Barbara Cleverly (23 page)

The voice faded and Joe was quite certain that he could hear chatter and laughter in the background. Mr and Mrs Tilly sat rigidly still, tears pouring down their faces but beaming with happiness.

‘God, she’s good!’ Joe thought. ‘She’s bloody good! I wonder who we’ll have next? And how on earth will she manage to do Snowdrop?’

Silence fell on the group once more and again Joe found himself hypnotized by the candle flame in front of his eyes. He was startled from his trance by a voice which boomed from Minerva Freemantle.

‘Joe! Joe Sandilands, you old so-and-so! Ladies present so I’ll watch my language. Well, there you are, old boy, and here I am! Now do you believe me?’

A soldier’s clipped, jocular tones.

‘Seb? Sebastian?’ Joe managed to gasp. He was conscious of Alice Sharpe squeezing his hand tightly to help him through his astonishment.

‘Of course it’s Sebastian! We have unfinished business! I’d have won our last game, you know, if that shell hadn’t wiped it off the board and me with it. I was going to move my bishop to KB3. Checkmate in three moves. Take care, old man! And watch your left flank!’

Joe couldn’t speak. His throat seemed to be choked, his tongue paralysed. This wasn’t in the script. His mind raced back to the summer of 1915, to the shell burst that robbed him of his dearest friend, tore open his own face and stopped a game of chess he had just realized he could not possibly win. He looked desperately at Minerva. She read his thoughts and shook her head sadly. She could not call Sebastian back again.

Excited and congratulatory looks were being directed at him from those around the table. With a final squeeze of encouragement, Alice Sharpe’s hand relaxed its grip once more and Joe wondered if she thought it at all unfair that he should have made a contact on his first visit when she had tried often to communicate with her mother. He also thought about Seb’s last crisp warning. ‘Watch your left flank!’ He looked briefly to his left flank and encountered Alice’s smiling blue eyes.

‘It’s all right, Seb!’ he said silently to himself like a prayer. ‘Your message received!’

The candles guttered as a chill rush of air swept through the room. A log fell and the glow of the fire dimmed. The grandfather clock behind Mrs Freemantle abruptly stopped ticking. Somewhere in the corridor outside a cat screeched in terror and was abruptly silenced. Mrs Freemantle began hurriedly to mutter a prayer. Joe caught the words, ‘

keep us from evil

let no bodeful presence come nigh

’

Tension spread around the group. Feet shuffled, throats were cleared but the circle of hands remained intact and firm. Ears straining for the slightest sound heard it at the same moment. Tap, tap. Tap, tap. The sound of a stick in the corridor outside. It paused then tapped again. Exploring. Searching out the way. Soft footsteps shuffled after the stick. They grew louder, more confident, and came to a halt by the small door behind Minerva.

In her own voice from which she could not totally eradicate a tremble of fear, she said, ‘Friends, this is very exceptional. We must not be afraid. Stay firm. We are being visited by a very strong spirit – a spirit so strong it has the power to materialize before our eyes. It wants to show itself to us. It insists on showing itself! But beware! It takes its power from negative emotions – from resentment, from hatred and desire for revenge!’

A barely audible whimper came from the throat of Miss Trollope and she squeezed Joe’s hand tightly.

‘This spirit is searching for someone who is close at hand. For one of us.’

The door creaked open.

‘Someone whose initials are

’ She frowned, concentrating on an inner voice. ‘

are

I. N. Is there anyone here who is aware of an I.N. in their life?’

Alice’s hand had become icy cold and she was unconsciously moving her whole body closer to his.

No one spoke.

‘There is no one here with those initials,’ said Minerva. The relief was evident in her voice. ‘Will you not admit your error, spirit, and leave us in peace? She whom you seek is not among us.’

‘You lie! She is here!’

The voice burst from the doorway and a dimly perceived figure took on hideous shape before their eyes.

Darkly clad, the only parts of the apparition which revealed a human identity were the pale hands and the pale face. A face of such horror that Miss Trollope gurgled, released Joe’s hand and slumped under the table. The deathly white features glowed with the marble colouring of a fresh corpse. A trail of blood trickled down from the forehead to the chin and as they watched in frozen fascination, dripped on to his front. Where the eyes should have been there was a black and gaping void. The apparition moved its head from side to side, slowly sweeping the table with its blind gaze. Searching. It raised a white stick threateningly.

