Isobel

1. A necessary job

It is embarrassing for a gentleman to admit that there was a time in his life when he found himself in urgent need of gainful employment.  Society considers some work acceptable, even laudable, for him to do.  He might practise at the bar, but as I had no legal training, that was out.  If he is well connected, he might become of clergyman and enjoy a generous living, but as I had never studied for holy orders, that was out too.  He might become an academic at one of our great universities; I possessed the required qualifications, but the pursuit of high academic office requires lifelong dedication, so that was out as well.  The army is another honourable profession, most suitable for a gentleman, but I had just resigned my commission. 

I had been an intelligence officer, stationed in Calcutta.  I was fluent in several Indian languages, and I possessed a talent for breaking ciphers.  In all my fifteen years' service, I had never seen a single shot fired, until one almost took my left arm off.  A fellow officer, who was negligently fiddling with his revolver in the officer's mess, discharged it by complete mischance. 

"Dreadfully sorry, old chap," he said, breathing gin and tonic all over me as I crumpled against the bar.  "The bloody thing sort of went off in my hand.  Can't think how."

"Perfectly all right, old fellow," I said.  "Don't mention it."  Then I collapsed on the floor.

In India, even the most trifling wound can become fatally infected, and mine was far from trivial.  I hung between life and death for weeks before I slowly started to mend, and I had shrunk to almost half my previous body weight by the time they finally decided that I was well enough to ship home.

My assailant saw me off at the quay.

"Jolly decent of you not to make a fuss," he said.

"Oh well," I said.  "No harm done."

"That's the ticket.  Chin up!"

"Don't mention it," I called back to him as a burley medical orderly carried me up the gangplank.

The sea voyage provided a much-needed tonic.  Away from the stifling, fever-ridden airs of Calcutta, I started to put on weight, and when I disembarked at Southampton, I had largely recovered.  It was the spring of 1878 and, after so many years away from home in the heats and monsoons of India, I was looking forward to a peaceful convalescence among the soft green woods and soft green hills of my native Buckinghamshire.  I had reached the rank of major, and I had in my pocket glowing testimonials from my superiors in India, recommending me as an instructor to the military academy at Woolwich.  There seemed to be no impediment to my future career, but fate decided otherwise.  I arrived home to discover that my father had died while I was at sea, and the notification had passed me on an outward-bound ship.  I had never been close to him, and after so long an absence I accepted the news with equanimity.  My mother had died many years before and, being the only child, I was his sole beneficiary. 

The axe fell two days later when the family solicitor informed me "with the most heartfelt commiseration" that my father had died insolvent, leaving a mountain of debts.  Few of his creditors could enforce a claim against me, but I knew that, if I walked away from them, I would never be free of the stigma.    I could picture my grateful assailant swaying over his gin and tonic in the Calcutta officers mess.

"Always knew the fellow wasn't quite one of us, yer know.  Always something iffy about him."

Such opinions travel fast, and they always receive credence. 

My solicitor informed me "with the very deepest possible regret" that my only immediate way of discharging the debts was to resign my commission, cash in my army pension, and sell the family home.  Then, "with profound embarrassment" he handed me his colossal bill.  

I had no choice but to do as he advised.  The proceeds enabled me to settle the debts, but only just, and I found myself reduced from a man of some standing, substance, and reputation, to one with no home, no income, and nothing to support him but a dwindling £100 in the bank.

Consequently, I incurred the humiliating necessity of seeking immediate work.  I applied to several agencies for employment suitable for an educated gentleman.  I quickly discovered that the opportunities for respectable employment were few, saving those already mentioned, all of which required precise qualifications, experience, connections, or funds.  For several weeks, I did a lot of pride swallowing and jaw jutting.  I soon began to see my future self as a clerk, working for £50 a year, living in a shabby room, forced to work and even spend my leisure hours among social inferiors. 

Please understand that I do not stand on breeding — my own is unexceptional — and I loathe snobbishness, but cultivated men require the company of other cultivated men and women.  Such people will not admit a menial clerk into their society, no matter what he might have been in a previous life.  I knew what their comments would be.

"Bloody down-and-out, trying to play the old soldier!"

"Can't stand that sort of thing!"

"Why doesn't he stick to his own type?"

With a twinge of shame, I recalled that I too had made such comments on occasion.  We all make them, not because we necessarily mean them, but because we humans, like dogs, are pack animals.  When the pack leader barks, we all bark in tune with him.  Each has his own pack and, if it rejects him, he becomes an outcast, friendless and alone.  I knew that a life shunned by the sort of people I had worked, played, and lived among — despite their many faults — would crush me far more than poverty.

