Judith Appleby, as it happened, had heard of Splaine Croft. Two of her friends had sent sons there, and had reported with satisfaction that it seemed a fairly civilized sort of place. It was funny how, as civilization seeped away, the idea of civilization became all the go. She rather distrusted it. People now said ‘a civilized chap’ where she herself would have been prompted to say ‘rather a smooth type’. Certainly to go looking for civilized boarding-schools for one’s young was dangerous, even if laudable. If what you insisted on were the old-fashioned desiderata: gravel soil, southern exposure, all-Oxford staff, toughening them up, licking them into shape, rubbing off the awkward corners – if you were after these and similar prescriptive futilities and iniquities, you were at least pretty sure of getting what you looked for; and, if you were eccentric enough to want something else, you kept the kids at home. But if you went round looking for civilization, you were only too likely to get heaven knew what…
Still, reasonable friends had praised Splaine Croft. Judith therefore drove up to it in a mood of only modified prejudice. She was acquiescing in more or less orthodox education for her own young; and it couldn’t be said that they showed any marked ill-effects so far. But having herself been brought up at home, in a large house full of assorted relations who were mostly mad, and having found this interesting and entirely satisfactory, she was always ready to take a poor view of what she called institutions.
Splaine Croft – she noted contentedly as she drew up the car – looked unappealing on a day of warm thundery summer rain. John had reported liking the place – but John was capable of liking anything that was really efficiently run. And no doubt Splaine Croft was that. The windows were clean; they were also blank and uncurtained and thus doubtless let in more light. There was a garden to one side, crammed with roses – but probably only the headmaster was allowed into it. Straight in front of the main entrance stood a flagstaff. Clearly the boys were paraded round it on appropriate occasions for the purpose of singing God Save the Queen. Hanging in the hall there would be a certificate praising the drains. And the headmaster’s study would be protected by a supernumerary green-baize door, to muffle the howling when the headmaster’s pupils were being caned. Upstairs in the dormitories the most prominent furnishing would be a profusion of rope-ladders designed to assuage the anxieties of prospective parents apprehensive of fire. But in term-time these would be firmly padlocked to the wall, since what the headmaster himself was apprehensive of was any too ready means to suicide. Yes – Judith said to herself firmly – I have been here before. I can smell the disinfectant. I can slip on the tiles. I can extract, from the pitch-pine panelling of the interior, small gouts of resinous substance that can be satisfactorily rolled between finger and thumb. And that is sometimes the only resource through long weary hours.
‘Can I help you to find anybody?’
A small boy in a blue windcheater, running past in the rain, had wheeled and come politely to a halt by the open window of Judith’s car.
One of the extra-unfortunates, Judith thought, who have to stay through the holidays as well. A dozen or so boys altogether, John said. Afterwards, I wonder, could I offer to take them all out to tea? Aloud she said – thereby beginning the course of duplicity she was much looking forward to – ‘Can you tell me if Mr Juniper is about?’
‘The Head’s had to go away to a funeral. Isn’t it a bore?’
‘Well, yes – I don’t suppose he finds it invigorating.’
The small boy smiled charmingly at being trusted to understand this long word. ‘No, I don’t mean that. A bore that he isn’t here I mean. Of course, Pooh and Piglet are all right–’
‘Pooh and Piglet?’ The unfortunate waifs, Judith supposed, got through their weary days partly by a relapse upon nursery fantasy.
‘Oh, just a couple of undergraduates we have to cope with. They’re very decent really. Last night we absolutely soaked them with our water jugs, and they gave us a wonderful scragging afterwards. But, of course, doing nothing but larking around is rather a waste of time. The point about the Head – I expect you’ve heard – is his leg break. You see, he can teach it. He really can. If you’re prepared to work hard at it, that’s to say. And I think I really was getting it, and so were Alabaster Two and U-Tin, and now the Head’s gone off to this funeral, and it’s going to absorb him for days.’
