of starting. Oliver blew on his hands for warmth, banged the accelerator down hopefully a few times, and at length the engine chugged into life.

A thin, icy rain was falling as he drove out of Thornacre, and every house he passed had lights burning at the windows. Each one was a tiny lit stage, with families in varying stages of Christmas celebrations: tables were being set for meals, and there were trees with winking lights and paper decorations inside, and holly wreaths outside on front doors. The pundits said that Christmas was a fraught time for many people, a time of tension, what with so many families being awkwardly split these days, what with single parent families and unemployment. Not everyone enjoyed spending time with relations and not everyone could afford to buy presents, or extra food. Not everyone wanted to be cooped up in the kitchen, cooking.

But driving past the houses, Oliver had only the impression of happiness and warmth and normality in each one. He and Dan had almost always been together at Christmas, either in London, meeting Dan's friends, some of whom Oliver knew, most of whom he liked; or in Oxford, where Oliver's colleagues would include him and Dan in family meals. It suddenly felt vastly and painfully wrong to be out here like this, completely alone. However much you enjoyed solitude and your own company, if you were alone on Christmas Day you felt wrong. You felt isolated. Oliver liked his own company; he was used to being on his own and comfortable about it, but now he felt appallingly lonely. He should have turned this whole thing over to the police at the beginning. He was mad to be out here on Christmas Day, chasing a wild goose or a mare's nest through a driving rainstorm.

He nearly missed October House, but Blackmere was even tinier than Thornacre village and there were only a very few houses that met the description. Oliver eliminated them carefully as he drove. But when he finally found the wrought-iron gates with the stone pillars and the carved sign that said October House, the place looked deserted. Oliver parked on the grass verge and walked back to the gates. The rain was edged with ice now as if it was turning to sleet, and he hunched his shoulders against it and dug his hands into his coat pockets.

The gates were uncompromisingly locked and they were high and strong. There was a high brick wall and a thick hedge. Oliver contemplated climbing over the gates and decided against it. There was no legitimate reason for committing trespass; there were any number of reasons why Thalia Caudle should have taken a house up here, the most obvious and innocent being to visit the girl who was in Thornacre. If that was the case, Thalia had almost certainly gone to Thornacre itself to spend Christmas Day there. Oliver tried to remember if Juliette had said how old the girl was, and thought she had not.

The only thing to do was to return to the Black Boar and get through the rest of Christmas Day. He would come back here tomorrow or the day after. Perhaps he could leave a note, asking Thalia Caudle to contact him at the Black Boar. Yes, that was a good idea. There was a postbox set into the gate. He could say quite openly that he was looking for his brother who seemed to have vanished, and that the trail had led him up here. In the meantime, he would have to make sure that it really was Thalia Caudle who was living up here. The local post office or village shop might tell him.

The visibility on the way back was even worse. Oliver hunched over the wheel, peering through the dark afternoon and the lashing rain. His glasses wouldn't stay put and he had to keep pushing them back up, which was a nuisance. What with that and continually having to wipe condensation off the windscreen it would be easy to miss a turning here, in fact he was beginning to think he had missed it. Yes, he had come too far along this road, which meant he had to turn round somehow and go back. Damn.

It was as he was reversing cautiously into a side road that the car's headlights picked out the sign on the grass verge. ‘Thornacre House. Private road.'

Dan's nightmare mansion.

Oliver looked at it for a moment, and then swung the steering wheel across and turned towards it.

The malevolent ugliness of the real thing was like a sharp, jabbing blow under his ribs. Oliver stopped the car abruptly and sat staring up at the house. A cold darkness eeled around his mind.

Thornacre House was a grim place, even viewed from the road through a silver beaded curtain of rain and through the old trees that had grown up around it. Oliver stared at it and thought: how did Dan describe it so accurately? There were the ill-proportioned wings, the eastern one larger than the west, and there was the humped roofline, giving the place a lumpish, grotesque appearance, as if a hunchbacked giant was crawling across the landscape on all fours. It was an ogre's castle, it was Macbeth's ruinous Dunsinane or Bram Stoker's Carfax Abbey.

