Lisette Rivers & the Crumbling Mansion Affair
Brian Sands
Wildbach, HtF
Chapter Four
Dinner Party at Weatherstone Hall
Lisette smoothed down the red silk dress around her hips and considered herself critically in the mirror. The effect was not at all bad. In keeping with her decision to remain incognito under the name of Elizabeth Poole, she had donned a dark wig – it was shoulder length and of real human hair with a switch, very expensive – tied as a head band in a red silk scarf to match her dress.
“Will I pass do you think?” she asked rhetorically.
“Fraff,” said Rasputin Thermodux the First.
The big Persian appeared to teeter precariously at the top of the small wardrobe. He was, however, a very orthodox cat and made sure that his perches were stable.
“I’m glad you approve,” said Lisette as she shrugged into her light trench coat and took up a small clasp bag.
Ten minutes later, after laying out the necessary evening comforts for her feline friend, Lisette was walking up the driveway of Weatherstone Hall. Her two-inch heels clicked on the uneven pavers of the driveway and she had to step with care, avoiding the cracks between the paving slabs from a desire not so much to attract bad luck as to avoid turning an ankle. On the other hand, without a doubt turning an ankle could be considered bad luck. Maybe there’s something in that superstition, thought Lisette as her approach to the squat crenellated building that loomed darkly ahead of her projected a palpable sense of foreboding. It was almost night. The interior of Weatherstone Hall was no doubt well lit, but from the outside no window allowed so much as a chink of light to show. What she could see of the grounds to either side, as well as the driveway itself, revealed that they were as ill kept as those of Swallowtail Cottage, another similarity between the two properties. They were both old, allowed to fall into neglect, and with a certain unhealthy aura of decay and evil. It was more worrying because her reaction could not be put down to anything more tangible than a feeling. Too many Gothic novels read as a schoolgirl?
Lisette paused at the top step to the entrance and inspected a heavy wooden door lit dimly by a small led light mounted in the lintel. The ornate iron knocker on the door was fashioned in a shape that at first puzzled her. When she recognised what it represented a shiver of apprehension touched her spine. The image embossed on the metal was that of a swallowtail butterfly. It was not an exact replica of the one at the entrance to the cottage where she was staying, but it was close enough. The presence of the same icon at two neighbouring dwellings could not be a coincidence. Swallowtail Cottage and Weatherstone Hall were once part of a single property. Most have lion’s head doorknockers or people’s faces. She thought of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. I must ask about them if I meet someone who knows.
She put the knocker to use. The metal gave a dull muffled reverberation that must have penetrated to the other side, however, because after waiting for less than twenty seconds Lisette heard the tumblers of the lock turn. The heavy wooden door swung open to reveal the rotund frame of Spencer Fforbes, a brandy balloon in one pudgy hand.
“Ah! Miss, um, uhh isn’t it?” he enquired jovially. “Do come in. The party’s just beginning.”
Fforbes led the way across a wide entrance hall that was squared off in a chessboard pattern of black and white marble. He skirted around a broad stairway bifurcated at an upper landing and steered Lisette with a lot of ceremony towards a set of tall double doors behind which could be heard the muted sounds of conversation and the clink of glassware. He flung open the doors and announced to no one in particular: “Miss urrhm,” letting his voice trail off.
Lisette stepped into the room. A uniformed maid relieved her of her trench coat and whisked it away.
A motley assortment of people stood or sat about the drawing room. Some Lisette thought were from the village and others appeared by their dress to be landowners. But what caught her eyes was a long couch that at a glance appeared to be heaped with mounds of gaily-coloured fabrics. On closer inspection she found two faces peering up at her from within the variegated pastels. One was that of a woman with round rosy cheeks, purple hair crowned with a glittering tiara that might have been real diamonds. The other face was smaller and belonged to a Pomeranian. The little dog resting on its mistress’s ample stomach had a broad mane of thick white hair to rival that of the Persian cat Rasputin. There was a rustle of silk, chiffon and satin as the fabrics slid from a snowy white arm which was extended languorously towards Lisette.
“So pleased to meet you my dear,” said the apparition. Lisette gingerly took the proffered hand. The fingers were covered so thickly with rings as to bring a certain amount of risk to the handshake. “I did not quate catch your name when the estimable Fforbes announced it just now.”
“It’s Eliza, Eliza Poole,” Lisette replied, using the pseudonym she had adopted for the benefit of Regina Ecuestre from the nearby farm as well as for Sunny Virtue.
