'I understood your visit was cancelled.' The woman's voice was cracked and reedy. 'You'd better come into the hall.'
Dobbs and Gaddis exchanged glances before following her inside the house. The hallway was short and led into an open area at the base of a large staircase that swept upwards into the darker reaches of the upper storey. There were portraits in the alcoves and several doors leading off. The woman left them there and her harsh footsteps clattered off into the depths of the house.
'Hardly an auspicious start,' young Gaddis commented.
'A misunderstanding, I am sure,' Dobbs said. 'It will soon be resolved once Lord Urton knows we are here. Since we are responding to his invitation he can hardly express surprise.'
'But I do, gentlemen.' The voice came from behind them, and they both turned to see who had spoken. 'Did you not get my telegram this morning?' He was standing in an open doorway, just outside the pool of light from a wall lamp.
'We have been travelling all day, sir,' Gaddis said.
'I assume that you are Lord Urton?' Dobbs inquired.
'I am indeed,' the man told them, stepping into the light. He was a thin man, his slight frame making him appear taller than he really was. His face was also thin, with angular features and a narrow nose. His high forehead led to swept*back hair, white and grey intermingled with the original brown. His eyes shone with inner brightness as he surveyed the two newcomers. 'And I assume that you are Professor Isaac Dobbs and Mr Alistair Gaddis.'
'We are. And may I ask what your telegram said, sir?' Gaddis replied.
Urton thrust his hands into his jacket pockets as he approached them. 'That much as I appreciate your interest, gentlemen, your services will no longer be required. I fear you have had a wasted trip.'
'Perhaps we shall be the judges of that,' Dobbs told him. 'While you may have extended an invitation to us, I think it would be premature for us simply to leave the matters you mentioned uninvestigated.'
'But there is nothing to investigate. A few earth tremors, that is all.'
Dobbs shot a glance at Gaddis. 'Nevertheless, whatever deductions you may have drawn, sir, we should analyse and investigate the situation before we draw conclusions as to an explanation.'
Urton removed a hand from his pocket and stroked his chin thoughtfully. 'I cannot, of course, order you away,' he said. 'But please be aware that circumstances have changed here. I think you will be wasting your time.' Abruptly he turned away. 'Now, gentlemen, I am rather busy. I shall have Mrs Webber organise a carriage.'
'A carriage?' Dobbs was astonished.
'To return you to the station in Ambleton,' Urton said without turning back.
'At this hour, sir?' The elderly man was almost spluttering with anger and incomprehension. 'But there will be no train back to London tonight. And in any event the journey will take hours.'
'It took us all day to get here,' Gaddis pointed out severely.
Urton turned back with a sigh. 'Then to the Midland Hotel,' he told them.
'Hardly hospitable, sir,' Dobbs said, calming slightly to adopt an air of righteous indignation. 'You promised us rooms here at your house. Even if you have changed your mind as to the necessity of our services, the least you can do is honour the promise you made as to our accommodation.'
'This is a large house, sir,' Gaddis pointed out. 'I suggest there must be some lodging available. If only for one night.'
Urton stared at them. His expression did not soften. But as he opened his mouth to reply, a voice cut in from the other side of the stairs.
'Indeed there must.' It was a woman's voice, clear and sharp. 'And whatever the case, you will at least join us for dinner.'
Lady Urton joined her husband, feeding his unhelpful arm round hers as she smiled at her guests. She was as tall as he was. Like him she was not young but not yet old. Her hair appeared to retain its natural dark colour and was tied up an her head with a precision and care that was echoed in the rest of her appearance. Her face was not conventionally pretty, but there was an aristocratic presence to it that made it attractive despite being overly angular. 'I'm sorry if my husband has been a little surly, but he seems to have a lot on his mind at present.'
'We have guests,' Urton said stiffly.
'Indeed we do,' Lady Urton replied quietly. 'So let's start treating them as such, shall we, Robert?' She turned back to Dobbs and Gaddis. 'Your luggage is outside?'
Dobbs nodded, unsure what to make of this turn of events.
'Then I shall have it brought in. Mrs Webber will show you where you can rest and recover from your journey, and she will call you for dinner in an hour.'
'Eloise,' Urton said, 'I really don't think '
'We have yet more guests for dinner,' his wife interrupted. 'It's the first Thursday of February, or had you forgotten. Matthew will be here soon. Another two diners are easily accommodated.' She smiled thinly. 'Will you excuse us, gentlemen? My husband and I have several things to discuss.'
'Of course, Lady Urton,' Dobbs said. 'And thank you.'
'Not at all. Mrs Webber will be with you in a moment. I am afraid we are rather short*staffed at present, so she has much to do.' She led her husband away. His expression as he glanced back at them was unchanged.
She waited until they were in the drawing room before she rounded on him. 'Just what do you think you are doing?' she demanded. As if in response to her sudden anger, the fire in the grate behind her flared and sputtered.
Lord Urton stared back at his wife impassively.