And it was Rosamund's sea fortress on the jutting rock face. There to one side was the haunted west wing which Dan had used for chapter fifteen, in which Rosamund, with the companion who had determinedly and faithfully accompanied her, had hidden from the blood-hungering Margot. Dan appeared to have created this companion as a kind of female second lead, a back-up heroine to keep the reader's interest during Rosamund's long inactivity; he had made her a distant cousin of the family, a girl who had been callously abandoned by her husband and who was therefore broke and glad of a bit of practical help. Oliver thought she was rather an interesting character. He suspected that Dan was quite fond of her.

Dan had described his house's history in the same chapter: how its origins went back and back like twisted black roots into the ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom that had once been called Bernicia. Thornycroft Hill had been a sea fortress, and of course Thornacre was miles from the North Sea and there was no rock face within view. No, but the barren wastes of the Northumberland landscape were here, said Oliver's mind. And the desolate, rolling moors of Bernicia, where the ancient beasts of paganism and myth once prowled and from the look of this place might still do so.

He switched the ignition on again and reversed erratically down the narrow road, back to the Black Boar.

He shied away from going into the inn's crowded dining room or the bar, even though the landlord was encouraging about the degree of conviviality that he would find if he did so.

‘You'd be made welcome at any of the tables, Dr Tudor, that I do know.'

‘It's very kind, but I'd rather not.'

‘A few games laid on after everyone's eaten, and a bit of a sing-song – good fun it'll be.'

Dan would probably have entered into the spirit of the celebrations with enthusiasm and discovered a few kindred spirits among the people in the dining room – he might have discovered a female companion to spend the night with as well. In any event, he would have enjoyed the motley group of people. But to Oliver the prospect was terrifying. He thanked the landlord but said he would prefer to go up to his room, and asked if it would be possible to have a tray of food sent up. ‘Anything will do – I don't want to put your kitchen staff to trouble. An omelette, or even soup and sandwiches . . .

But the landlord was genuinely horrified at the idea of anyone dining off sandwiches on Christmas Day. Oliver had barely had time to don a dry shirt and was still towelling his hair from the rain when there was a knock on the door and a tray appeared, laden with a plateful of sliced turkey which was flanked with roast and creamed potatoes, Brussels sprouts, cranberry sauce, and buttered carrots. A generous helping of plum pudding lay under a lidded dish, with brandy sauce, and whoever had set the tray had dug out a bottle of claret which was apparently presented with the landlord's compliments.

‘Thank you very much,' said Oliver, helplessly.

The little waitress asked if there was anything else she could do. Did he need any help to dry his hair – shockingly wet he'd got, hadn't he?

‘No, truly, I can manage perfectly well.'

‘I've got a hair dryer – my room's only up the stair. My name's Michelle, by the way.'

‘It's very kind of you, Michelle, but I really won't trouble you.'

It was nice of the little waitress to offer the loan of a hair dryer. Oliver remembered that northern people were supposed to be famous for their hospitality. Here was proof.

He finished towelling his hair dry, and set the pages of manuscript on the small table under the window. He found his glasses, and while he ate the very good Christmas food, he went on reading Dan's book. He thought it was good. He thought this was a publishable, potentially successful book. If Dan never reappeared – this was a truly appalling idea, but it had better be faced – if Dan never reappeared, Oliver would try to get the book published for him. He had himself written and had published a couple of academic textbooks, one about Lady Jane Grey and one about the early years of Elizabeth Tudor. They had been scholarly and there had been much cross-referencing and considerable listings of various primary sources. The indexing had taken nearly as long to sort out as the actual writing, and Oliver had enjoyed it all immensely. But he had absolutely no idea how you went about getting fiction published. Dan's agent would be the person to ask, of course. He read on, increasingly absorbed.

A second waitress collected the tray midway through the afternoon. She seemed inclined to linger, smoothing down the bed, which as far as Oliver could tell did not need smoothing down, and perching on it while she asked if he was having a nice time and whether he would maybe like a bit of company for an hour or so.