“Aha. I am Agapanthus Woodgreen. Perhaps you have heard of me?”
“Of course,” said Lisette. “You’re a writer of romance fiction I believe?” Lisette had seen the woman’s novels on railway bookshelves but, having no interest in bodice rippers, she had never read one.
Agapanthus was gratified. “That’s right my dear. Perhaps you have read my latest, The Heiress of Frogmorton Manor?”
“I’m sorry, no. My work doesn’t give me much time for reading.”
“And what pray is your line of work?”
“I’m a secretary for a small legal firm.”
“I daresay it’s a living, but hardly an exciting occupation.”
“Oh no. It has its moments,” said Lisette earnestly, building upon her role of dull and respectable office worker. “Some of the Land Acts and conveyancing procedures are quite riveting.”
“Aha. But I must say that you don’t look at all like an office drudge, as you seem to describe yourself. That’s a beautiful dress. I know expensive silk when I see it. And that hair style – black does go so well with red!”
“I like to indulge a little when on holiday,” replied Lisette primly, wondering whether she had blown her cover or at the least made it moderately less plausible.
“Aha, of course. Young women nowadays …” Agapanthus Woodgreen’s voice trailed off. A few seconds later the woman inclined her head regally and spoke again. “Eliza - you may call me Lily.”
“Thank you.”
At that moment Spencer Fforbes reappeared at Lisette’s side and pressed a glass of white wine into her hand. “Do you mind if I take this young lady from you, Aggy dear?” Agapanthus Woodgreen flinched slightly at the familiarity. “I wish to introduce her to some other guests.”
“Not at all, Spence,” replied Lily with reciprocal familiarity. “I shall talk with you later dear.”
Lisette was escorted across the drawing room through the crowd to where two men lounged in thickly upholstered easy chairs in front of the fire roaring in the grate. One had the longest legs that Lisette had ever seen on a human being. They stretched across the scatter rug in front of the fireplace. The patched corduroy trousers covering them smouldered faintly in the heat. But what struck Lisette most forcibly was the man’s visage. He had a high domed forehead made even more prominent by sparse strands of black hair that fell from the temples and the back of the head to lie in tangled ribbons across the neck of a collarless shirt. A narrow sallow face and deep-set eyes gave him a corpse-like, almost skeletal appearance. The other man appeared of much shorter stature and was less prepossessing. He had a thatch of close-cropped white hair in a pudding basin cut. Contrasting against his companion’s shirt and trousers he wore a dark suit with matching waistcoat, pink shirt and green bow tie.
Spencer Fforbes came to a stop before the two men and presented Lisette. “Gentlemen, allow me to introduce – “
“Eliza, Eliza Poole,” said Lisette quickly in order to forestall embarrassment.
“Um, yes,” said Fforbes awkwardly. “Miss, uh, Poole – Mr Serge Easel – “
The tall man with the death’s head nodded perfunctorily and looked intensely at Lisette through eyes that glinted faintly from deep within their sockets. He did not speak.
“And Mr Brick Simenov,” Spencer Fforbes continued.
Simenov half rose from his chair as he extended a hand, “Ver’ pleased t’ meet yer,” he intoned.
Lisette accepted the handshake. The man’s fingers were cold despite the circle of heat in which he sat.
“Serge here is an artist,” said Fforbes chattily, “and Brick writes science fiction. He has only recently won the Black Hole Award for a story. Tell her Serge.”
“If you wish, Mr Fforbes. It was nothing really: ‘Duck Feet Across the Galaxy,’ a little thing I dreamed up.”
“But isn’t that how fiction and fantasy, science or otherwise, is created,” asked Lisette with a smile, “dreamed up by the writer’s imagination?”
Brick Simenov fidgeted in his seat. “Of course. I suppose you could say that, yes.”
“What sort of art do you work in, Mr Easel?” Lisette asked.
For a moment it seemed that the man would not reply. With a slow smile that revealed unsettlingly long canine teeth, he answered. “Surrealism. It is abstract art that not everyone understands, only a select few who share my genius.”
“Oh. Then you cannot have many admirers,” Lisette retorted archly.
“Admirers there are plenty, Lady. Just that most people do not understand the genius behind the works,” said Serge Easel dismissively.
