Dr Porthos and other stories Page 2
By next summer Philip hoped they would be fully installed for a six-month season of prolific and profitable writing for him and a period of pleasure and entertaining for her. He was determined that they would make the old house a show place, a necessary pilgrimage for their London friends and all that night, long after the rest of the hotel was asleep he kept Angele awake with plans and possibilities. Angele had her reservations but kept her own counsel. She felt that she might be mistaken in her intuitions and after all, carpenters and builders could make a magnificent job of the old house. She would wait and see what transpired.
II
A month later The Grey House was already under siege. Philip had engaged a local builder and he, two assistants and Philip and Angele in their oldest clothes, were in a frenzy of demolition and renovation. Philip had decided that they would tackle the Great Hall first. It was mainly of stone and once they had got rid of the loathsome accumulation which littered the floor, they would rid the house of that putrescent smell. But first there was one setback.
Pierre, the builder they had engaged, was a stolid, good-looking man, broad as a barrel, in his early fifties; as was the custom he worked with his hands with his assistants, taking his share of the heavy work as well as directing operations. He was surprised, as were all the local people that The Grey House was to be re-opened and lived in after all this time, but he was quite glad of the job.
But the first afternoon, there was a short consultation among his two workmen and they drew the builder to one side. Philip, who had been down the lane, returned at that moment and Pierre asked to speak to him. He seemed embarrassed and eventually said that nothing could be done until the electric light was in operation; his point was that the loathsome conditions underfoot in the Great Hall made good lighting essential.
This was understandable enough but Angele thought she could discern odd expressions in the eyes of the two workmen. Despite herself, she was convinced that they had other reasons for their request. Fortunately, a modern water supply was already laid on to the house, and Philip had merely to request the local electricity company to restore the current. Like many English people he was naive about local conditions and Angele had laughingly assured him that it would take a month or more before anything would be done about it.
Philip told the assembled workmen that the current would be turned on that afternoon. There was a general air of disbelief but Philip said he had an appointment with the electricity people at two o’clock and sat down upon an upturned box in front of the house to wait. Pierre and his workmen chatted among themselves. Philip was the only person present to believe the statement.
When half-past three came with not a stroke of work done it became obvious even to Philip that the electricity would not be connected. He jumped up angrily and drove off in his car. He was unable to achieve any satisfaction and found the company office locked; no doubt the official in charge was in one of the local cafes.
Incensed at this lack of efficiency Philip phoned M. Gasion, who presently came down to the house himself. He assured Philip that he had sorted out the misunderstandings and that the workmen would be at The Grey House without fail the following day. Mollified, Philip announced that they could still get some work done while daylight lasted. It was not half past four, so, lighting a couple of lanterns the party of five - M. Gasion having returned to his office - set off through the gloomy reception rooms to the terrace. Here, restored by the bright sunlight and the atmosphere of open countryside, the workmen unloaded their tools and set about clearing the area, amid jokes and laughter.
The whole terrace seemed to be covered with lichen and here and there fungoid growths; two of the workmen started scraping this off to reveal the intricately patterned tiles beneath, while Pierre, Philip and Angele busied themselves with clearing the area of brushwood, fallen branches and other debris which had accumulated over the years. This they threw off the balcony into the orchard below; it made loud crashing noises in the brittle branches of dead trees and for some reason gave Angele considerable uneasiness.
She looked sharply down to the water mill and the dark trees at the orchard end, but nothing moved and she attributed her feelings to nerves and the thin tinkle of falling water. In an hour, good progress had been made and when repeated applications with buckets of water had been carried out to the considerable area of tiling cleared by the workmen, it was seen that the whole terrace was one of considerable elegance and beauty.
Philip had recovered his good humour when he saw what an excellent start it was and how pleasantly and efficiently the workmen had carried out their task.
It was evident that with this team the house would be in good hands and Philip was obviously in a great hurry to complete the preliminaries and get to grips with the major problems. He spoke with Pierre of the work to be done to the main roof and the sagging turret; this would have to be a priority and needed to be started well before the winter. Pierre told him that work on this would commence within a fortnight, once working arrangements had been achieved inside.
It was in this atmosphere of mutual satisfaction that the day’s work ended. Dusk was falling and the lanterns had been carried on to the terrace to complete the clearing of the tiles. Another of the workmen was already chipping rust from the great sweep of the balcony. It made an ugly sound in the dusk and was re-echoed from the dark woods below. As they finished and carried the tools back into the house for the night, there was a faint rustling in the underbrush at the back of the house down by the water mill. Angele was the only one to hear it; she strained her eyes down to the orchard below and thought she could see the faintest shadow slip into the dark shade of the old trees at the end of the orchard.
Probably a cat. There were lots of them haunting the lanes down near The Grey House. Big, grey brutes they were, and sometimes she heard them howling sadly in the dusk when she and Philip went out. The big door of the house shrieked, as though annoyed at the intrusion into the long silence of forty years, when they left. Outside, on the small terrace in front of The Grey House, where Philip intended to lay tiles and build a small garage later, the employer and the employed congratulated one another and there was much shaking of hands.
