The House on the Strand (29 page)

'As to the drug itself, yes, it's dangerous, and could be lethal if taken to excess, and should it fall into the hands of the unscrupulous it might bring even more havoc upon our already troubled world. So, dear boy, if anything happens to me, destroy what remains in Bluebeard's chamber. My staff—who, however, know nothing of the implications of my discovery, for I have been working on this on my own—have similar instructions here in London, and can be trusted implicitly. As to yourself, if I don't see you again, forget the whole business. If we meet this evening as arranged, and take a walk and perhaps a trip together, as I hope we shall, I intend to have a close look, if I have the luck, at the beautiful Isolda, who, from the evidence in the document at the top of my suitcase, appears to have lost her lover just as you said, and must be in dire need of consolation. Whether Roger Kylmerth can supply it we may discover at the same time. No time to say any more, we are drawing into Exeter.

A bientôt, in this world, or the other, or hereafter.

Magnus.'

If we had not gone sailing on the Friday I should have found the telephone message about the earlier train in time... If I had made straight for the Gratten after leaving Saint Austell station, instead of going home... Too many ifs, and none of them working out. Even this letter, coming now like a message from the dead, should have reached me on Saturday morning instead of today, Monday. Not that it would have done any good. Nor did it say anything about Magnus's real intentions. Even then, as he posted it, he may not have made up his mind. The letter was a safety-measure, as he said, in case anything went wrong. I read it through again, once, twice, then put my lighter to it and watched it burn.

I went down to the basement and through the old kitchen to the lab. I had not entered it since early Wednesday morning, after returning from the Gratten, when Bill had come downstairs and found me making tea in the kitchen. The rows of jars and bottles, the monkey's head, the embryo kittens and the fungus plants held no menace for me now, nor had they done so since the first experiment. Now, with their magician gone, never to return, they had a wasted, almost a forlorn appearance, like puppets and props from a conjurer's bag of tricks. No ebony wand would bring these things to life, no cunning hand extract the juices, pick the bones and set them fermenting in some bubbling cauldron brew.

I took the jars which held various liquids and poured the contents down the sink. Then I washed the jars out and put them back on the shelf. They could have been used for preserving fruit or jam, for all anybody would ever know; there were no distinctive marks upon them—only labels which I stripped off and pocketed. Then I fetched an old sack which I remembered seeing in the boiler-house, and set about unscrewing the remaining jars and bottles that contained the embryos and the monkey's head. I put them all in the sack, having first poured down the sink the liquid that had preserved them, taking care that none of it touched my hands. I did the same with the various fungi, putting them also in the sack. Only two small bottles remained, bottle A, containing the remains of the drug I had been using myself to date, and bottle C, untouched. Bottle B I had sent to Magnus, and it was lying empty in my suitcase upstairs. I did not pour the contents of either down the sink. I put them in my pocket. Then I went to the door and listened. Mrs. Collins was moving about between the kitchen and the pantry—I could hear her radio going.

I swung the sack over my shoulder and locked the door of the lab. Then I went out through the back door and climbed up to the kitchen garden behind the stable block, and into the wood at the top of the grounds. I went to where the undergrowth was thickest, straggling laurels, rhododendrons that had not bloomed for years, broken branches of dead trees, brambles, nettles, the fallen leaves of successive autumn gales, and I took one of the dead branches and scraped a pit in the wet, dank earth and emptied the sack into it, smashing the monkey's head with a jagged stone so that it no longer bore any resemblance to a living thing, only fragments, only jelly, and the embryos slithered amongst the fragments, unrecognisable, like the stringy entrails flung to a seagull when a fish is gutted. I covered them, and the sack, with the rotting leaves of years, and the brown earth, and a heap of nettles, and the sentence came into my mind, 'Ashes to ashes, dust to dust', and in a sense it was as if I were burying Magnus and his work as well. I went back into the house, through the basement, and up the little side-stairway to the front, thus avoiding Mrs. Collins, but she must have heard me entering the hall, for she called, "Is that you, Mr. Young?"

