The Burning Altar Page 10

  ‘Lewis Chance is due to speak at a conference in Bath this weekend,’ said Raffael. ‘He’s going ahead with that and I think he’s expecting some kind of demand by the time he returns – or at the very least something that will give us a clue. His instructions are that the police are not to be called in until he gets back. And of course,’ he added wryly, ‘it’s unlikely that the police would send out the might of the Metropolitan Forces just because a young man of twenty-three had been missing for twenty-four hours.’

  ‘If they knew about the – flaw – they would,’ said Fleury.

  ‘Oh yes. But I’d rather trust Lewis Chance’s judgement,’ said Raffael. ‘Because if he does know anything about the League of Tamerlane he might lead me to them.’

  ‘And from them to the Decalogue?’

  ‘Of course. I haven’t lost sight of the original mission, Eminence.’

  ‘You should be careful, Raffael,’ said Fleury. ‘If they – if anyone – should suspect what you’re doing . . .’ He made an abrupt gesture with one hand, and Raffael felt an icy finger of fear trace a path down his spine. Fleury said, ‘The League of Tamerlane will certainly kill anyone trying to reach the Decalogue. You do realise that?’

  ‘I do realise it,’ said Raffael, and then, summoning up the flippancy that fooled most people but probably did not fool Fleury for a second, he said, ‘But I shan’t be in any danger, Eminence. You’re forgetting the old adage about the devil looking after his own.’

  Chance House always felt empty when Lewis was away, but this time Ginevra was arriving for the weekend so Elinor would not notice it so much.

  He had left after lunch on Friday to attend a charities conference in Bath, where he would be one of the after-dinner speakers. His speech would touch on the particular problems of the homeless in London’s East End and he would speak well and everyone would be enrapt. The women would be very enrapt indeed.

  It was a good speech – Elinor had done quite a lot of the research for it, finding some interesting anecdotes both about the early days of Dr Barnardo’s Stepney Mission in the 1860s, and also about the less well-known Father Hudson’s Homes of the Catholic Church in the 1940s and 1950s. It was astonishing how long ago this all seemed.

  She had rather diffidently suggested that Lewis might consider using these examples as a springboard, drawing parallels with the Chance Centre, and Lewis had liked the idea and asked her to draft something, which had been totally unexpected. It was very gratifying that he was going to use her draft almost word for word: he had even commented that the slight touch of wry humour she had unconsciously allowed to get in made it human and entertaining. Elinor had stored these words away to gloat over, although she would only allow herself ten minutes’ gloating per night. She had asked the typist to print three copies of the speech, one to be retained for faxing to the hotel in case of mishap, and two to be bound into a folder to place in Sir Lewis’s briefcase.

  The conference would mostly be organisers and helpers from various charity organisations, but there would be bound to be a few silk and lace slitherers present, and it was entirely possible that Lewis would find himself sharing a drink or a late supper with one. Elinor dwelled with vicious masochism on this image, deliberately exploring it so that it would hurt even more. At what point did you signal that you were willing to be propositioned? And how did you do it? Did you go to his room or yours, and did you undress and get into bed and wait, or did you wait for him to undress you? And what did you do about contraception?

  Elinor went down to lock the doors at half-past six. She liked the early evening when the centre settled into quietness, and when it almost felt as if Chance House was hers. And although Lewis had never once intruded into her flat – not even to borrow the farcical cup of sugar – Elinor liked the feeling that he might. Sometimes she played out little scenarios in her mind: I’m awfully sorry to disturb you, Elinor, but I’ve run out of . . . Oh that’s all right, come in and have a glass of wine . . . No, I don’t want to intrude – oh, how cosy your room is . . . Perhaps I’ll just have one drink, then . . . This is very good wine . . . No, don’t switch your music off – Schubert, isn’t it? I’m particularly fond of Schubert.

  Quite of lot of these scenarios ended with him staying to supper, with Elinor off-handedly whipping up an haute cuisine meal out of absolutely nothing, and almost all of them ended in him still being there for breakfast. The in-between bit varied from the merely romantic to the downright explicit. It was as well that none of it would ever happen because the reality would be a crashing disappointment.

