Читать книгу The China Governess - Margery Allingham - Страница 4

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In the expectant greyness which was only just less than the night’s dark a cock crew twice. Instantly, from the rise behind the wayside station a second rooster answered him, and with this unearthly sound, the whole ritual of daybreak began.

In the red sports-car which was pulled up on the lane’s verge below the station drive, the two young people who were asleep in each other’s arms moved drowsily. The girl’s lips were still against the cheek of the young man beside her and she completed the kiss which sheer weariness had interrupted before she opened her eyes. “Oh no,” she protested sleepily. “No. Not morning yet, surely?”

“Julia!” The boy was all over awake at once, his eyes bright as the lids flickered open. He returned her kiss joyfully and glanced down at the watch on his wrist; his forehead crumpled and he sat up. “So much for our careful planning! We’ve slept for two solid hours and the train will be here in fifteen minutes. Oh hell! You’ll have to go down to the Keep alone. Do you mind?”

“I feel as if I shall never mind anything ever. It may wear off but it hasn’t yet,” she said blithely. She was kneeling up on the seat and he put his arms round her waist and hugged her. “But if I’m to get your car under cover by daylight I’d better go now, which is a bit heart-rending ... you’re sure Nanny Broome really is a hundred per cent on our side?”

“Completely.” His voice was muffled as he rubbed his face against her chest with weary longing. “I telephoned before I collected you. Anyhow, she’s almost my foster-mum. She’s always on my side.” He sat up to look at her seriously. “I gave her the full details. I told her what we had in mind.”

She met his eyes squarely, her own round and grave.

“Was she scandalised?”

“Lord no. She was thrilled to bits.” He shivered slightly. “And so am I.”

“Me too.” Julia was just visible in the cold light. She was a very pretty girl: not very tall, but slender, with fine bones and hair so dark as to be almost black. Her skin was thick and white and unpainted and her bright blue eyes and determined mouth echoed her father’s considerable personality. He was Anthony Laurell, head of the Laurell light engineering empire and youngest self-made tycoon in Britain and one of the most interesting characters in industry. Julia was just eighteen, warm and gay as a lamb, and every detail of her cared-for, well-dressed appearance acknowledged that she was somebody’s very precious only child. At the moment she was absorbed, peering down into the shadowed face raised to her own.

“Your smile is like lace,” she said.

“Lace?” He was hardly flattered.

“Decorative.” She was entirely serious. “It sort of trims you up and makes you glorious.”

“You’re idiotic,” he muttered through his kiss. “Sweet and certifiable and I love you, I love you, God! I love you. Darling, I’ve got to catch this dreary train back to London but tonight ...” His voice broke with a disarming helplessness which pinked them both like a sword. “Tonight I’ll come back and find you and damn everybody else in the world.” He pushed her firmly away and climbed out of the car.

“Timothy.”

“Hello?” He swung round in the fast growing light and she saw him for the first time all over again. He had a rangy body, a distinctive, characterful face, grey arrogant eyes, and a wide thin mouth whose lines could curl and broaden like copperplate handwriting. He was twenty-two and all the panoply of masculine physical charm which had earned him a host of admiring contemporaries, even in the Oxford where they both were students, was at its freshest and best. To see all this giddy power and splendour helpless before her was a part of the enchantment which bound her and she caught her breath before it.

“I don’t want you to go back to London!”

“Nor do I, lady! But I’ve got to. I’ve got to see your old man and have it out with him. His trip to Ireland made it possible for me to get you away and safe down here while I talk, but we can’t just clear out into the blue.”

“Why not?” She was coaxing. “Honestly, I don’t care any more about anything in the world except being with you. Two months ago I’d rather have committed suicide than upset Daddy or got in the newspapers. Now I just can’t care.”

The young man put his hands on either side of her face and looked down at her like a child with a treasure.

