Why Aren't They Screaming? (6 page)

‘I write music,' Robert said unexpectedly. He laughed. ‘That is, I sit at my piano and think about writing music, and occasionally I actually do it. It's a very pleasant existence.'

‘Actually, Loretta' – Imo's voice floated down from the other end of the table – ‘Robert's very famous. You
must
have heard of him.'

‘Very probably,' Loretta said, hoping her ignorance of contemporary music was not about to be exposed. She turned back to Robert. ‘But I don't know your surname.'

‘Herrin,' called Imo. ‘Didn't I tell you?'

Loretta was relieved; she recognized the name from concert posters she'd seen on the London Underground, even
though she had no idea what kind of music Robert composed.

‘Of course,' she said. ‘Flitwell obviously isn't as rural as I'd supposed. I expected it to be full of farmworkers and smallholders, not publishers and composers.'

There was a slight edge to her remark which Robert was quick to pick up.

‘And what about where you live?' he asked. ‘What kind of people live there? Islington, I should say, or just maybe Fulham?'

‘Islington,' Loretta agreed, wondering where this conversation was about to lead.

‘Islington? I used to have a very tiny flat down by the Angel. Where are you?' Gilbert had overheard the last part of the conversation.

Loretta told him she lived in Liverpool Road and they began to compare notes about the area. Robert's attention was distracted by Here, and Loretta settled back and began to enjoy the evening again.

Conversation flowed unforcedly round the table – even Peggy, coaxed by Here and Robert, seemed to be joining in. It was not until the hate cake made its appearance, to general acclaim, that Loretta realized how tired she was. Perhaps it was the soft darkness of the room, or the gentle rhythm of the rain overhead, but she longed to curl up on the yellow velvet
chaise-longue
in Clara's study. So seductive was this image that, as Gilbert handed a plate of cake to her, she realized she was in danger of nodding off. Blinking hard, she picked up her spoon, only to drop it with a clatter as a tremendous crash resounded through the room, followed by the noise of a car accelerating.

Confusion reigned; she was aware that Robert and someone else – was it Ellie? – were on their feet and a voice was – calling for lights. As the room flooded with light Clara wrenched open the front door. For a moment all Loretta could see was blood – blood running down the brown front door, over the threshold into the hall, and leaving brilliant red stains on the hem of Clara's green and yellow dress. Then she heard Ellie's voice – ‘Paint! It's only paint!' – and a collective sigh of relief ran through the room. Everyone began
talking at once and Loretta edged round the table behind Robert until she was close enough to see for herself. The smell alone, she realized, was enough to prove it wasn't blood. Of all of them, Peggy was the first to recover her wits.

‘You got a floorcloth? And a bucket?'

Imo led the way into the kitchen, leaving the others standing uselessly in the hall. Robert stepped gingerly into the road, avoiding the pool of paint, and returned with something in his hand.

‘This is what it came in,' he said, holding up a two-and-a-half litre paint tin with the label clumsily torn off.

‘Don't touch it – there may be fingerprints!' Clara's warning was too late.

‘Sorry. I expect they wore gloves, anyway.' Robert stood the can on the floor, well away from the front door which Imo and Peggy were now attempting to clean.

‘Hadn't we better phone the police?' Gilbert was the first person to think of it.

Robert offered to make the call, and disappeared into the sitting room.

‘How did they get away so fast?' Ellie asked.

‘There was a car,' Loretta said. ‘I heard it accelerate.'

‘I did, too,' said Here. ‘I guess they threw that stuff out the door.'

‘Now what do you say?' Clara suddenly whirled round to face Gilbert, her face flushed. ‘Is this what I have to put up with, just because I don't want the base here?'

‘Clara, there's no proof this has anything to do with the peace camp,' Gilbert said weakly. ‘Let's leave it to the police to find out. That's their job.'

‘You're telling me this is a coincidence? After last night?' Clara was really angry now. ‘Since I allowed that peace camp on to my land there's been one thing after–'

‘Mum, hadn't you better change your dress? It's got paint all over it.' Loretta wasn't certain but she thought there had been some sort of warning in Imo's tone. What had Clara intended to say?