  She wished everyone good night and stood for a moment at the old stage door, watching them all go off into the gathering dusk. The two typists were giggling about their plans to go to a wine bar later, and a probation officer, who had called in earlier and got caught up in a discussion with a couple of the Lifeline phone people, was going to have a drink with them on the way home.

  After everyone had left – especially with Lewis away – a subtle darkness seemed to steal over the house. As if something that had had to lie low during daylight crept out? Don’t be ridiculous, Elinor. But the feeling remained, even after she had shut the door and locked it firmly. As if someone were watching. As if the house were filled with people peering out of the shadows.

  She would not think about it; she would go up to the flat and have a quick shower, and then she would cook herself a dish of pasta and mushrooms with smoked ham, and pour a glass of sharp dry Chablis. Being able to do all this was still one of the delights of having left Kensington; there was no one to ask why she was spending her evening at home again, or why she was stewing in an armchair with a book instead of going out and having fun. Elinor hated her mother for not realising that the world had changed since the frenetic sixties of her own youth, and for not understanding that when you were plain and awkward and, more to the point, excruciatingly shy, you ran away from all opportunities anyway.

  Except Lewis. She would never run away from Lewis. He would be donning his immaculate dinner jacket about now, preparatory to going in to pre-dinner drinks with a roomful of slitherers. How would it feel to be at his side, smirking complacently at them? It would feel appalling, thought Elinor crossly. You’d be clumsy and you’d look like a sack of potatoes even in a designer dress, because you always do look like a sack of potatoes. You don’t have any conversation. You might as well leave him to the slitherers.

  She turned to go up the ringing iron stairs. After she had eaten, she would make up the bed in the tiny slit of a room which would be Ginevra’s for two nights. Ginevra had not known what time she would be arriving: it all depended, she had said vaguely on the phone. She might get a lift if someone was driving down, or she might hop on an overnight bus and go from town to town, which would be a bit long-winded but quite good fun. If she got stranded somewhere she would wait for another bus or find a railway station. Anyway, Nell was not to sit around waiting for her: she would get there when she got there.

  Elinor started up the stair, wondering whether Ginevra would arrive in time for lunch, and whether she might like to eat at the Prospect of Whitby or the Anchor if so, when she heard a scrape of sound that turned the blood in her veins to ice water.

  There was someone in the cellar.

  Elinor had no idea how long she stood motionless, staring at the cellar entrance.

  She could see the door clearly: it was tucked under the iron stairs, and although the workmen had ripped out most of the old worm-eaten doors and replaced them, this one had been left intact. It was low and damp-looking and somehow imbued with a sinister aura. Elinor, who disliked cellars and basements and underground places, had always avoided looking at it when she went up the stairs, and was thankful that it was always closed.

  It was not closed now. It was partly open; she could see the band of black all around it and her heart leaped.

  There was someone in the cellar. There was someone on the other side of the forbidden door where there would probably be rats
and mouldering piles of nameless debris, and where the Thames occasionally overflowed . . . At least, that was what Lewis had said.

  She took a deep breath. You said you’d investigate, but you might have known you’d duck out when it came to the crunch. You’re a fink and a coward.

  There was probably not anything to be finkish about, because the chances were that whoever was in there was simply someone who came to the centre – somebody a bit confused or distressed who had got lost, or was looking for the loo. If that was so it was Elinor’s clear duty to haul him out politely but firmly. It was a pity that everyone had gone home because it was not really a brilliant idea to go into a dark cellar on your own to rout out an intruder. On the other hand you could hardly ring the police at quarter to seven in the evening, just because somebody had got lost on the way out of a large building.

  Elinor took another deep breath and reached out a hand to the door. It swung easily back and a faint dank breath of air gusted out to meet her.

  Chapter Ten

  It was dark beyond the door, but not as dark as Elinor had feared. It was shadowy and dim and there was a fetid clammy stench, but a faint green waterlight rippled on the walls and it was possible to see quite well.

