Unnatural Causes (25 page)

Suddenly he woke again to a gust so violent that the cottage seemed to rock, the sea roared as if it were about to break over the roof. He had never known anything like this before, even at Monksmere. It was impossible to sleep through such fury. He had an uncomfortable urge to be up and dressed.

He switched on his bedside lamp and, at that moment, his aunt appeared in the doorway, close-buttoned into her old plaid dressing gown and with one heavy plait of hair hanging over her shoulder. She said: “Justin is here. He thinks we ought to see if Sylvia Kedge is all right. We may have to get her out of that cottage. He says that the sea’s coming in fast.”

Dalgliesh reached for his clothes. “How did he get here? I didn’t hear him.”

“Well, that isn’t surprising, is it? You were probably asleep. He walked. He says we can’t get the car to the road because of flooding. So it looks as if we’ll have to go across the headland. He tried to telephone the coast guards but the line is down.”

She disappeared and Dalgliesh hurriedly pulled on his clothes, cursing gently. It was one thing to lie in warm security analysing the noises of the storm; it was another to fight one’s way over the highest point of the headland on an adventure which could appeal only to the young, the energetic or the incurably romantic.

He felt unreasonably irritated with Sylvia Kedge as if she were somehow responsible for her own danger. Surely to God the girl knew whether the cottage was safe in a storm! It might, of course, be that Bryce was fussing unnecessarily.
If Tanner’s Cottage had stood through the 1953 flood disaster it would stand tonight. But the girl was a cripple. It was right to make sure. All the same it was hardly an enterprise to be welcomed. At best it would be uncomfortable, exhausting and embarrassing. At worst, especially with Bryce in tow, it had all the elements of farce.

His aunt was already in the sitting room when he went down. She was packing a thermos and mugs into a rucksack and was fully dressed. She must have been wearing most of her clothes under her dressing gown when she called him. It struck Dalgliesh that Bryce’s call was not altogether unexpected and that Sylvia Kedge’s danger might be more real than he knew. Bryce, wearing a heavy oilskin which reached to his ankles topped with an immense sou’wester, stood dripping and glistening in the middle of the room, like an animated advertisement for sardines. He was clutching a coil of heavy rope with every appearance of knowing what to do with it and had the air of a man dedicated to action.

He said: “If there’s any swimming to be done, my dear Adam, one must leave it to you. One has one’s asthma, alas.” He gave Dalgliesh a sly, elliptical glance and added deprecatingly, “Also, one cannot swim.”

“Of course,” said Dalgliesh faintly. Did Bryce seriously believe that anyone could swim on a night like this? But there was no point in arguing. Dalgliesh felt like a man committed to an enterprise which he knows to be folly but which he can’t summon up the energy to resist.

Bryce went on: “I didn’t call for Celia or Liz. No point in having a crowd. Besides, the lane is flooded so they wouldn’t be able to get through. But I did try to get Latham. However, he wasn’t at home. So we must just manage on our own.” He was apparently unconcerned at Latham’s absence. Dalgliesh bit
back his questions. There was enough on hand without taking on fresh problems. But what on earth could Latham be doing on a night like this? Had the whole of Monksmere gone mad?

Once they had climbed out of the shelter of the lane and had mounted the headland there was energy for nothing but the effort of moving forward and Dalgliesh let the problem of Latham drop from his mind. It was impossible to walk upright and they clawed onwards like crouched beasts until aching thighs and stomach muscles forced them to kneel, palms pressed against the turf, to recover breath and energy. But the night was warmer than Dalgliesh had expected and the rain, less heavy now, dried softly on their faces. From time to time they gained the shelter of scrub and bushes and, released from the weight of the wind, trod lightly as disembodied spirits through the warm, green-smelling darkness.

Emerging from the last of these refuges they saw Priory House to seaward, the windows ablaze with light so that the house looked like a great ship riding the storm.

Bryce drew them back into the shelter of the bushes and shouted: “I suggest that Miss Dalgliesh calls Sinclair and his housekeeper to help. By the look of it they’re up and about. And we shall need a long stout ladder. Our best plan is for you, Adam, to wade across Tanner’s Lane if the water isn’t too high and get to the house as soon as possible. The rest of us will move inland until we can cross the lane and approach the house from the north bank. We ought to be able to reach you with the ladder from that side.”

