Authors: Jonathan Coe
‘Who’s there?’ said Hilary. ‘Come on, speak up.’
Nobody breathed.
‘You were imagining it,’ said Roddy, after about a minute.
‘I don’t
imagine
things,’ Hilary answered, indignantly. But the tension had gone.
‘Well, fear can play strange tricks,’ said her brother.
‘Look: I am
not
afraid.’
He laughed scornfully. ‘Afraid? You’re scared witless, old girl.’
‘I don’t know what gives you that idea.’
‘After all these years, darling, I can read you like a book. Anyone can tell when you’re upset. You start messing around with the grapes.’
‘The grapes? What are you on about?’
‘You start playing around with them. Peeling them. Taking the skins off. You’ve done it since you were a kid.’
‘I may have done it since I was a kid but I’m not doing it tonight, I can assure you.’
‘Oh, come off it. I’ve got one of them in my hands right now.’
Roddy stroked the fruit between finger and thumb – it felt smooth and oily without its skin – and then popped it into his mouth. He closed his teeth upon it, but instead of the expected release of fresh, tangy syrup upon his tongue, he felt only a rubbery squelch, and his mouth was filled with an appalling taste, the nameless virulence of which he had never known before.
‘Jesus Christ!’ he shouted, and spat it out. He began to retch violently.
Just then, the lights came back on. Squinting in the sudden brightness, it took him a few seconds to identify the object he had just coughed up, which was now lying on the table in front of him. It was a half-chewed eyeball. Its fellow stared balefully at him from the fruit bowl: the bloodshot eye of Thomas Winshaw, fixed for ever in its last, unblinking, lifeless gaze.
CHAPTER SIX
The Crowning Touch
‘HE should sleep now,’ said Phoebe, as Roddy lay back on the pillow, his breathing gradually taking on a slower, more regular rhythm. She gently took the glass from his hand, set it down on the bedside table, and put the bottle of pills away in her bag.
Hilary regarded her brother dispassionately. ‘He always was a squeamish little thing,’ she said. ‘Still, I’ve never seen him perform in quite that way before. Will he be all right, do you think?’
‘I expect he’s just in shock. A few hours’ rest ought to take care of it.’
‘Well, we could all do with that.’ Hilary glanced around the room, and went to check that the window was securely fastened. ‘I suppose he’ll be safe in here, will he? There’s not much point leaving him sleeping like a baby if our resident maniac is just going to sneak in and bump him off the minute our backs are turned.’
They decided that the best thing would be to lock him in. Phoebe didn’t think that he would wake before morning, and even if he did, the temporary inconvenience of being held captive was surely of little importance when set beside his personal safety.
‘I think I’d better keep the key,’ said Phoebe, slipping it into the pocket of her jeans as they set off down the corridor together.
‘Why’s that?’
‘I would have thought it was obvious. Michael and I were tied up when Thomas was killed. That puts us in the clear, doesn’t it?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Hilary curtly, after a moment’s thought. ‘In any case, my congratulations go to whoever’s behind this whole set-up. They haven’t missed a trick. Disconnecting all the phones, for instance. I think I could forgive just about everything apart from that.’
‘Preventing us from calling the police, you mean?’
‘Worse than that – I can’t even use my modem. First time in six years I’ve missed a copy deadline. I’d got an absolute corker for them, too. All about the Labour Party peaceniks and how the Iraqis would have run rings around them. Ah well.’ She sighed. ‘It’ll just have to wait.’
They made their way back to the sitting room, where Tabitha was once again installed by the fire, now preoccupied not with her knitting but with the perusal of a bulky paperback which on closer inspection turned out to be Volume Four of
The Air Pilot’s Manual.
She looked up when Hilary and Phoebe came in, and said: ‘Why, there you are! I was beginning to think you were never coming back.’
‘What about Michael and Mr Sloane?’ Phoebe asked. ‘Are they still outside?’
‘I suppose they must be,’ said Tabitha. ‘Really, you know, I find it hard to keep track of all your comings and goings.’
‘And there’s been no sign of Dorothy, I suppose?’ Hilary ventured.
‘The only person I’ve seen,’ said the old woman, ‘was your father. He stopped by a few minutes ago. We had a lovely little chat.’
Phoebe and Hilary exchanged worried looks. Hilary knelt down beside her aunt and began to speak very slowly and distinctly.
