go and bring the Salmon indoors before she falls into the ha-ha." Esme shrunk back into the darkness. Uncle George was muttering something about the character-moulding effects of good boarding schools, and Marie-Hélène sought to re-orient the conversation.
"You mean you just need to want it enough and you can have a succubus of your very own?" she asked, looking at me innocently.
"Er... Well, that wasn't really what I meant, but I suppose it's one way of seeing it... Although, it really depends on your conception of reality... I ah..."
"'Conception of reality'?" Uncle George snorted. Fortunately, he had not fully realised to what sin I had been referring earlier, or I dare say I would have been thrown unceremoniously out of the house. "Never heard such bosh in all my life."
"But what's in it for the succubus?" she asked.
"Well, I dare say that's a curious annex to the problem of evil in general. The satisfaction of corrupting a soul, perhaps? Her own ticket out of Hell for a while? Who knows?"
The days passed by with astonishing, dream-like swiftness. I got very little serious work done, and not merely because the copy of the Sertum Steinfeldense Norbertinum on which I had been working had vanished completely, despite a morning’s energetic searching by Marie-Hélène and myself. I did, however, take a great many walks in the countryside around Endings, and played a certain amount of bridge.
While the twins grew bonnier every day, Esme seemed to be sinking into a profound depression at the prospect of being sent to school. She would sit up for much of the night reading - returning from bridge parties in the village, I would frequently see her light burning into the early hours - while being absent for much of the day.
The village of Northcombe was so small that we frequently found ourselves a frustrating seven for cards. This problem, however, solved itself in late July. I was walking on a trail that led through the woods, constituting a shortcut to the village, when I ran into Mrs Lorrimer.
I should probably explain here that Mrs. Lorrimer was the most frequent bridge hostess, and unquestionably the star of our local circle. A widow of some twenty-six summers, she had been (as unkind tongues never ceased to point out) some sort of cabaret actress before catching the eye of the eligible Mr. Lorrimer, with whom she enjoyed three years of married bliss before he overturned his skiff somewhere off the Amalfi Coast.
I turned a corner and saw her some way down the path. As soon as she spotted me, she waved frantically.
"Mr. Crosby! You owe me your undying gratitude, for I have solved our bridge problem!"
"Ah? Good-oh. Did you carry out your threat and teach your parlourmaid?"
"I tried. She thought it was quite the silliest game she'd ever played." Here, she turned for the first time to the suave young gallant who accompanied her. "Meet Cesare d'Amato, Count of Somewhere-or-Other, and one of the most wonderful bridge players who ever lived. I'm having him to stay for the summer."
"Oh? Pleased to meet you." We exchanged courtesies, and he apologised gracefully.
"I am afraid Laeticia exaggerates. I am a serviceable player at best."
I could not see this bothering the elderly matrons who comprised, along with the vicar and a retired sea captain, our bridge circle. They would be sent into new ecstasies of romantic snobbery by the presence of a genuine Italian count. Moreover, his appearance seemed calculated to set feminine hearts aflutter. His hair was slicked back in the style fashionable among young bloods in the capital, and his clothes were of the most exquisite cut. Unusually for an Italian, he had dark green eyes, which appraised me coolly as we talked, though he seemed very young - barely older than my students.
"You must come down to the house tonight,” she announced. “We shall play as a full eight, now that the Vicar is back from town." I agreed and went on my way, as they headed upwards towards the house.
The game was indeed enjoyable, especially for Miss Burleigh-Woods and Miss Carruthers, who had had the good fortune to partner d'Amato. When I arrived back at the house, I found Esme peering out of the front door.
"I'm sorry,” she said rather brusquely. “I thought I heard someone, so I came down."
"Well here he is," I said, pointing to myself."
"Yes,” she said, seeming puzzled. “It must have been you I heard."
I myself had to go up to town the next day, to beg an extension on my loan of the miserable disappearing Sertum from the British Library. I stayed overnight at my club, and returned the next morning, to find the house empty. Making my way round to the terrace, I ran into Uncle George, returning from a fishing trip. He seemed particularly out of sorts, and I put this down to the fact that among all the paraphernalia he carried there featured precisely no fish.