“You go on thinking just like that and leave the rest to me,” he said earnestly. “But I can’t face the thought of you and me being turned into a nice Sunday ‘read’ for halfwits. It was foolhardy and inconsiderate of your old man to call the whole thing off suddenly, just when his own invitations to the engagement ‘do’ were out, and he must have known that the gossip hounds would be down on us like a blight. I must talk to him. He can’t have so much against me.”

“He hasn’t. I told you I don’t know why he suddenly vetoed the marriage, but he liked you and he liked your background and was impressed by the degree and the sports record and ...”

“Then why? For God’s sake?”

“It was something to do with a letter he got from Miss Kinnit.”

“From Aunt Alison?” He was staring at her. “Do you know what was in it?”

“No, or I’d have told you. I only knew it came. I didn’t mean to mention it.” The dusky colour appeared in her cheeks. “She was so nice to me. I thought she approved.”

“She does. She’s a funny, cold old thing but terribly kind—after all she and Eustace are my only family and she was delighted about you. They keep teasing me about you being the deb of the year. This must be some completely idiotic misunderstanding. I’ll go and put it right. Wait at the Keep and love me.”

From the embankment above there was a clatter as the signal fell and her arms closed round him possessively.

“I’d still rather you didn’t go. I’ll hold you. I’ll make you miss the train.”

He released himself gently. “Please don’t,” he said gravely but with great sweetness, his lips close to her ear. “You hurt too much. Too much altogether.” And turning from her he ran up the slope into the half-light which was already throbbing with the noise of the train.

Julia sat listening until the engine had shrieked away into the fields once more and then with a sense of desolation she let in the clutch and drove away through the back roads to where the village of Angevin lay hidden in the Suffolk folds.

She avoided the turning to the single main street of cottages and took, instead, the upper road which wound through the fields to a pair of neglected iron gates leading into a park so thickly wooded with enormous elms as to be completely dark although their leaves were scarcely a green mist amid the massive branches.

The trees grew near to the house, so close in fact that they obscured it from the north side and she had to use the headlights to find the squat Tudor arch which led into the paved yard. As she passed it a yellow-lit doorway suddenly appeared in the shadowy masonry and the angular figure of a woman stood silhouetted within it. She came running out to the car.

“Mr. Tim?”

“No.” Julia was apologetic. “It’s only me I’m afraid, Mrs. Broome. We got held up and I left him at the station. You knew he was going back to London, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Until tonight.”

There was an indescribable note of satisfaction in the brisk voice which startled Julia as well as reassuring her, and the newcomer went on talking. “He told me all about it on the telephone and what he didn’t tell me I was able to put together. There isn’t much Mr. Tim hides from me.”

It was a strange greeting, neither hostile nor effusive but possessive and feminine and tremendously authoritative. Julia was only just sufficiently sophisticated not to be irritated. “What about the car? I don’t think it ought to stand out where it can be seen, do you?”

“No Miss, I certainly don’t and I’ve given my mind to that, all night nearly. I think it should go down to the little piggy brick house. I’ll show you where.”

She stepped into the empty seat and pointed to an opening on the further side of the yard.

As she settled down beside her Julia noticed that she was trembling with excitement, and her round face turned suddenly towards her showed patchy red and white. Margaret Broome was a woman of perhaps fifty but her coarse hair was still fair and her light brown eyes were bright and shiny as pebbles in a brook. Her gay green cardigan was buttoned tightly across her chest and she folded her arms against the cold.

“It’s all overgrown but if you drive slowly you’ll make it,” she hurried on. “I slipped down last evening to make sure we could get in. It’s the old summerhouse at the end of the View. We used to call it the piggy house when Tim was a baby, after the little pig’s house that was built of brick you know.” She was unself-conscious in her nursery talk, matter of fact rather. “Nobody goes there now. It’s too far for anyone in the house but right in front of the windows, so no one’s going to hop in there courting from the village. Here we are. See, I propped the doors open. You drive straight in.”

It was a little ornamental temple with a tessellated floor and pillars, designed perhaps as a music room in some far off Victorian age of extravagance.