"Yes," I said.

"I looked for you everywhere—I couldn't find you. The Inspector from Liskeard was on the telephone."

"I was in the garden," I told her. "I'll ring him back. I went upstairs to the dressing-room, and put bottles A and C in my suitcase along with the empty bottle B, locked it once again, put the key on my ring, washed, and went downstairs to the library. Then I put a call through to the police-station at Saint Austell.

"I'm sorry, Inspector," I said, when they got him on the line. "I was in the garden when you telephoned."

"That's all right, Mr. Young," he said. "I thought you would like to know the news to date. Well, we've made some headway. It was a goods-train that caused the accident, that seems to be clearly established. It passed through Treverran tunnel, going up the line, at approximately ten minutes to ten. The driver saw no one near the line as he approached the tunnel, but these goods trains are sometimes of considerable length, and this one carried no guard in the rear, so that once the engine had entered the tunnel there would be no one to observe whether anybody came on to the line and was struck by one of the passing wagons."

"No," I said, "no, I appreciate that. And you think this is what happened?"

"Well, Mr. Young, everything points to it. It would seem as though Professor Lane must have continued up the lane past Trenadlyn Farm, but before he got to the main road he turned off into a field they call Higher Gum, well above Treverran, and crossed it in a diagonal direction towards the railway. It is possible, by climbing through the wire and scrambling up a bank, to get on to the line, but anyone doing so could not have failed to notice the goods train. It was dark, of course, but there is a signal just outside the tunnel, and a goods train is far from silent, quite apart from the warning hoot of the diesel engine, which is routine procedure before entering the tunnel." Yes, but six centuries ago there were no signals, no wire, no lines, no warning hoots sounding on the air...

"You mean", I said, "that anyone would have to be blind or stone-deaf not to be aware of a train coming up that valley, even when it is some distance off?"

"Well yes, Mr. Young. Of course, it is possible to stand at the side of the line as the train goes by—there is plenty of room on either side of the double tracks—and it would seem that this was what Professor Lane did. We have found marks on the ground where he slipped, and up the bank where he dragged himself to the hut."

I thought a moment, and then I said, "Inspector, would it be possible for me to go and see the exact spot myself?"

"As a matter of fact, Mr. Young, it was what I was going to suggest, but I was not sure how you would feel about it. It could be helpful, not only to you but to us."

"Then I'm ready whenever you are."

"Shall we say eleven-thirty outside the police station at Tywardreath?"

It was already eleven. I was backing my car out of the garage when Vita came down the drive in the Buick with the boys. They scrambled out, clutching baskets filled with provisions.

"Where are you going?" asked Vita.

"The Inspector wants me to see the spot near the tunnel where they found Magnus," I told her. "They think they know what did it—a goods train that passed there around ten minutes to ten. The driver would already have been in the tunnel when Magnus walked, or slipped, into one of the rear wagons."

"Run along," said Vita sharply to both boys, who were hovering. "Take those things up to Mrs. Collins," and when they were out of earshot, "But why should Magnus have been on the line? It makes no sense at all. You know what people are going to say? I heard it in one of the shops, and I felt dreadful... That it must have been suicide."

"Complete and utter drivel," I said.

"Well, I know... But when anyone is well known, and there is a disaster, there's always such talk. And scientists are supposed to be peculiar anyway, border-line cases."

"So are we all," I said, "ex-publishers, policemen, the lot. Don't wait lunch—I don't know when I'll be back."

The Inspector took me to the site he had described over the telephone on the lane above Treverran farm. On the way he told me that they had got in touch with the senior man on Magnus's staff who had been unable to throw any light on the disaster.

"He was very upset, naturally," the Inspector went on. "He knew Professor Lane was intending to spend the weekend with you, and was looking forward to it. He concurred with you in stating that the Professor was in perfect health and excellent spirits. Incidentally, he did not seem to be aware of his interest in historical sites, but agreed that it could undoubtedly be a private hobby. We took the Treesmill road out of Tywardreath and turned right at the Stonybridge lane, past Trenadlyn and Treverran, and drew up near the top of the lane, parking beside a gate leading into a field.