‘That seems too bad.’
‘And, you see, all three of us are going to different public schools. U-Tin is going to Eton – everybody with a name like that does, you know – and I’m going to Radley, and Alabaster Two is going to Downside because he’s a Jew.’
‘A Jew?’ Judith asked doubtfully.
‘Or is it a Catholic? Anyway, the point is that we can all take the same leg break to different schools. You see? But I’m being a frightful bore. Can I find you somebody else? Pooh or Piglet? Piglet’s less shy, I’d say. Or there’s Miss Grimstone, the secretary. She’s not shy at all.’
‘I think Miss Grimstone will be best. You see’ – Judith looked with limpid candour at the small boy – ‘I’m thinking of sending my sons here. Kevin and Jerry.’
‘Can they swim?’
‘Yes, they swim quite well. For people’ – Judith added with proper humility – ‘still at baby school, that’s to say.’
‘Well, it’s really not bad.’ The small boy offered this as one who considers a large complexity of balanced factors. ‘Only get some of their friends – small boys they know quite well, and who won’t frighten them – to toss them in a blanket a bit before you send them. It makes the first night easier. All the chaps whose families are in the know about Splaine arrange for that.’
‘Thank you,’ Judith said. She was much encouraged by this glimpse of savagery. ‘And is your headmaster a really nice man?’
The small boy frowned. He probably doubted this question’s being quite good form. Nevertheless he answered with continued frankness. ‘He’s terribly decent, really. Of course, he does seem a disappointed man. It makes him restless. We think he must have been frightfully ambitious. And, of course, it didn’t come off.’
‘Ambitious?’ Judith found this interesting.
‘He was a Rugger Cap, you know, which ought to satisfy any man. But, at the same time, he had this natural leg break. So he hoped to play for England as a cricketer too. It would have been unique, almost. But he just didn’t bring it off.’ Judith’s informant shook his head seriously. ‘We think that’s what messed him up.’
‘Messed–’ Judith checked herself as she saw the boy, for the first time, shift rather uneasily from one foot to the other. ‘But look, you’re getting frightfully wet. Do just take me in to Miss Grimstone.’
Left in charge of Splaine Croft, Miss Grimstone received visitors in the drawing-room. Judith looked round it with interest. It was the sort of entirely feminine and decidedly old-fashioned apartment which some bachelors think proper to keep about the house in pious memory of a mother.
But it was a pleasant room in itself – and no doubt there would be prospective parents over whom its selling-power could be considerable. Gentlefolk have to be on the job for a good many generations, Judith reflected, to build up just this sort of everything-good and everything-faded effect. The bits and pieces of French furniture had really come from France – and already long ago local carpenters had had to be called in to remedy unfortunate disintegrations. The few watercolours were really by Girtin and Paul Sandby and the elder and the younger Cozens, and they had been acquired by Junipers when such things cost a good deal less than they do now. The whole room was much of a piece – the only odd note being struck by a modern portrait-bust in bronze. Judith, being a sculptor herself, saw at a glance who it was by. Fifteen hundred guineas, she said to herself. And then Miss Grimstone entered the room.
Judith shook hands and then turned to the large bay window. It looked out on the rose garden. ‘Peace!’ she said enthusiastically.
Miss Grimstone peered at her intently through thick lenses. ‘It is,’ she admitted, ‘a secluded situation.’
‘No – those roses. The large yellow ones with the faint pink flush. Peace. Such a beautiful name for a rose. Do you know’ – and Judith turned impulsively to Miss Grimstone – ‘I am quite, quite sure that Kevin and Jerry would be very, very happy here!’
‘And they might even learn something, if that is judged to be of any importance.’ Miss Grimstone, who regarded Splaine Croft not as a refuge from the miseries of the world but as a place at which there were standards to keep up, clearly had no scruple about snubbing gush. ‘And how curious, Lady Appleby, that your sons would appear to be named out of Finnegans Wake.’
