A Dark and Stormy Night (19 page)

‘I'm not sure your logic holds up there. I wish I could do it myself.'

‘So do I. But you can't. So it has to be Pat and me.'

‘All right, I suppose. But I intend to be right outside the door. And it can wait until after lunch. I assume you can eat something now?'

‘So long as it doesn't have much taste, or any smell at all.'

I stayed out of the kitchen. Alan brought me some very mild cheese and rather tasteless crackers, and had thoughtfully made a glass of iced tea for my strange American tastes (apparently the freezer was still cold), and reported as I nibbled that the Bateses were back at work and apparently feeling quite normal, except that Mr Bates wasn't quite as urbanely courteous as usual, and his wife was rather quiet.

‘Embarrassed, I suspect,' he concluded. ‘A big man like that doesn't care to remember that he fainted at the sight of . . . that he fainted, and in front of a lot of people.'

‘I would have, too, only I couldn't see very clearly. He was right in front of that . . . thing.' I shuddered and put down my glass. ‘I really think that's all I can manage for now. And if I don't go talk to Julie soon, I'll lose my nerve. I don't think I can face kitchen smells, though. Could you find Pat for me and ask if she's willing to act as prosecuting attorney again?'

‘Counsel for the Crown,' he murmured, and left the room.

Pat was more than willing. She was, in fact, hovering in that uncertain state between boredom and nervous excitement that makes it impossible to settle to anything. ‘I feel like Kipling's rhinoceros,' she said as she walked in the door, giving an impatient wriggle of that magnificent body.

‘Cake crumbs under your skin?'

‘Exactly. I want something to happen, but I'm afraid of what it might be. I understand you want me to tackle Jovial Julie again.'

‘I'm hoping that she may be chafing enough under her self-imposed restraints to open up a little more. Especially if you provide some further . . . um . . . lubrication.'

Pat held up the bottle she had thoughtfully brought along, an unopened litre of a premium bourbon. ‘Will this do the trick, do you suppose?'

‘Yipes! That's way too good for the purpose. I do hate to see that stuff poured down an unappreciative gullet.'

‘Perhaps you'd like a taste first?' asked Pat with a wicked smile.

‘Ouch! No, I won't have a hair of the dog, thank you very much. If somebody's going to get a splitting head from that stuff, better her than me. Excelsior.'

We headed down to the far end of the wing, Alan right behind us. He had obtained the key from Rose, assuming that Julie was still barricading herself. I couldn't say I blamed her. If I hadn't had Alan to sustain me, I would have locked myself up, too.

‘Dorothy, look.' Pat pointed with the bottle.

Near the end of the long corridor, a lighter area showed, as if a door was open, letting in, not direct sunlight, since that side of the house faced north, but the glow of reflected light.

Julie's door was open, and a glance told us she wasn't in the room.

‘Bathroom, probably,' said Pat.

‘There's an en suite bath for every bedroom, remember? Every one that's in regular use, anyway.'

‘Then she's gone in search of something to eat.'

‘I'm sure Mrs Bates brings her food. Something to drink, more likely,' I said, by way of calling the kettle black.

‘She'll be back soon, anyway. Should we close the door so she won't know she has a reception committee?'

‘Not when she left it open,' Alan put in sensibly. ‘Leave everything as it was, but stay out of sight of the doorway.'

Feeling as if I'd walked into an Inspector Clouseau movie, I took a position against the wall beside the hinge side of the door (hoping Julie wouldn't bang it into my nose when she returned). Pat stepped into a corner, easily visible but not until one was in the room. And Alan, who was there simply as guard dog, stepped into the unoccupied room across the hall.

We waited, scarcely daring to breath. The hall was carpeted with heavy Oriental runners and the floors, though very old, were very solid. Julie's footfalls wouldn't make much noise, and we didn't want to be caught off guard.

I began to get a cramp in the calf of my left leg. I tried to wiggle it out, but it only got worse. In agony, I had to walk it out. ‘Cramp,' I mouthed, pointing to my leg, when Pat glared at me. I walked as quietly as I could and returned to my post as soon as the cramp eased itself.