After a few weeks searching in vain for respectable work, I had almost resigned myself to this life of ignominy, and to the lonely, twilight existence it would bring.  Then, unexpectedly, my luck changed. 

I was standing outside the Gentle Diversions agency in Holborn one day, wondering if I should go in and repeat my futile enquiry yet again.  I had a particular aversion to the place.  The factotum I usually spoke to was an insolent creature who took transparent pleasure in telling me that he had "nothing suitable for a gentleman of your quality, major".  He had taught me precisely what Shakespeare meant by "dog in office". His endless insinuations had become unendurable and, as I hovered outside the place, I decided that I could no longer tolerate the humiliation of another pointless interview with him.  I was about to walk on when a window flew open and the creature himself stuck his head through it.

"Major Wickstraw, sir?" he yelled at the top of his voice, even though I stood only six feet from him.

"Yes," I growled in an undertone, trying to look anonymous.

"Might have a job for you, sir," he yelled so loud that heads turned on the other side of the street.

I entered, if only to avoid advertising my embarrassment further in a public thoroughfare. 

The creature himself was a spotty youth, dressed in a suit that we used to call 'flash', and with a leer to match.  Only this time he seemed a marginally subdued.  He ushered me straight into the office, past a line of decent-looking chaps — all of whom I pitied — stood aside for me, and closed the door.

"Might have something to interest you, sir," he said, enthusiastically kneading his palms and offering me a seat.  "I understand you speak Hindoostarnee, sir?"

"Hindi.  Yes," I said shortly.

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"No, sir," he simpered in a particularly oily way.  "Do you speak Hindoostarnee well?"

"Fluently."

"How fluently?"

"Why don't you test me on it?" I snapped, severely irritated.  I wondered if he had invited me in merely to play some impertinent game with me, but I had the pleasure of seeing the insolent smile instantly vanish from his face.

"Any other languages, sir?" he asked more soberly.

"A number of Indian languages, reasonable French, some German and, of course, Latin."

"Ah, of course, Latin," he said, succumbing again to the sneer.  "Most gentlemen do know Latin, don't they, sir?"

"Most have a smattering," I conceded.

"And you have more?"

"I have a first Classics degree," I replied as evenly as I could, for my patience was almost exhausted.

"Perhaps you do, sir, but what about the Latin?"

The man was clearly a fool.  I got up and made to leave, but before I reached the door, he had leapt across the office and intercepted me.  "But about the job, sir?"

"Out of my way, sir!"

"Five hundred a year, sir."

Five hundred a year!  I fell back into the chair as fluidly as I had hit the floor in the Calcutta mess.  Five hundred a year exceeded all but my wildest hopes.  The creature scurried back behind the desk, still rubbing his hands.  "And you say you can do ciphers, sir?"

"I was the army's chief code breaker in Calcutta."

"And yet you find yourself here, sir," he sneered.

My knuckles whitened on the handle of my stick.  Had I not been so desperate for employment, I would have given him a good thrashing there and then, and thrown him bodily through the window.  He clearly noticed my simmering anger for he immediately changed his tack.

"Gent by the name of Glimmeridge, sir.  Wants an educated gentleman to translate the family history—"

"From what?"

"He didn't say, sir.  But he wants the gentleman to command Latin and Hindoostarnee, and to have some experience of ciphers."

"Then I'm his man," I said eagerly.  "I doubt he'll easily find anyone as well qualified as I am in all three disciplines."

The palms squelched together again.  "That was my view, sir.  Now, the gentleman will be here to interview applicants the day after tomorrow."

"Applicants?"

"Three others sir, but I don't think they need worry you."

The days passed slowly.  I didn't trust the creature so I continued doing my rounds of the other agencies, but the only other suitable job on offer was from a wealthy clergyman who wanted someone to cram his son with Latin for an Oxford entrance examination.  The remuneration was reasonable, but the appointment would last only for two months, so it wouldn't amount to much.  Therefore, I presented myself at the Gentle Diversions agency at the date and time set for the interview.  As I entered the premises, the creature scuttled out from whatever hole he had been hiding in, and intercepted me, feverishly kneading his palms.  "He's seen the other three, Major Wickstraw, sir," he murmured from the side of his mouth.  "Rejected them out of hand, he did.  I knew he would."

"Then why did you put the poor devils up for it if they stood no chance?"

"To make you look the rarer commodity, sir."  He rubbed his thumb and middle finger together in a disgustingly familiar way.  "We'll both do all right out of this, sir," he confided.

