The Castle of the Demon Read online

  ‘Oh, Cal,’ she said. ‘You silly, silly dog. Where have you been? What have you been up to?’

  Cal’s tongue slapped her cheek warmly, damply, and discarding the dignity befitting his size he ran round and round her in a kind of waltz-time, always keeping his head as close to Emily as possible while his hind-quarters were unceremoniously flung round at some considerable distance behind.

  Finally Burgess judged it safe to approach. Cal stopped and looked at him enquiringly. The man stopped too, feeling it was not perhaps so safe, after all.

  ‘Cal,’ said Emily quietly. ‘This is Mr. Burgess. He is a friend.’

  She held out a hand to her companion, who took it gladly.

  Cal resumed his caperings and Emily let go.

  ‘What a beast!’ said Burgess admiringly. ‘No wonder he got himself lost. With all that hair hanging over his eyes, he must be half-blind!’

  ‘He is,’ said Emily quietly. ‘In his left eye. He sees very poorly at a distance. That’s why I shout so much.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Burgess.

  ‘So am I. It was silly of me to tell you. It puts you at fault when you’re not really at all. Forgive me.’

  They had begun to move forward again, Cal loping ahead, glancing back from time to time to ensure he was followed.

  ‘On condition,’ said Burgess suddenly as they reached the track which turned away from the sea up towards the hotel.

  ‘What on condition?’

  ‘I’ll forgive you on condition. On condition you come and have dinner with me tonight.’

  ‘Up there, you mean?’

  She made a motion of her head towards the red-tiled turrets. Her hair fell in a disturbingly beautiful sweep over her right cheek.

  ‘Or anywhere else you want.’

  She thought so long and so impassively it seemed certain she would refuse.

  ‘All right,’ she said finally. ‘Up there. What time shall I come?’

  ‘I’ll collect you at seven,’ he replied. ‘If that’s O.K.?’

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘But don’t call. I’ll meet you there. It’s only a short walk.’

  She walked away to where the big dog stood impatiently waiting.

  ‘All right,’ he called after her. ‘In the bar. Seven o’clock. Don’t be late.’

  ‘Late?’ she said to him over her shoulder.

  They both laughed and he stood watching her till she and the dog had disappeared into the cottage.

  Now what did I want to go and do that for? she asked herself as she opened the cottage door and went inside.

  A lone bachelor, let down by his girl friend. A casual pick-up on the beach. He’ll probably start sending out feelers under the table between the soup and the fish.

  ‘What do you think?’ she asked the dog, who had leapt tremendously on to a fortunately very solid-looking couch the moment he went in.

  Cal hung his head over one arm of the couch and looked at her sagaciously and barked happily.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, blinking against the gloom. More than gloom. It was downright dark, despite the bright evening sunshine which still covered everything outside.

  It was called a cottage, but it wasn’t one at all. ‘Cottage’ gave the impression of a small detached building with honeysuckle and roses climbing up the wall. This place was really a flat, if ‘flat’ didn’t conjure up quite another and absurdly modern picture. It was the bottom floor of a two-storey semi-detached building. The whole building stretched in a terrace about fifty yards long (which was where it got its name Long House, she supposed) with wings at either end partially enclosing a cobbled yard. It contained half a dozen or more ‘cottages’ most of the front doors of which opened on to a sea-wall, with the high-tide line not many yards away. Hers was the end one and the door opened to the side so that it faced up the long spit of land known as the Grune where she had been sunbathing that day. But the bedroom windows overlooked the sea.

  Windows were obviously a problem to the builders. The place was very old, how old she couldn’t say. It had been built for solidity and contained none of the more common-place evidences of ‘style’ which would have helped her to date it. Everyone said it was mentioned in Scott’s Redgauntlet as some kind of hotel, and many of the cottage names were taken from the book. The Young Pretender was supposed to have slept there, and it may have been an old building then.