‘She’s here! Isobel, you are here! Isobel Newton! You could have saved me! Why did you leave me dying?’

Alice Conyers-Sharpe made a sound half-way between a scream and a gasp, jumped to her feet and hurled herself towards the door and to the head of the stairs. Leaving a shattered audience behind him, Joe set off in pursuit. He saw her face upturned in terror as she heard him coming after her and then she lost her footing on the narrow stairs and fell with a scream.

Ť ^ ť

Scrambling to her feet, she blundered on and fled with a bewildered cry into the street. She started to run at speed through the crowds, dodging neatly between the strolling couples, never looking back. To Joe’s surprise she seemed to be making her way past the Ridge, past Christ Church and on south towards the wooded hills in which lay Sir George’s Residence but at the last she turned aside and ran, still at speed, sandalled feet pattering, down a narrow lane between the backs of two rows of houses. Joe followed her into the lane and saw her disappear at last through a small arched gateway.

He went in pursuit and found himself in a walled courtyard. As his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom he became aware that a narrow flight of steps led upward from this to a higher level, a higher level from which flowering creepers and trailing roses cascaded down across the face of a pale wall. Tentatively he set his foot on the steps and began to mount.

The silence was broken by a sharp click.

Someone above him had slipped the safety catch from a pistol.

‘Not a step nearer! Whoever you are, you stay right there or I fire!’

The voice was breathless and quavering with terror.

She was leaning on a parapet wall and Joe caught a glint of moonlight on the barrel of a revolver. She repeated, ‘Not a step nearer!’

‘This is a bit unfriendly, Alice! It’s me – Joe Sandilands. I wish you no harm.’

There was a pause. ‘Joe? Oh, Joe! Thank God! Are you alone?’ And then, ‘That creature

it hasn’t followed you?’

‘There’s only me here, Alice. Let me come up, will you? Why don’t we take a seat? Why don’t we share a cigarette? Why don’t we enjoy a moment of tranquillity together? Tranquillity! A commodity always in short supply in Simla as far as I can see.’

As he spoke, step by step he climbed the stair until at last he joined Alice on a small terrace platform shaded and scented by jasmine. Alice was just discernible in the fretted moonlight but the pistol in her hand was clear to see.

‘Spare me!’ he said. ‘I am unarmed! At least, not entirely unarmed. Not quite sure how the evening was going to turn out, I took the precaution of filling a flask with the Governor’s excellent Courvoisier! Whatever else, you’ve had a taxing evening! Won’t you join me?’

With a sob Alice threw herself into Joe’s arms and clung to him. Gently he disengaged himself and led her to sit on the low parapet wall. He sat beside her, an arm around her shoulders, waiting while she gained a fragile measure of control.

‘Before we do or say anything,’ she said, ‘please tell me who or what on earth – or in hell – that was? Was he real? Did he exist? Did you see him too? Did everybody see him? Did you see him, Joe?’

Joe hesitated. Perhaps the truth might be most serviceable. ‘He was real all right,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t a figment of your imagination. He wasn’t a revenant. He was, though, someone you know. Someone you have known. Any ideas?’

Alice looked at him with huge, uncomprehending eyes. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. I have never met such a

a

creature. And anyway, you heard him – we all heard him – he was looking for someone with the initials

oh, what was it?

I.M.? Yes, I.M. Isobel something or other

’ She shivered. ‘I shall never ever go to a seance again! It was horrid and very frightening. I had to get away! And that wretched woman, Miss Trollope! Did you see her? Fainted away completely! I really think Mrs Freemantle has overstepped herself. It’s perhaps time that she moved on from Simla. I’m quite sure that when Her Excellency hears of tonight’s fiasco she will insist. Don’t you agree, Joe?’

Alice had recovered her self-possession; only a tremor in the voice and a trembling hand remained of the storm she had passed through.

Joe held her firmly by the shoulders and turned her face to his. ‘Isobel,’ he said gently, ‘Isobel Newton. It’s no use. You can’t fool me. And before you think of shooting me to get rid of a witness, let me tell you that Carter knows and, of course, the man you met again tonight at the seance

’

To Joe’s surprise she stopped sniffling, sat up, favoured him with a broad smile and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Oh, well! It was worth a last shot, I suppose!’ She gave him a level glance. ‘You should have waited a little longer, Joe, I was going to make it worth your while to forget about all this. But tell me – who was that – the thing that appeared in the doorway? The only man I have ever met with whom that creature had the slightest resemblance is long dead.’

