Hold Back the Dark Page 6

  ‘Hi,’ said Clarry. ‘He isn’t in.’

  She presumed Fiona was heading for the office, but she stopped now and brushed an invisible fleck from her sleeve, then demanded, ‘How well do you know Nicolas?’

  The question was curt, and Clarry muttered, ‘Better than most.’ She had had experience of Nicolas Dargan at his roughest and toughest, and it would surprise her if Fiona Stretton had.

  ‘And that’s why you got this job?’ Fiona was looking at Clarry with a disdain bordering on contempt, and that was downright stupid.

  If she had been different Clarry could have told her, ‘Somebody recommended me to the estate manager. Nicolas knew nothing about it.’ As it was, Clarry was in no mood to reassure Fiona Stretton about anything.

  ‘Could be,’ she said, and left it at that, and Fiona began to view the chimneypiece, her expression rapidly becoming super-critical.

  In its unfinished state it was patchy. ‘I only hope you know what you’re doing,’ she said, as if she doubted that, and Clarry acted puzzled.

  ‘Are you talking about chimneypieces or Cole Dargan?’

  ‘It’s Cole, is it?’ Fiona’s lips had thinned. ‘I’m talking about the fireplace, of course. How’s it going to look when you’ve finished. Like new?’

  ‘No,’ said Clarry. If it did it would stick out like a sore thumb. The stone had mellowed and aged with the rest of the house. Did the girl think she was going to scour it down?

  Fiona gave a little sigh and said coldly, ‘You may be here because you and Nicolas are old friends—’ Clarry opened her mouth and closed it ‘—but our standards are very high.’

  ‘Our standards?’ Clarry acted dumb again. ‘Do you mean yours? And I thought we were being employed by Dargan Enterprises.’

  Fiona brushed that aside. ‘Of course you are, but if your work is second-rate Nicolas won’t let sentiment sway him.’

  She was so obnoxious, she was ridiculous, and Clarry drawled, ‘But everybody knows that sentiment never enters into a Dargan deal. I quite understand that—I always have.’

  Nigel could have been different, but Nigel was never the boss nor likely to be, and Clarry had had enough of Miss Fiona rabbiting on. ‘And I tell you what I think you should do now,’ she said as if a bright idea had just struck. ‘You’ll find Danny Hill in the drawing-room or somewhere around. He’s my right-hand man, and he’ll be doing a great deal of work here. Why don’t you run along and tell him that you and Cole Dargan expect us to keep up the standards you’re both accustomed to?’

  If Fiona was stupid enough to do that Danny might not say much, but his response would be blistering. His reputation must have reached Fiona somehow, because she said quickly, ‘I think you should speak to him,’ and Clarry grinned.

  ‘I bet you do,’ she said.

  She watched Fiona flounce out of the room and did a little deep breathing before she returned to her assault on the tar stains. Paul Burnley was right—Miss Fiona was a spoiled bitch. She deserved to get Nicolas Dargan, but on the whole Clarry did not think she would, because the last thing he was was a fool.

  * * *

  Night was falling when she finished for the day and the house was filling with shadows. Danny was in the parlour with a newspaper, and she gave him the photographs, then rang her work number from a phone on the ground floor and listened to several messages that had come on to her answerphone that day. There was nothing too urgent, and after today a friend who ran a mobile catering business from the next unit would be checking her morning mail for her.

  Then she showered in the little bathroom, washing her hair to get rid of the dust, and came downstairs freshened up to join Danny in their evening meal.

  The food was good, well cooked and well served, and tonight they ate alone. Paul Burnley didn’t join them and Clarry didn’t miss him. Danny was comfortable as an old pair of slippers, and it had been a tiring day.

  She did all the talking, she always did with Danny. She told him how she was getting on with the chimneypiece. She described the priest’s hole in the attic, not getting shut in and panicking but where it was and how it worked. They looked at all the photographs, and she said that Fiona had asked her if the chimneypiece was going to be good as new when it was finished.

