The Archivist Read online

  He wondered if regaling Sam with the story of his recent hospital adventure would have a similar effect, and he was on the point of opening the subject when she looked at her watch and said, ‘Goodness! Is that the time? It’s half past one.’

  ‘Is it? Would you like a coffee?’

  Sam smiled and reached out to rub the top of his hand. ‘No, I think it’s time I went to bed. We’ll have to be out early tomorrow to get that car out of the ditch. It’s been a lovely evening, I couldn’t have hoped for a more gallant rescuer, but I’m shattered.’ She patted his hand affectionately and he knew it signalled an end to the evening and that he had no option but to capitulate. Reluctantly he showed her up to the spare room.

  Half past one was not late for Max. He seldom slept well. After he had found some towels and a spare dressing gown for Sam, bidden her goodnight and come back downstairs to shut down the stove, he put his coat on and walked out into the back garden with Monty to have a final cigarette. It had stopped snowing and he could hear a gentle rhythmic dripping in the woods at the back of the garden. It wasn’t going to freeze tonight – as he had suspected, the snow would not last. He looked back towards the house and saw the light of the spare room extinguish. Sam would be turning in the bed, pulling the duvet over her shoulders ready for sleep. Had she slipped under the covers naked? Probably. Rather crossly he threw the lighted butt away and heard it hiss as it hit the snow.

  - 11 -

  Earlier that same evening, BS Moreton reached the great hall a trifle early. Several members of staff bade him a cheery goodnight and the new guide, Max Black, was waiting at the front door while Noel checked the tickets of a family who had arrived in the nick of time. BS couldn’t understand people paying all that money to come into the Hall when it was about to close. Tonight he felt particularly irritated – it would take Max half an hour to get them through and out. He would just have to risk slipping down to the muniments room while the tour was at the other end of the building.

  He hesitated in the shadows of the gallery and watched from above until Max disappeared into the statue corridor, then he unlocked the door of the sealed chamber and began a painful ascent of the stone steps. He was feeling extremely puffed. Halfway up there was a small slit window which looked out across the park, and here he rested a hand on the sill to get his breath back. A dim glow came through the window, and bending to peer out he realised it had begun to snow. He sighed and started to climb once more.

  The table was exactly as he had left it, the foolscap notepad covering the great leather tome, and BS sat at the desk for a few minutes, his hands knitted across his belly, his eyes closed. He thought perhaps it was nerves that were making his heart thump and that it would be a good idea to use a short meditation on the Hail Mary to relax. He took a deep breath and imagined it travelling up into his head, then exhaled and felt it running down into his feet. His shoulders began to soften and on the next inhalation he said quietly, ‘Hail Mary, full of Grace,’ and breathed out the words ‘The Lord is with Thee’, and so on, up and down, in and out, ‘now and at the hour of our death ...’ and his lips formed a wordless ‘Amen’.

  He woke with a snort. How long had he been asleep? He checked his watch. Not long, only fifteen minutes or so. He pulled himself forward, pushed his hands down on the desk and rose to his feet. He felt much better – invigorated, refreshed. Gathering up the heavy volume, he started back down the stairs. All was quiet below.

  When he reached the door into the undercroft he spent a few minutes of exasperation struggling with the security key – there was a knack to turning it – and he had to stand the inventory up against the wall with his stick beside it to leave both hands free. Eventually he opened the door and stepped down into the half light where the air was even colder. He patted the powdery wall until his hand felt the bakelite switch which he flicked on. A small blue spark spat inside the switch, making BS jump and curse. He hobbled down the stone steps into the bowels of Duntisbourne Hall.

  Swaying heavily on to his stick with each step, he started to make his way along the corridor, the inventory tucked underneath his right arm. Passages disappeared into the gloom to left and right of him, while a dank breeze lifted the sheets of cobweb and every now and then he stopped to wipe one from his cheek. He was heading into the darkest middle section of the corridor. The locked door to the wine cellars was on his right, and ahead of him in the distance he could see a yellow oblong of light, the glass panel of another locked door leading to the cellars of the private apartments at the other end of the building. The light from the base of the hopper windows set low in the wall was already obscured by a bank of snow building up outside. Feeling his way along for the second switch, he began to curse again.

  ‘Oh blow me down to the ruddy ground,’ he said as, supporting himself against the wall with his hand, he tried to inspect the sole of his shoe as well as he could with his limited mobility. Even in the darkness he knew what had happened and the smell confirmed it. He had trodden in dog shit. When the weather outside was cold, Dean couldn’t be bothered to take the earl’s dogs out for their exercise, so he let them run around in the undercroft beneath the Hall. BS had tried to reason with the earl about this, but had made little headway. With a heavy sigh he located a discarded piece of wood on the floor, and pinioning it down with his stick he began to scrape his foot across the edge reflecting that if a dog had done that up in the park the earl would have fined the owner heavily, but in his own household, what did it matter if someone stepped in it? He treated his employees like dog shit anyway.

  Taking a corridor to his right, BS eventually reached the door to the muniments room and began to fumble with the keys at his hip. He paused momentarily, his attention caught by a barely perceptible disturbance in the silence. He thought he had heard the door at the end of the corridor open and felt a brush of air across his face.