I brushed him aside and strode for the interview room.

I was surprised to see no one sitting behind the interview desk, and I might have remained staring at it bewildered had not the creature scuttled through the door after me and announced me.  "And this is Major Wickstraw, sir."

I turned and saw two people sitting in the window.  One riveted my attention immediately, a wizened, elderly man in a bath chair, bald except for a few wisps of white hair, and wrapped in shawls.  A thick travelling blanket covered his lap, and I noticed that it also covered his hands.  He was eyeing me keenly and, I perceived, hopefully.

The other was an attractive looking woman of about thirty-five years, with an intelligent face, brown hair drawn back into a bun, and wearing thick spectacles.  I could see from her ring finger that she was unmarried, and I assumed that she was a daughter, a niece, or a governess.  On reflection, I considered the last possibility the most likely, for her plain grey dress had a governess look about it.

She smiled warmly, and the elderly man also smiled.

"I'm sorry that I can't rise to greet you, major," he said in a reedy voice, "but I am, as you can see, a valetudinarian."

I made the usual polite noises.

"My name is Gravell Glimmeridge, and this is my amanuensis, Miss Needler."

I bowed towards them both, and abruptly sat as the creature pushed a hard chair into the back of my knees.

"That will be all, Scriven," said the elderly man.  He withdrew a hand from under the blanket and flapped it towards the door.  I fought to suppress a shudder when I saw that it was scarred and deformed into a ghastly claw, as if by a terrible fire.  After the creature had scuttled off, probably to listen outside the door, Mr Glimmeridge withdrew the other hand also, and I saw that it was similarly deformed.  I tried in vain not to register shock, but he immediately set my mind at rest.

"Might as well get it over with, major," he said, looking at them wistfully for a few moments, and then hiding them under the blanket again.  "They're a hideous sight, aren't they?  I've never got used to them myself, so I can hardly expect you to.  Consequently, there's no need for you to feel in the least awkward about it.  They're also why I require an amanuensis."  He smiled up at the woman.

"Of course, sir."

Miss Needler now produced two leaves of paper from under her grey shawl and placed them carefully on his lap.  He cast his eye over them for a few moments and then looked back up at me.

"You say you were a major in the Indian army?"

"My references will confirm that, sir."

"You languages are strong and you are a cipher expert?"

"They will confirm that too."

He studied me a moment.  "I ask only because I would not have expected to see such an accomplished man in a situation like this."

I coughed and looked at my shoes, which were worn from weeks of pavement pounding, and shabbier than I would once have thought possible.  I cleared my throat and stuck out my chin.  "Force of circumstance, I'm afraid, sir."

"Such as — if I may make so bold?"

I blinked at him, struggling to contain my embarrassment.  It was an intrusion, but I knew that he was entitled to enquire.  He might reasonably suspect that the army had cashiered me for some misconduct, or that I had more recently fallen into bad habits.

"My father died a little while back, sir," I said with as much dignity as I could muster.  "Unfortunately, he left his small estate severely encumbered with debts.  I had to sell everything to—"

He waved his two misshapen hands in the air to stop me.  "Please, major.  That satisfactorily explains everything.  Be assured that I shall never allude to the subject again."

"Thank you, sir."

At this point, Miss Needler stooped to pick up the papers that had slid to the floor. While she gathered them, she stole a glance in my direction.  At first, I read it as pity, and I bridled slightly, but I quickly realised that it wasn't pity at all, nor even compassion, but commiseration, and I suspected even then that her story might not be dissimilar from my own.  As she rose, I studied her more closely.  She had a fine figure, slim and well rounded; her mouth was full-lipped and sensitive, and her spontaneous smile seemed genuine.  Her glasses had slipped down her nose, and I saw that her eyes were warm, bright, and highly intelligent. 

She replaced the papers on Mr Glimmeridge's lap and carefully rearranged them.  She leaned over him and whispered a couple of words in his ear before reseating herself and looking directly at me.  I realised that I was as much her interviewee as his, that she was a person whose judgement he trusted.

Mr Glimmeridge then asked me a series of questions about India, and he seemed to have some knowledge of it himself.  I wondered if he had served there himself many years earlier, but I did not enquire, as it was not my place to.  He asked me about my languages but he was most interested in my deciphering ability.  

"Could you crack any cipher I put to you, major?"

"Unfortunately not, sir?"

His eyes snapped wide.  "Oh?  Why not?"