‘I can promise you he isn’t dead. Nor yet was he undead. His name is Simpson. Captain Colin Simpson and, by a miracle, he is as alive as you or I. It was a trick. It was a put-up job. It was a trick on you.’

‘Simpson?’ said Alice slowly. ‘Simpson!’

‘Yes. And a member of a select band. A very select band. A band of those who survived the Beaune rail crash. Now are you getting it?’

‘Christ, yes!’ said Alice. ‘The man in the railway carriage! He still lives? Can it be? And what the hell was he doing here?’

‘I’ll exchange information for information,’ said Joe. ‘But, in the meantime

’ He lit two cigarettes and handed one to Isobel. He unscrewed the cap of his flask and passed it across to her. ‘If ever a girl needed a swig of aqua vitae, I suspect it is you so help yourself. And why don’t you begin at the beginning?’

‘The beginning?’ said Isobel bitterly. ‘The beginning is a long time ago and a long way away from here!’

‘It’ll do,’ said Joe. ‘The night is young.’

‘We could begin in an impoverished Surrey vicarage if you like,’ said Isobel. ‘With a cold and ambitious father, a mother who died when I was eleven. Or we could begin in a bleak girls’ school in the Home Counties. Or would you like to start in the south of France when our heroine is seventeen? We’d be talking about the same person. We’d be talking about me. It was a very long journey, ending – though ending is not the word – here in a private and concealed Simla garden.’

‘Good God,’ said Joe, looking round in astonishment. ‘Garden? Private garden? Whose? Where?’

‘Old Simla’s full of gardens, big and small. The house this belonged to is gone but the garden remains. It belongs to Rheza Khan’s family. They are a very well-to-do family – you might almost say tribe – with extensive lands north towards the Nepalese border but they’ve always kept what you might call a town house here in Simla.They keep the garden in order – as a sort of gesture of family piety. I come here sometimes. It’s a peaceful place. Away from everybody. If I want to see someone privately it’s always here and here we are – private.’

She took the proffered flask from Joe’s hand and drank. She coughed and spluttered and drank again.

‘Well, the beginning? Born of poor but honest parents

I won’t deceive you, Joe. They weren’t particularly poor. Thinking of my detestable father not particularly honest either but he’s done pretty well for himself.’

Joe’s mind was racing. ‘Newton?’ he said, the picture of an austere and influential bishop of the Church of England coming to mind. ‘Not

? Are we by any chance talking about “Retribution Newton”? And he’s your father?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that Bishop Newton. The scourge of sinners. Just a rector the last time I saw him. Difficult to live with, I think you’ll agree. But that’s jumping ahead and I said I’d begin at the beginning. It was a detestable childhood and it got worse after my mother died. I couldn’t wait to get away! But I had a stroke of luck. My father had an old friend, very rich, very much of the Church, very corseted and a great subscriber to my father’s good causes. Fallen altar pieces one day, fallen women the next! You know the sort of thing. She spent every winter in the south of France and she had a pathetic, quenched companion. Her name, almost inevitably, was Mildred but Mildred got measles and lo! Horror! Tragedy! Crisis! Mrs Hyde-Jellicoe had no one to accompany her on her winter trip to Nice and after more debate, discussion (praying if you can believe!), it was decided that I should fill the vacant slot and set off for the south of France. So, suitably admonished as to how to conduct myself and much to my father’s relief, off I went to carry Mrs Hyde-Jellicoe’s knitting about for her.’

‘And you went for it?’ said Joe.

‘Did I ever go for it! And, in the fullness of time, I ended up in an attic bedroom in a large Nice hotel only three flights of stairs away from Mrs Hyde-Jellicoe’s first-floor suite overlooking the sea and – no telephones in those days – a voice tube from her to me so that if she felt she needed a little glass of water in the night she could blow down it. A whistle would go off in my ear and I would come padding down three fights of stairs in my school dressing gown and see what was what. Not much of a life for a girl but anything was to be preferred to the Gothick splendours of St Simeon-under-Wychcroft, Surrey’