At that moment Robert returned from the sitting room. As soon as he appeared, Peggy, who was on her knees wiping up paint with old newspapers, jumped to her feet.

‘They coming?'

Robert shook his head.

‘Not yet. They're sending a car, but it'll be at least three-quarters of an hour. They're short-staffed, apparently. There's been a big crash on the M40 and they're out at that as well as some incident in Oxford. Saturday night, I suppose. So – we wait.' He paused. ‘Listen, Clara, why don't you go to bed? You as well, Loretta, and Peggy. There's no point in all of us hanging about down here. I can tell them what happened, I saw as much as you did.'

For a moment Loretta thought Clara was going to argue; then, with a heavy sigh, she gave in.

‘I suppose you're right.'

‘Sure you can deal with this? You don't want me to stay?'

Robert refused the offer and Here gathered together the party that was to return to Flitwell. Ellie hugged Clara briefly, then she, Here and Gilbert stepped out into the night. As the door closed behind them, the women gathered at the foot of the stairs.

‘Off you go,' Robert said encouragingly. ‘You're quite safe. I'll wait here till they arrive.'

Climbing the stairs, Loretta realized she was trembling very slightly. The attack on the house, so sudden and intimidating, had left her feeling weak and empty. The image of Clara on the doorstep, what looked like blood soaking into the hem of her dress, was more real to her than the brightly lit staircase and landing. At the top of the stairs she turned and said a subdued goodnight to Clara, Imo and Peggy, then started down the long corridor to the study.

‘Loretta – I'm so sorry.' Clara's voice followed her down the corridor, her attempt at a normal tone underlining how shaken she had been by the incident.

Loretta turned again, forcing a smile. Inside the study, the door firmly shut, she undressed slowly, folding her clothes in a neat pile and absently brushing dust off her grey shoes. But there was no disguising the taste of bile in her throat as she curled up on the
chaise-longue
with the pretty Victorian quilt drawn up to her ears.

She didn't wake with a start, as sometimes happens in a strange place. She was in no doubt about where she was, and at no point did she experience the gut-wrenching stab of fear that hurls the sleeper across the boundary from dream to consciousness after a particularly vivid nightmare. It was more that she gradually became aware of voices, and the fact that she could still hear them now that she was fully awake. It was difficult to make out what they were saying, and she had to strain even to catch one or two phrases. When she did, she had to dismiss her initial assumption, which was that the police had finally arrived and were talking to Robert Herrin in the hall below. For one thing there are too many voices; for another the vocabulary was all wrong.

‘–brother was always penny-pinching but it did not occur to me that even he –'

‘God be thanked that his poor dear sister is not alive to hear such words.'

‘His own flesh and blood –'

‘Poor, poor Cousin Maude.'

Loretta sat up and peered into the darkness. Where were the voices coming from? They seemed to be in the room with her, but she had no sense of their direction, perhaps because the drawn curtains and closed shutters had combined to produce an impenetrable darkness. Now completely awake, she sat up on one elbow and listened carefully. What were these people talking about? She caught more phrases.

‘To think that the scion of so noble a family could sink to such depths of depravity.'

‘Not just depraved, Lord Brownshaw;
unnatural.
'

“Tis a final and most bitter bequest.'

They were speaking in shocked, subdued tones, and a scene flashed into Loretta's head: a group of people, middle-aged to elderly, dressed in sombre and old-fashioned clothes, sitting in a dark parlour discussing the newly revealed contents of a will. But there was something stagy about the set-up, something not quite right; it was as though she was listening to a bad play on Radio Four.