I explained that there are two main types of cipher.   The first employs a letter substitution that is either consistent, or a logical progression of some sort.  They can be difficult to crack if the algorithm is complex, but ultimately, they are all decipherable.  The second relies on some external reference, such as a page from a book.  This substitution is neither consistent nor logically based, and the cipher is uncrackable without the external reference, or a huge amount of material to work on.   I told him that the military used this type of cipher through the agency of specially written codebooks.

"And if it were a mediaeval cipher?"

"That would almost certainly be logical," I said, "though the logic might be abstruse.  The mediaevals loved complex puzzles, syllogisms of syllogisms and so forth.  In addition, books were rare commodities then, and before the advent of printing, there were no uniform editions or paginations, so their use as cipher keys would have been extremely limited.  A mediaeval cipher will almost certainly have a logical key."

"And will therefore be penetrable?"

"Ultimately, yes."

He nodded, deep in though, then came to a decision.  "Yes, that's clear, major" he said.  "I understand all that, and I'm obliged to you for your clarity and candour. I think we'll get on well."

We talked only a little further before, to my unbounded joy, he offered me the job, confirming the salary at £500 per annum, and saying that there would be a significant bonus if he were pleased with my work, as he was sure he would be. 

He then told me also that he lived at a remote house in Westmorland, some miles east of Kendal.  Seeing my surprise he asked with apparent alarm if that would pose a problem for me.  I told him that it would not.  After so many years in India, I had no personal connections in London beyond a handful of distant relations and acquaintances.  He seemed gratified by this.  He said that his family was a very old one, and he wanted to prepare a modern English compilation of family papers going back many centuries — a family history, if you like.  The archive was huge, and he expected that the work would take a number of years.  I reminded him that I was no Middle English expert but he said he had no qualms; he was confident that a man of my abilities would quickly plug any gaps in his knowledge.  He added that his library was vast, and that I would find all the books required to extend my knowledge in the directions required.

I asked him the relevance of Hindi and he told me that his ancestors had been among the first English to penetrate India as merchant adventurers.  Many of the seventeenth and eighteenth century papers were in Hindi and other India languages.

I was intrigued and I said so.

He smiled.  "Yes, major.  They intrigue me too.  Who knows what marvels and adventures they contain!  But I think you'll find that the ciphers the greatest intrigue of all."  His eyes sparkled.  "Wait until you see them!"

As we talked I formed the view that my language qualifications were of secondary, or even marginal interest to him.  My ability as a cipher breaker, and that ability alone, had secured me the job.

We parted on the most amicable terms. We agreed that that I would travel up to Westmorland the following week.  I would send a telegram the day before my journey stating my expected arrival time at Sedbergh, the closest station, and Mr Glimmeridge would arrange for someone to meet me off the train.  To cover any immediate expenses, Miss Needler handed me twenty pounds in notes on his behalf.  Such was my reduced financial situation, that I accepted it gratefully.

"I'm sorry I can't shake your hand, major," said Mr Glimmeridge as I rose to leave.

"Don't mention it, sir."

"Will you shake mine on Mr Glimmeridge's behalf?" enquired Miss Needler, rising and extending her hand towards me.  I took it.  Despite the surprising strength of her grip, her hand was soft, and very warm.

2. Glimmersmeer Hall

Five days later, I alighted from the slow local train in the tiny Westmorland town of Sedbergh.  For the previous hour, I had gazed through the carriage window at the brown treeless hills that loomed ever closer to the east.  Even on this summer afternoon, they were forbidding and desolate and I noticed how the lower land flanking the railway had also become increasingly harsh as I travelled north.  Everywhere were rocky outcrops, thin soils, dry-stone walls, and scattered sheep.  Everything was hard, open, and angular, so different from the soft, overarched, hedge-rowed lanes, low rolling hills, and the silver-birch woods of my native Buckinghamshire. 

I wondered how remote Mr Glimmeridge's house would prove to be.  After many years in India, and with a badly smashed left arm, long, cold, snowy winters, cut off from civilisation were not a prospect I relished.  I had assumed that he would live close to Sedbergh but now, seeing the sparseness of the habitations hereabouts, and the proximity of the great glowering hills, I began to wonder.  All the same, there would be compensations.  I would have few expenses in this remote place, and the salary of £500 and bonuses for a few years could set me up far better than I could have hoped.  It was an opportunity I couldn't refuse, and the work itself promised to be interesting.

