Nightmare

Book 399: Murder Room

by Dell Shannon

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries; Thrillers

Synopsis

It was strictly a duty call and Pat Carroll wasn't looking forward to it one bit. But she was in Wales and her fiance's family lived nearby. He was dead now, killed in an accident, and Pat felt that since she was so close to his family's home she should pay her respects to the woman who would have been her mother-in-law. It would be a bore, but it was the least she could do. And, besides, it was only for a day or two. But the day or two dragged on and Pat found herself the helpless prisoner of a fanatic madwoman. Locked in a hideous room, she was trapped in an infinite eternity of a waking nightmare . . . 'A great suspense shocker in the icy horror tradition of Psycho ' Boston Herald

Release date: July 14, 2014

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

By itself the rain wouldn’t be too bad, but the gusty winds from the west, driving the rain sidewise, produced an effect very much like fog. And quite as
hampering to a driver.

Pat slowed still more at another bend in the road, and again cursed herself that she’d listened to that maundering old fool in Clun. “Oh, this is only local, miss—you’ll
find you’ll run out of it within an hour, west.” Local! It had just got steadily worse. And to think she could have been back at that delightful inn, toasting before the public-room
hearth, with muffins and hot tea to come! If she’d thought there was any prospect of a sixty-mile drive in a downpour of rain on a strange road, of course she’d never have left Clun
after a late lunch there. Damn it, the natives ought to know about their country—no business to go telling wanton lies to visiting foreigners so obliging as to come and look at their mingy
little nation!

The thought of that casual guess, probably produced just because she was an American (to reassure her that it doesn’t rain all the time in England), made her grind her teeth. She
also thought bitter thoughts about the narrow rambling roads (good heavens, they called a three-lane road a highway!) and of course the impossibility of getting a decent cup of coffee, and peculiar
hotels without private baths, and the incomprehensible money based on arbitrary units of twelve and twenty instead of a logical hundred. And the lack of ice water. And the silly notion of driving
on the wrong side of the road. And in fact, for a few intensely insular moments, every single peculiar and annoying habit the English have of being so totally un-American, which every visiting
American has ever darkly complained about.

“The English!” said Pat aloud in heartfelt tones. The windshield wipers were working manfully, but they could be only about fifty per cent effective against the deluge. Oh,
well. She needn’t have believed the yokel: it had been her own choice to come on. Anxious to get the thing over with, have it behind her. One of the civilized duties of social
communication, unavoidable. Just one of those things, and the only thing that had marred her anticipation of this long-planned holiday. However, it’d soon be over, and it was little enough
for her to do.

One thing she would say of the English, they knew how to build an automobile. She patted the Jaguar’s wheel affectionately. Very extravagant, and there’d be the freight home too,
just about equaling the import tax; but of course she needn’t think about another car for years and years and years, and besides—an unarguable answer—she’d always wanted one
and she’d had the money. Actually, she shouldn’t—what was the phrase?—kick against the pricks. She’d had a lovely time so far, with only the faint shadow of
this necessary visit to Stephen’s mother hanging over her. The Jaguar was a dream to handle, and the weather had been wonderful all the leisurely way from London. She’d taken it very
slow and easy, first because she wanted just to wander, see everything, all on her own; and second because of getting used to driving British style. She’d pretty well got the hang of it now,
and felt proud of herself.

This was the first time she’d run into any inconvenience, in three weeks; it was senseless to complain. Again, just one of those things. But all the same, she’d stop at the next
village which looked like having a decent inn.

The trouble was, there didn’t seem to be any. Not in the last fifteen miles, since it had really turned to a deluge. She knew she’d come about sixty miles from Clun, and thus must be
somewhere in Brecknockshire, but that was about all she did know. She had the uneasy feeling that she’d got off the main road somehow: even the backward English couldn’t call this a
major highway, could they? She had studied the map rather casually, as she was in the habit of doing. She didn’t want to cover England in a series of grim set runs, today I’ll get as
far as Tunbridge, today I’ll make it to Truro by lunchtime. When she saw something she wanted to look at, she’d stop and look at it, maybe stay the night. So she’d often wandered
off the main roads.

There had been a signpost about five miles back, but though she’d stopped and craned her neck, she hadn’t been able to make it out through the downpour, and she certainly
wasn’t going to get out in that and eventually reach civilization looking like a drowned rat. The two hats she possessed—one a serviceable rainy-day hat, one for church—were in
her luggage in the trunk. No, in what the incomprehensible English called the boot.

