The House of Lost Souls - F. G. Cottam [13]
‘Are you aware, Mr Seaton, that there are more trees in Surrey than in any other county in England?’
‘No. That I didn’t know, professor.’
‘An Irish accent. Dublin?’
‘Dublin. Though I was born in Bray, which is to the south of Dublin in the north of County Wicklow.’
‘On the coast.’
‘On the coast.’
The professor nodded. He was still looking out of the window. ‘No coast in Surrey, of course. No salt in the soil. None of those withering coastal winds. Which probably explains the concentration of trees.’
Seaton said nothing.
‘The wood we’re in on this hill was here long before the university and will, I fancy, be here long after it, too. Would you agree?’
‘I’d say so, professor. I’d say it was a betting certainty.’
‘Entropy,’ the professor said.
‘What?’
‘Yesterday men came and used those high-pressure water hoses more usually employed to eradicate graffiti. They used them to scour the moss from the building we’re in. They’ve been doing it a lot, lately. But this morning the moss was back.’
Seaton sat with his elbows on his knees and his fingers linked. He looked away from the professor’s back, down at his own hands.
‘Each day the electrician comes. Each day the lavatories are scrubbed and disinfected. But it makes no difference. Entropy, Mr Seaton. The breakdown of a pattern. The descent into disorder.’
Outside, he could hear the fizz and blink of the fluorescents in the dark corridor. ‘This isn’t entropy, professor.’
Professor Clarke turned from the window and faced Seaton. He took off his glasses. His eyes were very blue in the light of the Coleman lamp and for a man who studied ethics, Seaton thought, surprisingly lacking in guile. ‘There’s something in the trees,’ he said. ‘Something in this building sometimes, too. I’m being haunted, aren’t I?’
‘It’s somewhat worse than that, I’m afraid.’
The professor groaned. ‘You’re afraid,’ he said. He sat down.
‘What possessed you to take them to the Fischer house?’
‘Can you help me, Mr Seaton? Can you help any of us? You look like a priest. Like Central Casting’s idea of a priest, anyway. One of those rugged, brooding, defrocked priests who rekindles his faith in a rousing final reel.’
He’d been drinking, Seaton realised. Vodka, probably. He hadn’t noticed any liquor smell. He rose to go. This was useless. ‘I’m no priest, Professor Clarke.’
‘But you’re a Catholic.’
Seaton laughed before he could stop himself. ‘It’s no help.’
‘You’re alive. And you’ve been there. Haven’t you?’
Looking at the doomed man in front of him, Seaton said, ‘What possessed you to take those girls there?’
‘The invitation, of course,’ the professor said. ‘I took them because we were invited to go.’
Seaton took this in. ‘Can I ask who it was invited you?’
‘It was Peter Antrobus. A philosophy postgraduate. At least, he called himself that. But I imagine it was a false identity and his credentials every bit as bogus as those you showed me when you came in here.’
Seaton sat back down. ‘Tell me everything, professor. Start at the beginning. I want to know everything you do about Peter Antrobus. And you will tell me. Even drunk, I’d say you know enough about ethics to know you owe it to those girls.’ He glanced at his watch. He didn’t want to be crunching across the clumsy gravel of the university’s paths in the dark. He didn’t want to be anywhere near this place when night fell. He did not want to risk another encounter with the visitor in the spats. Outside, it was raining persistently out of low, blue-black cloud. But it was only just after two o’clock in the afternoon. Seaton sat back in his chair and the professor began to speak.
Five
The drive to Whitstable was almost due east, so he was chasing darkness as the sun declined, anaemic through cloud when it showed itself, in the mirrors of the Saab.