‘Aunty, Mortimer isn’t with us any more. He died, the day before yesterday. That’s why we’re all here, remember? We came for the reading of his will.’
Tabitha frowned. ‘No, I think you must be quite mistaken, dear. I’m certain it was Morty. I must say, I didn’t think he was looking his best – he was very tired and out of breath, and he did have blood all over his clothes, now I come to think of it – but he wasn’t dead. Not a bit of it. Not at all like Henry, or Mark, or Thomas.’ She smiled at the last name, and shook her head fondly. ‘Now
that's
what I call dead.’
There were footsteps outside the room, and Michael returned, with Pyles and Mr Sloane in tow. Hilary rose from her kneeling position and took Michael aside to acquaint him with the latest turn of events.
‘Loony alert,’ she said, in a loud whisper. ‘The old biddy’s completely lost it this time.’
‘Why, what’s happened?’
‘Says she’s just been talking to my father.’
‘I see.’ Michael paced the room for a few moments, sunk in thought. Then he looked up. ‘Well – who’s to say she’s not telling the truth? I mean, did anyone actually
see
Mortimer die?’
‘I didn’t,’ said Phoebe. ‘As I said, I wasn’t here when it happened. I’d gone back to Leeds for a couple of days.’
‘And was that your idea?’
‘Not really. He more or less forced it upon me. Told me I was looking under the weather and insisted that I took a break.’
‘And what about you, Pyles – did you ever see Mortimer’s body?’
‘No,’ said the butler, scratching his head. ‘Dr Quince – Dr Quince the younger, that is – simply came down that morning and informed me that the master had passed away. And then he very kindly offered to make all the arrangements with the funeral director himself. I wasn’t involved at all.’
‘But my father couldn’t be running around here killing people,’ Hilary protested. ‘He was confined to a wheelchair, for God’s sake.’
‘That was the impression he liked to give,’ said Phoebe. ‘But I saw him get up and walk once or twice, when he thought nobody was looking. He wasn’t nearly as ill as he liked to make out.’
‘I cannot find it in me to believe,’ the solicitor maintained, ‘that Mr Winshaw himself is still alive, somewhere in this house, and is responsible for all these dreadful murders.’
‘But it’s the only possible solution,’ said Michael. ‘I’ve known it all along.’
Hilary raised her eyebrows.
‘That’s a rather extraordinary statement,’ she said. ‘Since when have you known it, exactly?’
‘Well … since Henry was killed,’ said Michael; and then thought again. ‘No, before then: since I arrived here. No, before that, even: since Mr Sloane turned up at my flat yesterday. Or – oh, I don’t know: since I was first approached by Tabitha and started writing this wretched book about you all. I can’t say. I really can’t say. Perhaps it’s even longer than that. Perhaps it goes all the way back to my birthday.’
‘Your birthday?’ said Hilary. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
Michael sat down and put his head in his hands. He spoke wearily, without emotion.
‘Years ago, on my ninth birthday, I was taken to see a film. It was set in a house rather like this one, and it was about a family, rather like yours. I was an over-sensitive little boy and I should never have been allowed to see it, but because it was supposed to be a comedy my parents thought it would be all right. It wasn’t their fault. They could never have known the effect it was going to have. I know it sounds hard to believe, but it was … well, easily the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. I’d never seen anything like it before. And then half-way through – less than half-way through, probably – my mother made us get up and leave. She said we had to go home. And so we left: we left and I never found out what happened in the end. All I could do was wonder about it, for years afterwards.’
‘Enchanting though I find these childhood reminiscences,’ Hilary interrupted, ‘I can’t help thinking you’ve chosen an odd time to share them with us.’
‘I’ve seen the film since then, you understand,’ said Michael, apparently not having heard her. ‘I’ve got it on video. I know how the story works out: that’s how I know that Mortimer’s still alive. But that isn’t the point. It was never enough, being able to see it whenever I wanted: because I wasn’t just
watching
it, that day. I was
living
it: that’s the feeling I thought would never come back, the one I’ve been waiting to recapture. And now it’s happening. It’s started. All you people’ – he gestured at the circle of attentive faces – ‘you’re all characters in my film, you see. Whether you realize it or not, that’s what you are.’
‘Just like Alice, and the Red King’s dream,’ Tabitha chipped in.
‘Exactly.’