"What is difficult to understand", observed the Inspector, "is why, if Treverran Farm was the place that interested Professor Lane, he did not call there, instead of walking across these fields some distance above the farm."

I threw a quick glance around me. Treverran was to the left, above the valley but in a dip, with the railway running below it; and beyond the railway line itself the land sloped down again.

Centuries ago the contour of the land would have been the same, but a broad stream would have run through the valley below Treverran Farm, more than a stream, a river, which in high autumn spate would flood the low-lying ground before it entered the waters of Treesmill creek.

"Is there a stream there still?" I asked, pointing to the valley base.

"Still?" repeated the Inspector, puzzled. "There is a ditch at the bottom of the hill, below the railway—you might call it a stream, rather sluggish—and the ground is marshy.

We walked down the field. The railway was already in sight, and just to the right of us was the ominous tunnel-mouth.

"There might have been a road here once," I sald, "descending to the valley, and a ford across the stream to the other side."

"Possibly, the Inspector said. Not much sign of one now, though."

Magnus wanted to ford the stream. Magnus was following someone on horseback who was going to ford the stream. Therefore he moved swiftly. And it was not a summer's evening at dusk on a clear night: it was autumn, and the wind was blowing, and the rain was coming in gusts across the hills...

We descended the field to the railway embankment, close to the tunnel. A short distance to the left there was an archway under the line, forming a passage between one field and another. A number of cattle were standing here, under the arch, seeking shelter from the flies.

"You see, said the Inspector, there's no need for the farmer or anyone to cross the line to get to the opposite field. They can go through the passage-way there, where those cattle are standing."

"Yes," I said, "but the Professor might not have noticed it, if he was walking higher up the field. It would be more direct to cross the line itself."

"What, climb the embankment, get through the wire, and scramble down the bank on to the line?" he said. "And in the darkness too? I shouldn't care to try it myself."

In point of fact, it was what we did right then, in broad daylight. He led the way, I followed, and once over the wire he pointed to the disused hut, covered with ivy, a few yards higher up the embankment, just above the line.

"The undergrowth is beaten down because we were here yesterday," he told me, "but Professor Lane's tracks were plain enough, where he dragged himself clear of the line and up to the hut; semi-conscious as he must have been, it showed almost superhuman strength and tremendous courage."

Which world had surrounded Magnus, the present or the past? Had the goods train rattled towards the tunnel unobserved, as he scrambled down the bank on to the line? With the engine already in the tunnel did he make to cross the line, which in his vision was grass-meadow still, sloping down to the stream below, and so was struck by the swinging wagon? In either world, it was the coup de grace. He could not have known what hit him. The instinct for survival made him crawl towards the hut, and then, please God, merciful oblivion, no sudden loneliness, no knowledge of imminent death.

We stood there, staring into the empty hut, and the Inspector showed me the spot on the earthen floor where Magnus had died. The place was impersonal, without atmosphere, like some forgotten toolshed with the gardener long gone. "It hasn't been used for years," he said. "The gangs working on the line used to brew tea here, and eat their pasties. They use the other hut lower down now, and that not often."

We turned away, retracing our footsteps along the overgrown bank to the strands of sagging wire through which we had climbed. I looked across to the opposite hills, some of them thickly wooded. There was a farm to the left, with a smaller building above it, and away to the north another cluster of buildings. I asked their names. The farm was Colwith, and the smaller building had been a schoolhouse once. The third, almost out of sight, was another farm, Strickstenton.

"We're on the borders of three parishes here," the Inspector said, "Tywardreath, Saint Sampsons or Golant, and Lanlivery. Mr. Kendall of Pelyn is a big landowner hereabouts. Now that's a fine old manor house for you, Pelyn, just down the main road on the way to Lostwithiel. Been in the family for centuries."

"How many centuries?"

"Well, Mr. Young, I'm no expert. Four, maybe?"