last entry in Annette le Feuvre’s poor little diary:
They shall have me, but they shall not have him.
I had thought the ‘they’ had been her parents.
Now all I could think about was the three smirking, sneering faces in the picture of the Neptune Yacht Club (Steam Section).
The room went on whirling round me. The odd, mad behaviour, one Guy Fawkes’ night, of Tony Tanner; just before he disappeared, leaving his precious model boats behind . . .
Where had all those people gone? And the suicides in the Pond? And that crazy fight between the firemen?
There was not just an ancient dreadful evil lingering on in Wheatstone . . . It was still working now.
‘There’s something wrong with that house,’ I think I said. Then I was falling into darkness; the corner of the microfilm machine, the edge of the desk were cold and sharp. But they were the last things I knew.
She had left me lying very comfortably, on the chaise-longue pulled up to her sitting-room window; where the late afternoon sun would lie warm on the tartan rug over my legs, and the reassuring sounds of Kensington, women talking to dogs and men washing down cars, could drift in through the open window. There was whisky to hand; and a flask of coffee; and the latest editions of Harper’s and Cosmo. There was even a cordless telephone. Oh, she had looked after me well. Before she went back to the chase.
I only hoped she’d get home before dark. For her sake and mine.
I dozed a lot, never quite unaware of the sun’s warmth on my face, and the sounds outside; taking care never to drop into the dark depths where faces swam out of the darkness suddenly. It was pleasant just to drift and forget . . .
I’d had one fright: a rattle in the kitchen that had fetched me heart-thuddingly awake. But it was only her cat coming home through the cat-flap, the golden long-haired Suki, slender and elegant as Hermione herself, who had watched me first with caution, then with curiosity, and then come and decisively settled into my lap and gone to sleep.
Cats were wise; cats knew. While Suki slept on me relaxed, no harm could come to me . . .
The cordless phone rang, like a mewling lost mouse. I snatched it up, fumbled with the unfamiliar switches, and managed to remember her number.
‘That you, guv?’ The voice, warm and reassuring, of Sam. ‘You OK? You sound a bit funny!’ There was almost a smile in Sam’s voice; probably at the idea of me shacked up in Hermione’s house. He was much younger than James; his mind was broader. He was of the new generation who didn’t bother to get married. ‘We done OK, guv. We’ve been where you said. Dudley; Stafford. Got a good set of chairs for four hundred. Should get six for them, by the time they’re polished up. And . . .’ he took a deep breath, ‘you ought to’ve seen the Welsh dresser at Martin’s. Young fool had tarted it up wi’ repro brass handles – thought it was Victorian. James rescued the old handles out of the bins in the yard. We knocked him down to two thou. James reckons it’ll be worth five and a half. Late Georgian.’
‘Well done,’ I said. ‘Where is James, by the way? Getting drunk to celebrate?’
Sam gave his infectious little giggle. James, like most Methodists, was a teetotaller. ‘Knocked off early to see some of his holy mates in Birmingham. Bigwigs, I gather. Got something on his mind, James has.’
I cursed James in my mind. I knew what he had gone to talk to his holy mates about. And that after I’d sworn him to secrecy.
Much later, the mewling of the phone wakened me again. The look of the sky, a dimming blue with swallows wheeling, told me how late it was getting, and a tiny paw of panic nudged my stomach. But Hermione was in a high good mood, wild with excitement.
‘Ran Wheeler down to earth, in an old copy of “Strange Stories from the London Evening News”. The reference librarian put me on to it. He’s a bit into the occult, and seems to have his own little book-cupboard, for those he favours. And, of course, this being a Wheatstone story, he knew all about it . . .
‘Wheeler was an East Ender, and a no-good. A rag-and-bone man, no less, and had several convictions for helping himself to stuff left