Then Philip insisted on buying everyone a drink at the first cafe they came across. All parted with mutual expressions of goodwill and it was quite dark when Philip and Angele had got back to their hotel. He was resolved to make a good start the next day and had asked the electricity people to come in at nine o’clock. The workmen would arrive at twelve and with luck and sufficient illumination they could make a good start on clearing the Great Hall.
The following morning the electricity employees surprisingly arrived almost at the specified hour; The Grey House was opened again and around midday a jubilant Philip was allowed to pull the master switch and the Great Hall was flooded with light. Much of the house would need re-wiring and Philip had many special schemes for heating and outdoor floodlighting, but that would come later.
For the moment, naked bulbs and trailing lengths of flex were draped all over the house in order to give the workmen good light to work by. Philip hoped also to have two great picture windows opened up in the stonework of the Great Hall to let light into the building during daytime.
This, and a number of other anomalies puzzled him and he resolved to look up the history of the de Menevals in the great historical library in the City Museum, when time would afford. That opportunity did not arise until the next year; in the meantime Philip and his wife, with their team of workmen, followed by the interest of M. Gasion, M. Morceau and later, the architect, went at the work of restoration with enthusiasm.
But strangely, the progress of the first day wasn’t repeated. One of the workmen went sick the second afternoon and, assuredly, the stench from the floor of the Great Hall was such as to turn a strong stomach; Philip got round that with buckets of hot water and disinfectant and after a while they cleared some of the miasma which seemed to hang around the old foundations.
Lorry load after lorry load of malodorous rubbish left for the city tip and even the sick workman, who returned to duty the next day, had to admit there had been a great improvement. But there was something which made Angele vaguely uneasy, though Philip seemed as blind to the atmosphere of the place as ever. He was puzzled at the inordinate number of lights and flex positions the workmen were obliged to insist on, especially when working among the noisome rafters and complained that the cost of electricity and bulbs would soon gross the total cost of the house if things went on that way.
Yet Angele understood perfectly the feelings of the workmen and marvelled again at the insensitivity of her husband to the atmosphere; especially as his name as an author had been largely made through the description of just such situations. About a week after the renovation of the house had begun the workmen were still clearing the upper storey and Pierre expected an early start to the roof repairs; Philip had been delighted with some unusual finds among the debris of centuries. A curiously marked ring, evidently belonging to a man of rank; a sword hilt, a tankard with a strange inscription in the Latin tongue and some porcelain jars and containers for which none of them could assign any known use.
Philip took them back to his hotel for cleaning and said he would use them for decorating the house when restoration was complete. One afternoon one of the workmen came to Philip with a bizarre object he had found in one of the upper rooms. It was a long instrument with a spike of very old metal on one end of it; the other end was a sort of whip or switch. The thongs were made of wire, stained with the rust of centuries.
A learned Abbe from the City University, with whom Philip had become great friends, was visiting The Grey House on the afternoon in question. Monsignor Joffroy turned quite pale, Angele noticed.
“May I see?” he asked, taking the whip from Philip with unseemly haste. He drew him on to one side. The good Abbe looked worried.
“I do not wish to alarm you, my friend, but this is an unclean thing,” he said, almost fiercely.
“See,” He pointed out an inscribed tablet on the shaft of the instrument. “These are the arms of the de Menevals. We have a locked room of the Musee d’Antiquites at the University, devoted to such relics of the sadistic de Menevals. If you would permit me, I will see it is deposited for safe keeping. It is not fit that such mementoes should be allowed in the outside world.”
He crossed himself and Angele could not repress a shudder. Though inclined to be amused, Philip could not but be impressed by the earnestness and deadly seriousness of Monsignor Joffroy’s manner and he readily assented to his friend’s request.
“I should like to hear something of the history of the de Menevals from you, some time,” he said. “It would make good material for some of my books.”
The Abbe laid his hand on Philip’s arm and looked steadily into his eyes.
“Believe me, my friend, such things are not for books - or rather for books of your sort. Your essays in the macabre, admirable and successful as they are, are children’s nursery tales compared with the things that went on in the chateau above - now no more, praise be to God.”
A few minutes later the Monsignor excused himself, made his farewells to Angele and returned to the university; he left behind him a somewhat thoughtful Philip and a thoroughly disturbed Angele. Sensibly, Philip said nothing to Pierre and the workmen and to M. Gasion, whom he met for an occasional glass of cassis at the latter’s home, he was guarded; he made no comment on the curious whip, but discussed some of the other finds which the workmen had made. He did learn one thing about the de Menevals from the inscription on the tankard, but of this he said nothing, even to Angele.
She herself had one more unusual experience on the afternoon of the same day as Monsignor Joffroy’s visit. She was alone on the terrace at dusk; she was no longer afraid of the low tinkling of water, to which she had become accustomed and even the mist did not affect her with uneasiness. She was trimming branches of an old tree which overhung the balcony.