Lisette was about to make further repartee – she did not like Serge Easel at all – when there was a slight commotion at the double door. Two new guests had arrived, Jeremy Buddington with a very pretty Sunny Virtue by his side, the girl’s face glowing from the brisk walk in the cold night air. The maid had just dropped Buddington’s overcoat and was retrieving it from the floor. In bending over, she revealed the gap between sheer black stocking-top and short skirt that had brought the room’s conversation to a halt. As the girl straightened up, an audible exhalation of suspended breath came from Brick Simenov.
Willie, John The Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline, Belier Press, 1999, p. 112.
“Thank you, Lolly,” said Jeremy Buddington with a straight face. He had been treated to a front row view.
Sunny smiled and with a faint flush handed her coat to Lolly the maid without a word. The maid executed a quick curtsy and left the room with the two garments over her arm. The conversations returned to normal. Buddington went to Spencer Fforbes and accepted two glasses of wine from the man. He then followed Sunny who had gone immediately to Lisette’s side, and handed her one of the glasses.
“If you don’t mind,” said Buddington to Sunny and Lisette, “there is a business matter I need to discuss with Serge.” He drifted away to join Brick Simenov who in the meantime had risen from his chair. Together the two men moved to a corner of the room where they fell into conversation that was inaudible to the others.
Sunny took Lisette by an arm and shepherded her gently to the opposite corner. She wore a slim silky skirt of red, a white silk blouse and a broad black belt to match black shoes with sturdy but feminine heels, better for walking on the paths than thinner and longer heels would be.
“Have you had a chance to meet them all?” asked Sunny as soon as they were out of earshot.
“Only enough to exchange pleasantries,” replied Lisette. “If you can call it that. The artist fellow - who looks like something from Return of the Living Dead - is very dismissive, and has a high opinion of himself, and the science fiction writer is also much too pleased with himself while I suspect he’s somewhat of a hack.”
Sunny laughed. “You’re right on both counts, Liz. The only person who’s published anything substantial is that woman with the funny little dog. Seven rip-roaring so-called historical novels to date and still going! But I have to say that the artist gives me the creeps. He’s asked me to model for him. Believe it or not, he’s on contract to prepare the cover illustration for Lily’s next book.”
“Something outside his métier?”
“I think so, yes. I’m going to beg off. I don’t think I’d enjoy being alone with him! … Hullo? What’s this? Oh no - ”
Jeremy Buddington had stepped into the middle of the room and as Sunny’s voice trailed off on the note of disquiet he tapped against the side of his wine glass with a small spoon to gain everyone’s attention.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Buddington declaimed in a sonorous voice, “before you move to the buffet room I have an important announcement. It will no doubt be of interest, and might I say gossip, for the village and those of you on the land. It is of somewhat greater importance for those who are at present residents in this building.” He paused as the room became quieter, then he continued. “Without wishing to sound overly dramatic, I introduce the heiress to Weatherstone Hall, who is therefore the owner of said hall, Miss Sunny Virtue. It has been left to her by the late lamented Sir Albatroyd Merks who was her godfather. Probate has just been announced by the trustees.”
Buddington drew Sunny to his side. There was a scattering of applause. Sunny curtsied.
“There will be changes,” Buddington went on. “Weatherstone Hall is gravely in need of renovations. Residents of this establishment will be asked to reappraise their lease arrangements, which for all have an expiry date that falls in thirty days’ time according to legal precedent. However, Miss Virtue assures me that everyone will be treated well, and assisted where necessary to find alterative accommodation.”
Lisette heard a choking sound from over her shoulder. It was Spencer Fforbes. She had never seen someone really spluttering but this man did so.
“It- It’s -,” he could scarcely get the words out. “There must be some mistake. This is mine. I signed …” His voice trailed off.
Someone laughed. The general audience gave a collective metaphorical shrug and trailed out of the room in search of good things to eat, leaving Spencer Fforbes standing deflated in the centre of the room.
Sunny went to Fforbes. “I’m sorry that this has come as such a shock to you. I did ask my solicitor to send you a letter explaining everything … You did not receive it?”
Fforbes shook his head dismally.
“There was a national mail strike, remember?” said Brick Simenov, who had joined them. “Nothing for it but to regroup yourself, old fellow, and maybe start to plan your packing.”
Spencer Fforbes gave Sunny a searching look, turned and quickly left the room.
“Oh dear,” said Sunny. “I don’t think I’ve made a friend have I?”
“You have every right as the new owner of this dump,” said Simenov. “I wouldn’t trouble yourself over it. They’re all a bunch of poseurs anyway. Do them good to face the real world for a change. I’ve often said that this place is more like a sheltered workshop than a writers’ retreat.”