  Danny looked horrified, and she teased, ‘I told her to find you and tell you how she wants the carving done,’ and he grinned like a mischievous monkey.

  Never once did Clarry mention Nicolas Dargan, so that, listening to her, Danny must have believed she had never set eyes on him today. In fact, from the moment she had opened his bathroom door this morning he was either around, or he might as well have been, because everything that had happened to her since had been dominated by him. If she had told Danny the half of it he would have been worried to death.

  As it was, Danny was relaxed enough to eat a good meal and then doze off in an armchair by the fire. At the table Clarry made notes dealing with the answerphone messages, read the newspaper and started the crossword.

  When she was home she had a busy social life, but she and Danny often spent evenings alone like this. She was always content to be with the old man who had done more for her than she could ever repay.

  This room was about the same size as the living-room in the bungalow. The Lodge was a much grander house, the furniture in here was worth a whole lot more than theirs, but there was a familiar feel about the situation. Clarry often occupied herself while Danny snoozed, and now she solved a crossword clue with a self-satisfied smirk and decided that tomorrow she would see about getting a radio.

  It was warm and cosy, with even the right background sounds: a ticking clock and Danny softly snoring. Then the door swung silently open and Nicolas Dargan was framed in the doorway.

  He seemed to fill it. Behind him the corridor was darker than the room. The temperature dropped and Clarry imagined that the wind was rising. Enter the demon king, she thought crazily, and snapped, ‘Don’t you knock on doors?’

  This was a sitting-room; why shouldn’t anyone walk in? But she had felt a chill when he materialised because she had felt so safe and secure before.

  ‘You’re a fine one to talk about knocking first after this morning,’ he said, and she hoped she would not have to explain that to Danny. ‘We’re expecting company—will you both be joining us?’

  ‘Who’s coming?’ Again she was speaking without stopping to think, because she would hardly be likely to know them, whoever they were.

  ‘Folk from around here, mostly,’ he told her.

  ‘Miss Stretton’s friends?’

  ‘Most of them.’

  Fiona had had no part in this invitation. She wouldn’t want Clarry and Danny meeting her friends. Were these the crowd she hoped Nicolas Dargan would meet in the clubhouse yesterday, so that she could show them what a twosome she and he were? Only they were not, because no one was getting that kind of commitment from him.

  ‘Not much for company,’ said Danny, as brusquely as if he was being invited to join in an orgy, and Clarry knew why Nicolas wanted his ‘old friend Clare’ along. She was almost tempted to go, because Fiona Stretton needed taking down a peg, she had been insufferable this afternoon.

  Nicolas said nothing. He looked at Clarry as he had that first morning, when she had walked into the King’s Room expecting to be sacked before she started, and again it was tunnel vision, so that he was all she could see, and she thought wildly, If he touches me it will be the way it was with the handshake, and heaven help me, I’ll go with him.

  Somehow she looked away, but it was like tearing herself free. She was surprised when her voice came out so bright and brittle. ‘How kind of you to think of us, but I don’t think so, thank you—we know our place.’

  Nicolas burst out laughing. ‘I can’t believe I heard that!’ He grinned at Danny, who was trying not to grin back. ‘If you change your mind—’ he said.

  ‘We shan’t,’ said Clarry. ‘Besides, Paul might look in.’

  ‘He won’t,’ said
Nicolas, which could mean the estate manager was joining the guests or working late, but she felt she was being parted from an ally and bit her lip to stop herself asking, How do you know? Have you warned him off me?

  As Nicolas closed the door behind him Danny said, ‘Keep it to business. Keep out of his way.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that,’ Clarry said grimly. ‘I’m not likely to forget what I owe to Cole Dargan,’ and she thought Danny suddenly looked very old indeed.

  She jumped up and went across to him. ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘shall we try to pair him off with Fiona Stretton—don’t you think it would serve him right?’

  That made Danny smile. ‘Pigs might fly,’ he said.

  But the peace of the evening was shattered for Clarry. Not that there was that much noise. She did hear cars arriving and when she listened carefully she could catch the sound of voices and laughter, but it was in no way a boisterous party.

