The Dancing Man

Book 602: Murder Room

by P.M. Hubbard

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Mark Hawkins is an engineer and a loner, who has always resented his adventurer-archaeologist brother, Dick. But when Dick vanishes, allegedly dead in a climbing accident, Mark starts investigating the site his brother was excavating, a Cistercian monastery, and meets three strange souls who were the last to see his brother alive. Among them is Dr Merrion, a specialist in medieval archaeology. As Mark pokes around the woods surrounding Merrion's home, he begins to feel that sinister forces are at play in Dick's death. 'Beautifully put together with an atmosphere that literally chills you' San Francisco Chronicle

Release date: July 14, 2013

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 256

Sample

DICK DISAPPEARED some time in May, but I did not hear about it until several months later. This was because I was abroad. Also, there was no special
reason why I should be got hold of. He was my younger brother, but he had long since come of age, and we were not one of those very closely knit families. I liked Dick, and I had a slightly
disapproving and I suppose slightly envious admiration for him. He was an archaeologist and a mountain climber and a great one for the girls. I once asked him which was the most difficult ascent he
had ever made, and he said oh, Betty, far and away. After her he reckoned it was a particular crag in North Wales, I forget which. It turned out later that he had at some point made a will leaving
everything to what Rupert Brooke called the one before the last. As she had by then settled down as a respectable married woman, it must have been a bit of an embarrassment to her, but I expect the
lawyers managed it all very discreetly. Not that he had much to leave, anyway. But it meant that I was not involved in the possibility of his death, even as an heir presumptive.

I say the possibility of his death; perhaps I should say the probability, but that was all there was in it. He had gone out climbing alone and never come back. They looked for him, of course,
but he was too experienced simply to get lost or do anything silly. If he had not come back, he had been in real trouble, and the body might have been anywhere in a piece of country like that. I
had a letter from the man he was staying with at the time, but, as I say, I did not get it till some months later. It was a man called Merrion. I think I had heard Dick mention him. He was an
archaeologist, too, of sorts. I gathered his interests were two or three thousand years later than Dick’s, but I suppose they had met on some academic occasion. It occurred to me to wonder
why Dick had been staying with him, and I supposed it was the climbing. There were, as I found out later, other reasons. I might have guessed some of them, what with restless, randy Dick and his
difficult ascents. The others I could not be expected to guess, not till much later. Merrion had suggested that I come up. By the time I got the letter, the formalities were over, though of course
Dick’s death could still not be legally presumed. All the same, I said could I come? I still had a month’s leave in hand, and some of Dick’s stuff was still there. Merrion wrote
and said certainly. I went up early in September.

I am not indulging in hindsight when I say it was one of the most extraordinary places I have ever seen. It was called Llanglas. On the ordnance survey sheet it was marked in Gothic lettering
Abbey (Site of), which meant that there was nothing to see above ground, only foundations and rubble, and they were buried in the trees. There was a round shallow basin, a mile or
more across, with the mountains going up sharply on the west of it and fairly craggy foothills disposed round the other sides. Only one road led to it, winding in from the east between the foot of
the hills. The basin was completely full of trees, mostly oaks. The house was at the end of the road, on the eastern edge of the basin. It was built of the local stone, but not particularly old, a
hundred years or so. They had not even tried to use material from the remains of the abbey. They had just taken what they wanted from the nearest hillside, which was probably cheaper in the long
run. It was not as ugly as it might have been, but it was no beauty.

When I came round the last bend of the road, there was a cloudy sunset going on somewhere behind the mountains. The house and the trees were all in shadow, but there was a sort of top lighting
from the colored cloud effects overhead. It made it all look very small, though it was not a small house when you got up to it. It was not really remote, either. There was a biggish village where
you turned off the main road, and a market town only a few miles along it. I suppose the last bit of the side road must have been private, but there was nothing to show this. The house was very
much on its own, but it was barely a mile and a half from the nearest petrol pump. It was the sort of place a Victorian with money might have built to retire to, especially if he had antiquarian
leanings, as many of them had. I drove in between stone gateposts and thought how dark it all looked, with that huge splendor hanging over it. It was an impression I never entirely lost, though
there was plenty of sunlight later.