  ‘Hello!’ he boomed out. ‘Dean? Is that you?’ But his voice echoed away and died unanswered. He hobbled back towards the intersection of the passageways, his stick hooked over his arm, the book still pinned to his side, and strained his eyes into the darkness. The yellow oblong of light from the glass panel in the door at the end of the undercroft had been replaced by a grey oblong. That was what he had heard: someone must have gone down to the basements in the private apartments to turn the lights off on the other side. He hobbled back towards the door of the muniments room, but just before he turned the key in the lock he paused again, breathing through his mouth to listen. He was sure he had heard something, and there in the drumming darkness of the passageway running off behind him he thought he could make out an even darker shape. He blinked hard and stared and it was gone.

  ‘Come on, you silly old fool,’ he muttered to himself. ‘It’s just your eyesight. Jumping at shadows!’ and he unlocked the door and let himself in.

  Once inside he felt more settled. The room had been created for him by one of the estate carpenters underneath the domed ceiling of the cellars, and over the years BS had been collecting up all the old books and files and letters and papers from around the Hall and slowly and laboriously stockpiling them here in the muniments room before beginning the task of cataloguing. He had found stacks of letters in the most unlikely places: abandoned rooms up in the disused servants’ quarters, trunks stored in the attics, once fabulous pieces of furniture stacked broken and twisted and waiting for restoration.

  There was no window down here, but the carpenter had painted the brickwork white to make the room brighter, and although the moisture had already caused the paint to start peeling and crumbling in places, it did give the room the appearance of care. As soon as the cold weather began BS had smuggled a fan heater into the basement hidden in his rucksack, and the first thing he did on entering the room was to plug this in and turn its purring mouth towards his feet so that the air underneath the desk warmed and washed over his shoes and up his trouser legs. The room was stuffy and smelt of mildew and the chipboard shelving that had been ins
talled last autumn down one side. The shelves were piled high with parcels of papers tied with string and labelled in his own spidery handwriting. Tucked between them were treasures from the earl’s uncatalogued collections which BS had carried down here over the years: a photograph of the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna in the original Fabergé frame, a Meissen figurine of a semi-naked young woman, an exquisite little bronze of Leda and the swan.

  Dropping the book on to a table near the door, he inspected the room for the best possible hiding place for the inventory. He lifted a few boxes aside until he came to a tin trunk which probably dated back to the 1850s and bore a patina of age. The blue paint had been chipped and scratched over the years, and although it had a lock, the key had gone missing long ago. The inventory would fit very nicely into it and he could leave it at the back of the room and cover it with other boxes. It was a particular favourite of his, and he was confident he wouldn’t forget where he had stowed the book. He pulled his chair over to the trunk so that he could sit as he emptied it, but as he leaned forward his attention was caught again by a sound, quiet but clear, just outside the room. He stared at the gap beneath the door and saw a shadow pass first one way, then the other. He tried to keep completely still and listen, but as he leaned forward just a fraction of an inch, to his horror he felt the chair beginning to move under his weight, and to stop it he took the strain on his bad knee. A stab of pain shot up through his leg and he pushed sideways with a groan to relieve it by straightening it and fell noisily on to a pile of boxes opposite him, twisting and rolling as he fell. As he flailed around like an upturned tortoise on his back, books and papers and seals clattered on to the floor around him. He lay for a few moments until the shower of documents ceased, then laboriously rolled backwards and forwards until he could get an elbow down on to the floor and begin to lever himself up into a sitting position. He listened, but everything was quiet once again. He wasn’t surprised. He had probably made enough of a din to scare away even the most hardened eavesdropper.

  Getting slowly to his feet, he steadied himself on the back of the chair before taking up his stick and opening the door into the passage. He leaned his head around the door. ‘Hello!’ he called, and was surprised that his voice sounded high and weak. He cleared his throat noisily and swayed a few steps down the corridor towards the intersection. ‘Hello?’ he called again, using the full volume of his barrel chest to push out a strong, confident voice. ‘Is that you, Dean?’ He looked left and right into the dark portals along the passage. The harder he stared into the darkness, the more it seemed to clot as if something was forming in the shadows.

  Behind him BS heard a creak followed by a loud bang and the passage was plunged into darkness. He swung round and stood panting and blind for a few seconds until his mind slowed. With a great wave of relief he knew that the door had swung shut behind him as it had done many times before. Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he moved as quickly as he could back towards the door which he could just see by the pencil line of light glowing at its base. His large hand felt nervously up and down the wood until he located the handle, pushed it down, and let himself once more into the sanctuary of the muniments room.