I was surprised when the person waiting for me on the platform was no carter or outside servant, but Miss Needler, the amanuensis.  This time she was dressed, not in governess grey but quite mannishly in a rusty-brown tweed jacket, tweed riding culottes, and high boots.  On her head, she wore something like a fly-angler's hat, completely shapeless and most unladylike.  She ushered me through the small booking hall and onto a forecourt, where a shaggy mountain pony stood in the shafts of a two-wheeled trap, a local boy holding his bridle.  She dropped a copper coin into the boy's hand, took the reins and climbed up energetically onto the seat.  While the station porter hoisted my cases into the back, she leant across and helped me up beside her.

When I had settled myself, she expertly whipped the horse and we set off at a brisk pace through narrow streets of houses built from the local stone. 

"You'll have to hang on," she said as we drove out of the tiny town.  "The tracks up here are a bit rough — full of ruts and—"

The seat lurched I would have somersaulted backwards had her quick hand not caught me.

"See what I mean?" she laughed, pushing her glasses back up her nose.  "Hang on tight.  By the way, I notice that you don't approve of my dress."

"My dear lady, I assure you that—"

"Fiddle-faddle," she said, matter-of-fact.  "You clearly don't approve one jot.  But we're in Westmorland now, and you can't drive an open trap across windswept fells wearing frills, flounces, and muslin.  If we'd sent a carter, you wouldn't have understood a syllable of his brogue, so I came instead, suitably attired."

"My dear lady, I meant absolutely no criticism—"

"Fiddle-faddle," she said, matter-of-fact again.  "Of course you did.  By the way, I do hope you've packed plenty of tweeds and thick clothes."

Like a fool, I had to admit that I hadn't.  "If lived fifteen years in India," I explained.  "I have no winter clothes at all."

"Sorry.  We should have realised and warned you.  We're so used to the place that we forget others aren't.  The weather can be harsh up here.  In the winter we have a lot of snow — the hall can be cut off for weeks — and when it's not snowing it's sleeting, and when it's not sleeting the wind blows right through you — in one side and out the other."

"Delightful."

"It's healthy, at least.  And you can order clothes off catalogues."  She laughed, and her laugh was musical and infectious.  "We order everything from catalogues up here.  After all, nobody sees us."

The need for warm winter clothing became apparent as we climbed up into the bare hills.  Although it was summer, there was a chill edge to the wind, which was unbroken by any tree or hedge, and I clutched my collar closer about my throat.

"I suppose you'll miss trees," she said, reading my thoughts.  "But there are compensations.  The views from the high places are awesome, and when the light changes all the colours change with it; and you can watch the shadows of the clouds racing each other across the fells."

"How far is the house?" I asked, for the wind was going for my arm.

"About five miles, but you'd think it was further.  All the tracks and lanes are steep and winding."  She reached with one hand under the seat and pulled out a blanket.  "Here.  Wrap this round you if you're chilly."

I felt like an invalid, but I was starting to shiver, so I gratefully accepted the blanket.

I asked her what she did with herself when she wasn't conducting her amanuensis duties for Mr Glimmeridge, and driving sartorially unprepared gentlemen around the moors.  She told me that she also helped him supervise his estate and business affairs.  "I'm his secretary and estate manager too I suppose.  He's a scholar, and a highly competent man, but his injuries have sadly impaired his ability to do the most trivial things.  He can't sign a cheque, for example."

"What do you do for society?" I asked as we climbed further, the sky grew larger, and the empty hills ranged all around us.  It seemed strange that an amiable, capable, and attractive woman would choose a life cut off in such a remote place, and I wondered again whether need had driven her here, as it had me.

"We make our own amusement, and the house is large," she said a little wistfully.  "Besides, I like wilderness — I always have . . . and we certainly have wilderness here."

It seemed to me that she was clutching at excuses.  I suspected more strongly than ever that, Mr Glimmeridge had offered her a job and a salary she couldn't refuse.  I remembered the look of commiseration she had given me in London.  Had family debt or some similar disaster cast her down too?  Was that why she had come to meet me from the station — because she saw me as a kindred spirit, or a fellow sufferer?  It wasn't such a fanciful thought.  Despite her outlandish outfit and her brisk ways, she was obviously a woman of breeding and intelligence, and she gave me the impression that she had ridden to hounds in the past.  Yet like me, she was alone and working for a living in this remote and unprepossessing place.  I couldn't complain, though.  Along with Mr Glimmeridge, she would at least provide the educated and cultivated companionship I had recently feared I would lose forever.

We topped a ridge and I saw, in a shallow bog and boulder-strewn valley below, an extensive grey stone house surrounded by nothing but stone outhouses, heather, and an expanse of black water. 

"Glimmersmeer Hall," said Miss Needler, pointing.  "The stretch of water beyond is Glimmers Meer."