Judith felt a sinking sensation inside. She was the more disconcerted because Miss Grimstone had so unmistakably the appearance of one whose literary studies are unlikely to have proceeded beyond Eric, or Little by Little. Irresponsible humour, clearly, ought not to be cultivated by those who would assist Scotland Yard.
‘Finnegans Wake!’ she said, perplexed. ‘Is that quite a nice book?’
‘Since it is largely unintelligible, the point is hard to determine. No doubt the matter of your children’s names is coincidental.’
‘Of course,’ Judith said, ‘my husband’s family are Irish.’
‘Indeed? You surprise me, Lady Appleby. To my mind, the name has Yorkshire associations.’
‘Quite so. The Cromwellian Settlement, you know, Miss Grimstone. How useful history is! Kevin and Jerry both adore it.’
Miss Grimstone, although receiving this last assertion with undisguised scepticism, was obviously impressed by the suggestion of Applebys busy in a territorial way in the seventeenth century. ‘I am sure,’ she said, ‘that Mr Juniper would wish me to tell you that the prospect of any vacancies in the near future is very small. We are almost fully booked up for some years ahead. Most boys who come to Splaine are either sons of old Splaine boys or have had elder brothers at the school. A certain priority has to be accorded to applications in which there are circumstances of that kind. But I am sure that Mr Juniper would do his best. Would your husband have been born in Kilkenny?’
‘No, not Kilkenny.’ Judith, who knew very well that John had been born at Kirkby Overblow, was disconcerted by this. ‘In Wicklow. But Appleby House is now a ruin, unfortunately. It was burnt down in the troubles.’
‘How very shocking.’ Miss Grimstone was again discernibly impressed. ‘I ask simply because we have a closed scholarship for boys coming from Kilkenny. Wicklow, I’m afraid, wouldn’t count. And now, I think you may care to look over part of the school? Both matron and housekeeper are unfortunately on holiday, but I think I can tell you enough, perhaps, about the domestic side.’
‘Oh, thank you so much.’ Judith felt it was now incumbent upon her to think up the sort of questions and attitudes proper in one who has married into the Irish landed gentry. ‘You have your own green vegetables, I suppose?’
‘Most certainly. Everything of that sort is grown within the grounds.’
‘And cows?’
‘Of course. We have’ – Miss Grimstone spoke without a flicker – ‘special cows, suitable for invalids, infants, and young and tender stomachs in general.’
‘That is most satisfactory.’ Judith had an uneasy feeling that Miss Grimstone, too, was capable of indulging obscure and unseasonable humour. ‘And now I would certainly like to see over the school.’
‘The house is a large and rambling one, as you will have noticed, Lady Appleby. But I can certainly show you over the greater part of the boys’ quarters. And the kitchens – which are, of course, most important.’
Judith had certainly noticed the size of the house. John had given her a decidedly tall order. Wondering what was to be done about it, she let her glance stray once more round the drawing-room. It came to rest on the bronze bust.
‘Is that,’ she asked suddenly, ‘a bust of Mr Juniper’s famous brother?’
Miss Grimstone didn’t take this inquiry very well. ‘The bust,’ she said severely, ‘is of Mr Juniper himself.’
‘Oh, I see! Commissioned, no doubt, by old pupils of the school.’
‘I think not.’ Miss Grimstone, although disapproving this curiosity, was allowing herself a tone that was faintly dry. ‘If you are interested in contemporary art, Lady Appleby, I must show you the Augustus John in the dining-room.’
‘Of Mr Juniper again? Not delivering his celebrated leg break?’
‘I think,’ Miss Grimstone said, ‘we might begin with the chapel. It is all that remains of the house formerly standing on the site. We are very proud of it. There is some fine modern glass. Which was presented by old boys.’