  She had pushed the door back almost to the wall and light spilled in from the hall. Wooden steps led down and Elinor tested them cautiously: they were a bit rickety but they seemed fairly secure. With her heart thumping erratically she began to descend. This is the place Lewis forbade me to enter, insofar as Lewis would ever forbid anyone anything. Unsafe, he had said, and unhygienic. Occasionally flooded by the Thames. So whatever you do, my dear, don’t open the seventh chamber . . . Of course not, M’sieur Bluebeard.

  It would probably be sensible to go up to her flat to get a jacket and even a torch, except that if she did that she might not have the courage to come down again. And she was only going to turn out whoever had got in here by mistake. Either that or she was going to lay the ghost. It was a ridiculous expression: you could imagine a crowd of men in a pub saying it raucously. Hey, I’m laying a ghost tonight, fellas.

  At the foot of the rickety steps – at least they had not splintered and deposited her in a broken-bone heap at the foot – was a long dim tunnel with the sides and the roof rounded, rather like a giant brick culvert. It was about eight feet from roof to floor at its centre, and the green light rippled over the dank bricks. It was rather horridly cavernous and the tiniest sound reverberated against the walls. From somewhere up ahead was a faint drip of water and the echo caught that as well and bounced it back over and over. Drip-drip. Drip-drip. It was the kind of dank hollow sound that would grate against your nerves if you were shut in with it for long. Not that Elinor was shut in. She glanced back at the wooden steps. The cellar door was wide open; she could go back at any time she wanted. Like all those wide-eyed heroines in fairy tales, who went trippingly and trustingly into the dark gusty castle of the ogre, gaily saying that it was quite all right because they could go back . . .? Yes, but I’m not in a fairy tale. Not unless it’s Bluebeard, of course. Not unless it’s a nightmare version of Jekyll and Hyde, with the house as the main character. I am changing, my dear, I am fearfully changing . . . Once I was an ordinary house, sheltering ordinary people, but now I am turning into a gobbling monster . . . regressing to the days when this was the lair of a recluse who dared not go abroad in daylight because he was so repulsive that people would run screaming from him . . .

  Elinor gasped and put out a hand to the wall to steady herself. A touch of claustrophobia. Making me imagine all kinds of weird things. I don’t suffer from claustrophobia. I wish I hadn’t lit on the word lair. I wish I hadn’t thought about the recluse, either.

  Apart from the echoes it was very quiet; she could no longer hear the drone of traffic in St Stephen’s Road, which added to the sense of isolation. And the tunnel seemed to be deserted: the echoes would have betrayed the presence of a mouse. There was nothing and there was no one, but she would just go a little farther along and then she could go back to the flat with a clear conscience and enjoy the pasta and the glass of wine. She would probably have a couple of glasses after this, in fact she might very well finish the bottle.

  I’ll just go a little farther, thought Elinor firmly. I’ll make absolutely sure there’s nothing here, and when I know that there isn’t – because of course, there won’t be – I’ll feel a whole lot better. Like looking under the bed before you got into it. Like checking that the noise you heard at two o’clock in the morning really was the cat coming in through the kitchen window and not a burglar.

  She went past a smallish door set deep into the brickwork, and paused. It would be sensible to try it, but in fact it resisted Elinor’s tentative push. Locked. It was probably only an old storeroom anyway. The entire place was probably only storerooms.

  There was the impression of immense age down here, and Elinor reminded herself that Chance House was very old and that very old houses were often built on the sites of houses even older. But the aura down here had nothing to do with Victorian grafted on to Regency, or even Regency grafted on to something much earlier. It was an aura of creeping darknesses and ancient evils, as if something tainted and malign had lived down here and as if the malignancy had soaked into the stones and the bricks. The recluse again? Or something else? Something that lived down here in dark secrecy, and came prowling up out of the cellars when everyone was asleep . . .?

  The rippling light was getting stronger and the echoing drip of water was more distinct. Then I’m going towards the river. Or am I? Well, if not the Thames, maybe a tributary.

  And then she rounded a curve and came up against a flat stone wall, with brackish water oozing down it and oily puddles on the ground. Dead end. Then I’ve done what I set out to do; I’ve checked the boundaries. I’ve looked under the bed, and there’s nothing there.