Before he had finished expounding this unexpectedly lucid and positive plan Miss Dalgliesh without a word set off towards Priory House. Dalgliesh, cast without his consent in the role of hero, was intrigued by the change in Bryce. The little man obviously had a concealed passion for action. Even his
affectations had fallen away. Dalgliesh had the novel and not disagreeable sensation of being under command. He was still unconvinced that there was any real danger. But if there were, Bryce’s plan was as good as any.

But when they reached Tanner’s Lane and stood sheltering in the slope of the south bank and looking down on Tanner’s Cottage, the danger was apparent. Under a racing moon the lane shone white, a turbulent sheet of foam which had already covered the garden path and was sucking at the cottage door. The downstairs lights were on. From where they stood the squat, ugly doll’s house looked strangely lonely and threatened.

But Bryce apparently found the situation more hopeful than he had expected. He hissed in Dalgliesh’s ear: “It’s not very high. You ought to be able to get across with the rope. Funny, I thought it would be well up by now. This may be as far as it will get. Not much danger really. Still, you’d better go in, I suppose.” He sounded almost disappointed.

The water was incredibly cold. Dalgliesh was expecting it but the shock still took his breath away. He had stripped off his oilskin and jacket and was wearing only his slacks and jersey. One end of the rope was around his waist. The other, hitched around the trunk of a sapling, was being plied out inch by inch through Bryce’s careful hands. The swift current was already armpit high and Dalgliesh had to fight hard to keep upright. Occasionally his feet stumbled into a rut in the lane’s surface and he lost his footing. Then, for a desperate moment, it was a struggle to keep his head above water as he fought on the end of the rope like a hooked fish. It was hopeless to try to swim against this tide. The cottage lights were still on as he gained the door and braced his back against it. The sea was boiling around his ankles, each wave carrying it higher. Panting to get back his breath he signalled to Bryce to release the rope.
In response the bulky little figure on the far bank flailed its arms enthusiastically but made no move to unhitch the rope from the tree. Probably his exuberant gestures were no more than a congratulatory acknowledgement that Dalgliesh had gained his objective. Dalgliesh cursed his folly in not having agreed with Bryce who should keep the rope before plunging to his task with such spectacular fervour. Any shouted communication between them was impossible. If he were not to remain tethered to the tree indefinitely—and his situation was already uncomfortably close to burlesque—he had better let Bryce have the rope. He released the bowline and the rope whipped free from his waist. Immediately Bryce began to coil it in with wide sweeps of his arms.

The wind had dropped a little but he could hear no sounds from inside the cottage and there was no answer to his shout. He pushed against the door but it was stuck. Something was wedged against it. He pushed harder and felt the obstruction shift as if a heavy sack were sliding across the floor. Then there was a gap wide enough for him to squeeze through and he saw that the sack was the body of Oliver Latham.

He had fallen across the narrow hall, his body blocking the sitting-room doorway and his head resting face upward on the first stair. It looked as if he had struck the banister. There was a gash behind the left ear from which the blood was still oozing and another over the right eye. Dalgliesh knelt over him. He was alive and already regaining consciousness. At the feel of Dalgliesh’s hand he groaned, twisted his head to one side and was neatly sick. The grey eyes opened, tried to focus, then closed again.

Dalgliesh looked across the brightly lit sitting room to the still figure sitting bolt upright on the divan bed. The face was an oval, deathly pale against the heavy swathes of hair.
The black eyes were immense. They stared across at him, watchful, speculative. She seemed utterly unaware of the swirling water spreading now in waves across the floor.

“What happened?” Dalgliesh asked.

She said calmly: “He came to kill me. I used the only weapon I had. I threw the paperweight at him. He must have caught his head when he fell. I think I’ve killed him.”

Dalgliesh said briefly: “He’ll live. There’s not much wrong with him. But I’ve got to get him upstairs. Stop where you are. Don’t try to move. I’ll come back for you.”

