Ritual Page 12

  ‘She’s not. But I have to stay somewhere.’

  ‘Rather you than me, pal.’

  Charlie turned his car around and drove straight back through Allen’s Corners and out on to the Quassapaug Road. A few drops of rain freckled his windshield, although it didn’t look as if it were going to come down heavily. Cherub’s tears, Marjorie always used to call those light sporadic showers, an occasional reminder that even the life hereafter could be unhappy, too.

  The gates of Le Reposoir were locked. Charlie climbed out of the car and pressed the intercom button. There was no reply, so he pressed the button again, and kept his finger on it for almost half a minute. At last, a detached, metallic voice said, ‘Please – we are closed. If you have anything to deliver, leave it at the post office in Allen’s Corners. We will collect it from there ourselves.’

  Charlie said, ‘This is Charles McLean. I want to speak to M. Musette.’

  ‘M. Musette is not here.’

  ‘What about Mme Musette?’

  ‘I regret, sir, that Mme Musette is not here, either.’

  ‘Is there a manager? Somebody in charge?’

  ‘Only myself, sir. I am the caretaker.’

  ‘I’m looking for my son,’ Charlie insisted, trying not to let his voice tremble.

  ‘Your son?’ asked the disembodied voice. ‘I regret that I do not understand.’

  ‘My son, Martin McLean, is missing and I have reason to believe that somebody at Le Reposoir may be able to help me locate him.’

  ‘Sir – you must be making some mistake. There is nobody here who could possibly help you with such a matter. If your son is missing you would be advised to contact the police.’

  Charlie said, ‘Is Harriet Greene there?’

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir, there is nobody of that name known to us. You seem to be suffering from some kind of misapprehension.’

  ‘Can I come inside and talk to you? It’s darned windy out here.’

  ‘I regret that would serve no constructive purpose, sir. Besides, in M. Musette’s absence, I have been requested not to admit anybody at all. There is much valuable property in the house, sir, and we have to be exceptionally careful about security.’

  Charlie rubbed the back of his neck. He was feeling very stiff and very tired. ‘All right,’ he conceded. ‘I’ll go talk to the police. But I would like to see M. Musette when he comes back. Is it possible to make an appointment?’

  ‘M. Musette has no appointments free before the end of the month.’

  ‘The end of the month? But it’s only the fourth now!’

  ‘M. Musette is a very busy man, sir.’

  Charlie controlled himself. ‘I understand,’ he told the voice on the intercom. ‘I’m sorry if I disturbed you.’

  ‘You are quite welcome, sir.’ The voice was as faultlessly polite as it was faultlessly unhelpful.

  Charlie returned to his car. For the first time he saw the remote TV camera watching him from the trees just inside the gates. He climbed back into his car, and made a showy three-point turn before taking a right along the north-west side of Le Reposoir’s extensive grounds, in the opposite direction to Allen’s Corners.

  He drove slowly, peering between the trees that lined the roadside to see what kind of fencing protected Le Reposoir from the outside world. Every now and then he glimpsed spiked steel railings, painted green, with ceramic conductors on them. Electrified, he thought. That’s how much they want to keep people out. Or maybe that’s how much they want to keep people in.

  After a little over a mile, however, he came to what he was looking for: a place where the grounds of Le Reposoir dipped downwards, while the verge of the road remained high. He stopped the car and got out, walking up the verge a little way to make sure that he would be able to do what he wanted to do. The wind blew across his ears like a ghostly mouth blowing across the neck of an empty bottle. He returned to his car, started up the engine again, and shifted it into first.

  Carefully, he turned the Oldsmobile off the road and drove it on to the grass. The suspension bounced and bucked, and he heard the muffler scrape against the gravelly ground. But then he was able to drive at a sharp angle down towards the green spiked fence, and pull to a halt with the automobile’s front bumper only an inch or two away from it. He switched off the engine and climbed out. Then – looking quickly all around him – he heaved himself up on to the hood. The sheet metal dented under his weight, but he walked without hesitation right to the front of the car to find that the green fence stood only two feet proud of the hood. He took two steps back, and then jumped right over the spikes and into the tangled bushes on the other side, tumbling over and over and tearing the elbow of his suit.