  But, whenever it was built, windows had proved difficult. Or perhaps they had only become difficult later as domestic expectations grew higher. There were two bedrooms overlooking the sea, both well enough lit. The large one, hers, ran parallel to the living room and had two not very large but adequate windows. Similarily the other, smaller one. So they were fine.

  The trouble was the living room. It shared one wall with the bedroom, one wall with the kitchen, a third (opposite the bedroom wall) with the cottage next door which formed the ‘wing’ of the whole of Long House; and thus the room only had one ‘outside’ wall. The front door was here, of course. But so was the fireplace, and this was huge.

  The whole complex took up two-thirds of the wall. The door took up most of the rest. This left room for a window approximately two and a half feet square. Even with the help of a glass panel over the door this was totally inadequate to light what was a very long room.

  So with a casual ingenuity which Emily greatly admired, the builder, or some later ‘improver’, had knocked a small window high in the wall between the bedroom and the living room so that the superfluity of light in the former could be democratically shared with the latter.

  It worked reasonably well at midday in bright sunshine. At most other times the electric light was needed, despite an additional aid to the lighting problem in the form of a multiplicity of mirrors. They were everywhere in the lounge: square ones, round ones, long ones; fitted into furniture, nailed on to walls, resting casually on top of the sideboard. Her favourite was the one high above the double mantelshelf of the fireplace, too high to reflect herself unless she stood on tiptoe.

  Perhaps the real reason she liked this mirror was just because she could not see into it. All the mirrors were pretty old, with some of the silvering going, and though only one was actually cracked, none of them gave what seemed to be a simple true reflection. There was always a slight twist somewhere, or a mistiness. It made her feel slightly uneasy to come face to face with herself as suddenly as she could do here. She had been here nearly a week. Surely that was long enough?

  For me, perhaps, she thought gloomily. But Sterne had booked her into the cottage for a fortnight; and Sterne Follett expected thirty-six inches in his yard.

  She dared not plumb too deeply into her hopes and fears. Somewhere, fathoms below, struggling all the time to reach the surface of her mind, was the certainty that Sterne would never let her go. But he had implied a bargain; that was why she was here. And he kept his word, didn’t he? She had to stay.

  But he used people as well. In the end it might all be for nothing. Probably for nothing. Nothing.

  Still, it wasn’t too bad. Being here. Not too bad. Not while the sun shone. She too would make a bargain, a meteorological pact. God alone knew what her husband was up to and she had no desire to share the knowledge. So let the weather decide.

  Once the weather broke, she promised herself, she would go.

  ‘Where next, Cal?’ she asked. The big dog opened its good eye, then went back to sleep. It loved to lie on the couch whenever it got the chance. But at night Emily stretched out a large rug in the covered archway outside the back door and he slept there. The nights had been so hot and muggy since they came that if he stayed inside he would start licking her face in the early hours till she awoke and let him out.

  Emily glanced at her watch. There was time for a cup of tea before getting ready. She still took an absurd pleasure in catering for herself, even at this lowly level. She had been ashamed to find how inept she was in the kitchen when she first started to look after herself again. That had only bee
n a fortnight ago. It seemed much longer. But now at least she knew exactly where everything was.

  She opened the door of the large store cupboard in the living room and reached inside.

  Her fingers closed over a packet of tea instead of the tea-caddy.

  She lifted it out and looked at it thoughtfully. It was very right and proper that packets of tea should be on the same shelf as the caddy. She had decided on the arrangement herself. But there shouldn’t have been one there.

  She peered into the cupboard, went and switched the electric light on, peered in once more.

  There the caddy was, looking perfectly ordinary, neatly situated on the shelf, no sign of disturbance.

  She looked at the next shelf. Two bottles of instant coffee looking exactly the same. She knew one was half-empty, one unopened. It was impossible to tell which was which till you felt the weight. But she knew the unopened one was nearest the side of the cupboard. She picked up the other, unscrewed the lid. The circle of unblemished silver foil shone dully at her like a great, unseeing, cyclopean eye.

