Ritual (16 page)

‘M. Musette has
no appointments free before the end of the month.’

‘The end of the month?
But it’s only the fourth now!’

‘M. Musette is
a very busy man, sir.’

Charlie
controlled himself. ‘I understand,’ he told the voice on the intercom. ‘I’m
sorry if I disturbed you.’

‘You are quite
welcome, sir.’ The voice was as faultlessly polite as it was faultlessly
unhelpful.

Charlie
returned to his car. For the first time he saw the remote TV camera watching
him from the trees just inside the gates. He climbed back into his car, and
made a showy three-point turn before taking a right along the north-west side
of
Le Reposoir
’s extensive grounds,
in the opposite direction to Alien’s Corners.

He drove
slowly, peering between the trees that lined the roadside to see what kind of
fencing protected
Le Reposoir
from
the outside world. Every now and then he glimpsed spiked steel railings,
painted green, with ceramic conductors on them. Electrified, he thought. That’s
how much they want to keep people out. Or maybe that’s how much they want to
keep people in.

After a little
over a mile, however, he came to what he was looking for: a place where the
grounds of
Le Reposoir
dipped
downwards, while the verge of the road remained high. He stopped the car and
got
out,
walking up the verge a little way to make
sure that he would be able to do what he wanted to do. The wind blew across his
ears like a ghostly mouth blowing across the neck of an empty bottle. He
returned to his car, started up the engine again, and shifted it into first.

Carefully, he
turned the Oldsmobile off the road and drove it on to the grass. The suspension
bounced and bucked, and he heard the muffler scrape against the gravelly
ground. But then he was able to drive at a sharp angle down towards the green
spiked fence, and pull to a halt with the automobile’s front bumper only an
inch or two away from it. He switched off the engine and climbed out. Then –
looking quickly all around him – he heaved himself up on to the hood. The sheet
metal dented under his weight, but he walked without hesitation right to the
front of the car to find that the green fence stood only two feet proud of the
hood. He took two steps back, and then jumped right over the spikes and into
the tangled bushes on the other side, tumbling over and over and tearing the
elbow of his suit.

Winded, he sat
up, and listened. All he could hear was the leaves rustling, and the low
humming of the voltage in the electrified fence. He got up to his feet, brushed
himself down, and then began to make his way through the undergrowth in the
rough direction of the house.

It appeared
that the woods which screened
Le Reposoir
from the Quassapaug Road curved in a horn shape towards the north-west side of
the house; so that it would be possible for Charlie to approach the building
very closely without being seen. Behind the house there were wide lawns,
looking unnaturally green in the morning light, with sombre statues of naked
Greek gods standing beside them, their shoulders heavy with moss,
their
eye-sockets blind with mildew.

The house
itself was as forbidding as Charlie had remembered it. It still possessed that
peculiar quality of seeming to be suspended an inch above the ground, of having
infinite density, like a black diamond, but at the same time being weightless.
Window upon window reflected the grey fall clouds as they hurried past, giving
the extraordinary illusion that the sky was inside the house. Charlie came as
close to the edge of the lawns as he
dared,
stopping
and listening every few seconds in case he was being observed. The house,
however, looked silent and empty.

Perhaps the
voice on the intercom had been telling the truth, and there was nobody here.

Charlie weaved
his way in between close-set oaks and tangles of thorn that were as vicious as
rolls of barbed wire. At last he reached a low stone retaining wall from which
he could see into the large cast-iron solarium which ran along the back of the
house. He could see potted plants and old-fashioned cane furniture, and several
white marble statues of naked children. Keeping his head down, he skirted the
side of the house until he came within fifteen yards of a small door.

The door was
carved with wooden grapes and gargoyles and studded with black iron bolts. It
was impossible to tell whether it was locked or not. If it were, Charlie would
not only have to risk discovery by running across the open lawn towards it, but
he would have to run back again, too. He crouched down behind the retaining
wall and waited to see if there was anybody around, but apart from the wind and
the agitated shivering of the trees, the house and its grounds were silent. No
airplanes passed overhead. No birds sang. The reflected clouds ran silently
across the windows.