This was now almost complete, wanting only a few final touches and, with an electric light above the glazed double doors, was taking on an unaccustomed elegance. She had gone down to Philip to ask him about something and when she came back the last glow of the fading sun was sinking behind the mountain. She was overcome by the melancholy of the scene and had remained seated while her gaze played over the terrain spread out so enticingly before her. It was while she was so occupied that she felt rather than saw a faint, dark shadow steal out from one orchard tree and disappear behind another.
Why she did the next thing she was not quite sure; but on some obscure impulse she suddenly stooped, picked up a large bundle of chopped branches from the tree, stepped noiselessly to the edge of the balcony and hurled the mass of wood and foliage through the air into the orchard below. The bundle fell where she had aimed, quite by chance, and with a sharp, almost frightening crash into the tree beneath which the shape had melted.
More branches fell to the ground and from the midst of the splintered wood something dark and long launched itself like a streak through the orchard; the creature poised and jumped up on to the edge of an outbuilding of the water mill. As far as she could judge, Angele saw a huge, grey cat. It had enormous yellow eyes that flickered with anger in the dusk. It looked back over its shoulder at her reproachfully and then disappeared into the bushes.
A moment later she heard a stealthy swish as it vanished and was evidently making its way through the dark trees at the back of the orchard. More startled than alarmed she left the terrace rather hurriedly for the welcome shelter of the house, which now blazed with lights from every room.
The next day Monsignor Joffroy was dining with them on the terrace of their hotel and Angele mentioned the cat. It was the first time she had spoken of it. Philip seemed only mildly interested but the effect on the Abbe was electric. His hand twitched and his glass of cognac soaked the table cloth. There was a flurry of apologies and in the midst of mopping up, Angele felt the Abbe’s eyes fixed on her.
“There is no such animal, Madame,” he said with terrible emphasis.
“Oh, come now, Monsignor,” Philip laughed good-naturedly. “There’s nothing so remarkable about that. There are dozens of cats around the lanes leading to The Grey House. I’ve seen ‘em myself.”
The Abbe continued to look at the girl. “Nevertheless, I must insist, there is no such animal. A trick of the light…”
Angele did not press the point and a moment or two later the conversation passed on to other topics. But she felt the Abbe’s eyes on her from time to time during the evening, and she read concern in their friend’s eyes.
The house was making excellent progress. As the autumn colours deepened and the melancholy around The Grey House gradually gave way to orderliness and a more modern atmosphere, Angele’s unease subsided. The couple had arranged to leave for England in November as planned and would return in April, when the main architectural changes would be made and Philip would be on hand to supervise and give advice. They were due to depart on the following Tuesday, and in the meantime wandered about the house, idly watching the workmen and planning even more grandiose effects for the spring.
The architect they had finally engaged, Roget Frey, was thoroughly in accord with Philip’s ideas and he had been enthusiastic about the designs the gifted young man had produced. Philip knew he could trust him to realize the effect he wanted. The house was to be a blend of ancient and modern, with every comfort, yet the medieval atmosphere was to be retained, particularly in the Great Hall and in the rooms above it.
The roof was more than half finished and two great picture windows had been punched into the ancient stonework high up in the eastern wall of the Great Hall, more than thirty feet above the fireplace.
Philip had ideas about these windows and he didn’t want to reveal his special plans to Angele or the workmen until their return; Roget had worked out a fine design for his piece de resistance and he was convinced his house wo
uld be a showplace for his. friends if the final result was only half as spectacular as his designs.
The work to be done in the winter would be long and arduous and Philip was glad they would be in the comfort of their London flat; there was no heating in The Grey House as yet and the wind and rain on that exposed ledge would find them totally unprepared. Pierre had promised that all would be up to schedule by spring, and in the warmer weather he and Angele could work out the elegant details, the central heating and style of radiators, the furnishings the curtains and the hundred and one other things that would make The Grey House a masterful blend of old and new.
In the meantime Pierre and his men were to finish the roof; prepare and glaze new windows; install the central heating plant; build a garage and terrace in front of the house; scrape and plaster the interior walls and line the Great Hall with oak panelling. Philip could imagine the stupendous effect the whole thing would have when it was finished; he strolled around the house in a delighted daze, noting the fine new staircases, the cedar handrails in the modern parts of the house and the start already made in creating a streamlined kitchen for Angele.
The whole of the upper storey had yet to be converted into several rooms; there was much to be done. But he was glad he had given his confidence to Pierre and Roget. They would see that the work had a quality seldom seen nowadays. The men had already made a start on the interior of the Great Hall and their scaffolding and lights lined the walls at a dizzy height from the flagged floor; another gang was at work on the roof outside and the place resembled a great, humming factory.
A striking contrast to the mist-haunted ambience of their first sight of the place. Philip was pacing about on the terrace, smoking a pipe, and picturing himself writing a new series of novels of the macabre in this evocative atmosphere. He had two novels coming out shortly, but he would have to get down to some hard work in England in the coming winter. Then he would return to The Grey House and by late summer would be well back in his stride.