She was bound (like Alice) to come somewhere eventually. Everybody knew that rural England was composed of villages about five miles apart. It was only at home that there were expanses
so vast you could drive all day without seeing anything but wheat or cows.

However, she’d come a good fifteen miles from the last hamlet. She’d hesitated about stopping there, though the rain then hadn’t quite reached deluge proportions, but it had
been a dreary, incredibly tiny place, and its one inn had no accommodations for guests.

“Never say die,” she said aloud. “Bound to be another one along soon.” And there she would stop, always providing the inn would have her.

She was going dead slow, fifteen miles an hour, and had switched on the lights. In spite of three weeks’ experience, she still had a tendency to shy away right when anything suddenly
appeared in front of her, and she did so now, violently, as a black bulk loomed up through the haze of rain. She swerved, and tramped on the brake, and like a fool killed the engine.

Another car, motionless at the side of the road. Pat rolled down the left-hand window. Somebody stalled?

A vague dark bulk moved toward her out of the dark bulk of the car, and she heard its door slam. Thick wet mist blew in the window onto her face; it smelled of salt and lots of wet green woods
and grass. “Thanks be to God,” said the dark bulk. “A human face in the wilderness. At least I presume you’re human? I congratulate myself—a Jaguar. I have fallen in
with the elite, no mere vulgar member of hoi polloi in an M.G. or Hillman.”

“Are you stalled?” asked Pat. “What a day for it. You’d better get in, I’ll take you on to the next town.” And at home you’d hesitate about
that sort of thing, but probably in England it was quite safe. Besides, the voice sounded like that of an educated man.

He fumbled at the door and precipitated himself in beside her. “And rescued by a lady. My luck still holds. I’ve been sitting in that cow for an hour, praying somebody’d come
along. My own fault—I’d been warned the battery was wonky, but machinery means nothing to me. It stops, I get out and walk. But not in Noah’s flood. I’m eternally grateful
to you.”

“Not at all,” said Pat. “I’ll be eternally grateful if you can tell me where we are. I’ve got a nasty idea I’m off the main road.”

“Ah, an American. Yes, that I can tell you—I do read maps. This is a secondary road, and we ought to be somewhere within five miles of a place called Tregarth. I beg your
pardon, should have introduced myself before—I’m Alan Glentower.”

Pat had started the engine again and let in the clutch, and at this she let up on the accelerator and swiveled around to look at him, groping for the gearshift. “You are? Well,
imagine. Picking you up out of the flood like this. I’m Pat Carroll.”

“How do you do,” said Glentower gloomily. “If you ask me for an autograph I’ll scream.”

Pat laughed. “I can’t very well right now. Besides, I didn’t buy the book, I borrowed it.”

“An honest American,” said Glentower. He was very wet, even from the brief passage between the cars, and he made the Jaguar suddenly smaller, bulking beside her. “It’s a
sort of measure of my mental state to say let’s not talk about the book. All writers are egotistical asses, generally we enjoy that kind of thing. But I’m good and fed up with hearing
how Tom, Dick and Harry liked the book.”

“But I did,” said Pat. It was a very good book indeed, Isle of Gramarye. If you liked soundly-researched, well-written, exciting and action-filled historical novels; and a
lot of people did.

“It’s made a lot of money,” said the man beside her. “I’m sorry to get the upholstery so wet. That part of it I like. But they keep coming at you for interviews on
the B.B.C. or television, and those awful meet-the-author teas, and autographing parties. Like most writers, I don’t like people en masse. Very few of us are good speakers, you know,
and if we’d confess it damn shy and retiring. What’s called an ambivalent situation. Watch it—there’s a fence to the near side.”

“How do you mean, ambivalent?”

“Oh, we’re all egotists as I say. Idea of talking about ourselves very attractive, but at the same time that dreadful paralyzing shyness. I was escaping out of it. Said all solemn,
going off to collect local color for another book—which is nonsense, you do that out of books in your own study. George told me the damn battery was down.” He had a pleasant
baritone voice.

“Is that a light?” said Pat. “I do believe it is.”

“It is. Haven. Thank God. I have a vision of muffins,” said Glentower dreamily. “And lots of tea. But first a drink.”

“That sounds heavenly.”

Five minutes more, dead slow, and the light resolved itself into several lights. A hamlet. Pat slowed more, peering out of the obscured window, looking for the inn. “This looks like
it—yes, there’s a sign. And a dogtrot, how nice, we needn’t get wet.”

“What in the name of heaven is a dogtrot?”