'You invited these men here, remember that. The least we can do is show a little decency and hospitality.' She shook her head and sighed deeply. 'I don't know what's got into you this last week, Robert, I really don't. You seem happy enough to invite that ingrate Nepath to stay despite the fact we can't afford the staff to help look after him.' She turned away so that he could not see the moisture in her eyes. 'Yet the gentlemen you yourself have invited are slung out to the Midland Hotel.'
'There is no room for them here.' There was a lack of emotion in her husband's reply. In angered her that he could be so callous, that he seemed not even to wish to discuss the matter.
'There is plenty of room here,' she told him. 'Even with Nepath taking over the West Wing, even with the crates and trunks of... of goodness only knows what that arrived this morning. And with Matthew Stobbold coming for dinner, there will be plenty to eat as well.' She turned back to face him again. 'Or have you also taken against the local clergy and postponed Matthew's visit?'
'I had forgotten he was coming,' Urton confessed.
'You mean you would have put him off?' She could not believe she was hearing this. She paused, considering. When she spoke again her voice was softer, more measured. 'It's since Nepath arrived,' she said. 'What is it, Robert? What's going on?'
He met her gaze and she saw something flickering in his eyes. A reflection of the fire perhaps. 'Nepath,' he said quietly. 'Yes, we should talk to Nepath.'
'You're right,' she agreed. 'I think we should.'
She let him lead the way to the stairs that led up to the West Wing of the house. The servants' quarters had been above the West Wing, but the only servant they had been able to keep on was Mrs Webber. Now Nepath had the entire area. The rooms were all off the corridor from the top of the stairs, the main reception room was half way along.
She rarely came into this part of the house, and had not visited it since Nepath's arrival the previous weekend. The room was large, occupying the space over the main drawing room on the ground floor of the house. There was another, slightly smaller, reception room off the side of it.
As her husband opened the door, she was astonished at what she saw. There were lighter patches where pictures had been removed. The furniture too had been taken out of the room and the carpet rolled back to expose bare, dusty floorboards.
In place of the furniture there were display cases running the entire length of the room. There were wooden specimen tables with glass tops in the centre of the room. Glass*fronted cases lined the walls, their shelves for the most part bare.
Every spare area of floor between the cabinets and cases it seemed was occupied by tea chests and trunks. Scrunches of newspaper and other packing materials, straw even, were pushed into the spaces below the cabinets. And in the middle of this confusion, Roger Nepath sat massively on the floor, cross*legged. He was examining a small statue that seemed to be carved from dark, smooth stone. It was the image of a woman, her breasts and stomach emphasised and long hair curled round her stone head. The feet were splayed out and exaggerated. The hands were moulded to the sides of the figure.
'What is going on?' Lady Urton asked, her voice husky with surprise and irritation. 'Where is the furniture? The table...'
'Quite safely stored away, I do assure you.' Nepath pulled himself to his feet and picked his way across the room towards Lord and Lady Urton. He was a big man, broad and tall. His face had a quality like etched granite and his steel*grey hair served to emphasise the lack of colour in his face. 'As you can see,' he said waving a hand over the crates and cases, 'the bulk of my collection arrived today, mercifully intact. I was just unpacking a few items.'
'You seem,' Lady Urton said in a low voice, 'to be installing yourself for a lengthy stay.'
'Yes, I do, don't I?'
Lord Urton spoke for the first time since they had left the drawing room. His voice was level, a monotone. 'The work at the mine may take some considerable time.'
'So you have told me,' his wife said with rather more emotion. 'And when, may I ask, am I to be told what this work entails?'
'Oh, but you did not, I think, come here to discuss the mine,' Nepath said easily. He was standing directly in front of her. He still held the carved figure, one hand caressing the smooth surface as he held it up for her to see. 'She is beautiful, don't you think? From South America. Perhaps as much as four thousand years old.' He stared into the small statue's blank eyes. 'Imagine how many hands have touched this surface, how many memories are locked within her structure.' He looked back up suddenly. 'You have come perhaps to advise me that it is almost time for dinner?'
'I have come,' Lady Urton said in a steely voice, 'to insist that whatever you are doing to my husband is to stop this instant.'
Nepath raised an eyebrow. Lord Urton neither moved nor spoke.
'I am doing nothing,' Nepath said after a short pause. 'Tell her. Urton.'
'He is doing nothing,' Lord Urton said at once, his voice maintaining its earlier flat tone.
'And you expect me to believe that?' she demanded. 'He's not been himself since he met you, since you came to this house. Anyone can see that.' She took a step towards Nepath and was pleased to see that he instinctively stepped back. His foot caught an the edge of a packing crate and he stumbled slightly. 'I want you out of my house and out of my life,' she said.
Nepath's expression did not change as he regarded her. 'I can see that you are upset,' he said slowly. 'And we can't have that, can we?'
'We can't have that,' Lord Urton murmured in response.
'We have other guests,' Lady Urton went on. 'Invited before you arrived. So, you see, I'm afraid we shall need the space.'
'Indeed?' Nepath nodded in apparent understanding. 'Yes, I thought I heard the door bell. Who are these guests, may I ask?'