  Winded, he sat up, and listened. All he could hear was the leaves rustling, and the low humming of the voltage in the electrified fence. He got up to his feet, brushed himself down, and then began to make his way through the undergrowth in the rough direction of the house.

  It appeared that the woods which screened Le Reposoir from the Quassapaug Road curved in a horn shape towards the north-west side of the house; so that it would be possible for Charlie to approach the building very closely without being seen. Behind the house there were wide lawns, looking unnaturally green in the morning light, with sombre statues of naked Greek gods standing beside them, their shoulders heavy with moss, their eye-sockets blind with mildew.

  The house itself was as forbidding as Charlie had remembered it. It still possessed that peculiar quality of seeming to be suspended an inch above the ground, of having infinite density, like a black diamond, but at the same time being weightless. Window upon window reflected the grey fall clouds as they hurried past, giving the extraordinary illusion that the sky was inside the house. Charlie came as close to the edge of the lawns as he dared, stopping and listening every few seconds in case he was being observed. The house, however, looked silent and empty. Perhaps the voice on the intercom had been telling the truth, and there was nobody here.

  Charlie weaved his way in between close-set oaks and tangles of thorn that were as vicious as rolls of barbed wire. At last he reached a low stone retaining wall from which he could see into the large cast-iron solarium which ran along the back of the house. He could see potted plants and old-fashioned cane furniture, and several white marble statues of naked children. Keeping his head down, he skirted the side of the house until he came within fifteen yards of a small door. The door was carved with wooden grapes and gargoyles and studded with black iron bolts. It was impossible to tell whether it was locked or not. If it were, Charlie would not only have to risk discovery by running across the open lawn towards it, but he would have to run back again, too. He crouched down behind the retaining wall and waited to see if there was anybody around, but apart from the wind and the agitated shivering of the trees, the house and its grounds were silent. No airplanes passed overhead. No birds sang. The reflected clouds ran silently across the windows.

  At last, glancing left and right, Charlie took hold of the top of the retaining wall, and prepared to heave himself up on to the upper lawn. But at the very instant he did so, the handle of the garden door rattled and turned, he ducked down just before it was opened wide. He pressed himself as close into the stones as he could, his heart beating, his face sweaty, and prayed that whoever was coming out of the garden door wouldn’t come too close to the edge of the lawn and find him there. It was one thing to have driven openly into the front entrance of Le Reposoir; it was another to have deliberately breached their security and to be hiding like a would-be housebreaker in their private grounds.

  He heard voices, and a noise that sounded like the squeak of badly oiled wheels. One voice was high and accented; the other was gruff, and plainly American. The high voice said, ‘She should be allowed to sleep until the afternoon. You remember what it was like your first time.’

  The gruff voice replied, ‘I wish I could have my first time again.’

  ‘It is the last time that you must
look forward to now,’ the high voice replied.

  It sounded to Charlie as if the two speakers were moving around the side of the house and away from him. Their voices were accompanied by the persistent squeaking of wheels, as if they were pushing something. Charlie hesitated for a moment, and then edged his way about ten yards to the right along the wall until he came to a large stone urn. The urn was felted with dark green moss, and a small toad sat on its plinth, watching Charlie with yellow expressionless eyes. Charlie slowly raised his head, using the urn for cover, and tried to catch a glimpse of the people who had come out of the garden door before they disappeared.

  To begin with, they were out of his line of sight behind a triangular yew bush. But suddenly they appeared quite clearly between the bush and the corner of the house, and when Charlie saw them he shivered the way a small child shivers when a grown-up shouts at him. It was surprise, and fright, but most of all it was the incongruity of their appearance, like people out of a Breughel painting of lazars and cripples.