I must take it for granted – Judith said to herself as she went peering here and there in the interest of the mythical Kevin and Jerry – that the missing scientist is on the premises. He has committed a crime, he has done something disgraceful, he has gone harmlessly off his head. Anything that would prompt his schoolmastering brother to say, ‘Very well, lie low here for a time.’ That is the situation, and when John popped up here the other day the unfortunate schoolmaster was taken completely by surprise, and could do nothing but acquiesce in his plan. Alternatively, what is lurking here now is not Professor Howard Juniper living but Professor Howard Juniper dead. His brother has done him in. An affair of passion connected, no doubt, with Miss Grimstone. And my dear husband has pleasantly given me the task of finding the body. A policeman’s wife is not a happy one.
Outside, it was still raining dismally, and thunder was rumbling in the distance. And everything was planned for outside at this time of the year, so that there was a feeling abroad that the day was running drearily down. In one empty classroom the boy who had chattered so cheerfully to Judith on her arrival was now forlornly engaged in sticking together the parts of a model aeroplane which obviously bored him extremely. U-Tin – it was easy to identify U-Tin – was in a corner of the boys’ day-room, addressing himself with equal lack of conviction to a chess problem. Alabaster Two – since he was in blue corduroy he was presumably Alabaster Two – was in another corner, playing ludo with a conscientiously interested young man who must be either Pooh or Piglet. The holiday boarders ran about uncertainly; and Piglet (if the ludo-player was Pooh) kept on rounding them up and making suggestions of which they didn’t think too well.
Judith, conscious of this state of affairs as Miss Grimstone marched her around, found herself suddenly in the possession of a plan. It would be exhausting, but it might work very well. Unfortunately there was one serious difficulty in the way of putting it into operation. She herself hadn’t arrived at Splaine as quite the right person. Gushing and enthusiastic, yes. But not quite jolly enough. That was it… Judith, as Miss Grimstone showed her the kitchens and the up-to-date refrigeration, set herself to modulate, unobtrusively but rapidly, into a very jolly person indeed. An admiral’s daughter, she said to herself. A Betjeman girl. Or a matron from Eliot’s land of lobelias and tennis flannels. Slap Miss Grimstone on the back? Well, not quite. It was important to be asked to stay to tea.
A bell clanged out somewhere above the domestic offices. It was a cracked bell, Judith noted, of the kind with which the sombre imagination of Graham Greene regularly provides schools in the distressful memories of his male characters. But at Splaine Croft this horror of the ringing bell (John Donne, Judith told herself, being thus launched upon literary references) appeared to be rather cheerfully received. Perhaps it was because it did, on this occasion, mean tea. There was a general stampede to the dining hall.
‘Are they to have tea?’ Judith asked – enthusiastic and oh so jolly. ‘But I must see them! May I just peep?’
‘During the holidays I myself take tea with the school.’ Miss Grimstone glanced at Judith with what could not be other than naked suspicion. ‘I hope you have time to take a cup yourself? It is far from elegant, of course. But thoroughly wholesome. Each boy has half a pint of milk from the special cows.’
Judith found herself wondering what this formidable old person really believed about her. That she was some brazen woman from a magazine, perhaps, preparing a colourful feature on the education of the surtax-paying classes. Still, here she was safely in the dining hall, where Pooh and Piglet were being introduced to her under perfectly commonplace names that she didn’t catch. At school, of course, small boys are not introduced. But Judith, considering it to be all in her part, shook hands with them all vigorously. They stared at her, polite but round-eyed. She acknowledged in herself a flickering suspicion that she was not a terribly good actress. Everybody sat down at a single long table at one end of the room. The panelling, she noticed, wasn’t pitch pine, but some really gloomy high-class stuff. A city gent’s house, once upon a time, Splaine Croft must have been.
In the absence of the school matron, Miss Grimstone poised the beautiful Georgian teapot from which the grown-ups were to recruit themselves. Her aged features took on an inquiring expression, so that Judith supposed she was about to say, ‘Sugar and cream?’