'You may not.'
His eyes narrowed, just slightly, just enough to betray his anger. 'I was addressing Lord Urton,' he said in a low voice.
'Professor Isaac Dobbs and Mr Alistair Gaddis of the Society for Psychical Research,' Lord Urton responded immediately.
'Really?' Nepath seemed if anything to be amused at this information. 'How very impressive.'
'Then I shall take it you will leave tomorrow,' Lady Urton cut in. 'Dinner will be at eight. I will leave you to make your own arrangements for transporting yourself and your...' She looked round the room again. 'Your belongings.'
'You are too kind, Lady Urton. My sister and I shall join you for dinner at eight, then.'
'Your sister?' She glanced at her husband, but could not tell from his neutral expression whether this was news to him or not.
Nepath froze, a sudden look of puzzlement on his face. 'But you have not yet met Patience, have you Lady Urton? She arrived this morning. With my... belongings.' He stepped away from her, heading towards the door that led to the outer room. 'Please,' now he was the perfect gentleman, beckoning for Lord and Lady Urton to follow him. 'Please, come through and let me introduce you.'
A smile spread across his face as they followed, carefully picking a path through the open crates and packing materials.
'I am sure my sister can explain everything, put your fears well and truly to rest, Lady Urton.'
He opened the door to the other room and stepped back to allow them to enter first. Lady Urton looked closely at Nepath as she stepped over the threshold, but she could read nothing in his expression.
The room was in near darkness. A single gas lamp burned on one wall, casting a pallid glow over the immediate area. Beneath the lamp, the light spilling over it and into it, was a large display case. Like the cases in the larger room, it was largely made of glass. It was difficult to make out anything else in the room.
Nepath stepped past her. She was aware of her husband behind her. 'I thought you said...' she began.
'Lady Urton,' Nepath interrupted. 'Please allow me to introduce my sister.' He stepped towards the light, extending a hand.
She followed his hand, saw where he was pointing. Saw what he was pointing at. For a moment she stood absolute frozen, her blood running cold. When she started screaming she found she could not stop. There was a part of her that tried to rationalise what was happening, that listened to herself, to her cries echoing round the room. There was a part of her that heard Nepath speaking to her husband.
'I think it is time you explained matters to your wife, my dear Urton.' His voice was calm, cloying, menacing.
There was a part of her that was aware of her husband beside her, of his hands reaching for her, of the hissing and spitting of his fingers as they touched her throat. A part of her felt the blistering heat as his fingers scorched their way through the skin, smelled the charred flesh, saw his thumbs closing on her eyes as her vision blurred in a heat*haze of the most excruciating pain.
Her screams were breathless, stuttering and dying in the torrid atmosphere. But through her pain and her disbelief, through the searing, molten remnants of her eyes she could still see the afterimage of what Nepath had shown her. His sister.
There was a part of her that was aware that she had stopped screaming, that her husband's white hot thumbs were pressed deep into the scorched sockets of bone where her eyes had been, and were still pressing.
Until there was only the burning.
Chapter Five.
Heated Conversations The heat of the preceding days had given way to a sudden dry, cold calm. He had noticed the change even as he drove the cart up the drive to the manor house. He could have walked, but he was late already. It was as if, he reflected as he stood an the doorstep, a pressure valve had opened and the heat had been released into the upper ether. As if it had evaporated to allow the winter to reclaim her territory and take her proper course.
The door opened and Mrs Webber's familiar form stood framed in front of him. Her mouth twisted into the closest approximation of a smile that his experience led him to believe she was capable of.
'Doctor,' she said, 'how good to see you again. Come in.' She stood back and allowed him to enter the house. He handed her his hat and his top coat and she carried them through, leading him to the drawing room. 'Dinner will be at eight, Doctor,' she informed him.
There were two men in the drawing room. He did not recognise them. One was an elderly man, though he seemed full of energy. White hair erupted from his head like wire. The younger man was more sombre looking, with dark hair and long sideburns. His face was round and made him look younger than he probably was.
'Good evening,' he said as they stood in response to his entrance. They had been sitting opposite each other, warming themselves by the coal fire that burned in the grate.
'Good evening, sir,' the older man replied. 'Are you Mr Nepath?'
He smiled. 'Alas, no. I assume from your question that you are not associates of Mr Nepath?'
'We are not,' the younger man said. 'I am Alistair Gaddis. This is Professor Dobbs of the Royal Society.'
'I am impressed. A scientist.'
'Indeed,' Dobbs told him. 'Did I hear correctly, sir, that you are a doctor?'
'I am. Of divinity. So I am equally used to being called Reverend.' He tapped his clerical collar and smiled. 'Matthew Stobbold. DD. I am delighted to meet you both.' He sat down in a free chair. 'Robert Lord Urton had mentioned that he was expecting some guests from the Society for Psychical Research. Yourselves?'
'Yes,' Gaddis answered, sitting down again.
'Forgive me,' Stobbold said. 'I was afraid that you would be attention*seeking sensationalists rather than men of science and learning. I am, I must say, relieved.'