According to the clock in the Nag’s Head it was exactly half past ten when Quinn ordered his second pint of bitter. He told himself there was no hurry. Pub clocks were always at least five minutes fast.
… Still, you’d better not leave it too late. Be all right if you could wait until morning instead of trekking out into the wilds of Essex on a filthy night like this. Chances are you’ll break your neck in the dark … or somebody’ll break it for you. …
His mind shied away from that thought. He was doing his best to blot out the picture of Mrs. McAllister, her dead eyes staring up at the light in the roof of the phone box, her swollen tongue protruding from her mouth.
… By morning, if not before, Mullett’s bound to get round to the idea that the number on that piece of paper could refer to a classified ad. I must take a look at the place before he puts a NO ADMITTANCE TO THE PRESS sign outside the door. Bet he’ll kick himself when he discovers that Lou. had a full stop after it because it stood for Loughton. …
The second pint tasted even better than the first and Quinn was tempted. But by then the clock said the time was nearly twenty minutes to eleven.
He finished his beer, refused the offer of another and assured the barmaid that he had not taken leave of his senses “… I’m not like some people who stay until they get swept out with the empty cigarette packets. Moderation in all things, that’s me: food, drink, women. I might be prepared to make an exception in your case, so let me know when you’re free—and I mean free.”
It was still sleeting when he got outside and the cold stung his nose and ears. With his raincoat slapping against his legs he trudged to the corner of Chancery Lane.
Just after a quarter to eleven he picked up a taxi. As he settled back and lit a cigarette, he found himself thinking of the morning when he had made Mrs. Haupmann laugh.
She was such a charming woman … pretty as a picture, too. It would be a shame if she had been implicated in the execution of her second husband. The law would call it murder. But the law could hardly be expected to concede that justice had finally caught up with Fritz Haupmann.
The village of Loughton Woods crouched in a hollow where the ground fell away steeply to the east—one street, a score of old houses with no lights showing. On the slope overlooking the village a straggle of leafless trees strained in the wind, their branches glittering with frozen sleet in the lights of the taxi.
Quinn told the driver “… Can’t be far now. Look out for a side road or a lane of some sort. …”
Half a mile farther on they came to the cross-roads. A sign post pointed straight on for Epping, sharp left for Waltham Abbey.
The driver asked, “Which way?”
It was the first time he had spoken since they left town. He sounded disgruntled.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Quinn said. “Try left … and take it easy.”
They drove slowly along the Waltham Abbey road, headlights tunnelling through the blustering darkness. Two hundred yards from the junction there was an open gate on the right, a narrow track winding back from the road between high, overgrown hedges.
Quinn said, “Looks as if we’ve arrived. Drop me here and then carry on a little way so you won’t be seen from that house up there. I don’t want to advertise the fact that they’ve got a visitor.”
He got out. The driver said, “If I’d known it was this kind of a job I wouldn’t have brought you.”
“You don’t know what kind of a job it is. In case you think I’m a burglar, let me tell you I’m calling on a lady and I want to make sure her husband isn’t at home.”
The driver said, “A thousand cabs to choose from but the comics always pick on me. It’s a bloody cold night, mate, for parking out here in the open. How do I know I’ll ever see you again?”
Quinn looked at his watch. He said, “It’s almost twenty-five past eleven. If I’m not back by a quarter to twelve, you can do both of us a favour.”
“How?”
“Fetch the police,” Quinn said.
The mud of the cart-track ended in a cobbled yard fronting the house. It was a whitewashed two-story building with only one room on the ground floor screened by curtains. There were no lights anywhere.
The front door was locked, the windows at ground level immovable. He picked his way carefully round to the rear and tried the door there.
It seemed to be not only locked but bolted top and bottom as well. The windows on either side looked in on empty rooms. Except for the one curtained window at the front he would have said the house was uninhabited.
There was a neglected vegetable garden … a dog kennel … an old-fashioned drinking-trough … an outbuilding with half its roof missing and a rickety door swinging to and fro in the wind. With every gust a cowl on one of the chimneys made screeching noises that set his teeth on edge.
He went round to the front of the house again and tried to peer through the curtained window. All the time he was asking himself if he had made the trip for nothing.