‘I didn’t gather’ – this was what Miss Grimstone actually asked – ‘whether Kevin and Jerry are twins?’
‘Well, almost twins.’
There was a pained silence. Pooh and Piglet gave each other a quick apprehensive glance, as if doubting the propriety rather than the credibility of this obscure obstetrical intelligence. Judith improved the occasion by a large jolly laugh. Miss Grimstone refrained from further interrogation. U-Tin, who was presumably some sort of prince, made a few polite remarks in an English that was faultless but perhaps a little too formal for his years. The other boys ate mostly in silence; the rain still streaming down outside the windows made them glum. Judith, thus left with a clear field, offered the company a breezy account of her childhood. Her father, although perpetually afloat as admirals always are, had kept his family in the heart of the countryside. A large family, Judith explained, in a large rambling house. Really very like Splaine Croft.
‘Did it have secret passages?’ Alabaster Two asked suddenly.
‘Well, no – but there were very deep cellars.’
‘My grandfather’s place has secret passages,’ Alabaster Two said. And added modestly: ‘But, of course, it’s a sort of castle, and you’d expect them.’
‘Secret passages are best, I agree,’ Judith said. ‘But having several staircases is important too. With two staircases you can have very decent hide-and-seek. But with three staircases–’
‘Splaine has three staircases,’ the boy who had first encountered Judith interrupted.
‘Has it really?’ Judith seemed not to have made herself aware of this fact. ‘Well, with three staircases you can play Chinese Torturers.’
There was a moment of impressed silence. Judith’s credit had mounted perceptibly. She might perhaps be a person really entitled to that sort of laugh.
‘Chinese Torturers?’ Piglet asked with interest. He was a pleasant lad, Judith thought, but with a mental age probably a good deal below U-Tin’s. ‘I don’t think it’s in the Weekend Book.’
‘It certainly isn’t.’ Judith rejected this suggestion with civil scorn. ‘It’s the sort of game that is known only in a very few families. It was known in mine. We also knew Hungry Tigers. And Heads Off Quick. But Chinese Torturers was the best.’
Miss Grimstone alone seemed to react unfavourably to this. ‘The title,’ she said, ‘fails to commend itself to me, I confess. I hope it was not a game that carried any suggestion of cruelty, or gave scope for bullying.’
‘Well, of course, you have to imagine the most frightful things.’ Judith was concerned to be fair-minded. ‘And there is lots of rough and tumble.’
‘I would suppose,’ Miss Grimstone said drily, ‘that Kevin and Jerry would not care for it at all. Although it is a family game.’
‘And it’s the most splendid exercise’ – Judith ignored this shaft – ‘for a wet day. You rush all over and over the house. That’s where the staircases come in.’
‘It sounds tremendous fun,’ Pooh said. He looked cautiously at Judith, plainly indulging a callow vision of the fun that a little rough and tumble in her company might produce. Judith smiled at him brightly. Not so nice as Piglet, she was thinking. He reads too many modern novels, full of accessible women and inexpressible men.
‘Could you tell us the rules, please?’ U-Tin said politely.
‘Well, of course, there are two sides: victims and executioners.’ Judith frowned. ‘I’m afraid it’s rather hard to explain. But if I could just show you–’
It was a suggestion perfectly timed. The remaining mugs of milk from the special cows were drained at a gulp and amid general clamour. Even Miss Grimstone made no protest when Judith – by what she thought was her most brilliant stroke – suggested that the secretary’s office should be the den.