  It was then that a blurred movement caught the edge of her vision and she looked down. Near to the ground was an oblong opening, a kind of half-window half-ventilator, rather like the ones you saw in the basements of large Victorian town houses. It was about seven feet across and probably four feet deep at the highest point; there was no glass but there was a barred grille. Sluggish light poured through, casting the outline of the grille across the ground. Had something moved on the other side? Elinor bent down to look, her heart almost in her mouth with terror. Beyond the grille were stone steps leading down to a lower tunnel. There were the same dark wet brick walls and floor, and as Elinor pressed closer a stench of decay breathed into her face.

  Padding down the tunnel, going away from her, was a creature with a slender, black-clad body and a monstrous nightmare head. A cat’s head, with snarling lips and a blunt snout and gleaming teeth that protruded upwards like fangs. The terrible head turned slightly from side to side as it went as if scanning the shadows, and the eyes, yellow and feral, caught the light. In the thing’s arms was the limp body of a young man, his head falling back, a rim of white showing under his eyes. The hands holding the boy were paws, massive and claw-tipped, with coarse bristly fur along the backs.

  For ten hideous seconds Elinor almost lost her hold on sanity altogether – that’s the creature I saw on the stair! – and then understanding washed over her mind. It’s a false head! Of course it is! It’s like a Mardi Gras head or an elaborate mask! And the hands are gloves! She was about to draw in a shaky breath of relief when a different fear came scudding in. What kind of person deliberately donned a nightmare mask and claw-gloves, and prowled through dark houses and dank dripping tunnels? And carried prone bodies to some unguessed-at lair . . .?

  She crouched closer to the grille, trying to see more, and it was then that she realised that the grille was in fact a hinged gate. To lift it and go down into the lower tunnels with the stench of dank dripping decay and the nightmare creature padding ahead would be complete and utter insanity. But to let the thing take its victim to some impenetrable hideout was also unthinkable. If I can just
see where it goes, thought Elinor, I can go back up to the house and get help and I’ll have clear evidence. But if I’ve only got the evidence of my own eyes I don’t think anyone’s going to believe me. ‘You saw something with a man’s body and a cat’s head in the sewers, did you, madam? Dear me, very upsetting. And how long have you been seeing things like this?’ You could very nearly write the dialogue.

  And as long as she was very quiet and very stealthy, and as long as she kept so far behind the creature that it did not know she was there, it would not really be very dangerous. She reached for the grille which lifted easily and noiselessly in her hands, as if somebody kept it well oiled.

  Elinor glanced back down the tunnel, and then bent to climb through.

  The lower tunnel was larger and at intervals it was reinforced with brick pillars and arched groynes under the roof. It was dark but not completely so, and it felt rather like walking along an abandoned section of the Underground – Mornington Crescent, or one of those 1940s British films about ghost trains that came out of nowhere and thundered along closed tracks.

  At intervals were smaller tunnels, snaking away into complete blackness, and in the floor, every few yards, were huge old-fashioned iron drains. Elinor caught the stench of wet decay again, and the glint of dark stagnant water. An old sewer tunnel? Dear God, I’m in the sewers following a madman who thinks he’s a cat!

  Whatever he was, he knew the way through the tunnels. He went forward, his arms holding his victim easily, stepping between the gaping drains, his footsteps echoing hollowly. Once he stopped and looked back and Elinor’s heart jumped and she froze in the shadow of one of the brick pillars. But after a second the man continued, turning off into one of the intersections and going up another flight of steps. There was the sound of a door being pushed up – a trap door? – and then being closed. Elinor, keeping well back, tried to think what to do. The intersection was marked with a faint chalk cross on the wall and it would be easy to find again. But supposing the creature was only depositing its victim and was coming back down the tunnel almost immediately? If that was so he would certainly catch her. But to go forward after him was clearly out of the question. I’ve painted myself into a corner. No, I haven’t, he’s coming back – I was right to stay put then! She pressed back into the lee of a brick pillar again, thankful that she was wearing a dark sweater and skirt which would make her fairly unnoticeable. But her heart was pounding so loudly she thought the echoes would pick it up.