It was dark beyond the door, but not as dark as Elinor had feared. It was shadowy and dim and there was a fetid clammy stench, but a faint green waterlight rippled on the walls and it was possible to see quite well.
She had pushed the door back almost to the wall and light spilled in from the hall. Wooden steps led down and Elinor tested them cautiously: they were a bit rickety but they seemed fairly secure. With her heart thumping erratically she began to descend. This is the place Lewis forbade me to enter, insofar as Lewis would ever forbid anyone anything. Unsafe, he had said, and unhygienic. Occasionally flooded by the Thames. So whatever you do, my dear, don’t open the seventh chamber . . . Of course not, M’sieur Bluebeard.
It would probably be sensible to go up to her flat to get a jacket and even a torch, except that if she did that she might not have the courage to come down again. And she was only going to turn out whoever had got in here by mistake. Either that or she was going to lay the ghost. It was a ridiculous expression: you could imagine a crowd of men in a pub saying it raucously. Hey, I’m laying a ghost tonight, fellas.
At the foot of the rickety steps – at least they had not splintered and deposited her in a broken-bone heap at the foot – was a long dim tunnel with the sides and the roof rounded, rather like a giant brick culvert. It was about eight feet from roof to floor at its centre, and the green light rippled over the dank bricks. It was rather horridly cavernous and the tiniest sound reverberated against the walls. From somewhere up ahead was a faint drip of water and the echo caught that as well and bounced it back over and over. Drip-drip. Drip-drip. It was the kind of dank hollow sound that would grate against your nerves if you were shut in with it for long. Not that Elinor was shut in. She glanced back at the wooden steps. The cellar door was wide open; she could go back at any time she wanted. Like all those wide-eyed heroines in fairy tales, who went trippingly and trustingly into the dark gusty castle of the ogre, gaily saying that it was quite all right because they could go back . . .? Yes, but I’m not in a fairy tale. Not unless it’s Bluebeard, of course. Not unless it’s a nightmare version of Jekyll and Hyde, with the house as the main character. I am changing, my dear, I am fearfully changing . . . Once I was an ordinary house, sheltering ordinary people, but now I am turning into a gobbling monster . . . regressing to the days when this was the lair of a recluse who dared not go abroad in daylight because he was so repulsive that people would run screaming from him . . .
Elinor gasped and put out a hand to the wall to steady herself. A touch of claustrophobia. Making me imagine all kinds of weird things. I don’t suffer from claustrophobia. I wish I hadn’t lit on the word lair. I wish I hadn’t thought about the recluse, either.
Apart from the echoes it was very quiet; she could no longer hear the drone of traffic in St Stephen’s Road, which added to the sense of isolation. And the tunnel seemed to be deserted: the echoes would have betrayed the presence of a mouse. There was nothing and there was no one, but she would just go a little farther along and then she could go back to the flat with a clear conscience and enjoy the pasta and the glass of wine. She would probably have a couple of glasses after this, in fact she might very well finish the bottle.
I’ll just go a little farther, thought Elinor firmly. I’ll make absolutely sure there’s nothing here, and when I know that there isn’t – because of course, there won’t be – I’ll feel a whole lot better. Like looking under the bed before you got into it. Like checking that the noise you heard at two o’clock in the morning really was the cat coming in through the kitchen window and not a burglar.
She went past a smallish door set deep into the brickwork, and paused. It would be sensible to try it, but in fact it resisted Elinor’s tentative push. Locked. It was probably only an old storeroom anyway. The entire place was probably only storerooms.
There was the impression of immense age down here, and Elinor reminded herself that Chance House was very old and that very old houses were often built on the sites of houses even older. But the aura down here had nothing to do with Victorian grafted on to Regency, or even Regency grafted on to something much earlier. It was an aura of creeping darknesses and ancient evils, as if something tainted and malign had lived down here and as if the malignancy had soaked into the stones and the bricks. The recluse again? Or something else? Something that lived down here in dark secrecy, and came prowling up out of the cellars when everyone was asleep . . .?
The rippling light was getting stronger and the echoing drip of water was more distinct. Then I’m going towards the river. Or am I? Well, if not the Thames, maybe a tributary.
And then she rounded a curve and came up against a flat stone wall, with brackish water oozing down it and oily puddles on the ground. Dead end. Then I’ve done what I set out to do; I’ve checked the boundaries. I’ve looked under the bed, and there’s nothing there.
