Perhaps there was another announcement to come, I thought. It was obvious that someone else was in the house. The dull voice had not been that of a BBC commentator, and it certainly hadn’t the sound of a magistrate or a chancellor.
What if he caught me here?
The Pines and Fountains of Rome spun on, providing a dramatic sound track to my teeming thoughts.
Who was it that kept this unfortunate man locked away in an upper room? And why? Why did they force music upon him from a hidden loudspeaker? Who was Benson? Why must the saint not be wakened?
“Was that Benson speaking?” I asked, but again my words were met with the finger to the lips and an urgent “Shh!”
Why not help this man escape? I thought. I would simply lead him out through the two doors, down the stairs, through the foyer, and outside. I would balance him on Gladys’s seat, let him hang onto my waist, coast downhill to Nether-Wolsey, then pump us, standing up, all the way to Bishop’s Lacey. I would take him to the vicarage and— “Wait a minute,” a voice said inside my head. “The door to this room was locked. He let you in!”
Which of us then, was the captive?
If the second door was able to be opened with an inside bolt, what was its purpose? To keep someone out?
Was the outer door also able to be opened from the inside? Had there been a bolt? I hadn’t noticed. It certainly hadn’t been locked. Perhaps Benson, or whoever the disembodied voice belonged to, had accidentally left it open.
Two doors, two locks: one open and one not.
It was like a puzzle in The Girl’s Own Annual.
I was thinking this when the music came to an end.
“Music teaches. Music soothes the savage beast,” my host (or was he my captor?) said, and again I thought I detected the mimicking of a harsher voice.
Before I could ask him another question, the disembodied voice spoke again, riding above the hum and buzz of the loudspeaker: “Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky,” it said. “Swan Lake overture.”
There was a muted crash, as if someone had dropped a piece of china in another room.
“As you were,” the voice ordered, and there was an uneasy silence.
“Franz Schubert,” it said at last in a swamp-flat tone. “Death and the Maiden.”
Again the needle was dropped into the record’s grooves and the sounds of a string quartet came straining out through the sievelike covering of the speaker.
Death and the Maiden? I thought. Could it be a warning?
What kind of madhouse had I stumbled into?
My host was now sitting perfectly still, absorbed totally in the music, his eyes closed, his hands folded in his lap, his lips pronouncing silent words.
His hardness of hearing made it unlikely that he would detect faint noises which, thanks to Franz Schubert, would also be masked by the music. As long as I didn’t cast a shadow across his face, I should be quite safe. I got slowly to my feet and moved with glacial slowness across the room, going round to his right and behind him to avoid passing in front of the window.
When I reached the dresser, I opened the cover of the heavy black Bible.
Hallelujah!
As I had hoped, the branches of the Ridley-Smith family tree coiled like jungle vines across the page. At the very bottom, under “Births,” was this entry: Vivian Joyous Ridley-Smith—1 January, 1904.
Vivian. So that was his name. He was forty-seven years old.
I was closing the Bible when my fingers scraped against a sharp corner. Something was projecting slightly beyond the edges of the next two pages.
An envelope. I slipped it out.
On its front was written in a flowing—and obviously feminine—hand: Dearest Jocelyn.
It must have been from an earlier time: something removed from the family papers. But who was Jocelyn, the recipient?
There was no postage stamp, so obviously no date on the envelope. It must have been delivered by hand.
I held it to my nose and gave a sniff and my heart almost froze as my nostrils were filled with the odor of small blue flowers, of mountain meadows, and of ice.
Miratrix!
Harriet’s scent!
I had smelled it often enough in her boudoir. It was as familiar to me as the back of my own hand.
With clumsy fingers I opened the envelope and extracted the single sheet of paper.
Dearest Jocelyn, it began.
Jocelyn?
And then I saw! Of course! “Jocelyn”—“Joss”—was a variation of “Joyous.”
A nickname. A name that only his family and his closest friends—or perhaps only Harriet—would have called him.
Dearest Jocelyn,
I shall be going away for a time, and unable to visit you. I shall miss the two of us reading together, and hope that you will keep on with it. Remember what I told you: Books make the soul float.
Your friend,
H.
p.s. Burn after reading.