Of course – someone in a nearby room was listening to the radio. Sound travels in old houses, she told herself, speculating that the wall between the study and the room next door might be unusually thin. But what a time to choose. Then she realized that she had no idea what hour it was. She threw back the quilt, swung her feet to the floor, and took careful steps across the room to the mantelpiece where she had left her watch. Pushing a curtain to one side, she read the time by moonlight: twenty past one. Who on earth could be listening to the radio at that hour? She remembered that Peggy was sleeping in the spare room next door, and felt even more perplexed; the play, if that was what it was, hardly seemed the sort of thing that would interest Peggy. In any case, surely Radio Four would be off the air by now? Even so, there was presumably some sort of local radio station in the area – maybe it was running a drama series for insomniacs? The obvious thing was to go next door and ask. Loretta let go of the curtain, drawing in her breath as the room was plunged again into darkness, and began to feel her way towards the door. As she did so she heard a sudden click, and the voices ceased. So it had been a radio, she thought, relieved that she'd been spared the task of asking Peggy to turn it down. And who could blame the girl for her wakefulness – she had seen the peace camp and Clara's house attacked on consecutive nights. Loretta put out a hand to her left, felt for the edge of the
chaise-longue,
and slipped back under the quilt. Before long she had drifted back to sleep as though the radio incident had never happened.

The second time she woke up with a start. She must have been sleeping much more lightly, for she actually heard the click before the voices began again. As before, Loretta lay very still, straining to make out what they were saying; it took
a couple of minutes to realize that something very odd was happening.

‘God be thanked that his poor dear sister is not alive to hear such words.'

‘His own flesh and blood –'

‘Poor, poor Cousin Maude.'

Not only the voices, but what they were saying, were an exact repeat of last time. Loretta's first thought was to wonder what on earth Peggy was up to. The voices obviously weren't coming from a radio; even a local station wouldn't broadcast the same play twice in one night. A tape recorder? To sit up half the night listening to a second-rate play twice over was eccentricity of a high order. Why would Peggy do such a thing?

‘Not just depraved, Lord Brownshaw;
unnatural.
'

“Tis a final and most bitter bequest.'

Loretta felt herself getting angry. As if she hadn't had enough to put up with for one night! The last thing she wanted was a row with Clara's other guest. And yet, if she was going to get any sleep at all, it seemed she had little choice. With an impatient sigh she slid her legs out from under the quilt for the second time, stood up, and started to move in the direction of the door. As she reached it she heard an abrupt click. The voices ceased at exactly the same point as they had earlier. Loretta waited for a moment in darkness to make sure the silence wasn't temporary. Then, as it stretched into minutes, she felt her way back to the
chaise-longue
and lay down to sleep for the third time.

A persistent knocking woke Loretta next morning and she realized someone was at the door of her room.

‘Come in,' she called, rubbing her eyes and wondering what time it was.

The door opened to reveal Clara, who was wearing a blue dressing-gown and carrying a cup and saucer.

‘Brought you some tea. Were you asleep? Sorry, it's just that I'm nearly ready for church. How did you sleep? After that terrible paint business, I mean.' She perched on the end of the
chaise-longue
as Loretta tasted her tea.

‘Oh, that,' said Loretta, surprised to find that the events of
the previous evening had rather faded from her mind. ‘I was so tired when I came to bed, I went out like a light. What did bother me, to tell you the truth, was the radio next door. At least, it sounded like a radio – what's the matter?'

Clara was leaning forward with an air of suppressed excitement.

‘A radio? Tell me what you heard.'

Loretta was slightly unnerved by the intensity of Clara's stare.

‘Well, there isn't much to tell... I mean – I was woken up by voices, I assume from next door, and it sounded as if someone was listening to a play on the radio. Then it went off, and a bit later I heard it again. It was just – voices.'

‘What were they saying? What sort of voices?'

‘Quiet, sort of subdued. They seemed to be talking about a will–'

‘And Cousin Maude? Did they mention Cousin Maude?'

‘Well, yes, they did. What is all this?'

Clara sat back, her lips drawn together in a thin line.

‘So I'm not going mad. Thank God. I was beginning to wonder.'

‘Clara, what's this about?'

Loretta put her empty cup on the floor and moved closer to her hostess.

‘It starts with a click, as though a radio's been turned on,' Clara said slowly. ‘First you think it's a play, Radio Four or something. Then it stops. And after a while you hear it again, the same piece of dialogue. So you think it's a tape recorder. In here or next door. So you turn the place upside down looking for it. And that's the point. There's nothing in here and nothing next door. Not a thing. So where's it coming from?'