At last,
glancing left and right, Charlie took hold of the top of the retaining wall,
and prepared to heave himself up on to the upper lawn. But at the very instant
he did so, the handle of the garden door rattled and turned, he ducked down
just before it was opened wide. He pressed himself as close into the stones as
he could, his heart beating, his face sweaty, and prayed that whoever was
coming out of the garden door wouldn’t come too close to the edge of the lawn
and find him there. It was one thing to have driven openly into the front
entrance of
Le Reposoir
; it was
another to have deliberately breached their security and to be hiding like a
would-be housebreaker in their private grounds.

He heard
voices, and a noise that sounded like the squeak of badly oiled wheels. One
voice was high and accented; the other was gruff, and plainly American. The
high voice said, ‘She should be allowed to sleep until the afternoon. You
remember what it was like your first time.’

The gruff voice
replied, ‘I wish I could have my first time again.’

‘It is the last
time that you must look forward to now,’ the high voice replied.

It sounded to
Charlie as if the two speakers were moving around the side of the house and
away from him. Their voices were accompanied by the persistent squeaking of
wheels, as if they were pushing something. Charlie hesitated for a moment, and
then edged his way about ten yards to the right along the wall until he came to
a large stone urn. The urn was felted with dark green moss, and a small toad
sat on its plinth, watching Charlie with yellow expressionless eyes. Charlie slowly
raised his head, using the urn for cover, and tried to catch a glimpse of the
people who had come out of the garden door before they disappeared.

To begin with,
they were out of his line of sight behind a triangular yew bush. But suddenly they
appeared quite clearly between the bush and the corner of the house, and when
Charlie saw them he shivered the way a small child shivers when a grown-up
shouts at him. It was surprise, and fright, but most of all it was the
incongruity of their appearance, like people out of a Breughel painting of
lazars and cripples.

Leading the way
was the small dwarf-like figure in the white hood
whom
Charlie had seen at the Iron Kettle, and outside the back door at Mrs Kemp’s.
It walked with a swinging lurch, like an ape, yet it was distinctly human.
Behind this small figure came a three wheeled invalid carriage, a
kind of a Bath chair in which a pale-faced woman was lying, her eyes open, her
head back, staring at the sky.
She was covered up to her neck in an
off-white blanket, and there was a leather strap around her waist which looked
as if it was supposed to prevent her from falling out.

The invalid
carriage was being pushed by the black-cloaked woman whom Charlie recognized
from his first intrusion into the grounds of
Le Reposoir
, the woman who might have been Mme Musette. Her hood
had fallen back, revealing her face, and even from a distance Charlie could see
that she was just as striking as before, a woman of almost unbelievable beauty.
Yet – remembering what he had seen in his rear-view mirror as he had driven
away from the house the first time – his eyes jumped at once to the steering
bar of the invalid carriage, on which the woman’s hands were resting. She was
wearing black cotton gloves, but only one finger of each glove was actually
hooked over the bar. The remaining fingers were crumpled and obviously empty.

Charlie stared
at this bizarre procession until it had disappeared from sight around the side
of the house. Then he slowly slid down into a sitting position behind the
retaining wall, oblivious to the green moss which smeared the back of his coat.
He felt as if he had accidentally wandered into some extraordinary Victorian
nightmare. Alice
Through
the Looking Glass with freaks
and dwarves and beautiful women with no fingers. He wiped his face with his
hands; he was wet with chilly sweat.

It was not only
the weirdness of the procession that had frightened him. It was the conviction
that he had recognized the pale-faced woman lying in the invalid carriage staring
at the sky.

Although he had
glimpsed her for only two or three seconds, he could have sworn that it was
Harriet Greene.