  Leading the way was the small dwarf-like figure in the white hood whom Charlie had seen at the Iron Kettle, and outside the back door at Mrs Kemp’s. It walked with a swinging lurch, like an ape, yet it was distinctly human. Behind this small figure came a three wheeled invalid carriage, a kind of a Bath chair in which a pale-faced woman was lying, her eyes open, her head back, staring at the sky. She was covered up to her neck in an off-white blanket, and there was a leather strap around her waist which looked as if it was supposed to prevent her from falling out.

  The invalid carriage was being pushed by the black-cloaked woman whom Charlie recognized from his first intrusion into the grounds of Le Reposoir, the woman who might have been Mme Musette. Her hood had fallen back, revealing her face, and even from a distance Charlie could see that she was just as striking as before, a woman of almost unbelievable beauty. Yet – remembering what he had seen in his rear-view mirror as he had driven away from the house the first time – his eyes jumped at once to the steering bar of the invalid carriage, on which the woman’s hands were resting. She was wearing black cotton gloves, but only one finger of each glove was actually hooked over the bar. The remaining fingers were crumpled and obviously empty.

  Charlie stared at this bizarre procession until it had disappeared from sight around the side of the house. Then he slowly slid down into a sitting position behind the retaining wall, oblivious to the green moss which smeared the back of his coat. He felt as if he had accidentally wandered into some extraordinary Victorian nightmare. Alice Through the Looking Glass with freaks and dwarves and beautiful women with no fingers. He wiped his face with his hands; he was wet with chilly sweat.

  It was not only the weirdness of the procession that had frightened him. It was the conviction that he had recognized the pale-faced woman lying in the invalid carriage staring at the sky. Although he had glimpsed her for only two or three seconds, he could have sworn that it was Harriet Greene.

  If it were Harriet Greene, though, what the hell had they done to her? She looked almost as if she were dying.

  Charlie waited for nearly a minute. Then he raised his head cautiously over the top of the wall to see if there was anybody else around. But the house and the lawns seemed to be deserted, and even though ravens were circling around the spires which rose above the house like monuments in a Victorian cemetery, they were silent, as if they knew that this was not the place to cry out.

  Grunting with effort, after a working lifetime of four-course meals and not very much in the way of coherent exercise, Charlie climbed up the retaining wall and then crouched on the very edge of the lawn like a middle-aged backstop who refuses to admit that he is over the hill. The grass was bright and green and springy, and felt almost like short-cropped human hair. Charlie held his breath and listened – then made his way as quickly and as quietly as he could across the lawn to the garden door. By the time he reached it he was trembling with tension, but he took hold of the handle without hesitation and turned it. It had been left unlocked, and it swung open easily, without the slightest squeal. Charlie glanced behind him to make sure that he wasn’t being watched, and then stepped inside.

  9

  He found himself in a store room, which was gloomy but very dry. Rakes, hoes and edging-spades were hanging neatly on the walls and there were sacks of aromatic peat, of lawn-feed and rose fertilizer. Charlie edged between the sacks until he found another door on the far side of the room, a grey-painted steel door, with an automatic hinge to close it. He turned the handle, and to his relief this door wasn’t locked either. He eased it open and put his head around it. On the other side there was a long oak-panelled corridor, very dark and smelling of polish, with mottled engravings all along the walls. Charlie stepped out of the store room and into the corridor, and then hesitated, wondering which direction he ought to take. If he went to the right, towards the front of the house, it would probably be easier to get his bearings. But if the Musettes were really holding Martin, it was unlikely that they would have hidden him in any of the principal rooms at the front.

  He turned left, towards the back of the house. His fingers trailed along the stained oak panelling, as if he needed to touch the wall to keep his hold on reality. He glanced up at one or two of the old engravings. They were French, and they were all concerned with butchery. They showed the carcasses of cattle and sheep, and serious-faced men with big moustaches and white aprons removing with large knives the aiguillettes and culottes and plats de côtes découverts.