The panelled double doors had lost much of their paint but they were still stout and the car lights revealed the usual summerhouse miscellany piled in spider-infested confusion against the far wall.

“There,” said Nanny Broome, hopping out with the agility of a girl, “now we’ll shut and lock the doors on it and no one will be a penny the wiser. We must hurry though, because it’s nearly light. Come along miss, stir your stumps.”

The nursery way of speaking flowed over Julia, amusing and reassuring her without her realising that she was receiving a treatment whose technique was as ancient as history. She hurried obediently, helped to close the doors and then followed the angular figure round the side of the building to the broad terraced path which led up the slope to the front of the Keep. As she looked up and saw it for the first time from this vantage point she paused abruptly, and the older woman who was watching her exploded in a delighted giggle. In the pink light of dawn, with the long shafts of sunrise cutting through the mist towards it, the Keep at Angevin was something to see.

At that moment it was a piece of pure visual romance, inspired and timeless. Much of its triumph lay in the fact that it was an unfinished thing. The original family who had begun to build a palace to outrival Nonesuch had died out before they had put up little more than the gateway, so that the actual structure which had come down to posterity retained the secret magic of a promise rather than the overpowering splendour of a great architectural achievement.

Two slender towers of narrow rose-pink brick, fretted with mullioned windows, were flanked by three-storied wings of the same period, all very carefully restored and remarkably little spoiled by the Victorian architect who had chosen to build the summerhouse at this magnificent point of vantage.

“How staggering it looks from here!” Julia was almost laughing. “When I came to the houseparty at Christmas we didn’t get as far as this so I never saw it from this angle. I know why Timothy calls it his castle.”

“It is his castle.” Again the satisfied and possessive warning note jarred on the younger woman. “When he was a tiny boy in the war, he and I used to sneak out here in the very early morning mushrooming, and I used to tell him about the knights riding in the courtyard, jousting and saving ladies and killing dragons and so on. He loved it. All the kids have it now on telly,” she added as an afterthought. “Do you ever see it? Ivanhoe.”

“That was a bit earlier, I think. You’re a few hundred years out. When was this building begun? Henry the Eighth’s reign I suppose?”

“Henry the Eighth! He was nobody to tell a child about!” Mrs. Broome appeared to be annoyed by a fancied criticism. She strode up the path, the patches on her round face brighter, and her eyes as hard and obstinate as stone. “I’m afraid I wanted my young Mr. Timmy to grow up to be a chivalrous gentleman with a proper attitude towards women,” she said acidly. “I hope you’ve discovered that he has one, miss?”

She turned her head as she spoke and made it a direct question. Julia regarded her blankly. “I love him very much,” she said stiffly.

“Well, I thought you did, miss, or you’d hardly be here now, would you?” The country voice was ruthless. “What I was meaning to say was I hope you’ve always found him what you’d wish, you having been brought up as I hope you have?”

It only dawned upon Julia very slowly that she was being asked outright whether or no she was a virgin and her youthful poise wilted under the unexpected probe. The colour rose up her throat and poured over her face, making the very roots of her hair tingle.

“I ...” she was beginning but once again Nanny Broome had the advantage. Reassured on a point which had clearly been exercising her, she became kindness itself and almost more devastating.

“I see you have,” she said, patting the visitor’s arm. “Of course young people are the same in every generation. There’s always the ‘do’s’ and the ‘don’ts’ and it’s only a fashion which seems to put one or the other lot in the front rank for the time being.” And, as if to emphasise her whole-hearted co-operation in an enterprise of which she had once been doubtful, she seized the girl’s little suitcase and hurried on with it, still talking. “Sometimes children get funny ideas, but I brought up Mr. Timmy myself and I didn’t think the schools could have done him much harm after that. It’s a scientific fact, isn’t it, that if you have a child until he’s six it doesn’t matter who has him afterwards.” Again she gave the little laugh that would have been arch had it not been for the alarming quality of complete faith which pervaded it.