Not very surprisingly, Chinese Torturers proved to be very hard work – the more so as Judith had the task of improvising the rules as they went along. But at least she had one perfectly clear guiding principle: everybody must go rushing about everywhere, and in sufficient excitement not to notice that her own rushing about was on more systematic lines. When she had explained that she herself was the crucial personage called the Mandarin, that the Mandarin hurried around all the time, and that sundry penalties attended this dread figure’s spotting either executioners or victims, she found that she had got the situation pretty well under control. Even Pooh was no difficulty, since his libidinousness was unsupported by the resolution necessary to the making of any progress from fantasy towards fact. Nor was the game hampered, as she had feared might be the case, by any disposition to regard parts of Splaine Croft as sacrosanct or out of bounds. The boys romped as cheerfully in the drawing-room or in Miles Juniper’s study as they did in their own dormitories or day-rooms. It was a genuinely uninhibited place. Rather more surprising was the fact that Miss Grimstone proved uninhibited too – to the extent of appointing herself Chief Executioner out of hand and stumping short-sightedly about with a great deal of gusto.
It took Judith more than an hour of Chinese Torturers to feel that she had been thoroughly all over the place. A modern preparatory school, it seemed, had to make provision for other activities than Latin, Maths, and Cricket. There was quite an elaborately fitted out theatre. There was a large art room, crammed with materials for painting, modelling, and carving, and with a surprising collection of plaster casts of nondescript Roman emperors and classical gods and goddesses. There was a full-sized horse that came to bits for the purpose, it appeared, of anatomical study. Television sets, radios, gramophones, tape-recorders, and cinematograph apparatus lurked in corners and cupboards. Education seemed to have become very complicated. And it must be decidedly expensive.
The outbuildings constituted a distinct problem – and this might have remained insoluble if it had gone on raining. But in fact the rain had stopped and only the thunder was growling a little nearer, with now and then a flicker of lightning against an overcast sky. Judith began to feel curiously uneasy. Either it was the electricity in the air, or there was an element of strain she hadn’t at first recognized in all this scampering about in the vague expectation of hitting upon something sinister. Could there really be a living man lurking in the house, unknown to all these lively and curious children? She was almost sure there couldn’t be, and that she had eliminated what was an improbable speculation from the first. But, of course, a live man didn’t exhaust the possibilities. And she really must manage to do the outbuildings. They were extensive, but all grouped more or less together to form a large stable-yard.
Her problem was solved by the boys themselves. Quite suddenly, as if they possessed some paranormal means of communication such as is said to govern the evolutions of a flock of birds, they had abandoned the game she had invented for them, and poured out into the open air. They were now playing a game of their own, which somebody told her in a shout to be Cowboys and Red Indians. As she now had no share in directing their proceedings, she had correspondingly no further plausible status among them; and she saw that she couldn’t, without blank eccentricity, continue for more than a few minutes longer to wander gamesomely around. Pooh and Piglet had disappeared. Perhaps it was an hour at which their university studies claimed them. Miss Grimstone had returned to her more settled character as school secretary, and would certainly be expecting Judith to clear out, It was quite a long run back to London, and by this time Kevin and Jerry ought to be wondering what had happened to Mummy.
But she could cover the remaining ground in ten minutes, if she simply walked firmly and frankly from building to building and briskly raked through each. And the moment was suddenly favourable – for Miss Grimstone was called away to the telephone, and had excused herself with a hint of understandable impatience. Judith went rapidly to work.
The largest building had been converted into a gym. She had already stuck her head into it when being shown round; it was perfectly reasonable that she should have a better look now. And this didn’t take two minutes. It had once been a stable with a loft above. But the floor of the loft had been removed and it was open to the roof, with ropes and rope-ladders hanging from the exposed beams. Finding this totally unrewarding, Judith emerged again into the open air. For an August early evening it had gone strangely dark, so that a flicker of lightning that met her as she came out was almost theatrically effective. Somewhere she could hear some of the boys shouting, and among them she thought she could distinguish the particularly precise tones of U-Tin. But the yard itself was now deserted. She walked past a row of empty stalls, peering in. They no longer kept ponies at Splaine Croft, she had been told. Riding must be an ‘extra’ that no longer much commended itself to small boys. Which was, of course, deplorable –
Judith found that she had halted abruptly, and with a quickened pulse. For a moment she had no idea why. Then she realized that it was because she had heard a low moan. A growl of thunder, a low moan, and then a growl of thunder again… Only the moan wasn’t a moan; it was nothing more out of the way than a half-open door on one of the stalls turning on a rusty hinge.
