‘Fair enough,’ said Michael.
‘And here’s your taxi,’ said Hilary, as the ancient, shambling figure of Pyles, the butler, came unsteadily into view.
He and Michael proceeded slowly up the staircase together. Not having much experience of making small talk with servants, Michael waited some time before venturing his first sally.
‘Well, I can’t say I think much of the climate up here,’ he said, with a nervous chuckle. ‘Next time, I think I’ll bring a sou’wester and wellington boots.’
‘The worst is yet to come,’ said Pyles curtly.
Michael thought about this.
‘You mean the weather, I take it.’
‘There’ll be storms tonight,’ he muttered. ‘Thunder, lightning, and blinding rain enough to soak the dead in their very graves.’ He paused briefly, before adding: ‘But to answer your question, I did not mean the weather, no.’
‘You didn’t?’
Pyles put the suitcase down in the middle of the corridor, and tapped Michael on the chest.
‘It’s nearly thirty years since the family were last met together in this house,’ he said. ‘Tragedy and murder visited us then, and so they will tonight!’
Michael stepped back, reeling slightly from his close contact with the butler’s alcoholic aura.
‘What, erm … what did you have in mind, exactly?’ he asked, picking the suitcase up himself, and continuing down the corridor.
‘All I know,’ said Pyles, limping after him, ‘is that dreadful things will happen here tonight. Terrible things will happen. Let us all count ourselves lucky if we wake tomorrow morning, safe in our beds.’
They stopped outside a door.
‘This is your room,’ he said, pushing it open. ‘I’m afraid the lock has been broken for some time.’
∗
The walls and ceiling of Michael’s bedroom were panelled in dark oak, and there was a small electric fire which had not yet had time to warm the dank air. Despite the light from this and a couple of candles which stood on the dressing table, a sombre gloom shrouded every corner. The air of the room, too, had a strange quality: a suggestion of mouldering decay, a cold damp mustiness such as is found in underground chambers. The one tall, narrow window rattled unceasingly in its frame, shaken by the storm until it seemed that the glass would splinter. As Michael unpacked his suitcase and arranged his comb, razor and sponge-bag on the dressing table, a mounting sense of unease began to steal over him. Preposterous though the butler’s words had been, they had planted in him the seeds of a shapeless, irrational fear, and he started to think wistfully of the downstairs sitting room, with its blazing hearth and promise of human company (if a roomful of Winshaws could be said to offer any such thing). He changed out of his damp clothes as quickly as he could, then closed the door of the bedroom behind him with a quiet sigh of relief, and lost no time in attempting to retrace his steps.
This, however, was easier said than done. The upper floor of the house presented a maze of corridors, and Michael had, he now realized, been so distracted by the butler’s prophecies that he had not taken proper notice of their various twists and turns. After several minutes’ walking up and down the shadowy, thinly carpeted passages, his unease had begun to grow into something approaching panic. He also had the feeling – a ridiculous feeling, he knew – that he was not alone in this part of the house. He could have sworn that he had heard doors being stealthily opened and closed, and even that, once or twice, he had caught a fleeting glimpse of something moving in the darkest corner of one of the landings. This feeling was not completely shaken off even when he arrived (just when he was least expecting it) at the top of the Great Staircase. Here he paused, standing for a moment between two rusting suits of armour, one of them wielding an axe, the other a mace.
Now: was he ready to face the family? He patted his hair into shape, straightened his jacket, and checked that he hadn’t left his flies undone. Finally, noticing that one of his shoelaces had come loose, he knelt down to tie it up.
He had been in this position for only a few seconds when he heard the scream of a woman’s voice behind him.
‘Look out! For God’s sake look out!’
He wheeled around, and saw that the axe-wielding suit of armour was toppling slowly towards him. With a cry of alarm he flung himself forward, just half an instant before the blade of the venerable weapon embedded itself with a thud on the very spot where he had been kneeling.
‘Are you all right?’ said the woman, running to his side.
‘I think so,’ said Michael, who had in fact knocked his head on the banister. He tried to get up and failed. Noticing his difficulty, the woman sat down on the topmost step, and allowed him to lie across her lap.
‘Did you see anyone?’ asked Michael. ‘Somebody must have pushed it.’
Just then, as if on cue, a large black cat crept out from the alcove where the suit of armour had been standing, and ran off down the stairs with a guilty miaow.
‘Torquil!’ said the woman, scoldingly. ‘What were you doing out of the kitchen?’ She smiled. ‘Well, there’s your assassin, I suppose.’
A door had opened downstairs, and several members of the family rushed out from the sitting room to investigate the disturbance.
‘What was that noise?’
‘What’s going on here?’
Two men, whom Michael recognized as Roderick and Mark Winshaw, were heaving the suit of armour back into place, while Tabitha herself bent over him and asked: ‘He isn’t dead, is he?’
‘Oh, I don’t think so. He’s had a knock on the head, that’s all.’
Michael was slowly coming back to his senses, and now found himself gazing up at his rescuer, a very attractive and intelligent-looking woman in her early thirties, with long blonde hair and a kind smile; and as soon as he did so, his eyes widened in amazement. He blinked, three or four times. He knew this woman. He had seen her before. At first he thought it was Shirley Eaton. Then he blinked again, and a distant, more elusive memory rose to the surface. Something to do with Joan … With Sheffield. With … yes! It was the painter. The painter from Joan’s house. But it couldn’t be! What on earth would she be doing here?
‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ asked Phoebe, seeing the change in his expression. ‘You look a bit odd.’
‘I think I must have gone mad,’ said Michael.
Tabitha laughed hysterically at these words.
‘How amusing!’ she cried. ‘That makes two of us.’
And with this enlightening remark, she led everyone back downstairs.
CHAPTER THREE
Don’t Panic, Chaps!
‘MR Mortimer Winshaw’s will,’ said Everett Sloane, looking gravely around the table, ‘takes the form of a short statement, which he composed only a few days ago. If nobody objects, I shall now read it in full.’
Before he was able to proceed, the first crack of thunder sounded outside, causing the windows to vibrate and the candle-sticks on the mantelpiece to rattle loudly. It was followed almost at once by a streak of lightning, which for a brief, hallucinatory moment made the intent and hawkish faces of the expectant family look suddenly pale and wraithlike.
‘ “I, Mortimer Winshaw,” ’ the solicitor began, ‘ “pen these last words to the surviving members of my family, in the sure and certain knowledge that they will be present to hear them. I must therefore begin by extending the warmest of welcomes to my nephews, Thomas and Henry, to my niece, Dorothy, to my younger nephew, Mark (son of dear, departed Godfrey), and last, but by no means least, to Hilary and Roderick, the offspring – though it almost shames me to acknowledge it – of my own loins.
‘ “To the three other guests, of whose attendance I am perhaps not quite so confident, I offer more tentative greetings. I hope and pray that, for one night at least, my dear sister Tabitha will be released from her outrageous confinement in order to be present at what promises to be a unique and, dare I say it, never-to-be-repeated family gathering. I hope, too, that she will be joined by my most loyal and selfless nurse, Miss Phoebe Barton, whose grace, charm and gentleness have been a source of great comfort to me in the last year of my life. And finally, I trust that the family’s luckless biographer, Mr Michael Owen, will be on hand to make a complete record of an evening which will, I believe, provide a most fitting conclusion to his eagerly awaited history.