She laughed. “Oh, sorry! A porte-cochere!”

“And I already am wet. Why didn’t I bring my bag, I wonder.”

But it was quite a satisfactory haven. She stopped under the shelter of the overhanging port, and they went in. In the light of the entrance hall Glentower was revealed as the counterpart of the
photograph on the jacket of Isle of Gramarye—tall, dark, very thin, with a humorously craggy face all aquiline nose and black bars of eyebrows. He took off a nondescript ancient hat,
revealing an untidy thatch of black hair, and looking at her said, “Rescued by a goddess, I see. How do you do again.” And then a potboy or something (were there still potboys?) came
up.

Glentower explained about his car. Oh, well, reckon as Tom Shipley could send Bob out to tow her in, sure. Cost extra, out of hours. If the gentleman reckoned to drive on
tonight—

“I don’t,” said Glentower emphatically. “Not if I can stay here. Miss Carroll—it is Miss?—I’ll offer to stand you tea and dinner.”

“More like both together, isn’t it?” said Pat. The clock on the mantel in the public bar said ten minutes to six.

Inquiry of the landlord resulted in cheerful welcome; indeed guests could be accommodated. Betty was sent at once to make up the beds; on Glentower’s request for sherry, Martha was sent
after it scurrying, while from the rear premises someone else was ordering Jenny about. “At least they seem well-stocked with maids,” murmured Glentower. Pat sent the boy out for her
overnight case, and repaired the day’s ravages in the upstairs bath, a coffin-shaped room obviously partitioned off at a much later date than the original construction. In the one public bar,
Glentower poured sherry for her. It was a very large room, and only three or four men sat about. Glentower had pre-empted a corner table by the hearth, where a companionable coal fire hissed and
crackled pleasantly. The armchairs were leather-cushioned. Pat sighed and drank sherry contentedly.

“And what are you doing in England, just sight-seeing?”

“All on my own,” she nodded. “I expect it’s foolish of me, because I’m not likely ever to come by another legacy. And it was a very nice one—ten thousand
dollars, from a great-aunt. I’m spending it all in one glorious bust. I always wanted to do this—just drive all round the British Isles on my own. I got here a month ago, and spent a
week in London while I bought the car—I’ll do London properly later on.”

“That sounds fun. Parts of the country I’ve never seen myself—I may follow your example one day.”

“I went up to Gloucester first, because my grandmother was born there—but no relations left now. Our family seems never to acquire them, somehow. I don’t think I’ve even
got so much as a cousin, now Aunt’s dead—my parents were killed in an accident ten years ago, and I lived with Aunt after that. Well, then after Gloucester I saw a bit of Stafford and
then started working my way west. I’m making for Cardigan now, on a visit to someone there, and then I think I’ll go down through Wales, all the way to Cornwall, and up the coast across
east. It doesn’t matter how much time I take, I can just go on until the money gives out. Everybody tells me I’m crazy, to give up a good job—I’d been at the bank nearly
five years—and spend all the money this way, but I don’t know. It doesn’t seem very sensible to go on saving up for years and then do your traveling when you’re too old to
enjoy it, maybe have arthritis or chronic indigestion or something.”

He laughed. “I think you’re being very sensible—toujours gai! Never know, you might invest it and lose it all, or get killed crossing the road before you got any
interest on it. D’you intend staying long in Cardigan? I’m making for Newcastle, Carmarthen’s my home county, and I could show you around there, give you tips on what to see. You
mustn’t miss the cockle women, or the Carmarthen Oak—other things.”

“That’s very nice of you,” said Pat. “I’m—not just exactly sure how long I’ll have to stay. Oh, dear, what a way to put it. And I don’t mean it
exactly as it sounds, but— You see, it’s a sort of duty visit. A little place called Llandaffy. The man I was engaged to was English, and his mother lives there. Stephen was in
the R.A.F., a sort of test unit of some kind, using American bases—that’s how we happened to meet. He was killed in an experimental flight almost a year ago.”

“I see,” said Glentower sympathetically. “That kind of thing can be awkward. You’ll be wept over, and all of it fetched back and sentimentalized.”

She grimaced. “How right you are. Just one of those things.”

One of the maids came up to ask if they’d have the cold beef and fried potatoes or sausage and eggs. They both shuddered at the notion of cold beef and settled for the sausage.
“You’ve given me too much sherry on an empty stomach,” said Pat. “I’ve been talking too much about myself.”