‘If I may make a suggestion, Michael,’ said Hilary, in a sweet tone of voice which rapidly turned sour, ‘why don’t you and Aunt Tabitha retire to a quiet corner together, for a private meeting of Nutters Anonymous, while the rest of us apply our minds to the trifling little question of how we’re going to get through the rest of the night without being slashed to ribbons?’
‘Hear hear,’ said Mr Sloane.
‘We all seem to be forgetting, apart from anything else, that according to the local police there’s an escaped killer in the area. Forgive me for being so prosaic, but I can’t help thinking that this has slightly more bearing on our predicament than Mr Owen’s admittedly diverting fairy stories.’
‘That business with the policeman was all a red herring,’ said Michael.
‘What’s this? Another theory? Why, the man’s a perfect magician! What’s it to be this time, Michael – Plan Nine from Outer Space? Abbott and Costello Meet the Wolf Man?’
‘Mr Sloane and I have been out to check the driveway,’ Michael said. ‘It’s covered with mud, so any tyre tracks would show up quite clearly. But you can still see my footprints: they’re the most recent marks on the drive. There’s been no police car here since I arrived.’
Hilary seemed momentarily chastened. ‘Well you saw this policeman, and so did Mark and Dorothy. Are you saying he was an impostor?’
‘I think it was Mortimer himself. I only ever met your father once, so I can’t be sure.
They
, of course, hadn’t seen him for years. But it’s what happens in the film. The man who’s supposed to be dead turns up and pretends to be a policeman, to throw them off the scent.’
‘I don’t know about anybody else, but my head’s beginning to spin with all this theorizing,’ said Mr Sloane, breaking the uneasy silence which followed this exchange. ‘I propose that we all go to our rooms, lock the doors, and stay put until the storm blows over. Explanations can wait until the morning.’
‘What a splendid idea,’ said Tabitha. ‘I’m quite worn out, I must say. I wonder if someone would be so good as to fill me a hot-water bottle, before they retire? This house seems so frightfully chilly tonight.’
Phoebe said that she would take care of it, while Michael, Pyles and Mr Sloane decided to make one final search of the house, to see if there was any sign of Dorothy.
‘We still haven’t talked about your book, Michael,’ Tabitha reminded him, just as he was about to leave. ‘Now you won’t disappoint me tomorrow, will you? I’ve been looking forward to it for so long. So very, very long. It will be just like talking to your father again.’
Michael stopped in his tracks when she said this. He wasn’t sure that he had heard correctly.
‘You’re very like him, you know. Just as I expected. The same eyes. Exactly the same eyes.’
‘Come on,’ said Mr Sloane, pulling at Michael’s sleeve. He added in a whisper: ‘She’s not all there, poor soul. Take no notice. We don’t want to confuse her even further.’
Hilary was left alone with her aunt. She stood for a while in front of the fire, biting her nail and doing her best to make sense of Michael’s latest baffling suggestion.
‘Aunty,’ she said, after a minute or two. ‘Are you quite
sure
it was my father you were talking to in here?’
‘Quite sure,’ said Tabitha. She closed her book and put it away in her knitting bag. ‘You know, it’s very confusing, with everyone saying that he’s dead one minute and alive the next. But there is a way you could prove it beyond question, isn’t there?’
‘Really? How would I do that?’
‘Why, you could go down to the crypt, of course, and see if his body’s in the coffin or not.’
Hilary had never wanted for courage, and she thought that this plan was well worth putting into action; but the journey involved was not one to relish. She was determined to complete it as quickly as possible, and so didn’t stop to fetch her raincoat before unbolting the front door and throwing herself into the heart of the howling storm, which had been continuing now for two hours or more. Barely able to see through the thick sheets of rain, almost thrown off her feet by the buffeting wind, she struggled across the forecourt and made for the bulky outline of the family chapel, which stood in a small glade near the head of the densely wooded driveway. All around her the trees groaned, creaked and rustled as the gale came and went in a series of wild and unpredictable gusts. Very much to her surprise, the door to the chapel was open, and there was a light flickering inside. Two candles burned on the altar. They had been recently lit, even though the chapel itself appeared to be deserted. Shivering violently – half with the cold, half with apprehension – she hurried across the aisle and pushed open a small, oak-framed door which gave upon a steep flight of stone steps. These were the steps which led down to the family vaults, where generation after generation of Winshaws had been interred, and where one vacant but elaborately inscribed tomb bore witness to the memory of Godfrey, the wartime hero, whose body they had never been able to recover from enemy soil.