Pat's nose began to twitch. At first I thought she smelled something peculiar, so I sniffed myself, but could detect nothing but the slightly stale aroma of a room that had been shut up for too long with someone who hadn't bathed for a while. Then Pat sneezed, a sneeze that was all the more explosive for being suppressed.

We both waited anxiously for the sound of footsteps running the other way. Nothing.

I sighed, inaudibly I hoped, and settled down in silence again, changing feet now and then to avoid cramp.

I don't know how long we stood there before it dawned on us that Julie had gone farther afield than the kitchen or the library liquor cabinet. At any rate, I was the first to give it up.

‘This is pure farce,' I said aloud, slumping away from my rigid pose beside the wall. ‘Julie's up to something, and I think we'd do better trying to find her and figure out what it is.'

Pat agreed. ‘My skin was beginning to crawl in earnest. I don't think of myself as a fidget, but when one can't move, one instantly wants to.'

‘Well, let's get Alan and decide what to do.'

Alan, hearing us talking, left his lair and joined us. ‘The bird has flown?'

‘Hopped away, more likely,' I replied. ‘I doubt she's gone far, but we'd better find her.'

‘Yes. Why don't I take up my surveillance from across the way again, and you two check the rest of the bedrooms. And bathrooms. Because on past form . . .'

He didn't need to finish the thought. If Julie had managed to get hold of another bottle, she might well have found another comfortable bathtub.

It would be tedious to detail our search. It was slow and thorough. We looked in every bedroom, occupied or not (in a couple of cases waking nappers), and their adjacent bathrooms and sitting rooms. We checked two linen closets and found nothing but sheets and towels. We even peered down the shaft of the dumbwaiter.

No Julie.

‘She could be keeping one step ahead of us, you know,' said Pat as we sank down on the canopy bed in the last vacant bedroom. ‘One could play that game forever in a house this size.'

‘Yes, but why? I can't think why she'd want to hide, not from us. In fact, I can't think why she'd leave her bedroom at all, not for any length of time. She only had to ring for anything she wanted, and she's been so scared of whatever-it-is.'

‘Cabin fever. She got fed up with being by herself.'

‘Maybe,' I said dubiously. ‘Or else . . .'

Pat sighed. ‘Yes. I was hoping we could avoid that speculation. Or else, you're thinking, she didn't leave her room willingly.'

‘I think Alan's had that idea for some time.'

So we trooped back to where Alan was keeping his futile watch. ‘No luck?' he asked. But he knew the answer.

‘What now, boss?' That was Pat. I was rapidly becoming too worried to be cheeky.

‘Where have you looked?'

We told him. Pat summarized, ‘She isn't anywhere on this floor. We've exhausted all the possibilities. And ourselves,' she added.

‘Did you study her room at all?'

I took that question to myself. ‘No. I thought you'd rather do that. At a quick glance, I didn't see anything to show whether she left of her own accord or . . . not. But you'll know better than I what to look for.'

‘First,' said Alan, ‘we need to determine that she is not still somewhere in the house.'

‘Yes, we'll—'

I never got to finish the sentence. ‘I hope that you, my dear, will have nothing to do with this search. You've done your part. Please, I want you to go to our room, lock yourself in and stay there. Do I need to spell out why?'

No, he didn't. Nor was I, for once, disposed to argue. With Julie's disappearance the nightmare had overshadowed us completely. There was no more question of pushing it out of our minds, pretending that all the horrors were in and of the past.

We were now living in fear, genuine, unadulterated fear.

‘Alan . . . you won't do anything silly?'

‘By which I assume you mean heroics. No, love, I won't. I'll be with other people – more than one other person – the whole time. Now Pat and I will see you back to the room. I don't like the idea of her being alone, either. Then she and I will go downstairs, tell the others, and organize search teams.'