  I could not imagine any house more desolate, or any stretch of water darker, colder, or less inviting.  Even on this mild July afternoon, the forbidding meer seemed to suck away what little warmth there was in the bleak landscape.  No cottage, farm, or field was visible; no road crossed the valley but the narrow dirt track we were following, and that wound its way no further than the hall itself.  As we approached, I saw that the hall was a very extensive house.  From the shapes of the windows and chimneys, I judged it fifteenth century, and it displayed features of a mediaeval fortified manor, having a high retaining wall, a crenulated tower, and an overall aura of grey military rigour.

"Defence against the Scots," Miss Needler said, reading my thoughts again.  "Mr Glimmeridge's family has lived here since they built it in about 1400.  He owns all the land for miles around, though his only immediate tenants and neighbours are sheep."

We drove across a broad stretch of heather and the house loomed huge and grey before us.  Entering through a deep gatehouse, we drove into a broad flag-stoned courtyard.  Looking up, I saw gargoyles clinging under the eaves of the slate roofs, and dragons reared from a dozen steep gable ends.  The house appeared to be only partly inhabited, for the windows on one side of the courtyard were all shuttered or boarded.  I looked around again and, at all points, I saw nothing but cold grey stone, slate, moss, and lichen.  Overhead, grey clouds were gathering, and I felt the first spots of fine, penetrating rain.  And this was supposed to be summer!   Of course, summer rain was no stranger to Buckinghamshire or London, but the wind behind it was never so chill.  I thought again of winter and ice-cold draughts, frozen water in the washstand, thin rations, chills, and pneumonia.  I shivered.

"It's not so bad," breezed Miss Needler, looking keenly into my horrified face.  "We manage to keep the inhabited part warm enough.  Mr Glimmeridge's father installed piped heating about thirty years ago.  And wait until you see the library!"

A dour factotum in lead-coloured tweeds emerged from the gathering gloom to take the horse's bridle and we climbed down.  We entered through a Gothic-arched doorway into a broad dressed-stone hall where a huge fireplace yawned like a monstrous mouth.  Another tweeded retainer materialised from deep shadows to tell Miss Needler, in a dismal and near-impenetrable brogue, that Mr Glimmeridge had not yet risen from his afternoon nap. 

Leaving the servants to take my things upstairs, Miss Needler showed me round the main rooms.  All were forbidding, comprising grey stone, dark wood panelling, dark, heavy furniture, and few adornments.  I glanced through several of the small exterior windows.  In all directions, the view was much the same, louring clouds, sheeting rain, dark, treeless fells, and the black water of the meer.  The windows themselves perpetually rattled in the rising wind, and the draughts coming through them were icy.

"You'll learn to duck and dodge the draughts, and then it won't be so bad," Miss Needler announced brightly as our boots rang on the bare stone floor of a dark, winding passage that seemed to have its own arctic weather system.  She threw open two large doors at the end. "And this is the library."

It was like emerging from a subterranean cavern into the light of day.  My first impression was one of brightness . . . and then of size.  It was immediately clear that generations of Glimmeridges had lived for their library before everything else.  It was immense, and crammed from floor to ceiling with books.  And what books!  So many country-house libraries are stuffed with court proceedings, endless copies of the Gentleman's Magazine, and leather backing purchased in job lots to fill the walls.  But this was so wonderfully different.  As my eye explored the shelves and cases, I saw mediaeval manuscript books, early printed works, walls, of sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth century books, atlases, and ancient globes of the world standing on occasional tables.  Exquisite watercolours by Cotman, Wilson, Turner, and Blake hung from the pillars and spandrels, and over a blocked fireplace was a magnificent portrait in oils.

"That's Gervase Glimmeridge, the library's founder," said Miss Needler. 

"Gainsborough?"

"Almost.  Joseph Wright of Derby."

I stepped up to it.  It portrayed an ascetic looking man in emerald stockings and breeches, standing under a glowering sky before a backdrop of untamed hills.  It was appropriate, and magnificent.

Meanwhile, Miss Needler moved swiftly round the library lighting lamps, for the daylight was fading under the gathering clouds.  I noticed that each lamp was firmly anchored into a wide brass or copper dish, to preclude completely the chance of accidental fire.   As the light rose further, I saw it reflected in a multitude of mirrors, large and small, each cunningly placed to return it again and again.  Compared with the other rooms, the windows were huge, though beyond them, all was gloomy now, and the rain was running down them in a grey tide.  But here inside the library all was light, many tens of thousands of books slumbered in it, and their gold lettering blazed.  I walked across to where a rare seventeenth or eighteenth century harpsichord stood open, and I saw that on its music easel stood a manuscript by William Byrd.  Nearby, in a glass case were further manuscripts by Thomas Wyatt and William Wycherley.   