The girl glanced at her sharply under her lashes, and the blurred youthfulness of her face stiffened a little.

“I hope you won’t mind me calling you Nanny Broome but that’s how I think of you. I’ve heard it so often from Timothy,” she began, taking the initiative. “Did you look after him from the time he was born?”

“Very nearly. He was just over the two days, I suppose, and the ugliest little monkey you ever saw. Great big mouth and ears and his eyes all squitted up like a changeling in the fairy tales.” She laughed delightedly and her face became radiant and naïve. “I’ve looked forward to saying that to the girl he was going to marry for over twenty-one years.”

Julia’s intelligent mouth twitched despite herself. “And is it true?” she ventured. “I mean, was he really? Or can’t you remember now?”

The elder woman blinked like a child caught out romancing. It was a completely sincere reaction and utterly disarming. “Well, I remember he was very sweet,” she said thoughtfully. “I loved every little tiny scrap of him, that’s all I know. He was my baby. I’d lost my own, you see, and he crept right into my heart.” She used the cliché as if she had coined it, and the essential side of her nature, which was warm, unselfish, and mindless as a flowerbud, opened before the girl. “You see I’d been a nurse in the Paget family over at St. Bede’s and I was just on thirty when I met Mr. Broome, who was the head gardener, caretaker, and everything else here. He was a widower with five lovely grownup children and when he asked me I couldn’t resist them and all this lovely place to bring them to. So I married him, and my own little boy was on the way when there was all that business before the war—Munich time. The doctors had me in hospital at Ipswich but it was no good. Baby didn’t live and I came back knowing I wouldn’t have another. So when I was given Timmy to look after you can guess, I expect, young though you are, how I felt. And hasn’t he grown up a darling? And now you’ve come to take him away.” The final phrase was spoken solely for effect and its falseness did not convince even Mrs. Broome herself, apparently, for she laughed at it even while she uttered it and there was no trace of resentment in tone or smile. “You’ll never take him right away,” she added with a grin of pure feminine satisfaction. “He’ll always be my little Prince Tim of the Rose-red Castle in one little corner of his heart. You can see that’s true because where did he bring you? He brought you to me to hide you. Now you come along and I’ll give you a cup of tea.”

They had reached the last terrace as she finished speaking and only a lawn separated them from the tall graceful façade, whose blank windows looked out sightlessly to the estuary two miles away.

“It’s all locked up except for my little door.” She took her visitor’s elbow and guided her over the damp grass to the narrow entrance from which she had first appeared.

Julia was aware of a small service hall with the stone painted walls and varnished woodwork of the more solid variety of Victorian Gothic mansion, and found herself ushered into a long, narrow room with a very high ceiling. It was yet warm and remarkably comfortable despite a double row of painted water pipes round the cornice.

“Since the children went and Miss Alison wanted Broome and me to live in the house, we gave up our cottage and I’ve made us a little flat out here.” Her guide led her over to the window where a modern dining unit complete with pews and a gay blue and yellow plastic-topped table had been installed. “The big kitchen is nearly forty feet long so there was no point in poor old Broome and me rattling about in it alone. I use the scullery as my kitchen and the butler’s pantry has made me a lovely double bedroom and you’d never guess that this was the still room before the First World War, would you? It’s my lounge now and I love it. Excuse me a moment while I see to the kettle.”

She bustled out of the room, arch, affected, enjoying the romantic situation to the full and yet, despite it all, strangely genuine at heart. Julia looked about her curiously. The room reflected its owner to the point of giving itself away. A pile of weekly magazines whose bright covers promised the latest in patterns and notions stood on the old-fashioned dresser, which itself had been treated with white paint. The walls under the festooning water pipes were hung with a rose-strewn paper and the sky-blue curtains matched the table top and the washable upholstery of the chair seats. Homemade black wool rugs broke up the glare of black and yellow linoleum tiles but the “contemporary” effect was not so much enhanced as debunked by a peculiarly individual type of ornament. The room was full of toys which had been mended and repainted and which stood about in places where knick-knacks would have been more usual. A wooden engine, for instance, enamelled scarlet over its scars, occupied the place of honour in the centre of the dresser, while all over the place there were little newly dressed dolls and animals, as well as china wheelbarrows and boots holding cut flowers or little ferns.