I stopped the car on the gravel in front of the house. It was gray gravel, the same stone as the house was made of, broken up smaller. The whole effect was monotone. A moment later the door
opened and Merrion himself came down the steps. I had never seen him, of course, but I never for a moment doubted who it was. He was a very tall dark man with rather staring eyes. Even the skin of
his face was dark, with an almost Mediterranean pigment under it. The eyes were the palest thing about him, staring out at me under his dark brows. He carried his face turned down, so that even
with his height and with me still in the car he seemed to be looking up at me. I got out of the car. He said, “Mr. Hawkins?” and we shook hands solemnly. I felt he was trying to do
justice to what he felt to be a solemn occasion, though I did not feel that way about Dick, who I thought had had a good life and probably ended it very much as he would have chosen.

I said, “Yes. Mr. Merrion?”

He nodded. “Let me help you with your bags,” he said. He still did not smile. I found out later that he very seldom did, but at the time I just felt that he was overplaying the
thing.

I said, “I’m sorry Dick has given you so much trouble.”

I think I wanted to shock him, and I seemed to have succeeded. He checked and stared at me harder than ever. “Trouble?” he said. “Your brother gave me no trouble. I am only
sorry it happened as it did.” He had a pleasant voice. It sounded like the voice of a much younger man. But he spoke in spurts, hesitating and watching you, and then darting off into a fresh
sentence, as if his instinct was to reconnoiter the ground at every step before committing himself. I wondered what there could be in this quiet place to induce such a feeling of stress. I did not
dislike him, but I found him, already, a little oppressive. Even before I got inside the door, I was wondering whether I had been wise to come and how long I need stay.

I lost the feeling when I got inside, because the house, once you were in it, was an extraordinarily pleasant one. It was, I suppose, an academic’s house. It was not particularly elegant,
or even particularly tidy, but everything was easy and comfortable and ordered by a high intelligence. It struck me as a man’s house, but this was probably masculine prejudice. I did not
know, in fact, whether Merrion was married. Even if he was, I was certain there were no children. There might be a grown-up family, though I doubted if he was old enough to have one. But there was
no place here for immaturity.

As we came in, a door on the other side of the hall opened, and a tall dark woman came to meet us. Merrion said, “Cynthia, this is Mr. Hawkins. My sister.”

I bowed and said, “How do you do?” They were as unmistakable a brother and sister as I have ever seen. She was younger than he was, and paler, but the features were almost identical.
She had what I suppose some men might call a rather masculine face. It made no concessions, but in her the gray eyes were almost startlingly beautiful. I thought how wrong Cynthia was; it should
have been Athene.

She said, “How nice of you to come.” The voices were as near as possible identical, even to the pitch, but she had none of her brother’s hesitation. Even from halfway across
the hall, she was the better man of the two.

I looked at her left hand, as you always do, but there was no ring. She was Miss Merrion, and uncommitted, but I knew one thing from the start. She was not Dick’s type, nor Dick hers. If
there had been any attraction here other than the mountains, it had not been Cynthia Merrion. I said, “I don’t know why I came, to tell the truth. There’s nothing I can do now.
I’m sorry I was so long getting your letter.”

Merrion said, “There are your brother’s things. They’re still in the same room. You might perhaps—” He broke off, staring at me still with that watchful, slightly
puzzled look. He did not know what I could be expected to do with Dick’s things, any more than I did.

“I’ll have a look at them,” I said. “There’s probably stuff we can throw away, and I can get the rest packed up, at least. You don’t want them lying around.
Perhaps I could take them back with me.”

Miss Merrion said, “You could, of course. He only brought a couple of suitcases. But there’s no need, if you’d rather not. Have a look at them, anyway. Your room’s next
door. Shall I show you?”

“Please,” I said. I picked up my cases and followed her. Merrion stood there, watching us. The stairs ran up from one corner of the hall. To follow a woman upstairs is one of the
very revealing things. If they are there to be seen, you see the untidiness at the back of the neck, the awkwardness of movement, the unwanted contours, even a shortage of breath. If they are not,
the effect can be very impressive. The effect with Cynthia Merrion was very impressive indeed. She was a rather splendid woman, but not in the usual sense immediately attractive. You wondered about
her, but you assumed nothing.

We went along a corridor with doors on both sides. She pointed to one as we passed it. “His things are in there,” she said. “You’re in here.” She opened the next
door and went in ahead of me. The room faced south. It was full of the fiery light from the sky, but below the sky there was nothing but dark hills. She went across to the window and stood for a
moment, looking out. Then she turned and came back toward me. I still had the suitcases in my hands. She said, “You’re not an archaeologist?”