"Heavens," I breathed.  "It's a national treasure."

"I thought you'd like it," said Miss Needler, hugging herself and smiling brightly as the re-reflected light sparkled on the spectacle lenses.  "It rather compensates for the rest of the house, doesn't it!  I mean, you can lock yourself away here and forget about everything else, can't you?" 

She looked at me and I read an appeal in her eyes that said she wanted me to like it and stay here.  "Of course," I said.  "Of course you can.  I shall enjoy working here very much."

"Good.  And the family papers are through here." She ushered me through a low oak door into a much smaller room whose walls were crammed with mediaeval roll books, bound volumes, and chests of manuscripts.  This room by comparison was as cold, and as poorly lit as a crypt.  I shivered afresh.

"And through here," she said, opening another door, "is the study."

This room was different again, warmly panelled, with two large hot-water radiators, and a huge fireplace that dwarfed everything.  Here again were large windows and mirrors to defuse the light and spread it evenly across all the surfaces.  

"We're never cold in here," she said.  "The heating is very efficient.  We work in here, we read in here.  Do you like playing chess?"

"Very much so," I said, and she showed me an ornate walrus ivory set like others I'd seen in India, but more elaborate than most.

"So do I," she said eagerly.  "Mr Glimmeridge plays sometimes.  But he's not very good as he'll admit.  I hope you're good."

"Not bad," I said, blushing.

"Excellent.  By the way, we don't have fires in the library or archive room for obvious reasons.   And woe betide anyone who leaves a lamp burning there unattended."

"Of course," I hastened to assure her.  "Your precautions are most wise."

I noticed that there were two desks, both wonderfully large walnut affairs with a fixed lamp at either end of them.   She told me that one was mine and one was hers.

"I spend many hours a week working in here too.  I hope you'll be able to put up with my company," she said, with schoolgirl ruefulness.  "In a small, isolated household like this, companions are a boon.  But if you don't get on with someone, life can become intolerable.  So you must tell me if I do anything to annoy you."

"Perish the thought," I said earnestly, quickly warming to her, for I could imagine no less agreeable working companion than Miss Needler.  "But you must tell me if I irritate you with my rough soldierly ways"

She didn't reply, and her expression was unreadable.

*****

I discovered that evening at dinner that Mr Glimmeridge's household consisted of several other persons besides Miss Needler, and for some reason this surprised me.  At the given time, I entered the ancient dining hall, from whose high and dark-wood panelled walls the ancient heads of stags and boars hung grimly in dozens.  These were interspersed with ancient fowling pieces, spears, and several oriental shields with large raised bosses of intricate design.  A long black dining table ran down its centre and I noticed that although Mr Glimmeridge and Miss Needler had not yet arrived, four other women were already standing behind their chairs.  I gathered from this that they expected the master of the house to arrive shortly.  Without a word, a tweeded retainer beckoned me to a chair on the table's farther side, so I walked round and stood behind it, waiting like the others. 

We all stood rigidly in tactile silence for several minutes, as though a misplaced word would break some life-preserving spell.  At one point I cleared my throat and mumbled the usual apology without invoking the slightest response — not a word, not a sigh, not a flicker, not a twitch.  The four women simply stood and waited like painted statues.

Glancing from the corner of my eye, I saw that the one standing on my left was a tall, forbidding, black-haired woman whom I judged to be in her mid forties.  She was shapelessly slim with an oval face and a very pronounced nose that stood out from her face like a dorsal bone.  She seemed to be staring fixedly at the three younger women opposite, whom I judged to be in their early to mid twenties.  I could not see their faces clearly for all three stood with their heads bowed, staring fixedly at the tabletop. Their arms hung lifelessly at their sides.  All three were clad entirely in black, unrelieved by any adornment or jewellery, as was the forbidding woman on my left. 

When the silence became unbearable, I smiled and made a jovial pleasantry about the weather being fit only for ducks.  My words clattered to the floor and died there.  Not one of the women flickered so much as an eyelid.  The three before me still hung their heads and stared unblinking at the tabletop like chastened schoolgirls, and the older woman to my left stared straight at them; not a muscle of her stone-hard face moved, and even in this cold and draughty hall, she radiated winter like an iceberg.

At that moment, the door opened and Miss Needler arrived pushing Mr Glimmeridge's bath chair before her.  She wheeled him to his place at the top of the table and then came to stand silently behind the chair at my right hand.  She was wearing a low-cut evening dress of ivy green, and she had dressed her hair.   I had to suppress a smile as she whipped off her glasses and slipped them down the front of the dress. 