Julia’s white leather coat and silk scarf appeared remarkably sophisticated in this artless setting and Mrs. Broome, returning with a painted tin tray set with multi-coloured china, eyed her with open admiration.

“You look just like what the paper said of you—the one that forecast the engagement,” she announced. “ ‘The leading fashionable young lady of the year.’ I was so happy I cried when I read that. ‘A princess,’ I said. That’s what I always promised Mr. Timmy when he was a little tiny boy.”

Julia sat down abruptly, trying not to look dismayed. “Oh dear,” she said. “You explain quite a lot about Timothy, Nanny Broome.”

“Quite likely, but not all.” The woman spoke with unexpected shrewdness. “There’s nothing like a British Public School and Oxford to mould the clay. Mr. Eustace Kinnit said that when he insisted on sending the poor little chap away to Totham preparatory school. He was only eight and a bit; he did look a baby!”

She was talking fast and pouring out at the same time, but as she picked up a steaming cup to hand it to her guest she paused and fixed her hard brown stare on her.

“Tell me, miss, what exactly has your father got against young Timmy? I should have thought my boy had every mortal thing a gentleman could want for his daughter. Looks, lots of money, wonderful brains and education, a place all ready for him in a business which will be his one day, and lovely manners though I say it myself who taught him. I don’t understand your Dad because if we’d been preparing the lad for it all his life he couldn’t have been more suitable for you, or that’s my view!”

Julia hesitated, and Mrs. Broome nodded her approval without letting up in any way.

“Did something happen to put your father off?” she enquired. “He seemed willing enough at first, didn’t he? He was going to give you a dance to announce it or so Probe Parker said in my paper. Then, quite suddenly, he changed his mind and was dead set against it and the column wanted to know why. Quite frankly, miss, so do I, and I’m the one who would know if there was anything real to object to.”

The dark and elegant girl in the beautiful clothes sat looking at her thoughtfully and Mrs. Broome watched her.

“You were thinking that too, weren’t you my poppet?” she said with her eyes but she did not venture the question aloud and Julia came to a decision.

“Did you ever meet Timothy’s parents, Mrs. Broome?”

“No, miss, I didn’t.” She spoke with decision but there was a faintly satisfied, “just as I thought” expression in the voice. “I heard Mr. Eustace’s and Miss Alison’s younger brother had been killed in Spain, of course, but I didn’t see much of the family the first year I was married. It was only when I came home from the hospital after losing my baby that I found the family had moved down here because the war was just about to start. When I first married Broome the house was kept as it is now, partly as a show place and partly as a store. The family owns a gallery of antiques besides having an interest in the big auction rooms. And a lot of the important pieces were very often kept here, as they are still.”

“Yes, I knew that.” Julia was anxious not to intrude. “I only wondered if you’d ever seen Timothy’s mother.”

“No, miss, I only saw the girl who brought him down because London might be bombed. She wasn’t a uniformed nurse and not really safe with him, which was why I took over. I always understood that his Mummy had died in childbirth, but with eighty babies in the house you can understand I was too busy to hear much.”

“So many?” Julia’s dark eyes widened. “Miss Kinnit told me at Christmas about the evacuees. On the first day of the war this house was invaded. It was a sort of clearing station, wasn’t it, for the district? You must have had a time!”

An expression of such intense happiness that it could almost have been called a radiance transfigured Nanny Broome suddenly.

“Oh! It was wonderful,” she said fervently. “I never had a second to think of my own trouble, and then having Timmy without his mother it saved my life it did really!” She paused. “Your father’s very old-fashioned, I suppose?” she said abruptly.

“Father? No, I should have said the opposite.” The girl was out of touch with the trend the conversation was taking. “Why?”