“But you live here too,” interposed Lisette sweetly. “You must be the only one who is not a poseur then?”
Brick Simenov scowled, abruptly turned his back and left. His companion Serge Easel followed in his wake.
“You didn’t make a friend there either,” said Sunny. “Come on!” She linked her arm into Lisette’s elbow. “Let’s look around the old place. I’ve never seen it from the inside.”
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By the time Lisette and Sunny returned to the dining room the evening’s festivities were drawing to an end. The motley hangers-on would have tarried as long as the food and drink held out. But the sombre mood of the mansion’s live-in guests had poisoned the atmosphere and people were departing in twos and threes. The live-in guests of Weatherstone Hall - Spencer Fforbes, Brick Simenov and Serge Easel - had evaporated to their respective rooms. Agapanthus (“Lily”) Woodgreen had donned a voluminous raincoat in shocking pink and was at that moment adjusting the zip fastener of a small handbag from which protruded the muzzle of the Pomeranian. “Take me home, there’s a darling,” she said to Jeremy Buddington.
Buddington turned to Sunny and shrugged apologetically. “Coming?” he asked.
“That’s all right, Jeremy,” said Sunny in cheerful tones. “I’ll find my own way home. I have to stay a little yet - need to discuss matters with poor old Spencer before I go.”
Lolly Tablier the maid handed out their overcoats to Buddington, Sunny and Lisette without mishap. “If you don’t mind?” she said. “We have to leave too, back to our homes in the village.” Wearing a shiny black raincoat, Lolly tripped ahead of Buddington and Lily Woodgreen. Mrs Schlüssel the caretaker of Weatherstone Hall, who had doubled as a cook for the night, followed her. The older woman was muffled in a huge gabardine raincoat. The door closed and Lisette and Sunny Virtue were alone.
“I shan’t be long,” said Sunny. “This will take only a few minutes then we can walk home together, as far as your little cottage anyway.”
<p.
“I thought you were planning on staying here?”
“Not tonight. I didn’t bring my overnight bag. No, I’ll walk on to Jeremy’s. But I’d like to talk to you first.”
“It’s late, but there’s always time for a hot chocolate. I’ll wait for you,” said Lisette.
Sunny left the room on her errand of mitigation while Lisette made herself comfortable in one of the large armchairs. The fire was slowly dying but most of the room was still warm, aside from the chilly air near the main doors that had filtered in from outside with the departure of the others. Lisette wrapped her satin trench coat around her throat and drowsed in the fireside’s soft but fitful halo.
Lisette must have fallen asleep because the next thing she knew was being wakened by a sound that she could not identify. It had registered in her mind as a muffled report of some kind. The fire had burned down to glowing embers. As she straightened up in her chair, the grandfather clock in the hallway dinged out eleven in measured tones. She looked groggily at her watch and confirmed the time. By most standards the dinner party had ended early. But Lisette calculated that almost an hour had passed while she was napping. Sunny Virtue should have returned before now and roused her so that they could walk back to Swallowtail Cottage together and have that promised hot chocolate.
Climbing to her feet, Lisette walked to the double doors and stepped out into the hallway. She stood and listened. The mansion was silent save for the faint whistling of the wind under the eaves that came from somewhere on one side of the building. The hallway itself was in almost total darkness, lit only by a small bracket lamp by the front door. In its weak illumination the chess board pattern of the floor glowed faintly, the many squares creating perspectives that were at once maze-like and sinister. With a growing sense of unease, Lisette mounted the wide stairway. When she reached the landing where narrower stairs branched off to either side she was almost in complete darkness. The corridor to the right at the top of the last landing was lit however by another wall bracket that was out of sight, its glow as diffuse and weak as the one on the ground floor. Upon reaching this corridor, Lisette saw a faint glow seeping from below a door. Was this Spencer Fforbes’s room? She and Sunny had had no guided tour, had merely explored the corridors of the crumbling mansion without venturing into any of the rooms. Other doorways along the corridor were dark and silent.
Lisette walked to the door from which the faint glow came and knocked lightly on a panel. In the stillness her polite tapping sounded uncomfortably loud. There was no reply but Lisette thought she heard the faint sound of movement on the other side of the door. Sunny and Fforbes surely would not be doing things personal in the softly lit room? Lisette gripped the doorknob, paused a moment to consider, then opened the door softly. The source of the faint light was a lamp that stood on a small writing bureau of Victorian design. There appeared to be someone sitting at a chair behind the desk but she could not make out whether it was that of a man or a woman.