  Now she went swiftly round the house. Nothing was missing, nothing of hers, anyway. But here and there she found other small signs of disturbance, unnoticeable unless you looked closely.

  She looked very closely, seeking firm evidence that this was more than the neurotic nervousness of a woman living alone. Finally convinced, she lay down on her bed and lit a cigarette.

  I suppose I should call the police, she thought. For what? A lot of questions, a lot of disbelief. Christ, I can hardly believe it myself! Why should they? I’d probably get some big fat bobby who’d think I was trying to get a bit of male attention. He might even try his hand. Better forget it. I don’t want to end up resisting an officer in the pursuit of his duty!

  Laughing to herself, she leaned over and stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray on the bedside table. Beside it lay a book, with matchstick protruding from its pages as a bookmark. She glanced at her watch. A cup of tea no longer attracted, but she still had a quarter of an hour or more before she needed to change.

  She leaned back and opened the book. It was a nineteenth-century history of the Solway and seemed to go with the cottage. She had found it by her pillow on arrival, opened at the chapter on the ‘busy and important port of Silloth’. It was fascinating reading. She had known the area from childhood, though she had not been back here for fifteen years or more. And delving into a past where familar old names loomed large gave her a sense of security, a feeling of belonging.

  ‘Religious houses on the Solway Coast,’ she read. She gave a sigh of satisfaction and settled back into her pillow. She wished that she hadn’t made that silly arrangement to go out. She could always telephone the hotel. But that would be unfair. One thing she had learned from the last ten years was that everyone deserved a fair deal. Even Sterne honoured obligations in his own way.

  So as long as she honoured hers within reason, life would go on, become bearable eventually.

  ‘Besides, I’m tired of omelettes,’ she said aloud.

  She arrived at the Solway Towers dead on time, having deposited Cal and a small thigh-bone in the pretty little hotel garden. He tended to be a menace in crowded bars.

  It was her first visit to the hotel since she arrived in Skinburness, and the last time she had been there was more than ten years earlier. Ten aeons in terms of experience.

  Burgess rose from his seat and greeted her warmly, but at least half his attention was fixed on a small gathering further along the bar around a woman on a high stool who was crying, drinking and talking at the same time. From the surrounding group arose a constant ululation of consoling coos. It was the kind of grouping and ‘natural’ noise you might expect from a rather poor repertory company with lots of amateur extras. The woman herself was undoubtedly professional.

  Everyone else in the room was observing the main action with undisguised interest.

  ‘For Godsake!’ cried the leading lady with a nasal American drawl. ‘Why doesn’t someone get out and do something instead of just farting around? He’s lost, I tell you. He’s in trouble! Won’t you even phone the coastguard?’

  This last question she snarled at a man who from the quality of his cooing and the nature of his dress Emily assumed was the manager.

  ‘Please, Mrs. Castell,’ he said. ‘What I can I will do. But I do not see … your husband is merely forty-five minutes late … we will keep his dinner for him. Perhaps something of interest occupied his attention. There is no danger, I assure you. It is early yet…’

  ‘Early!’ cried the woman. ‘Early! You want to wait till it’s late, is that it? And no danger? What about that guy they found drowned on the beach down the coast a ways only last week. Try telling him there was no danger, eh? This couldn’t happen at a Hilton hotel.’

  ‘What on earth is going on?’ whispered Emily to Burgess.

  ‘The lady,’ he replied, ‘is Mrs. Amanda Castell, whose husband, Mr. Fenimore Castell, set out for a preprandial walk about five o’clock from which he has not yet returned. She is convinced that he’s fallen into a creek or trodden on quicksand. Mind you, it wouldn’t have to be very quick. He is a very large man and even good firm earth yields to his tread. I think that’s why they don’t walk together. Double the danger.’

  Satirical Mr. Burgess, thought Emily. But without doubt Mrs. Amanda Castell was a large woman. Twenty years earlier her figure might have been Junoesque.

  Now the front curves had resolved themselves into a single mighty undulation.