“Not a bit. Come on, let’s kill the bottle. Just another glass apiece. Not that it’s especially good sherry, but at least something with a little kick in it. If I had to go
traveling to get away from my public,” said Glentower sadly, “why didn’t I go to France? You always stand a much better chance in French inns of getting really beautiful meals.
Especially in the vineyard country. I remember a little place near Aurillac, called Le Chat Noir—” He sighed.

But the sausage was honest homemade sausage, and the eggs beaten beautifully light. There was also fresh lettuce-and-greens salad, and hot muffins with plenty of butter, and a passable apple
tart. On the whole, the haven was satisfactory.

The fire was built up, and more men drifted in; the inevitable darts game began. Pat and Glentower sat talking sporadically, rather somnolent with the food and warmth. Presently Glentower
reconnoitered, found an unopened bottle of brandy and took it off the landlord’s hands. “Just the thing to go down nice and cozy on such a night. Lord, listen to that rain. I wonder if
Bob’s fetched my car in. I hope somebody remembers to bring up my bag.”

About nine o’clock Bob turned up with the bag and said as how Mr. Shipley reckoned the Humber’d need a new battery, that thing in her wasn’t worth recharging. “Well, all
right, shove it in. Can I have it by tomorrow?”

Bob looked at him scornfully and said it wasn’t much of a job, just shove in a new battery, certain sure he could. “All right, then. Thanks very much—here, buy yourself a
drink. . . . Damn it,” added Glentower, “why should I know anything about cars, just because I’m male? Why should everybody expect it and look at me as if I’m a
nance when I say something stupid? Talk about the tyranny of sex.”

“It’s much easier being female,” agreed Pat. “People fall over themselves to help you.” She liked Glentower; they somehow jibed, and had fallen into the easy
conversation of much longer friendship. He was, she could guess, as he’d confessed a shy man; his little poses and didacticisms were cover-up, but almost apologetically delivered. And he had
that immense and rare saving grace, a sense of humor about himself. She felt that he was an instinctively warmhearted man who did not make friends easily or often, shied away from people somewhat.
But a very self-sufficient man.

The brandy was half gone, and the crowd beginning to thin as closing time approached. Pat yawned and said, “I suppose I’d better get to bed early, if I’m going to get an early
start and make Llandaffy tomorrow. I did get off the road, to end up way down south here nearly into Glamorgan.”

“Oh, if it clears you should have an easy run. Didn’t you say it’s somewhere up near Plynlimon? Call it ninety miles.”

“Yes, with any luck I should make it by lunchtime. . . . Oh, all right, just one more.”

Glentower poured it. “Look,” he said abruptly, refilling his own glass, “you needn’t stay with the woman more than a couple of days? I’m going to Newcastle to
potter around looking at houses—I always wanted a house in Carmarthen, and now I can afford to buy one. Let’s see, this is Thursday. Suppose you meet me in Newcastle, say next Thursday,
O.K.?—the Black Lion in High Street, they’ll do you well—and I’ll show you round some of the places you ought to see.”

“It’s awfully nice of you. I’d like to. The thing is, I don’t exactly know how soon I could get away.” Pat sipped brandy and after a moment said, “I
can’t tell you how much I’m not looking forward to it.” The combination of the brandy, and this warm comfortable place after the difficult wet drive, and the peculiar
feeling of intimacy with this man only four hours known to her loosened her tongue a little. “I have an idea she’s rather a difficult woman. Of course I had letters from her—when
we got engaged, and after Stephen was killed. Very stiff formal letters. She’s terribly religious.”

“Oh, dear,” said Glentower.

“Well, yes, you may say so. Stephen never said much about her, but somehow, from what he did say, I got the idea that he’d—oh, sort of escaped from her, if you know what I
mean. He was—” she hesitated; no, she really couldn’t talk about Stephen to Glentower. Not decent, somehow. Say, I don’t think in the end I would have married him
anyway. Poor Stephen. Stephen who had been so anxiously earnest—the only phrase for it. Even before he’d been killed, she had been slowly reaching the conclusion that she was more sorry
for him than anything else: it had been a—a maternal feeling, which certainly wouldn’t have made for a very good marriage. “His father died when he was only a baby, and I
think—as mothers will do in that case—she’d rather babied him, you know. Hung onto him, as all she had.”

“Yes, I see. Awkward for you now.”

“The thing is, she knows—I wrote her when I knew I was coming—she knows I’ve got lots of time in hand, no reason to make it just a courteous flying visit. Of course, for
all I know,” added Pat thoughtfull. . .