“I went to the adoption when Mr. Eustace made Timmy his own little son,” said Mrs. Broome without explanation. “We all went up to the Law Courts in London and into the judges’ secret room and it was summer and Timmy was in his first white sailor suit with long trousers although he was only five.”

“Secret room?” Julia appeared fascinated.

“Or it may have been ‘private,’ I forget.” The romantically minded lady was unabashed. “Anyway it was hidden away in the panelling, and all the gowns and wigs and water-bottles and things were about, and I sat in the passage while the business was done. Timmy was wonderfully good so the lawyer told me. We used to play ‘Judges’ after that. I had an old white fur shaped stole that looked just like a wig when you put it round your face. Now miss, Broome will be up in a minute, so I’m going to take you up to your room. I’ve been getting it ready ever since I heard a rumour Timmy had got a young lady. I knew he’d bring you here honeymooning. He always promised me that. ‘I will bring my bride, Nan, and you shall look after us.’ ” She imitated the small boy with such fidelity that for a second he stood before them, an arrogant pygmy, packed with authority in a washable white sailor suit.

She picked up Julia’s suitcase and turned a smiling face towards her.

“You’d better get some sleep,” she said. “You won’t get much once you’re on the run from the reporters. They’ll be on to you like ravening wolves, your father appealing for you on the telly like he did last night.”

It took a moment or so for the astonishing statement to register on Julia.

“But that’s impossible,” she said at last. “He doesn’t know.”

“Oh yes he does.” Mrs. Broome was remarkably cheerful about it. “Parents always know a lot more than children think. They’ve got an instinct you know, here”—she patted her lean chest delicately. “Anyway I know it’s true because I saw it myself when I was sitting up waiting for you. Just after the last news they caught him getting on to an aeroplane to go and look for you. ‘I wish she was safe at home in bed,’ he said, and his poor old face was all wizened with worry. I was quite sorry for him even if he has taken a silly dislike to Timmy. ‘You’ve made a rod for your back and you’ll suffer for it,’ I said to him and I switched him off.”

The girl rose slowly to her feet. “My father was coming home on an aeroplane last night from a business trip to Ireland ...” she began.

“Oh, that may have been it.” Mrs. Broome made it clear that she did not care. “I know I thought that he could go flying to Gretna Green in Scotland but he wouldn’t find you and Timmy because you’d be here, safe in the Bride’s Room. Come along, miss, it’s quite a way, up on the nursery floor, but it’s this side of the turrets.”

She led the way out of the service quarter into the vast house itself. Julia followed her, struck again as she had been on her first visit by the enormous size of the corridors, the endless acres of dark oak plywood panelling all looking perfectly new, and the stone staircases which spiralled from floor to floor. Only the windows whose glazing bars were as finely carved and delicate as if they had been in wood seemed to belong to the palace which she had seen from the summerhouse.

“Wouldn’t it have made a lovely school?” said Nanny Broome, only the least bit breathless as they arrived at last in a gallery as long as a skittle alley and looked at the line of mahogany doors all splendidly furnished with brass and cutglass.

“I always call this the Nursery Suite, and there was one time when Timmy was about six and very noisy that we used it for that, but it was always a long way up and lonely. We’ve never been able to get proper help here, you see, not in my time. It must have been wonderful in Mr. Eustace’s grandfather’s day. Twenty-three people in the servants’ hall and then they thought they were understaffed, or so Broome says. He can just remember the old gentleman. ‘Like God in tweeds, he was.’ Broome always says that though I shouldn’t repeat it. Well, this is the room, my dear. We always used to call it the Bride’s Room, Timmy and me. We had our own names for all the rooms, but the others were nearly always kept empty except when they were needed to show off a great suite of furniture or some tapestries or something. We had his things brought up to the room at the end there but they were all taken back when Timmy went to school. However, the Bride’s Room was always here and kept like this under dust sheets. I’ve got it all out and pressed all the covers; they’re not even yellow, they’ve kept so well.”