If it were
Harriet Greene, though, what the hell had they done to her? She looked almost
as if she were dying.

Charlie waited
for nearly a minute. Then he raised his head cautiously over the top of the
wall to see if there was anybody else around. But the house and the lawns
seemed to be deserted, and even though ravens were circling around the spires
which rose above the house like monuments in a Victorian cemetery, they were
silent, as if they knew that this was not the place to cry out.

Grunting with
effort, after a working lifetime of four-course meals and not very much in the
way of coherent exercise, Charlie climbed up the retaining wall and then
crouched on the very edge of the lawn like a middle-aged backstop
who
refuses to admit that he is over the hill. The grass was
bright and green and springy, and felt almost like short-cropped human hair.
Charlie held his breath and listened – then made his way as quickly and as
quietly as he could across the lawn to the garden door. By the time he reached
it he was trembling with tension, but he took hold of the handle without
hesitation and turned it. It had been left unlocked, and it swung open easily,
without the slightest squeal.

Charlie glanced
behind him to make sure that he wasn’t being watched, and then stepped inside.

H
e found himself in a store room, which was gloomy but very dry.
Rakes, hoes and edging-spades were hanging neatly on the walls and there were
sacks of aromatic peat, of lawn-feed and rose fertilizer. Charlie edged between
the sacks until he found another door on the far side of the room, a
grey-painted steel door, with an automatic hinge to close it. He turned the
handle, and to his relief this door wasn’t locked either. He eased it open and
put his head around it. On the other side there was a long oak-panelled
corridor, very dark and smelling of polish, with mottled engravings all along
the walls. Charlie stepped out of the store room and into the corridor, and
then hesitated, wondering which direction he ought to take. If he went to the
right, towards the front of the house, it would probably be easier to get his
bearings. But if the Musettes were really holding Martin, it was unlikely that
they would have hidden him in any of the principal rooms at the front.

He turned left,
towards the back of the house. His fingers trailed along the stained oak
panelling, as if he needed to touch the wall to keep his hold on reality. He
glanced up at one or two of the old engravings. They were French, and they were
all concerned with butchery. They showed the carcasses of cattle and sheep, and
serious-faced men with big moustaches and white aprons removing with large knives
the aiguillettes and culottes and plats de cotes decouverts.

When he reached
the end of the corridor he found himself at the foot of an oak staircase, which
led steeply up towards a back landing. There was a large window overlooking the
landing, which filled the stairwell with grey photographic light.

Charlie guessed
that this must have originally been used as the servants’ staircase. He looked
upward. There was the sound of someone vacuum cleaning in some far-off bedroom,
but that was all. He began to climb the treads one at a time, holding on to the
banisters.

He was halfway
up the stairs when a voice said, ‘Charlie?

He looked up in
shock. Standing just above him, one elbow casually propped on the banister, was
Velma, dressed in a linen kaftan so fine that it was almost transparent. She
was smiling at him dreamily, as if nothing had happened between them at all; as
if they were old chums who happened to have bumped into each other on a quiet
New England commuter train.

‘They told me
you didn’t even exist,’ said Charlie unsteadily.

‘Who said I
didn’t even exist?’ She wouldn’t stop smiling.

‘Those people
at the Windsor. Bits, whatever his name was.
The maitre d’.
He denied point-blank that he’d ever seen you. When I said that you called him
Bits, he laughed in my face.’

‘I expect he
did,’ said Velma. ‘I made it up.’

Charlie said
tightly, ‘Is Martin here?’

‘Martin?’

‘My son.
Was that what you were doing – keeping me busy
while Martin was being kidnapped?’

‘Charlie,’ said
Velma, ‘you’re not making any sense.’

Charlie took a
sharp, impatient breath.
‘When I returned to my room at the
Windsor after I’d spent the night with you, Martin was gone.
There
wasn’t any trace of him at all. There wasn’t any trace of you, either.’