… You’re not going home before you’ve taken a look inside this place. There must’ve been a reason why she was clutching that bit of paper. Someone’s either bought this ancient dump or means to buy it … and the idea isn’t to turn it into an olde Englishe Tea Shoppe: Afternoon Teas with Strawberries and cream. Coach parties catered for. The Misses Nesbitt, Props. … If the curtains are anything to go by, that somebody’s already in possession, although apparently not at home right now. …
He gave up peering through the window and tried the door again. Best way to find out would be to knock good and hard. Whoever it is can’t eat you. If it’s someone too big for you to tackle alone, you can always run like hell.
His first knock was a tentative effort that would scarcely have been heard above the noise of the wind. With his ear pressed against the centre panel he listened for sounds of life inside the house.
Then he began banging heavily with his clenched fist. When he got tired of bruising his hand he kicked at the door instead.
Nothing happened. It seemed obvious that he was wasting time and energy.
… Only one thing you can do now—if you’ve got the guts. Mullett won’t hesitate when he learns about this place. Of course, Mullett’s got the law on his side … with all the row that the wind’s making you don’t run any risk of being heard. …
His foot was beginning to hurt. He felt around in the dark until he found a loose cobblestone.
The lower half of the sash window consisted of two panes. He smashed one of them with a quick blow, waited until his heart settled down again, and then cleared away the jagged fragments of glass around the frame.
The opening was big enough for him to squeeze through with ease. He wriggled across the sill on his stomach, pulled the curtains aside and lowered himself head-first to the floor.
When he stood up he was in pitch darkness. Outside the house the shape of things had been visible but now he could see nothing.
With his back to the curtains he stood and listened. The walls of the farmhouse were a foot or more thick and they muted the noise of the gale, the whistling and whooping above the rooftop, the sullen booming sound of the wind in one of the chimneys.
That was all. So far as he could tell he was alone in the house.
Another ten seconds went by. He began to hear voices talking to him out of the darkness—the voices of things created inside his own head.
Once, he thought he could hear the rattle of chains somewhere below the floor. When he stooped to listen it had gone. He was not surprised. An empty house with a gale battering at its walls. …
Against his will he thought of Mrs. McAllister. Dead Mrs. McAllister had gone to join her spirit friends. Maybe she was complaining to them that they should have warned her a scarf would choke out her life. … Did it make any difference how a person died?
When you gotta go, you gotta go. Bet that bloke Hans thought his number was up when Fritz betrayed him. But maybe he lived to get his own back. Pretty rough on Mrs. Haupmann. Helluva position for a woman to be in. Husband No. 1 turns up after all those years and tells her she can wave good-bye to husband No. 2.
Wonder how she felt about Fritz after she learned he’d betrayed everyone—including her? Can a woman live with a man for years and years without developing the motherly feeling that forgives pretty near everything—everything, that is, except infidelity.
Maybe she was even flattered by the thought that desire for her drove him to get rid of Hans. Women had a way of looking at that kind of thing that a man could never understand. Women had no moral principles in matters of sex. Morals were abstractions that they encouraged men to believe in because it kept them out of mischief. …
The faint rattling noise came again. This time Quinn knew he was not deceiving himself. Perhaps there was a cellar under the house.
He struck a match and cupped it in his hands until it was burning brightly. When he held it above his head the darkness was swept back into the corners of a wide, stone-floored room with blackened beams supporting the ceiling, a brick-built fireplace big enough to roast a sheep, and a doorway arched like the entrance to a Norman church.
In the middle of the room there was a packing case that looked as if it had once contained oranges. On it stood a metal bowl, a cardboard box and a paraffin lamp with a tall glass chimney.
The match went out. He lit another and took a closer look at the orange box.
Its upper compartment formed a shelf on which there were some more boxes like the one on top—unopened boxes of dog biscuits. Four or five cans of dog meat filled the rest of the shelf.
Judging by the weight of the lamp it was full. He used two matches before he got it lit and he scorched his fingers in the process but when the flame was burning white and even he had all the light he needed.
Against one wall were stacked oddments of furniture … a drum of paraffin … another drum containing water. More junk had been piled close to the hearth as if it were intended to be used as firewood.
In the centre of the space between the orange box and the fireplace there was a trapdoor about four foot by three foot: scarred wooden planks bound with iron and secured by a hasp and staple. A poker jammed in the staple ensured that the trapdoor could not be opened from below.
He stood the lamp on the floor and squatted down on his haunches. Once again he imagined he heard a clinking noise but he could not be sure. As he released the hasp his skin crawled at the thought that he might be unleashing some wild beast, some watchful, silent creature waiting to spring out on him.