It was then that a blurred movement caught the edge of her vision and she looked down. Near to the ground was an oblong opening, a kind of half-window half-ventilator, rather like the ones you saw in the basements of large Victorian town houses. It was about seven feet across and probably four feet deep at the highest point; there was no glass but there was a barred grille. Sluggish light poured through, casting the outline of the grille across the ground. Had something moved on the other side? Elinor bent down to look, her heart almost in her mouth with terror. Beyond the grille were stone steps leading down to a lower tunnel. There were the same dark wet brick walls and floor, and as Elinor pressed closer a stench of decay breathed into her face.
Padding down the tunnel, going away from her, was a creature with a slender, black-clad body and a monstrous nightmare head. A cat’s head, with snarling lips and a blunt snout and gleaming teeth that protruded upwards like fangs. The terrible head turned slightly from side to side as it went as if scanning the shadows, and the eyes, yellow and feral, caught the light. In the thing’s arms was the limp body of a young man, his head falling back, a rim of white showing under his eyes. The hands holding the boy were paws, massive and claw-tipped, with coarse bristly fur along the backs.
For ten hideous seconds Elinor almost lost her hold on sanity altogether – that’s the creature I saw on the stair! – and then understanding washed over her mind. It’s a false head! Of course it is! It’s like a Mardi Gras head or an elaborate mask! And the hands are gloves! She was about to draw in a shaky breath of relief when a different fear came scudding in. What kind of person deliberately donned a nightmare mask and claw-gloves, and prowled through dark houses and dank dripping tunnels? And carried prone bodies to some unguessed-at lair . . .?
She crouched closer to the grille, trying to see more, and it was then that she realised that the grille was in fact a hinged gate. To lift it and go down into the lower tunnels with the stench of dank dripping decay and the nightmare creature padding ahead would be complete and utter insanity. But to let the thing take its victim to some impenetrable hideout was also unthinkable. If I can just see where it goes, thought Elinor, I can go back up to the house and get help and I’ll have clear evidence. But if I’ve only got the evidence of my own eyes I don’t think anyone’s going to believe me. ‘You saw something with a man’s body and a cat’s head in the sewers, did you, madam? Dear me, very upsetting. And how long have you been seeing things like this?’ You could very nearly write the dialogue.
And as long as she was very quiet and very stealthy, and as long as she kept so far behind the creature that it did not know she was there, it would not really be very dangerous. She reached for the grille which lifted easily and noiselessly in her hands, as if somebody kept it well oiled.
Elinor glanced back down the tunnel, and then bent to climb through.
The lower tunnel was larger and at intervals it was reinforced with brick pillars and arched groynes under the roof. It was dark but not completely so, and it felt rather like walking along an abandoned section of the Underground – Mornington Crescent, or one of those 1940s British films about ghost trains that came out of nowhere and thundered along closed tracks.
At intervals were smaller tunnels, snaking away into complete blackness, and in the floor, every few yards, were huge old-fashioned iron drains. Elinor caught the stench of wet decay again, and the glint of dark stagnant water. An old sewer tunnel? Dear God, I’m in the sewers following a madman who thinks he’s a cat!
Whatever he was, he knew the way through the tunnels. He went forward, his arms holding his victim easily, stepping between the gaping drains, his footsteps echoing hollowly. Once he stopped and looked back and Elinor’s heart jumped and she froze in the shadow of one of the brick pillars. But after a second the man continued, turning off into one of the intersections and going up another flight of steps. There was the sound of a door being pushed up – a trap door? – and then being closed. Elinor, keeping well back, tried to think what to do. The intersection was marked with a faint chalk cross on the wall and it would be easy to find again. But supposing the creature was only depositing its victim and was coming back down the tunnel almost immediately? If that was so he would certainly catch her. But to go forward after him was clearly out of the question. I’ve painted myself into a corner. No, I haven’t, he’s coming back – I was right to stay put then! She pressed back into the lee of a brick pillar again, thankful that she was wearing a dark sweater and skirt which would make her fairly unnoticeable. But her heart was pounding so loudly she thought the echoes would pick it up.
However, the cat-headed man seemed unaware of her presence. He was no longer carrying the boy and he came down the steps, walking quickly and lightly and went into the green darkness of the tunnels. Elinor heard him lift the hinged grille and go along the upper tunnel. There was the sound of the cellar door closing.
She came thankfully out of her makeshift hiding place. Almost safe now. But I’ll hurry: through the half-window, fold the grille back into place – yes, good, cover your tracks, Elinor – and now along the tunnel and up to the cellar door. She was nearly but not quite running and her mind was racing ahead, to getting back to her own flat, to ringing the police – this time there would be no sinister whispery voice on the other end – and unbolting the old stage door to let them in.
In a very few minutes she would be doing all that . . .
As she turned the cellar door handle she felt the resistance at once. She frowned and tried again, twisting the handle up and down. Jammed? She moved the handle from side to side, but panic was beginning to slick the palms of her hands with sweat, and cold fear was welling up. It was perfectly clear what had happened.