  The main room was beneath this little parlour. Clarry had been in there, and while she sat with the newspaper on the table in front of her she was imagining it now. Panelled walls and oil paintings, red Persian rugs on the dark polished floor, and genuine Jacobean furniture. How much of that Nicolas Dargan had brought with him and how much the Strettons had sold with the house Clarry didn’t know, but Fiona would be at home, and most of the guests would be used to seeing her in this setting.

  This was her scene, and there would be no sign tonight of the supercilious young woman who had looked down her neat little nose at Clarry this afternoon. She would be smiling at everyone, showing her neat little teeth and sticking close as a shadow to Nicolas Dargan.

  For some reason Clarry was finding the idea of that very irritating. Danny had found himself a book and she pretended to carry on with the crossword, getting tetchier by the minute as time dragged by.

  Surely Nicolas’s voice would carry from the murmur below? She was almost sure she caught it once or twice, but it was impossible to distinguish words, and of course she was not really listening, much less straining to hear.

  But she couldn’t get the picture of Fiona out of her mind, and if Danny had not been here, and bound to ask where she was going, she might have strolled into the party and fluttered her eyelashes at Nicolas just to take the smirk off Fiona’s face.

  But that would be playing his game, and that was the last thing she intended to do. So Fiona could go on impressing her friends and showing him what a perfect partner she could be, and blow the pair of them.

  Clarry rather wished Paul Burnley would turn up. She would cheerfully have gone with him on his late-night amble round the grounds. Keeping out of the maze, though. ‘The next time you get lost in the maze after dark you might meet more than you bargained for,’ Nicolas had warned her. Like what? Like him and Fiona, sitting on the stone seat?

  Clarry had no idea why that should make her want to throw something smashable at the wall, but it did, and she took a paperback thriller off a shelf and read it doggedly, elbows on the table and hands over her ears. Until Danny yawned and said, ‘I’m for bed.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Clarry. ‘I’ll take my book up.’

  She took her time undressing and washing, getting her make-up off and brushing her hair.

  ‘My advice to you is to dye that white streak before you develop a fixation on it...’ Even when she couldn’t hear him she kept remembering what he had said. That could be the start of a fixation, an obsession, and tomorrow when she was less tired and cooler-headed she would check that before it became a habit.

  In bed she opened her book and realised she would have to start again from the beginning, because while she was downstairs she had hardly taken in a word she was reading.

  She couldn’t hear the voices up here. The night was peaceful, there was nothing to disturb her, but she was too restless to fall asleep, and she was still trying to read when the guests started to leave.

  They hadn’t stayed that late, it was only around eleven o’clock when she heard the first car doors slamming and engines revving up. She switched off her light and opened her window just wide enough to see down into the forecourt and the drive, and then she could hear the voices again.

  They all seemed to be leaving at the same time, and from the sound of them it had been a good party as they called and laughed, and streamed around in the lights from the house and the open door.

  Clarry watched them going, car after car, until at last there were only two figures down there on the forecourt, Nicolas Dargan, dark in a dark suit, and Fiona with her silver-gilt hair and a pale dress that floated when she turned from waving goodbye to a departing Mercedes and looked up at the man beside her.

  She was laughing, Clarry thought, smiling anyway as though it had been a lovely evening, but now they had all gone the best was to come. With her hand through Nicolas’s arm they strolled towards the house together, and Clarry instinctively shrank down on her bed, although she could hardly be seen up here.

  Reflected light went out on the cobblestones as the heavy main door closed. Now they would be in the entrance hall. Where would they go from there? she wondered. What would they say to each other when there was no other company? What would they do?

  She felt terrible, hunched in her bed. She was an outsider here, of course she was, and it shouldn’t be bothering her, but suddenly she could have wept into her pillow like a lonely child.

  * * *

  She understood that better in the morning. It was because she was crazy about the house that she envied Fiona Stretton, who was managing to hang on to King’s Lodge, not because she was hanging on to Nicolas Dargan down there. Clarry could never be jealous of a man she disliked so heartily, and today she was going to start cleaning the big fireplace in the entrance hall, doing as Danny said and keeping out of his way.