A draught from the broken window billowed the curtain and made the lamp waver and dip very low. Shadows soared from every corner—great flying shadows that reached out to enfold him in wings of darkness.
Panic seized him. He wanted to run from the house, to get out before something terrible happened. He should never have come alone.
… You always want to show Piper just how damn’ clever you can be. … Packets of dog biscuits and tins of meat enriched with what that commercial TV fellow pronounces as Marylebone jelly. … ’ Make sure your dog is bounding with good health … Good health … good health. …
If he had accepted the invitation to have another pint he would have been a lot better off. A pub was a warm, friendly place where people enjoyed life for an hour or two, where no one was throttled to death.
Then the lamp flame blossomed brightly again and the shadows fled back to their hiding places. He kneeled on the floor, gripped the poker with one hand and hooked two fingers of the other hand through the staple.
As his muscles strained, he was saying under his breath, “You’re a bloody fool, Quinn: that’s your trouble. They should’ve locked you up years ago for your own protection.”
The trapdoor was even heavier than he had expected. He managed to raise it a couple of inches, the poker held in readiness. Then the staple slipped from his fingers and the trapdoor dropped shut with a noise that reverberated throughout the house.
He sat back on his heels and rested for a moment while he took half a dozen deep breaths. He was trembling with relief.
There had been no time to see very much but he had seen enough. It was dark down there … just an empty darkness … nothing with blood-red eyes and slavering jowls … nothing to justify his fears … except the smell….
In that second or two a stench had come up from the cellar, a fetid odour which reminded him of an animal’s cage. He had had a glimpse of walls that had once been whitewashed, a wooden ladder, cobwebs clustering on the underside of the trapdoor.
There had been no sound from below but he knew now that he was not alone in the farmhouse. Once again he took hold of the staple.
This time he was able to raise the trapdoor wide enough to prop it open with the poker. Then he held the lamp above his head and looked down.
The light revealed a few square feet of floor around the foot of the ladder. Wisps of straw … cobwebs … the grime of generations. With the smell churning his stomach, he knelt and listened.
A fiercer blast whistled over the rooftop and went rushing southwards. For a strangely-quiet moment there was a lull. And in that moment he heard the clinking noise again: a noise that he recognised as the rattling of chains.
He leaned farther over the opening and called out, “Hallo! Anyone down there?”
He knew it was a silly question to ask. The dog that someone had chained up in the cellar could scarcely be expected to answer … except by barking. And it was evidently not the kind that barked. Why anybody should want to keep it imprisoned in that filthy hole was the kind of problem—
That was when he heard a new sound. The flame of the lamp fluttered wildly as he drew back, his scalp prickling. He knew what he had found, he knew the secret of the old farmhouse, but his mind rebelled at the knowledge.
This was something more terrible than he could ever have imagined. This was worse than the slavering beast conjured up out of the wind and the darkness.
Footsteps scuffed across the grimy floor of the cellar. One dragging pace at a time they came closer until he could make out a figure standing just outside the spread of light: the figure of a big man with fleshy features and unkempt greying hair.
Clothes and face and hair were filthy. He looked like something that had been born of the grime in the cellar—something primeval and noisome.
With one hand shielding his eyes he tried to come a step nearer. As he struggled vainly. Quinn saw there was a broad metal band round his waist fastened with a padlock. Behind him a stout chain stretched back out of sight.
Another violent gust of wind buffeted the house. The curtains flapped, the lamp almost went out.
Quinn forced himself to say, “You’ll be all right now, Mr. Haupmann. I’ll go for help and we’ll soon have you out of there.”
The man in the cellar took his hand away from his eyes and peered up. In a cracked voice, he said, “For God’s sake, give me a drink. I’ve had no water for two days. If this isn’t just a new way of tormenting me, let me have some water….”
Close behind Quinn something made a slight noise. He was turning when a blow caught him on the back of the head—a blow that paralysed all power of movement but left him still conscious. As he fell he seemed able to see and hear with heightened clarity.
He knew he had dropped the lamp. Like a man watching a film in slow motion he saw it spin through the air and strike the floor close to where the odd bits of furniture were stacked. After what appeared to be a long time he heard the glass chimney shatter.
There was a muffled sound like the rushing of the wind. Then fire poured out in a torrent of flame and smoke.
His last recollection was of a world filled with heat, a great noise growing louder and louder. From far-off came the sound of someone screaming.