They walked on in silence. The sunlight seemed to have given up its battle with the Droy fog; it was impossible to judge what time of day it was but surely it was still morning. It could riot be more than an hour since daylight had broken.
They came upon the house suddenly, a huge turreted shape rearing up out of the gloom, frowning down on them. Go back, go back. Carol heard Thelma's warning again, would have turned and run had not Andy been holding her. A token resistance but where he went, she would go.
The hall looked exactly the same as it had when they had left it a few hours ago, that same stench of decay, the panelling rotting with age, the trap door in the far corner.
She didn't want to look at it, didn't dare guess what lay in the dungeons below, elevated her eyes to the crumbling stairway. It looked dangerous in places, entire steps missing, as though it would collapse if anyone put their full weight upon it.
Andy walked towards the stairs, noticed that the floor was wet, small puddles lying on the uneven surface. Somewhere water was trickling; the dungeons, they were flooded. He could hear the water lapping below the trap door. Soon it would push upwards and lift the hatch.
His foot was on the bottom step, Carol close behind him, when something made him glance up. The landing was in shadow, a dark damp platform with half the balustrade missing. Something moved, came forward and for one terrible second Carol thought that it was Thelma again, but the silhouette was wrong, too bulky. A man.
Now they could see him clearly, the silken clothes which had once been the finery of gentry, the waistcoat straining on the protruding stomach, the jowled scowling features, thinning long grey hair. Eyes that flicked and pierced the watchers like rapiers, thick lips curling into a sneer. The spider viewed the flies in its web with loathsome gloating.
'I was expecting you.' Nasal tones, wheezing as though even speech required a considerable effort. 'Let us go and view the Droy lands for the fast time, for now the sea, which had been kept back for thousands of years, has come to reclaim its own.' He laughed, a hollow chuckle that echoed across the empty hall. 'A few more hours and the lands of my forefathers will have gone for ever. Yet it is a fitting end.' A sigh that embodied deep sadness. 'Far rather that than that it should be wrested from us by usurpers to the title.'
Andy Dark stared up at the man on the landing, felt a fleeting humility as a serf might have experienced centuries before when summoned before his master, wilted beneath the gaze from those deep set small eyes. One who juggled with the fate of others.
'The police are coming.' It sounded trite, a last desperate throw, your final card when muggers cornered you in an ill-lit subway. Remembering the loaded Luger in his hand; token bravado, just a gesture of defiance. 'They'll pull this place apart.'
'They'll be too late, the sea will do it for them. For years Droy Wood had been eroded, the water creeping in, until it was virtually floating. A waterlogged sailing-ship that is ready to be submerged. Everything will be lost for ever without trace,' the other gave another forced laugh, 'and maybe then none of us will be forced to live on any longer. Come though, we are wasting time. Let us go aloft and bid the Droy lands farewell ere we go down with them.'
Andy felt his feet beginning to move, mounting the steps slowly, heard Carol following. The stairs seemed firm and strong. Perhaps they had recently been renovated and the repairs were not visible. Oak panelling that no longer bore the pockmarks of woodworm. Shadowy, so that the figure at the top of the stairs was a silhouette again, his arrogant features fading back into the darkness.
There was a roaring in Andy Dark's ears; it could have been the distant angry sea. A stench that reminded him of rotting seaweed. He lurched, clutched at the stair-rail to steady himself, his stomach rolling like it might have done on board a ship floundering in tempestuous seas; the captain up there on the bridge. We're sinking, we're all going down with the ship. Let's drown with dignity, not panicking like bilge rats.
Going on up, the man at the top turning as if to lead the way, his ungainly bulk moving surprisingly gracefully.
'Andy,' said Carol in a frightened whisper, 'we shouldn't have come here, we should have heeded Thelma's warning.'
Now they were standing on a stone balcony that jutted out at the back of the big house which had once been a castle, floating in a white swirling mist. And somewhere far down below they heard the lapping and splashing of water.
Fourteen
Muffin was back close at Roy Bean's heels, so close that at times she threatened to obstruct his difficult progress through the swampy ground. Angrily he kicked back at her, heard her whimper but she did not move away, just cringed.
'Stupid bitch,' he grunted. 'You're supposed to be working the rough, searching for a scent like those bloody police dogs are.' Strangely, the Alsatians had gone quiet. Perhaps they were trained to work silently. Or else they were acting strangely, too.
Hell, this fog was thicker than ever and yet you could hear the sea pounding the coastline like it hadn't done since that disastrous week of the Fastnet yacht race some years ago. It was crazy, a raging sea but here in Droy Wood you experienced the kind of feeling old-time mariners must have had when they were becalmed. The wind's never going to blow again, you're here for the rest of your life and there isn't much of that left now. The gamekeeper struggled in a patch of soft ground, the thick springy grass beneath his feet giving him the impression that it was floating on water, that at any second it might tip up and throw him into a deep pool. Muffin was wallowing, almost swimming, snorting the way she always did when she retrieved a shot bird off the water. It hadn't been as wet as this the other day. Christ, it was always swampy in here but this was ridiculous, frightening if you thought too much about it.
No longer was it easy to keep the men directly on either side of you in sight. Not just because the mist was appreciably thicker but now they were in the densest part of the wood where they were forced to detour impassable barriers such as bogs and impenetrable patches of brambles. Even if the syndicate demanded to shoot the wood the beaters wouldn't stand for it, Roy Bean reflected. And neither would 1.1 never want to set foot in this fucking place again.
He had given up urging the spaniel forward. She had a stubborn streak in her and she'd made up her mind not to range from her master's side. Any other time, anywhere else, she would have had a thrashing. Bloody dog!
He paused for a moment. Perhaps he wasn't as fit as he thought, he rarely got out of breath. The stink in here didn't help, a mixture of decaying trees, marsh vapours and rotting seaweed drifting in from the sea. He glanced about him; there was nobody in sight at this very moment, he could not even hear the other searchers splashing and cursing. It gave you a funny feeling like suddenly everybody else had left and you were abandoned here, hadn't a clue which way to go. Once you lost your sense of direction in thick fog you didn't find it again unless by chance you stumbled upon a recognisable landmark. And here in the wood everywhere looked the same, every stunted tree like the next one. But at least today you could hear the sea, knew that if it was on the left then the road had to be on your right. Well, at least it should be. He shuddered.
Roy Bean set off again, an urgency about his movements now, a disregard for the water that slopped over the tops of his Wellington boots. He should have worn waders but how the hell were you to know that the fucking place was going to flood?
Muffin stopped, cowered and whined. Oh Jesus Christ, not only are you refusing to work but now you bleedin' well don't want to do anything! He lifted his ash stick threateningly and at that moment the spaniel gave a short sharp bark, the way she warned him when there was a trespasser somewhere close by on the game preserves; except that now it was a yelp of fear, ears fiat back on her liver and white head, tail curled down between her hind legs. He was about to strike her when a movement distracted him, an eddying of the fog up ahead of him, revealing an outline then closing back over it again. One of the searchers must have gone too far, realised his mistake and come back, was trying to locate the line again. Silly bugger, if you were beating for me on shooting days you'd get a cursing. That's how beaters get shot, buggering about all over the place.