I didn't learn until later that Alan had excluded the Bateses from the search, even though their knowledge of the house probably surpassed anyone else's. His stated reason was that someone needed to be available in case, by a miracle, some outside help arrived. His real reason, I knew, was that they were not entirely above suspicion. Neither were Jim and Joyce, but Alan had to have someone who knew the house reasonably well. So Jim had gone with Allen, along with Lynn, and Joyce led Mike, Pat and Tom.

Neither of the Moynihans knew as much about the hidden parts of the house as John Bates, but they knew what one might term the surface very well. Both groups searched the same areas at different times, in case someone spotted a trace – a tissue, a bit of cigarette ash, a thread – that the others had missed. They searched all the living areas, the cellars, the outbuildings. They ranged over the devastated gardens, peering under promising bushes and into the pits left by upturned shrubs and trees. They looked in and under everyone's cars, including the trunks/boots and under the hoods/bonnets, and made sure that all the cars were where they should be.

They found neither Julie nor any trace of her.

TWENTY-ONE

A
lan knocked on the door. This time I was wide awake and recognized his code. I knew as soon as I saw his face that the news was not good.

‘You didn't find her.'

‘No, but that's not the worst of it.' And he related to me the scene when the searchers returned and told Rose Bates that Julie had now to be counted as missing. ‘It seems Rose has been busy conducting a search of her own. She said that food was missing from the kitchen – portable food, cheese and biscuits and apples, that sort of thing – and that Mr Bates had reported that two bottles of whisky were gone. Well, Pat confessed that she had taken one of them, and put it back on the kitchen table. But Rose said bourbon wasn't whisky, so there were still two bottles unaccounted for.' Alan heaved a sigh. ‘Which would have been the end of it, except then Pat commented that it was apparent Julie was gone, and the only question remaining was whether she had gone of her own free will or been spirited away. And at that Rose flew into a kind of hysterics. Jim and Joyce are still trying to calm her down, so far as I know.'

‘But why should that have touched her off? It's no more than we've all been thinking ever since we found her room empty.'

‘“Spirited”,' said Alan with another sigh. ‘Pat meant nothing in particular by the word, but it seems there's a streak of good old country superstition in the competent and efficient Mrs Bates. All the unfortunate things that have happened in recent days have worked on her fears, and the mention – as she thought – of spirits was the crowning touch. She has decided, from what little sense I could make of her ravings, that the house is cursed, or possessed, or something of the kind. God only knows what's going to happen without her in the kitchen. She has been the glue that kept the household together, and now . . .' He raised his hands in a helpless gesture and sat down heavily on the bed.

‘There's no chance she'll come to her senses?'

‘Oh, eventually, I suppose. I wish we could give her a sedative. When she does come out of it, she could be in a bad way. I'm no doctor, but I've seen full-blown hysteria before, and it's not easy on anybody.'

‘Poor Joyce.' I sat down beside him.

‘Why Joyce, more than any of the rest of us?'

‘Because she's the hostess. She'll feel it her job to try to keep things going, and it's hopeless. I wish—'

‘No.' Alan said it with a finality that cut me off in mid-sentence. ‘You will not attempt to cook for this crowd. You will not organize a rota for the household chores. You will stay in this room until help arrives.'

‘Her master's voice,' I said with a lightness I did not feel. His face didn't change. I studied it for a moment and said, ‘You're really worried, aren't you?'

He sighed. ‘I am. I didn't mean to shout at you, Dorothy. But I have
no
idea what's going on here, and until I do, I'm genuinely frightened. For everyone, not just you. Until someone responds to our calls for help . . .'

‘That could be a long time,' I said meekly. ‘What are we going to do about food?'

‘I'm going back down in a moment. Tom and I will pack boxes of non-perishables for everyone. Fortunately there's plenty of food, though the variety may leave something to be desired. We will distribute them to everyone, and then my recommendation is that everyone keep to his or her or their own room – with the door locked. I do not intend this to turn into that novel you keep citing, with all of us being picked off one by one.'

‘Your recommendation.'