It was absurd. It was absurd that, hard upon romping round with all these children, she should be abruptly playing nervous tricks with herself. Partly, no doubt, it was the sudden solitude – for now the voices were quite far away, as if everybody had moved off across the playing fields. If they had, they might get soaked at any time, for certainly anything could come tumbling out of that extraordinary sky. She herself would probably have to drive home through a tremendous storm. And the sooner the better. For she did now very much want to get away from Splaine. It was, beyond almost any suspicion, a thoroughly harmless place. Indeed, it was a genuinely jolly place – which made her own spuriously jolly act only the more uncomfortable in retrospect. But she would have a look at the last remaining building, all the same.
It was almost the twin of the one that had been turned into a gym. For a moment she thought the door was locked – which was odd, since at Splaine locks and keys seemed virtually not to exist. But it was only stiff. She pushed harder, and found herself looking into a large dark, empty space. Or almost empty. It was used as a store for miscellaneous sports equipment. Rugger posts, waiting to be put up again for next term. A pile of hurdles. Some coils of rope. A sight screen, dismantled and in need of repair. She could just distinguish these objects as her eyes got accustomed to the gloom. Then suddenly, as if directly behind her, there was the first really vivid flash of lightning. It served simply to reveal the place definitively as entirely innocent.
She was about to turn when it occurred to her to look upwards. There was a murky plaster ceiling here, which meant that there must be some sort of loft or garret up above. But nothing seemed to give access to it, and she supposed there must be an outside staircase on the farther side of the building. Then the lightning came again. And she saw a large square hole in the ceiling, close to the opposite wall. She moved cautiously through the near-darkness that followed the flash. Yes – there must have been a wooden staircase going up that way. But it had been removed. She explored more carefully. The signs of something of the kind were obvious. The staircase had been rather roughly torn down.
There was really nothing suspicious, she thought, about that. Probably it had become unsafe, and had been cut away to keep the boys from getting into mischief on it. Judith hesitated. It was almost certain that up there she would find nothing but cobwebs, unless indeed it was an owl or a colony of bats. And yet, that loft was unique. It was the only place in Splaine that was not entirely accessible to anybody who cared to wander about.
She went back into the yard. Everything was warm and steamy and still, and there was a long lull in the thunder. She glanced towards the gym. She knew very well what she was looking for: a ladder that she had noticed out of the corner of her eye. Yes, there it was, lying on the ground not twenty yards away. It would probably reach. And it looked reasonably light.
She was burning her boats as any normal sort of visitor. If Miss Grimstone returned and found her stumping across the yard carrying a ladder, she would probably judge her so mad that it would be advisable to send for the police. Which would be embarrassing – particularly for John. Judith was still meditating this when she found that she had in fact secured the thing and was staggering back with it. This part of the proceeding was fairly easy. Getting the ladder more or less perpendicular and so up to the hole in the ceiling was another matter. But she remembered how to do it. You got one end above your head and then walked towards the other end, shifting your hands from rung to rung.
This proved not too difficult either. It seemed only a couple of minutes before she was actually climbing. Would there – she wondered – be a skylight? She hadn’t a torch. Not even a box of matches. Which was inefficient. She should have taken thought.
But now her head was through the hole. And there was light – of sorts. It seemed to come from a single narrow window at a gable-end, and was almost negligible, with the sky as it now was. She climbed the remaining rungs and stepped cautiously on to the floor. For there was a floor. And it seemed to support every variety of junk. The place was precisely what one might expect it to be: a very large lumber-room. And the lumber was of an order so utterly useless that the staircase had been dismantled with no thought to it. Judith had just decided that this was the particular anticlimax to this part of her adventure when the lightning came again – and this time there was a terrific clap of thunder straight above her head.