She gave a little shrug of the shoulders and asked: “Why can’t we get across the lane? You came that way.”

Dalgliesh answered brutally: “Because the water’s already up to my armpits and running in a torrent. I can’t swim across burdened with a cripple and a semi-conscious man. We’ll get upstairs. If necessary we’ll have to get on the roof.”

He edged his shoulder under Latham’s body and braced himself for the lift. The staircase was steep, ill lit and narrow but its very narrowness was an advantage. Once he had Latham balanced across his shoulders it was possible to pull himself up by both banisters. Luckily there were no corners. At the top he felt for the switch and the top landing was flooded with light. He paused for a moment recalling where the skylight was. Then he pushed open the door to his left and groped round again for a light. It took him a few seconds to find. As he stood in the doorway grasping Latham’s body with his left hand and running his right over the wall the smell of the room came out at him, musty, airless and sickly sweet like a faint stench of decay. Then his fingers found the switch and the room became visible, lit by a single unshaded bulb hanging from the centre of the ceiling. It had obviously been Mrs. Kedge’s bedroom and looked, he thought, as it
must have done when she last slept in it. The furniture was heavy and ugly. The great bed, still made up, occupied almost all the back of the room. It smelt of damp and decay. Dalgliesh dumped Latham gently on it and looked up at the slope of the roof. He had been right about the skylight. But there was only the one tiny square window and this faced the lane. If they were to get out of the cottage it would have to be by the roof.

He went back to the sitting room to fetch the girl. The water was waist high and she was standing on the divan bed and holding on to the mantelshelf for support. Dalgliesh noticed that she had a small plastic sponge bag hanging around her neck. Presumably it contained such valuables as she possessed. As he entered she gazed round the room as if to ensure that there was nothing else which she wished to take. He fought his way over to her, feeling the strength of the tide even in this tiny confined space and wondering how long the foundations of the cottage could stand against it. It was easy to comfort oneself with the thought that the cottage had survived earlier floods. But the tide and the wind were unpredictable. The water may have risen further in earlier years but it could hardly have burst in with greater force. Even as he struggled across to the waiting figure he thought he could hear the walls shake.

He came up to her and without a word, lifted her in his arms. She was surprisingly light. True, he could feel the downward drag of the heavy leg irons but the upper part of her body was so buoyant that it might have been boneless, sexless even. He was almost surprised to feel the rib cage under his hands and the firmness of her high breasts. She lay passively in his arms as he carried her sideways up the narrow stairs and into her mother’s room. It was only then that he remembered her
crutches. He felt a sudden embarrassment, a reluctance to speak of them.

As if reading his thoughts she said: “I’m sorry. I should have remembered. They’re hitched onto the end of the mantelshelf.”

That meant another trip downstairs but it was hardly avoidable. It would have been difficult to manage both the girl and her crutches in one journey up those narrow stairs. He was about to carry her over to the bed when she looked at Latham’s writhing body and said with sudden vehemence. “No! Not there! Leave me here.” He slid her gently from his arms and she leaned back against the wall. For a moment their eyes were level and they gazed at each other, wordlessly. It seemed to Dalgliesh that in that moment some kind of communication passed but whether those black eyes held a warning or an appeal he was never afterwards able to decide.

He had no difficulty in retrieving the crutches. The water in the sitting room had now covered the mantelshelf and as Dalgliesh reached the bottom of the stairs they floated through the sitting-room door. He grasped them by the rubber grips of the hand pieces and drew them over the banisters. As he retreated again up the stairs a great wave broke through the shattered front door and hurled them to his feet. The pedestal of the banisters broke free, spun as if in a whirlpool and was dashed into splinters against the wall. And this time there could be no doubt about it: he felt the cottage shake.

The skylight was about ten feet above the floor, impossible to reach without something to stand on. It was useless to try shifting the heavy bed, but there was a square, substantial-looking commode by the side of it and he dragged this across and positioned it under the skylight.

The girl said: “If you can push me through first I’ll be able to help with … him.”

She looked across at Latham who had now dragged himself upright and was sitting, head in hands, on the edge of the bed. He was groaning audibly.