She stepped across the threshold, eyes straining to identify the shapes of furniture, or persons, in the darkened room. “Hullo?” She found the switch beside the door and in an instant the room was flooded with more soft light from fixtures spaced at intervals around the four walls just below the ceiling. Her gaze rested upon the hunched figure that sat in the chair behind the study desk. She approached slowly across the thick carpet as though hypnotised. The figure did not move. A pool of dark liquid stained the carpet where it sat. One hand rested on the sloping top of the bureau, its fingers curled around the butt of a small 22-calibre revolver. Lisette drew a faint intake of breath as she recognised the person.
At that moment Lisette felt a subtle change in the air behind her. There was no sound. She reacted too late. Before she could turn, a cry beginning to form on her lips, something struck her on the nape of the neck and she knew no more.
Regaining consciousness was a slow and painful experience. Blood pounded in Lisette’s temples and there was an ache and a throbbing across the back of her head and in her shoulders. She had difficulty opening her eyes. Her nasal passages felt stuffy, her head full of cotton wool, and to breathe was an effort. Down in the lower floor of the old mansion the clock began to chime midnight. She had lost virtually another hour.
When her head cleared sufficiently, Lisette discovered a number of unwelcome facts. Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to truss her up very tightly in what felt like yards of rope. She was sitting on a carpeted floor with her back against what seemed to be the end post of a bed. Her arms were bound securely behind her, wrists crossed parallel to each other and cinched together with cord that bit agonisingly into her soft skin. Thicker ropes had been cinched around her forearms just below her elbows. They connected her to one of the uprights. More ropes around her arms higher up held them to the bedpost as well and, as if that was not enough, the upper part of her body just above her breasts was anchored similarly to the bedpost. Her silky trench coat had been removed, probably to make it easier to tie her to the post.
Lisette was in a different room from the one in which she had been summarily dispatched into unconsciousness. She supposed, however, that it must be off the same corridor, because a small strip of light filtered in from beneath the door. In its faint glow she could see what appeared to be her coat lying a few feet away where it had been thrown aside. Her knees were bent and, while she was unconscious, her legs must have reclined to one side. They were bound about the thighs, a concession to modesty she supposed, because the cords were tied also over the skirt of her dress. But the rope followed in a double loop to her ankles and ended in a sort of hogtie, for she could not straighten her legs. Her feet were neatly and firmly tied together side by side at the ankles.
I’m bound with separate pieces of cord, thin stuff at my wrists, then thicker cord from forearms to bedpost, a separate piece for my upper arms, another separate piece for my upper torso! They’ve used a single long cord for my thighs and ankles.
Lisette knew from experience that it was more difficult to get free from bonds tied separately than from one long piece of rope that could be loosened by struggling. That situation was worrying enough, but worse was the gag that had been fitted neatly inside her mouth. It was this that gave her the feeling of stuffiness and a head full of cottonwool. Her entire mouth appeared to have been filled with thick cotton cloth so that her cheeks bulged, and her lips were held as though in a mould, pouting over a small knot of the same stiff cotton that filled the centre of her mouth behind her teeth, to keep the gag in place. The thin strip of material was tight around her head, tied off a little behind one ear where it dug painfully into the soft flesh of her upper neck. She could see the whitish blur made by a cloth remnant lying near her abandoned trench coat. A striped pillow without its case lay on the floor as well. She had been gagged with strips torn from a starched pillowcase.
Something else covered the entire lower part of her face starting from just below her nose, softer material that had also been tied cruelly tight. It was her own silk scarf, she guessed, worn originally as a headband and now used as an over-gag. The thin silk was stretched very tightly over the bulge made by her lips and filled cheeks. Moulded around her face in that way, the silk refused to slip when she tried to move jaws that were already locked in place. She could make scarcely a sound except for a faint humming in her head when she tried to call for help.
The ropes and the gag were becoming unbearable minute by minute. Lisette wanted to struggle, to wriggle about and loosen the bonds in an escapology ploy, but she was so tightly tied that all she could do was to strain feebly against her restraints. The intense pain in her wrists caused by the thinner cord that bound them discouraged struggling. Lisette looked about her desperately. There was no way out. Whoever had tied her up intended her to stay that way indefinitely. All she could do was to wait until someone found her in the morning, and it was just after midnight. There were many hours ahead of silence, pain and fear.
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