Still unable to speak, Jennifer pointed at the door to a room just to the left of the main entrance. It was ajar, and Michael stepped into the glow of a dozen picture machines, all showing colourless images of the house and its surrounds. He looked at each of them, trying to get some kind of bearings. The view he had over the gateway couldn’t have shown the Arab guard’s death, but showed clearly where he and the girl had rushed forward into the illuminated clearing. Tough on the old native he hadn’t raised the alarm while he could.
So long as no one turned on a light, the space underneath the bank of picture machines was in deep shadow. Not bothering to ask for help, he dragged the body in and put it out of sight.
He pulled the door back ajar and wiped his hands on the long robe he’d put on. “I take it we haven’t been seen by anyone now alive?” When the girl said nothing, he led her across the floor of polished wood and pushed her gently beside a bronze statue of Saint George that mimicked the ancient style. “Where do you suppose we can find Basil Radleigh?” He poked her sharply in the breast and waited for the pain to bring her back to her senses. “Jennifer,” he said urgently, “I did explain before we started that this wasn’t a game. If we’re caught, we can expect to be killed—eventually if not at once. Either we make a run for it—and that means two completely pointless deaths—or you can pull yourself together and try to work out where that man is sleeping.”
Jennifer looked about in blank despair. It was only once he began to lead her out of the house that she stopped choking back the sobs and twisted free of his grip. “In there,” she said, pointing at the room where he’d left the dead man. She swallowed and threw off the shudders he could see coming over her. “There might be a list of names.”
Michael leaned against the place where he’d pushed the body and watched the movement of the hands on the clock. He still wasn’t entirely sure how time was measured in England. But the girl was taking a lot of it to pull out every drawer and rustle every sheet of paper she could find. The little hand was pointing at the second mark down on the right, and he watched the big hand move steadily three marks up till it was hovering past the three quarters point. “I can’t find anything,” she whispered after she’d finished making a noise that ought to have woken everyone in the house who wasn’t already stone dead. “Can’t we just go up and look into all the rooms?”
Michael took a deep breath. “No. If you think I’m touched in the head, you should try listening to yourself.” He pulled the door open a few inches and looked into the continuing silence of the hall. “Come on. We’ve tried our luck as far as it will stretch. We’re getting out of here while we can. We’ll think of something else when we’re a couple of miles down the road towards Dover.” He controlled his temper. This was his own fault. He should never have let them in for this stupid mission. How they’d get across the Channel remained as big a mystery to him as it had been all day. But there was nothing to be done here.
He stood back from the main door just in time to avoid being caught in the glare of the vehicle that swept with a gentle purr through the gate, to crunch to a halt on the gravel. He muttered one of the English obscenities he’d learned and pushed the girl back into the little room. The vehicle was barely a dozen feet beyond the main door, and he could hear low voices and the soft thudding of metal doors into metal bodywork. Another moment, and a man was walking about the hall and speaking in a raised and impatient voice. A light now went on, and the man spoke again, now apologetically. Michael leaned noiselessly forward and looked out into the dim light of the hall.
The main spoke again. Another voice took up in Latin: “Your driver apologises, My Lord, for the lack of any reception. But the hour is late, and we were unable, for security reasons, to send ahead with a definite time of arrival.”
“Not the end of the world, you can say for me,” came the answer in the rough Latin of a barbarian. There was a low but wolfish laugh. “Unless you’d laid on something carnal, forget the greetings and get me a drink.” This was followed by a sound of tinny music and the double grunting of a pig.
Michael looked round to where Jennifer had fallen silently to her knees and was trying not to cry out. He wondered if she too had recognised the voice of Gordon Jessup. Its quiet yet fussy Latin had made him almost nostalgic for those interviews in Dover.
Chapter Thirty Three
Now he’d let go of her, Jennifer had to twist like a landed fish to avoid hitting her already aching breasts on the floor. “If you don’t get up and pull yourself together,” he murmured into her ear with a silky calm that nearly finished the work of scaring her witless, “I’ll have to go after them alone.”
“No!” she gasped in a voice that she’d meant to be a whisper, but that sounded like a shout in the little room. She shut up, then tried again. But Michael was already through the door and padding towards the staircase. She could hear Count Robert laughing with a failed attempt at the discreet. His voice came, she told herself, from one of the corridors that must reach out from the first landing of the staircase. She looked round. In the light that came through the open door, she could see the sagging face of the porter Michael had finished off in cold blood. In its own way, this was as nightmarish as Oxford Street had been. She took hold of a chair back and pulled herself up. At first, she thought her legs had turned to jelly. But the sight of Michael creeping on all fours up the wide stairs was a shock that got her moving again.
By the time they reached the landing, everything was quiet again. Jennifer swallowed and looked nervously along the right hand corridor. From behind, she heard the sound of a distant light switch. Or it might have been a closing door. She turned and followed where Michael was already moving swiftly. At every closed door, he stopped and pressed himself against the wall, listening for any hint of movement. He looked back once and glared at her as she traipsed along the middle of the long carpet. She would have copied him, only she knew she’d only have knocked the ornaments off one of the tables placed every few yards along the lavishly decorated walls. They reached the end of the corridor and passed into an oblong room that had neither carpet nor oil paintings. From this an open door showed a flight of narrow and uncarpeted steps. Here, the dim electric lamps gave out, and it would mean creeping on in darkness. Michael pressed a foot onto the first of the steps, and jumped back as it gave a gentle squeak.
“Follow me up slowly,” he whispered. Put your feet where I put mine.” This meant going up wide-legged, each foot pressed on the extreme edge of the steps. Jennifer had read novels that involved breaking at night into big houses. They’d always thrilled her, and her father had sometimes urged her to try writing a novel of her own in the style of Ian Fleming or Sapper. Now she was living the fantasy, it was more like the dreams she’d often had as a child about being where she had no business to be. There was the same oppressive dread—the same slight remove from outright hysteria. She nearly stumbled on the top stair, and had to be caught by Michael before she could fall with a crash onto the rough boards. She pressed the button on her wrist watch and tried to look round in its feeble glow. So far as she could tell, they’d reached the top floor of the house. This was where the servants had once been lodged. Servants there must still be somewhere—especially in a house of this kind, and now that labour was once again cheaper than dirt. Perhaps they were all Outsiders—or perhaps all Arabs or Turks.