The staff here really were enormously friendly, although the fact of it being Christmas Day might have something to do with it. Even so, he must remember to express his appreciation to the landlord when he checked out. But for the moment he did not want any company; he wanted to get through this wretched Christmas Day as quickly as possible and reach a time when he could investigate October House. In the meantime, he wanted to finish reading Dan's manuscript. He said, as politely as possible, that he had a great deal of work to do. The waitress seemed to find this a matter for regret. If he should want anything, she said, anything at all, he must ring the bell and ask. He might like to ask for her personally; her name was Sharon.

‘I'll remember,' said Oliver firmly, and held the door open so that she could manipulate the tray.

Dan's Rosamund and the companion-cum-friend, Anne-Marie, were being drawn deeper into the web of intrigue. Anne-Marie had been enticed away by the evil Margot and her fate was still uncertain, although if Margot's track record was anything to go by, it would be unpleasant. She was locked up in a dank wash house adjoining Margot's house which, in the best tradition of these things, was a rather isolated place, surrounded by trees. October House, thought Oliver, with the familiar chill. This was reporting before the event, not after it.

He paused, and glanced towards the uncurtained window. Rain was driving against the glass again, and even at four o'clock in the afternoon it was necessary to have the lights on. He shivered and got up to draw the curtains. The radiator could apparently be turned up or down, but Oliver knew from experience that the minute you touched a radiator something fell off or started to leak or even rendered the entire system out of order, and so he left it alone. There was a small two-bar electric fire which he switched on, and there was also a drain of claret left in the bottle. He poured this out, and with the room filling up with warmth now, stepped back into Dan's remarkable story.

Anne-Marie was safely hidden and Margot was intending to wait for the hue and cry surrounding the girl's disappearance to die down before going for Rosamund. In the meantime, she was considering the idea of an accomplice.

Oliver paused before turning the page. What kind of accomplice would Dan have given his archvillainess? That traditional witch's familiar, a dwarf? Or maybe a deaf mute so that he could not betray her if things went wrong. Assuming that things did go wrong. Dan would undoubtedly give this contemporary fairy story the correct, moral ending, which meant that Margot could not be allowed to get away with any of her evil. It was remarkable how strongly Margot came off the page and took shape in the small bedroom. Oliver thought Dan might have had a bit of trouble controlling her, and then pushed this rather sinister thought firmly away.

While Margot was weighing ways and means and considering who to inveigle to her side, the venal Dr Bentinck moved centre stage. Dan had written a scene where Bentinck sat at Rosamund's bedside, projecting his rather warped lusts on to her, turning back the sheets with slow, sensuous anticipation, and feasting his eyes on her near naked form. It was curiously distasteful to read about Bentinck slavering over the unconscious Rosamund, but Oliver recognised this for an obligatory passage of raunchy sex. He was pleased to find there was no rape, although Dan had allowed the man a few caresses, dwelling chastely on tip-tilted breasts and slender thighs seen through transparent silk, all of which twisted Bentinck's face with agonised desire and then sent him stumbling from Rosamund's room in a state that Dan described as ‘perpendicular with lust'. Bentinck, whom Oliver heartily disliked by this time, went hotfoot and steaming-loined into the nearest town to seek out a wine bar where girls were to be had for the asking. He found the wine bar all right, it was a kind of poor man's Soho strip joint, pulsating with throbbing rock music and leather-jacketed, mini-skirted girls on the prowl. It sounded a bit sordid; Oliver would not have been seen dead in such a place and hoped Dan would not either, but it suited Bentinck very well. He downed several large brandies before approaching a female with a passing resemblance to Rosamund and persuading her into the back seat of his car. Oliver was very glad indeed that when it came to the crunch Bentinck had drunk too much to give a good account of himself (in fact to give any account of himself at all), and was beginning to feel sick from the brandy. The girl was raucously insulting about his stubbornly soft manhood but at least she got out of the car before Bentinck was sick over himself. Oliver was pleased that Dan had given the slimy doctor such a humiliating experience.