“Nice day for it, at least,” I offered cordially.
“Not as far as I’m bloody well concerned,” he snarled back, and continued on his way, muttering darkly to himself.
In the back garden I found Marie-Hélène and the twins sitting on the patio with d’Amato.
“Come and look, James!" Marie-Hélène called out to me. "Cesare’s been showing the boys magic tricks.” Esme was sitting on the balustrade, nose buried sulkily in a copy of Elegant Extracts, presumably under orders from Miss Salmon.
I watched as d’Amato slowly opened one hand, and blue flames seemed to jump up from his palm.
“Isn’t it clever? He won’t tell us the secret behind it.” At that moment, Mrs. Lorrimer appeared round the corner of the house.
“Cooee! Oh there you are, you naughty boy! I’ve been looking for you to go to Mrs. Timothy’s horrible music afternoon. She’s going to do Lost Chord and Moonlight Sonata and it’ll be ghastly. If I have to suffer it, then you most certainly do.”
“He’s been keeping us all amused,” Marie-Helene explained. “Do you know how he does that?”
“No, he won’t tell me," Mrs. Lorrimer admitted, pouting slightly. "But it’s quite cold - you can touch it.”
They left, and I headed on into the house with Marie-Helene, where we found Uncle George still slamming around with a face like thunder.
“You should take a nap,” she told him, in a voice that, while remaining solicitous, brooked no disobedience. “You’re a positive tiger since you’ve been sleeping so badly.” He seemed to sag visibly, and the irritation seeped away.
“You could be right. I dare say I’m sickening for something. Not been feeling myself. I should switch bedrooms too; I know it’s diabolically cold in mine.”
“Really?” I asked. “If anything I’ve been too warm.”
“Summer flu,” Marie-Hélène diagnosed briskly, shooing her husband upstairs.
Uncle George’s illness, whatever it was, seemed to grow worse and worse, to a point at which he would spend most of the day snoring in his dressing room, and most of the night fretting in the library. The village doctor left puzzled, and finally prescribed a sickly red mixture. It looked very like the noxious substance my House Matron used to give to malingerers at school. The house sunk into a state of nervous depression without his barking and door-slamming to revive it, and the only positive outcome was that we were able to invite Mrs. Lorrimer and the Count over for dinner and cards several times without having to tolerate Uncle George’s remarks on the subject of horsewhipping damnable Dagos all day beforehand.
For some reason, Marie-Hélène seemed unduly worried about her husband’s state, and could settle to nothing. She would go on long walks in the woods, and at one point I actually (to my shame) suspected her of meeting someone. I had walked down to the Poacher’s Tower, a bit of medieval masonry that projects above the trees in a little coppice just outside the gate, when I heard voices. Looking more closely, I saw, between the trees, Marie-Hélène standing just in front of the doorway, calling up to someone at the top. The stairs are sufficiently unsteady as to permit only one visitor to climb at a time, and I wondered who the person could be. I was about to give a signal of my presence when I paused; possibly this would no
t be welcomed..? I backed off, in an attempt to be discreet, but somehow managed to flush out a cock pheasant that had been hiding in the ferns by the path. It shot away in a whirr of frantic feathers, and Marie-Hélène turned, looking both shocked and frightened. I reddened slightly, but she regained her composure first.
“I heard some people talking up there,” she explained. “I was going to tell them that it isn’t safe.”
“Ah. I see. Well I can’t hear anyone now. Are you sure?”
“Positive,” she said decisively. “I heard them laughing.”
“Well, I suppose I could go up a little of the way and look.” In the end I went all the way to the top.
“There’s no one here,” I called back down. “You must have been mistaken. Maybe a bird or something.”
“Apparently so.” By the time I had negotiated the stairs, she was gone.
I continued to the Post Office, from whence I intended to send a shame-faced missive to the British Library, apologising for my carelessness and assuring them that I was doing my best to retrieve their lost book. I ran into Mrs. Lorrimer on the way.
“You still haven’t told me what you think of my precious Cesare, or told me how wonderful I am to have dragged him away from Otranto to spend the summer here,” she said, accusingly.
“Otranto?”
“That’s not the name, but it could be. You simply wouldn’t believe it if you saw it.”
“He