The man, whoever he was, whatever he was, had a key to the main cellar door. And as he went out he had locked it.
He had locked her in the cellars. And on the other side of the cellar door, Chance House was deserted. Everyone had left for the weekend.
It was important to remain calm. It was very important indeed to work out what time it was and to think when people would be coming to the centre.
It was half-past seven – barely an hour since she had come down to lock the side door. No one would be coming to the centre tonight – they had had one or two open evenings and talks by people from organisations like Relate and Shelter, but there was nothing on tonight. The Lifeline phone had been switched through to whoever was on night duty. No one would be coming back.
Lewis would certainly not be returning because the conference would not end until Sunday afternoon, when there was a service at Wells Cathedral, and then a buffet lunch. He would not return before Sunday afternoon, or even Sunday evening.
What about the security man – the real one: what was his name – Raffael? Would he return to Chance House tonight? But even if he did, he would simply see that the cellar door was locked as normal. If she banged and shouted would he hear? More to the point, would she hear him come in and know when to bang and shout?
There remained Ginevra’s weekend visit. Once Ginevra got here she would almost certainly institute a search; Elinor could easily visualise her telephoning Lewis at the Bath hotel, demanding that he come home, even summoning the police. But the trouble was that between trains and buses and lifts that might not have materialised, Ginevra would perhaps not get here until tomorrow morning. Elinor glanced uneasily into the tunnels again. Supposing the cat-headed creature returned? And what about the boy? He might be lying helpless somewhere; it would be dreadful to find that he had died all alone because Elinor was too spineless to do anything other than crouch up here shivering, waiting for someone to come and find her.
She stood up and began to retrace her steps along the tunnel.
It was important to keep to the main tunnel and to go to the intersection with the chalk cross. She absolutely must not get lost down here where she might easily wander about in the dark for hours, going round in circles without knowing. Mad ideas of marking the turn-offs by scratching the brick like ramblers or gypsies, or unrolling a ball of twine like Ariadne tracking the Minotaur to its grisly lair through the labyrinth, scuttered across her mind but she dismissed them. This was not the time to start exploring, and nor was it the time to begin hunting about for pencils or reels of cotton. She reminded herself that the Minotaur with its human body and bull’s head was only a legend. The business about seven maidens and seven youths being fed to it each year was a legend as well. Anyway, the cat-headed thing had only been carrying one boy. Yes, but he couldn’t carry seven altogether, he’d have to bring them down one at a time . . . Stop it, Elinor!
The sensible thing would be to go to the marked tunnel and find out if there was another exit there. Probably there was. Probably there were any number. She would get out without any difficulty and she would go to the nearest police station or a phone box, and in a very short time she would be back in her flat and explaining all this to some nice sympathetic police officer.
She reached the top of the stone steps. The trap door was above her head, as if it might be sunk into the floor of a room directly above. It was easily reachable, and Elinor levered it up a cautious inch so that she had a thin line of vision without making her presence too apparent. There would not be any bull-headed (or cat-headed) things on the other side, and there would not be seven maidens and seven men queuing for ritual slaughter. But it was better to be wary.
Beyond the trap door was a long wide room with what looked like corrugated-sheet walls and a vaulted roof, criss-crossed with girders. And there’s gas lighting, she thought, disbelievingly. Is it? Yes, those are the brackets. I can hear it spitting and I can see it flickering. Does that mean there’s someone there? Dare I go up? Well, I’ve got to do something. She pushed back the trap door and stepped up into the huge room.
The gas jets flickered in the current of air from the opening of the hatch, and shadows leaped across the walls, making Elinor’s heart miss several more beats. She looked about her. An old warehouse? Packing cases and boxes were stacked at one end, and in the middle was an untidy heap of discarded furniture: old wardrobes and ancient desks with scarred surfaces; chaise longues with the fabric torn and dirty; a couple of oval cheval mirrors, the glass dim and spotted. Thrust against one wall were a dozen or so elaborate straight-backed chairs.
It was a warehouse or it might even be a disused wharf. How near to the river was it? There was a stench of something too sweet and pulpy somewhere that made you think of over-ripe fruit leaking decay through its skin, but she might still have the smell of those appalling tunnels in her nostrils.
She moved towards the jumble of old furniture, scanning the shadowy corners, trying to see if the cat-head man’s victim was lying helplessly in one of the corners. There was a bad moment when her face swam into eerie reflection in the dim drowned depths of one of the mirrors, the eyes huge and terrified, so that for a moment she thought someone was peering at her through the thick smeary gloom.
Elinor gasped involuntarily and stepped back, and it was then that she heard the whispering.