She smiled a little as she said it, as if she did not expect me to take archaeology wholly seriously. “No,” I said, “no, I’m an engineer. Much more prosaic, I’m
afraid.”

She shook her head. “Not necessarily,” she said. “You’re older than your brother?”

“Only about three years.”

She looked at me, not hesitatingly, as Merrion had done, but making up her mind. “You’re very different,” she said.

I put down the suitcases one on each side of me. The cases and I pretty well blocked the way out between us. She had to stay where she was, and I wanted to have this out with her.
“Different how?” I said.

She shook her head again, refusing to be drawn. Then she said, “There’s more of you. I’ll show you where you can have a wash. Then come down and have a drink.”

I stood aside for her and we went out into the corridor again. “Bathroom and loo there,” she said.

“I’d really like a walk before it gets dark. Would that be all right? I’ve been too long in the car.”

“Would you? All right. But come in and have a drink when you’re ready.” She went off along the corridor, but turned at the top of the stairs. “Don’t you get
lost,” she said.

I said, “I won’t,” and went back into my room.

There was no one about when I went downstairs. There were no lights on yet. The house was still full of the yellow light from the sky, but it would not last much longer. I went straight out of
the front door. My car was still standing where I had left it on the gravel. No one had suggested my moving it, and it would come to no harm where it was. I turned and went round the north side of
the house. I had not realized how close the hills came on both sides of it. It stood blocking the gap in the hills, straddling the line of the road that came in from the east. Behind it, the great
natural saucer swept round in a curve to which the back of the house was almost tangential. The whole saucer was full of trees. I thought the ground dipped from the back of the house toward the
center of the saucer, but the tops of the trees lay level between the hillsides, and you could not really tell.

There was no garden. There was a paved court at the back of the house, with outbuildings round it, all gray stone like the house. Beyond them the trees began at once. I skirted the side of the
buildings and found, as I had expected, a green rutted track that continued the line of the road and led in through the trees toward the center of the saucer.

I say I had expected it, but it is difficult to say why. I think it was because the thing was so symmetrical and the house so obviously an intrusion. The abbey would have been laid out in the
middle of the saucer, with the road leading straight into it through the eastward gap. They liked building abbeys in these hollows in the hills. They had probably cleared the trees from the middle
of the saucer, or perhaps the trees had fringed the edge of it then and had moved down only after the abbey was dead. I did not know when it had died. If it was long enough ago, even the oaks could
have grown since. I went in along the track and found myself, quite suddenly, in the dark.

I had forgotten how late it was and how much the remaining light came from the sky. At least I could not lose my way. There was only one way to go, straight on into the tunnel under the trees.
My eyes could see more now, but there was not much to see. On both sides the space between the trunks was blocked with undergrowth. By daylight there might be ways through it, but in this murk it
looked solid. There was not a sound anywhere. Even my feet made none. The ruts were full of moss, and I went, instinctively, as softly as I could. Whatever it was the trees hid, I did not want to
disturb it. I thought that where the abbey ruins were there must be at least a little open sky and enough light to show me I had got there. Then I would turn back and go and have that drink. I
wanted to turn back now. I did not like the place. I went on precisely because I did not like it. I ply a practical trade and do not easily admit imponderables.

The track led, as I had expected, very gently downhill. I do not know how far I had walked when the ground rose a little under me and then dipped again. Further on the same thing happened again,
but this time it was less marked. It was difficult to tell how far I could see ahead. I only know that when I saw the thing standing in the track in front of me, it was already too close for
comfort. It was tall and dark and absolutely motionless.

I stopped dead. I do not think I actually stepped back. I must have made some sort of a noise, because a figure detached itself from the standing thing and came out sideways, looking at me. It
was smallish and somehow luminous in the surrounding dark. When I got my wits back a bit, I could see it was human and almost certainly a woman. She had some sort of white coat on. I took a long
breath and said, “My goodness, you gave me a fright.”

She made a small yelping sound, hesitated, peering through the dark, and then flung herself at me. “Dick!” she said. “Dick, oh my God! I thought you were dead.” She clung
to me, nuzzling with her face into the front of my jacket, but I took hold of her arms and pushed her very gently away from me. “It’s not Dick,” I said.

She jerked away from me as violently as she had flung herself at me. We stared into each other’s faces, trying to pick out what we could in the darkness. Then she shook her head, very
slowly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It was the voice. It’. . .