Afterwards, she blamed that thunder a good deal. It was so immensely louder than anything that had preceded it that it took her entirely by surprise. It had never in her life occurred to her to be frightened by thunder – and now she was uncertain that she wasn’t suddenly weak at the knees. It’s absurd, she told herself again. I don’t behave like this. And suddenly she told herself: There’s a horrible smell.
Feeling her way past packing-cases full and empty, past a grotesque hatstand, past mouldering trunks, empty picture frames, an old hip-bath – feeling her way past these, moving desperately forward simply so that she shouldn’t ignominiously bolt, she said to herself: Things do die in places like this. And she added, trying to get it definite: Even a pigeon doesn’t always just shrivel up.
She turned a corner – round some shapeless stuffed affair that might have been an abandoned vaulting-horse. It was darker. It was quite dark. Her actions had become senseless. She wasn’t conducting a hunt any more. She wasn’t sure she wasn’t being hunted. And suddenly she stumbled – perhaps it was over a curtain rod or a hockey stick. Falling forward, she put out her hand to save herself – and suddenly knew that she had clasped another hand. But the hand returned no grip of its own; it was rigid and cold. Then there was a long instant of blinding light and she was looking at a man’s face: cold and rigid and very, very white. This time, when the thunder crashed, it seemed to be actually inside the loft with her and rattling at the roof in a maniacal effort to get free.
She struggled up from hands and knees – to realize that somebody was standing close behind her. It was a man. She made a tremendous effort to turn and face him. But before she could manage it, the man spoke.
‘Oh, I say, Lady Appleby, what awful fun!’
It was the young man the boys called Pooh. His voice was trembling, and for a moment she thought that he too must have seen. Then she realized it wasn’t that. The wretched youth was still pursuing his amorous fantasy. And of course he was scared stiff.
‘Have you a torch – a match?’ Judith was surprised to hear a voice that was entirely matter-of-fact, and to recognize it as her own.
‘Well, yes – I have.’ Thankful to do something non-committal, Pooh was fumbling in a pocket.
‘Then shine it, please – just here.’
There was a long moment while he fumbled still. Then the beam shot out. ‘On that?’ she heard Pooh say. ‘You’re interested in that? There’s a crowd of them in the art room. Didn’t you notice?’
Judith stared at the recumbent figure. The river Nilus, perhaps. Anyway, a heathen divinity in dirty plaster – and there was the very hand her hand had clutched. ‘Doesn’t it look absurd?’ she heard herself meaninglessly say – and even more meaninglessly add: ‘I adore idiotic things like that. That’s why I came exploring here. Lumber-rooms – don’t you think? – are such heavenly fun?’
Pooh made an inarticulate noise. He must have laboriously trailed her here. And now he was trying to say something he conceived as relevant to the situation – perhaps that any lumber-room would be heavenly fun with Lady Appleby in it. But all the wretched lad managed was a mutter.
Judith dusted her knees and laughed. This time it was a genuine laugh and not a jolly one. Something had certainly died here and decomposed – and presumably it could only be a bird. But it was far from making the atmosphere insupportable. Nor did even Pooh do that. He was far too frightened to be other than rather touchingly absurd. And – of course – he could be useful.
‘I’m so glad you have a torch,’ Judith said. ‘Do you know? Before I go home I’m quite, quite determined to peep at all this fascinating junk. Do you mind?’
Pooh didn’t seem to mind. Like a man who knows his dream has faded, he obediently attended Judith as she poked about. She found, of course, nothing at all. But at least she had completed her assignment – and at no greater cost than that of a single moment of panic that it was already a little embarrassing to remember.
The thunder growled harmlessly in the middle distance. The storm had passed over Splaine Croft.