Osborne leapt to his feet.
“I’ll ring Aunt Doris. I’m afraid it’s another of these fictions … ”
And off he went.
A this point Lene entered. Her apparel was in interestingly bad taste, the sort of thing that would go down well in Berlin.
The Earls’ greeting was a mixture of obliging kindness and extreme detachment. She didn’t like it.
“You remind me so much of my poor uncle Otto,” she remarked.
“I do?”
“Absolutely. He also studied the flies on the wall when speaking to you. I can’t stand it if someone doesn’t look me in the eye when he addresses me.”
The Earl stared at her in astonishment.
“That’s better. You know, you have a really intelligent face. Your family all seem to be fairly bright. I always thought old families were full of idiots.”
“Osborne will show you round the park,” he replied. “It’s rather pretty.” And he buried himself in his tea.
Osborne returned, ashen-faced.
“Trouble,” he announced. “Aunt Doris is in perfect health.”
“God bless her,” Lene added.
“Hang on a second. Aunt Doris says the telegram must be in error. Cynthia got there the night before last, slept there, and left, quite early the next morning, saying she’d be back. That was yesterday. She hasn’t been seen since.”
I glanced at the Earl. He was stroking his forehead.
“Where could she be?” he asked in a completely neutral voice. He seemed overwhelmed by a grief so profound that nothing new could touch him.
We all felt desperate and helpless. Even Lene was unable to drum up her usual reassuring indelicacy.
Osborne took her out to show her the park. I was pacing up and down the terrace, when the Rev. Dafyd Jones appeared.
“Oh, Doctor, I am so happy to find you. You lead such a spiritual life. I must speak to you whatever the cost.”
In silence, his face anxious as ever, he dragged me off to a remote section of the park.
“What do you make of it all?” he whispered, when we were out of sight of the castle. “Is it not unspeakably dreadful?”
“It is dreadful,” I replied. “We haven’t the slightest idea where she might be.”
“But there was no other way, sir. It was inevitable. I told you, did I not, that no good would come of it. All these experiments.”
“But what are the experiments to do with Miss Cynthia?”
The vicar wasn’t listening.
“Because that’s the way it is. First with animals. Axolotls,” he shuddered. “Then people.”
“What exactly are you talking about?”
“Why, about the child he abducted in Abersych.”
“Oh yes, the child … Who do you say abducted him?”
“The Earl,” he said, in a fierce whisper.
“Never. Why would the Earl do a thing like that?”
“To experiment, sir. To experiment. To kill him, and then revive him. He’s grown tired of mere animals.”
“But the little boy was taken away by an old man in black. The midnight rider.”
“The midnight rider is the Earl of Gwynedd. As I told you. I know it. Or if not the Earl himself, his double.”
“Or a different Earl of Gwynedd,” I said.
“Since that day the Earl has never been at home. He prowls about. Sick. With a guilty conscience. The boy isn’t hidden here. Somewhere in the mountains.”
“Nothing of the sort. I have seen, with my own eyes, that the Earl and the midnight rider are two different people.”
“Do not trust what your eyes tell you, Doctor. Try to put yourself in my shoes … I know I must say the words of exorcism over him. But in such a way that he is not aware of it. He’d be very offended, and, after all, the Llanvygan living is in his power and I am totally dependent on him.”
Just then my hypersensitive ears picked up the sound of a motor horn. I abandoned the mad vicar and ran towards the castle.
There, outside the front door, stood the little Rover.
I dashed inside, to find Cynthia eating her breakfast. She was in radiant spirits and greeted me loudly.
“Cynthia, where were you?”
She looked at me in surprise.
“Excuse me … when did you become so very inquisitive?”
“Forgive me, my dear, do forgive me, my only … We’ve been almost dead with worry. Osborne phoned your aunt, and she said she hadn’t sent for you, and that you’d left her yesterday morning. We thought … we really thought, you’d walked into Morvin’s trap.”
She laughed.
“Not in the least. What should Morvin want from me? I’m in excellent health, and I’ve had a marvellous time. But, since you are so curious, I might as well tell you. After I left Aunt Doris I went to see my lady friend. It turned out that it was she who sent the telegram, because she was missing me so much and she wanted to entice me down to London whatever way she could. I found her at home, as beautiful as ever. And she was just about to go and spend her Sunday at Llandudno. So we went there together, and I had the day with her. And now I’m here … So, are you happy now?”
And then something quite appalling happened. I am normally as circumspect as an engineer with particularly short sight, but I threw inhibition to the winds, hurled myself at her and covered her in kisses. It was such a relief to know she was all right.
She disentangled herself, thoroughly discomposed. Before her mouth had even recovered the usual shape for speech, she informed me she had been reading a study of Ivan the Terrible.
Soon it was time for lunch.
It is something I truly cannot help, but I adore women who eat heartily and with real pleasure. One of Cynthia’s major shortcomings was that she considered it undignified, as a spiritual being, to surrender to the pleasures of food. She ate with a faraway expression on her face, like a woman at her needlework. The fork appeared to find its way to her mouth by pure accident. It might just as easily have fluttered away, like a little butterfly.
Lene was precisely the reverse. She didn’t eat: she fed herself. In a fever of excitement she refuelled the large and ever-developing organism, glowing with vitality, that was her body. I could see that the Earl, despite his best efforts, couldn’t bear to watch her. And how much wine she drank! (These were the dangerously full-bodied reds of southern France.) She grew steadily louder, holding forth about her university experiences, and I waited in fear and trembling for her to get round to the more erotic of these, and the self-evident nature of Moralische.
Osborne and I sat there, like orphans huddled in a storm. But the Earl seemed to take a sort of masochistic pleasure in her brashness, and he questioned her constantly, encouraging her to talk.
“You haven’t said how you like the castle,” he remarked.
“In short, I can only say I don’t. First of all, those columns at the entrance. Why so many? The place isn’t going to fall down. Each storey is in a different style. And all this furniture. Queen Anne in one room, Chippendale in another: it’s a mess. There’s no single motif, no metaphysic holding it together. And tell me, why such a huge building? Sixty rooms … it’s utterly irrational.”
“I think you could say the same about the wives of oriental kings. They had three hundred and sixty five, not because they needed them, but because they were kings.”
After lunch we younger ones went for a walk down the long avenue leading from the castle to the village.
Coming towards us, very slowly, was a strange figure. He was walking with a stick, and was followed by several others, all rather small. With my short-sightedness I could not make out who they were, and only started to pay real attention when my companions, whose eyes were sharper, stopped to discuss the situation.
“What sort of procession is it?” asked Osborne. “Perhaps you can tell us, Cynthia. Is there some sort of Welsh festival today?”