  When he reached the end of the corridor he found himself at the foot of an oak staircase, which led steeply up towards a back landing. There was a large window overlooking the landing, which filled the stairwell with grey photographic light. Charlie guessed that this must have originally been used as the servants’ staircase. He looked upward. There was the sound of someone vacuum cleaning in some far-off bedroom, but that was all. He began to climb the treads one at a time, holding on to the banisters.

  He was halfway up the stairs when a voice said, ‘Charlie?’

  He looked up in shock. Standing just above him, one elbow casually propped on the banister, was Velma, dressed in a linen kaftan so fine that it was almost transparent. She was smiling at him dreamily, as if nothing had happened between them at all; as if they were old chums who happened to have bumped into each other on a quiet New England commuter train.

  ‘They told me you didn’t even exist,’ said Charlie unsteadily.

  ‘Who said I didn’t even exist?’ She wouldn’t stop smiling. ‘Those people at the Windsor. Bits, whatever his name was. The maitre d’. He denied point-blank that he’d ever seen you. When I said that you called him Bits, he laughed in my face.’

  ‘I expect he did,’ said Velma. ‘I made it up.’

  Charlie said tightly, ‘Is Martin here?’

  ‘Martin?’

  ‘My son. Was that what you were doing––keeping me busy while Martin was being kidnapped?’

  ‘Charlie,’ said Velma, ‘you’re not making any sense.’

  Charlie took a sharp, impatient breath. ‘When I returned to my room at the Windsor after I’d spent the night with you, Martin was gone. There wasn’t any trace of him at all. There wasn’t any trace of you, either.’

  ‘I left,’ said Velma, with complete simplicity.

  ‘Well, sure you did. In fact, the hotel porter said you’d never even been there. So did Bits, or whatever his name is. So what was I supposed to think?’

  Velma teased up her hair with her fingers. ‘This is private property, you know. You shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘I want to know if my son’s here, that’s all.’

  Velma suddenly stopped preening herself and stared at Charlie in amusement. ‘How old did you say your son was? Fifteen?’

  Charlie took three or four more steps up the staircase, until he was almost at the top. He was trying to be threatening but Velma didn’t seem to be intimidated in the least. She cupped one hand over her left breast through
the gauzy fabric of her gown, and lifted it slightly as if she was weighing it. Charlie had felt it for himself. He knew how soft and heavy it was.

  ‘You said something about the Célèstines this morning, didn’t you?’

  ‘Did I?’ Velma asked him.

  ‘You thought that I wanted to join them, didn’t you? I mean––that’s what goes on here, doesn’t it? Meetings of the Célèstines? You thought that I wanted to join, and that’s why you kidnapped Martin.’

  Velma stretched and yawned. ‘You’re going to get into serious trouble, you know, if M. Musette finds you here. M. Musette is very particular about trespassers. If it was legal, he’d shoot them dead. But of course he’s too law-abiding to do that.’

  Charlie reached the top step. He was only three feet away from Velma now. He could smell her favourite perfume, Obsession, and he could see the crow’s-feet around her eyes that last night had looked like experience and excitement, and which this morning looked like the first sign of advancing age. He could see her stiffened nipples through the linen of her gown. He didn’t even know whether he liked her or despised her. He didn’t even know what he thought about the Musettes. All he cared about was finding Martin, and if that meant being friendly to people he despised, then that is what he would do. He couldn’t help thinking of Mrs Foss, and the serious way in which she had looked at him through her upswept eyeglasses and said: ‘The story most people used to tell was that they were taking stray children off the streets and fattening them up, so that they could eat them.’

  And he couldn’t help thinking about his own response. ‘I haven’t heard anything like that since Hansel and Gretel.’

  Charlie stood close beside Velma and touched her hair. ‘Is Martin here?’ he asked her gently. ‘I’m his father, Velma. I’m responsible for what happens to him.’

  ‘And do you love him?’ she challenged.

  ‘What do you think? He’s my only child, my only son.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean anything at all. I was my father’s only daughter, and he used to beat me up every day. Well, it felt like every day. He used to burn the soles of my feet with cigarettes.’