Her hand was on the doorknob when she glanced at the visitor. Julia was standing in the long empty corridor, the clear morning light falling on her from the high windows. There was something about her which was peculiarly lonely and which reduced the cosy chatter to the status of an old wives’ tale. A scared look passed over Mrs. Broome’s face as she glimpsed reality’s fleeting skirt but her resilience was indefatigable and in a moment she was talking away again as happy as a child uncovering a surprise. She opened the door and stood back to let the visitor pass.

“Look, miss!”

There was a long pause as they stood together surveying the scene. “You can see why we gave it its name? Yet it was made, I believe, for one of Queen Victoria’s daughters who didn’t get married—or perhaps Mr. Eustace was joking when he told me that. He says some silly things: you never know how to take him. Anyway it’s a princess’s set of furniture all right, isn’t it?”

Julia was silent. The huge square box, parquet-floored and high-ceilinged, had been arranged to display a suite of bedroom furniture designed and made in the halcyon days of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when modish taste was just due to go clean out of fashion for the best part of the next hundred years.

The half-dozen pieces, all of which were very large indeed, were painted white and carved with festoons of flowers, birds, and cupids. To display them the walls had been tinted a vivid blue which had now faded, but the carpet, which had evidently been stored and recently relaid, retained its original turquoise. The bed was the most extravagant piece. Its graceful cane half-tester rose high towards the cornice and was so festooned in carved white wood that the effect was positively insecure, as if the great couch were trimmed with icing sugar. A magnificent spread of fine Irish crochet over a blue lining completed a picture of chill grandeur, chaste to the point of being suspect.

“Bridal and pure and oh, I hope you’ll be so happy!” Nanny Broome spoke straight from a heart which was coy and warm and unaware of the dismay she was producing. Even when she turned and caught sight of the frozen young face staring from the monstrous edifice in front of her to the horrific intimacy of the double washstand with the green marble top and the waterlily shaped toiletware, she did not comprehend.

“Oh, miss! Don’t you like it?” There was reproach as well as astonishment in the question.

“It’s very beautiful. Thank you very much for taking so much trouble but the whole room makes me feel rather cold. I don’t think I’ll stay here now if you don’t mind. Is there somewhere else I could change and lie down for an hour or so?”

Julia sounded as if she was aware of being ungracious but had decided she could not help it. Mrs. Broome remained disappointed and deeply mystified. “It’s not the room, you know, miss,” she said suddenly. “This isn’t the one the tale is about. That one is on the other floor and right the other side of the house, and even that is not the true one either, because it happened in another house. I wouldn’t give you that, even though I’d take my dying oath it’s never been haunted. There’s no ghosts anywhere in the Keep, thank God.” She spoke with tremendous fervency but the chill remained and her round eyes were watchful. “You’ve heard all about it, I suppose?”

“No.” Julia was already turning towards the door and the nurse made a move as if to intercept her. Her expression was fearful yet naughty, disapproving yet dying to tell.

“Do you know about Miss Thyrza’s chair?” She made the murmured phrase sound comically sinister, like a child trying out a suspectedly wicked word.

Julia heard her but without interest. She had reached the doorway and was almost running towards the stairhead. On reaching it, however, she paused and turned back, re-entering the room just as Mrs. Broome was coming out. Hurrying across the blue carpet, she climbed on to the stone sill and threw open the window pushing back the casements until they were at their widest so that the morning air poured into the room.

“Why, miss, whatever are you doing? There’ll be leaves from the tree tops, birds and I don’t know what flying in. That spread alone is worth a small fortune.”

“Very likely.” There was unexpected firmness in the young voice. “But I don’t think we’ll worry about that. Please leave the room like this to air. I may come back here later but just now I should like to lie down somewhere else.”

Mrs. Broome opened her mouth to protest but thought better of it. She was trained to recognise authority when she met it and presently she led the way downstairs again, for the first time looking a little dubious.