  He paused for a few moments leaning his back against the door. He found he was panting. This wasn’t surprising – he had just hauled himself up from the ground – but he also felt jumpy and his hands were shaking. Perhaps his coffee had been too strong this morning after all. He needed to get that book stowed and head home. It was getting late, the snow could have worsened. Sitting down again, he plunged his hands into the trunk pulling out the contents in three great handfuls which he dropped on to the floor. He could get it all cleared up tomorrow. He unhooked his stick from his chair, pushed himself up and was about to make his way across the room to collect the inventory from off the table when he heard a thump directly outside his door as if someone had tripped and fallen against it. ‘Who’s there?’ he called. There was no reply. He could feel that irritating tightness in his chest again as he made his way over to the door. He opened it, his heart pounding, and peered out into the gloom of the passage. ‘For God’s sake, who’s there?’ But the cannonade in his chest was getting louder and louder, he could feel the blood rushing through his ears, and as he stared into the darkness it turned thick and viscous and flowed into his eyes. He shook his head to clear it and saw the silhouette of a figure standing a little way up the passage in the darkness – someone who might have been fleeing, but had turned.

  ‘Pugh?’ he said weakly, ‘Is that you?’ And a horrible pain rose in his chest and sprayed across to his shoulder and arm and up into his face. He tried to catch his breath but it felt as if a carapace was forming around his rib cage, a breastplate of solid bone and try as he might he couldn’t get another breath in. Blackness deeper than the dark of the cellars rushed into his peripheral vision and clamoured in his ears, and the pain in his chest was so strong he knew he was going to swoon. The figure in front of him began to come forward, he heard a voice but couldn’t make out the words, everything was distorted, the noise boomed as if he was underwater, then the blackness at the edge of his vision rushed forward and overwhelmed him and he thought, Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, and he thanked God this awful pain was going to stop.

  - 12 -

  It did not freeze overnight. Sam was woken just after seven by shafts of low sun sliced into lines by the louvred blind at the window. She reached out for the dressing gown Max had lent her and pulled it half on before she stepped out of bed, gathering the rest of the oversized garment around her as she made her way towards the window. The towelling was soft against her neck and there was a faint tang of citrus and musk beneath the smell of cigarettes. She changed the angle of the louvres and looked down on the garden below. The snow underneath the trees was pockmarked with drips of melting water. She could see Monty’s paw marks circling and traversing the middle of the lawn, a spray of earth and mud radiating out across the white where he had kicked and scuffed at the ground.

  Max was downstairs smoking. ‘Coffee?’ he said.

  ‘Can I make myself a cup of tea?’

  ‘Of course,’ and he opened a cupboard and fetched down a box of tea bags. ‘Are you a breakfast person? I’ve got some bread in the deep freeze.’

  ‘You’re obviously not,’ she said, nodding at his cigarette.

  ‘Sorry. Filthy habit. Would you like me to go outside?’

  ‘Not in your own house,’ she said.

  Despite this Max walked over to the French windows and opened them. ‘Thawing, much as I thought,’ he said. ‘Did you sleep well?’

  ‘Great. You?’

  ‘I never sleep well,’ he said.

  Sam sensed that both of them felt awkward. Last night their conversation had flowed easily and warmly, probably as a result of the wine but also because of the shared drama of their meeting. They were now playing out a scene which traditionally followed a night of intimacy, and she wasn’t entirely sure why last night had ended on such a chaste note, but in the cold light of day she was glad it had.

  ‘When you’ve finished,’ Max said, ‘I’ll take you up to your car.’

  ‘Aren’t you working today?’

  ‘No. I do every other day. I’ll be in tomorrow.’

  The roads were wet with slush and her car, although still tilted at an angle and filthy dirty from mud thrown up by passing vehicles, started on the third attempt and was back on the hard standing of the road with little more than a few rocking pushes from Max at the back. He came round to her window. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow then.’

  ‘I can’t thank you enough,’ she said, and he patted the soft top of her car. She watched him in her rear-view mirror as he walked back to the Land Rover, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his coat. Monty was bouncing around in the front trying to see what was going on. She saw Max worry the dog’s head in his hands before pushing him over to the passenger’s seat and setting off back to his house.
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  The flat was icy cold. Sam dropped the files and papers from her meeting with the planners the previous day on to the dining-room table and checked her watch. There was still time to have a soak in a hot bath before the working day began. Her unplanned night away had left her feeling unkempt and grubby. While the bath ran she stood at the window and looked out across the lake to the Black Mountains beyond, sepia and white against a weak blue sky. She felt truly homesick. When she accepted the post at Duntisbourne Hall, she had underestimated how stateless she would feel. She envied Max his comfortable home filled with his own things – she even envied him his dog. She resolved to get the exhibition to a point where her daily intervention was no longer needed, to enable her to commute from her home in London on a more sporadic basis.

  The steam in the bathroom was so thick she could only just make out the ghost of the tub. She had forgotten this aspect of living without central heating – something she hadn’t experienced since her days at boarding school a few decades before. She lowered herself into the bath, her skin goosebumping above the waterline as she submerged – a feeling so seductive it was almost worth getting frozen to the bone to experience it. The bath was huge and the taps poured like geysers, the hot water bubbling and spitting as if it was boiling. That was one thing to be said for old plumbing – people never use to worry about the green issue. Sam had to hook her elbows over the side of the enamelled cast-iron roll-top to stop herself from disappearing completely under the water. She watched her legs float up and bob just below the surface. She needed a pedicure – the varnish on her toenails was chipped.