  But she had a pleasant, rather likable face and something like amusement glittered at the back of her eyes as she caught the tail-end of Emily’s scrutiny.

  ‘She’s right, though,’ Burgess went on. ‘The water round here is dangerous. I hope you don’t get your bathing suit wet when you’re by yourself?’

  ‘I’m careful,’ she said, part amused, part irritated by his warning. ‘It was sad about that chap they found. It was at Allonby, wasn’t it? I read about it in the local paper the day I arrived.’

  Allonby was about nine miles down the coast. She could remember going to have tea in a café when she was young, then playing among the rocks on the beach. It was much-looked-forward-to treat. Her memory drift prevented her from catching the first part of her host’s reply. She gathered he had been talking about the inquest.

  ‘… heart-failure,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t wearing a stitch, evidently. Perhaps the sea had dragged his clothing off him. Anyway, identification was impossible further than the fact that he was a foreigner. No one’s come forward to claim him.’

  ‘How’d they know he was a foreigner if there were no clothes?’

  ‘Teeth,’ he said laconically. ‘They weren’t filled by an English dentist.’

  ‘Perhaps he fell off a boat,’ suggested Emily, as the barman approached.

  He looked pleased to have something to do other than minister to a grieving woman.

  ‘Gin and tonic,’ she said to Burgess’s questioning eyebrows.

  ‘And a half of keg,’ he passed on to the barman.

  ‘And a pint of Guinness when you’ve a moment, John,’ said another voice.

  It came from a man leaning through the hatch which opened from the bar on to the smoke room. Through it came the click of dominoes and the chatter of male conversation. The man was tall, in his thirties, with jet-black hair and a weather-beaten face of rather sullen cast.

  ‘Right, Mr. Scott,’ said the barman.

  Scott’s attention seemed like everybody else’s to be on the American woman who had started talking again. The corners of his mouth lifted sardonically as he listened, then his gaze drifted momentarily along the bar, took in Emily and Burgess, held them for a moment, and returned to the main attraction.

  Emily felt discarded, but reassured herself by basking in the full glow of Burgess’s obvious pride of possession now he had returned his whole attention to her.

  Even this was not hers for long, however. Behind her s
he heard the bar door open.

  ‘Fenimore!’ screamed Amanda Castell in a high C of relief.

  Then ‘Fenimore!’ she added, dropping an octave into menace, ‘where in the name of all that’s holy have you been?’

  If the man you’re with is staring over your shoulder, Emily told herself resignedly, you might as well look with him. But before she did, she noticed with mild curiosity that the man Scott had decided to ignore this interesting development and had moved away from the hatch.

  Fenimore Castell was large. He filled the doorway, just as honest distress at his wife’s question filled his broad honest face which had a look of perpetual surprise given to it by a pair of huge rimless spectacles fastened round the back of his head by an elastic band.

  ‘Honey, I’m sorry! Have you been worried? I never thought… the time just flew. The thing was this. I came across Mr. Inwit and Mr. Plowman here—you remember we noticed them at dinner last night and you said—well, anyway, here they are.’

  With the air of a jovial conjuror he shepherded forward two men who had entered almost unnoticed behind him.

  Both middle-aged and of medium height, there the resemblance ended. The one on Castell’s left was round, with a chubby red face in which bright little eyes twinkled behind thick-lensed spectacles. A few scant locks of fair hair had been laid carefully over his sunburnt pate whose bald eminence shone like polished red tiles.

  The other was thin and lugubrious in appearance. His nose looked as if it had been pinched out of china clay and his thin lips pressed together in an unyielding line. He had all his lank brown hair and was wearing what looked like a boiler-suit, the knees of which were stained with fresh earth.

  Oblivious to everyone else, Fenimore Castell was cotinuing his explanation to his wife.

  ‘Now these two, Mr. Plowman and Mr. Inwit’ (Which is which? wondered Emily), ‘are archaeologists, honey, the real thing, yeah. And I found them at it along the Grune!’