The Ghosts of N-Space - Barry Letts [38]
Keeping a tight lookout, he stepped onto the gangplank and walked with light steps over to the main entrance to the deckhouse. If Miss Perwhatski had come on board, this must have been the way she went, he thought, peeping cautiously into the gloom. Yes, surely that was her voice? It was difficult to hear properly with the sound of the engines.
He started to creep forward.
All at once, everything changed. An electric bell sounded right in his ear, making him jump and instigating 133
instant panic. Running footsteps and shouts from on deck.
He couldn’t go back, he’d be caught.
Starting forward, he looked wildly round. The doors all seemed as if they must go into cabins or saloons or whatnot
– bar one, a little door near the stairs. He scuttled over and opened it. Yes, it was a sort of broom cupboard. He crammed himself into it, closed the door behind him, and waited in the utter darkness, listening with palpitating heart for the commotion to die down.
And that’s how Jeremy was carried off to sea.
134
Eleven
When the Doctor came to see Sarah the next morning, she was a little taken aback to find that he knew all about the legend of the castello.
‘I’m still not convinced, though, that there isn’t something of great importance to be followed up here,’ he said. ‘With the strange happenings we witnessed all those years ago, it would be very surprising if a legend hadn’t grown up around them.’
At first Sarah was inclined to disagree with him. It was Louisa who convinced her that he was right. For the first of her secrets was revealed.
Louisa had insisted that she should stay where she was
– and that a truckle bed should be brought into the room so that they might be together. Sarah recognized it as the one her body was lying on when she’d gone on her jaunt into N-Space.
While Louisa was getting dressed in the morning, she had prattled on about her gowns, her caps, her ribbons, until Sarah was heartily glad to have been born in the twentieth century; and she’d vanished to have her breakfast with an assurance that she would be in an agony until she could rejoin her new friend.
135
After the Doctor had gone and Sarah’s breakfast tray had been cleared and they were alone together, she came over and sat on the edge of the bed, saying in a low thrilling voice, ‘I know more about the evil monk and his dread deeds than you might imagine. If it were not for the particular case, I should entreat you to read Udolpho, so that we might share in its melancholy grandeur, the sublime tale of the noble Valancourt and the base Montoni, but I shall not –’
For which Sarah was sublimely thankful. There was a pile of books on the side-table, with tides such as The Skeleton of the Black Forest, The Witches of Midnight, Murder in the Mad‐ House and so on, prominent amongst which were the four volumes of Mrs Radcliffe’s most famous novel. When she’d been left alone, she’d picked up the first volume and tried to read it, but the excesses of the story and the language, and the endless descriptions of romantic scenery, gave her such mental indigestion that she had to recite a whole wodge of John Betjeman to clear her head – like having a lemon sorbet to clean the palate after a heavily greasy meal.
‘– because it is of the utmost importance,’ Louisa continued, ‘that you should peruse Mrs Radcliffe’s latest work.’ She got up from the bed and went to a small cupboard across the room.
136
Oh no! And here she was, trapped in bed until lunchtime at the very least. There was no escape.
It was a very curious feeling, Sarah found, a little like finding an old newspaper in the attic, only backwards, to hold in her hands once more the very same volume, The Mystery of the Castello, which Jeremy had found in the library. Only now, instead of being an old book, yellowing and brittle, with a worn-out cover, it was brand-new.
The scarcely concealed glee with which Louisa handed it to her, and the way she lay on her little cot