  This fireplace was massive. In the old days all the cooking had been done here, cauldrons had simmered, great sides of meat had rotated on spits; but long ago a room leading off the hall had been turned into a kitchen, and now the fireplace was a showpiece on which logs burned on occasions. The fire was out now, although ashes were left piled and a charred log was waiting to be topped with kindling.

  After breakfast Clarry went down, carrying a piled tray. Staff were about. There was the hum of a vacuum cleaner, a girl was running a polisher over the quarry-tiled floor, and in the kitchen the housekeeper and the cook were bustling around.

  ‘I’ll be working down here this morning,’ Clarry told them. ‘I’m starting on the main fireplace.’

  She crept into the King’s Room to get her tools, and again the bed was smooth and the room was empty, and she was not waiting to find out if Nicolas was in the bathroom behind the panelling or not. She grabbed and ran, and came down the stairs clutching her bulky canvas bag.

  This time the girl with the polisher, hovering near the chimneypiece, called, ‘Sounds as if there’s a bird up there.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Clarry went to see. That probably happened quite often with these wide chimneys when there was no smoke rising.

  ‘Usually they get out,’ said the girl. ‘Could be a bat—more likely a bird, though.’

  You could see right to the sky, and high up there the bird was fluttering, beating its wings in frantic flight. Clarry willed it out, standing below with upturned face. If it didn’t escape it would fall exhausted, probably with a broken wing, and it was so near the top if it would only fly up instead of thrashing around.

  She heard the girl squeak, ‘Oh, Mr Dargan!’

  She didn’t look at him. She felt that the bird was going to make it so long as she didn’t take her eyes off it, like cheering on a racer, Come on, you can do it, nearly there! Go, man, go! ‘What are you looking for now?’ Nicolas asked her, and she said,

  ‘Why don’t you take a wild guess?’ and heard the girl giggle nervously.

  Now the bird was silhouetted with wide-spread wings in the circle of white that was the sky, and then it was gone and she cried, ‘It’s out!’ but almost bef
ore the words were through her lips a fall of soot from the bird’s last brush with the chimney walls came down on her. She had no time to duck away before it had covered head and shoulders like a soft sticky veil, filling her mouth and eyes so that she staggered back, gagging and spluttering.

  She heard Nicolas Dargan laugh, right by her, and she lurched against him, rubbing her head on his jacket, burrowing her face into his shirt.

  She was blinded. Couldn’t see a thing. She could hear the women dear-oh-dearing, and she blinked and gasped, ‘Oh, how awful! I can’t tell you how sorry I am.’

  She had managed to transfer a liberal amount of soot. He didn’t look quite as bad as she did, but bad enough. ‘Don’t even try,’ he said. ‘You’d better get cleaned up.’

  ‘And you.’ He probably suspected she had done that deliberately, and she was suddenly aware of his hands on her shoulders and jumped back as if he might start shaking her.

  ‘I’ll see you down here in fifteen minutes,’ he said. ‘Bring a jacket.’

  ‘What for?’ Clarry queried.

  But he had gone, and someone was handing her a towel, which was fine for mopping off the top layer, but the residue would need soap and hot water. By now most of the staff seemed to be here, and those who had seen what had happened were telling those who had not, ‘She fell right up against Mr Dargan—got soot all over him, but he was ever so nice about it.’

  He could hardly have cursed her, with that audience, over what appeared to be an accident. No one could prove it wasn’t, and she was admitting nothing. She might even apologise again, because she had overreacted and could just have ruined a very expensive jacket.

  Her dungarees and sweater were used to rough treatment. She stripped them off, and had to scrub her skin before she creamed it, and went through half a bottle of shampoo washing the tackiness out of her hair.

  Of course it took longer than fifteen minutes. Twenty-five minutes later she hurried downstairs, with flushed face and wet heavy hair, and with a mustard-coloured duffel coat slung over her shoulders.