The other four women remained rigidly silent; no word or gesture from any of them greeted the new arrivals.  In the palpable silence, a senior retainer walked to his master's elbow, picked up a large spoon, and then he too waited silently while several more seconds crept.  I wondered for a moment whether we were all waiting for someone else to come and say grace but, at an almost imperceptible nod from his master, the retainer brought the spoon down on the tabletop with a resounding crash.  The four silent women walked round their chairs and sat, then Miss Needler sat, and I followed her, bewildered, for the three opposite me still hung their heads and stared silently at the tabletop, and the one to my left still glared at them.

We continued waiting in silence while yet another tweeded factotum brought the soup round in a large tureen.  When he had served all seven of us, the senior man inserted a napkin into his master's neckband and started to feed him with a spoon held in his own hand.  At this signal, the five women started to eat their soup and I followed suit, desperately trying not to look at Mr Glimmeridge, whom the factotum was spoon-feeding as one would a small child.

"Don't be embarrassed, major," he called good-naturedly.  "You get used to it in time."

"I profusely apologise, sir," I stammered.  "If any gesture of mine has—"

He silenced me, as he had at the agency, by waving a misshapen claw in the air.  "Please, major, I find you conduct admirable.  I should have warned you of certain peculiarities before you came.  I was remiss and it is I who should apologise."

I opened my mouth the make another protest but the claw waved again.  "I was also remiss in the matter of your wardrobe.  Isobel tells me that you are entirely unprepared for our hard winters."

"An unpardonable lack of foresight on my part, sir.  It's of no consequence.  I—"

Again, the claw waved.  "Please, major.  I merely wanted to say that my tailor will be calling next week.  I shall ask him to measure you and prepare you twelve outfits to equip you for all seasons, weathers, and pursuits.  And please allow me to defray the expense."

This was too much.  "Really, sir!  I can't allow you to—"

Yet again, the claw waved.  "I insist, major.  The fault was entirely mine.  Allow me to make this small gesture of restitution."

He fell silent and the senior factotum lifted another spoonful of soup to his lips.  Meanwhile, Miss Needler leaned towards him and whispered a few words in his ear.  He lifted his claw once again and the soupspoon froze in mid lift.

"Heaven's, major!  What must you think of my manners?  I haven't yet introduced the rest of the household.  The stout fellow wielding the spoon is Bludgeon who, together with Isobel, I rely on most in the entire world."

I nodded at the retainer, who was obviously highly valued, and he took this opportunity to ignore me and pop another spoonful of soup into his master's mouth.

"The three ladies opposite you are the daughters of my late lamented younger brother, Isidore.  Their names are Ignatia, Iphegenia, and Isidora.  There is no need for you to remember this, major.  A man of your intellect and accomplishments can have no possible commonality with three such dim-witted and pointless scapegraces." 

I smiled at them, assuming that Mr Glimmeridge's comment was good-natured avuncular chiding, but no smile returned; they didn't even notice;  their heads hung lifelessly, and their eyes remained rigidly fixed on their soup plates.

"And finally, on your left, is Miss Drizzle, their long suffering governess."

I turned and nodded at her, wondering why ladies in their twenties should require a governess, and assuming that her role was perhaps more that of a necessary older companion.  She, for her part, ignored me and remained staring fixedly ahead, like a statue carved from ice. 

Tactile silence fell once more, relieved only by the desultory clatter of soupspoons, and so it remained until Miss Needler rescued me by telling Mr Glimmeridge that she had already shown me round the library, the archive room, and the study.  This launched him into a flow of eager questions and observations, which mercifully carried us through the remaining courses.  It became evident that he was an accomplished scholar and bibliophile, and he confided to me that the injury to his hands was a sore burden to him, for he could no longer hold a pen or turn the pages of a book.  I sympathised and he thanked me, saying that he divined from my sentiments the sincere empathy of one scholar for another.

He told me how much he relied on Miss Needler — or Isobel as he called her — and how he wanted me to thoroughly immerse myself in the library and the archive before I started the work of translating and deciphering.  He was in no tearing hurry to see the work finished and welcomed the arrival in his household of a man whose intellect and interests matched his own.  He looked forward to interesting and stimulating discussions, which, at present, he could enjoy only with Miss Needler.  She also joined in this conversation, very much as his friend and equal.

Meanwhile, Bludgeon inserted food at finely judged moments into his master's mouth, the three young women hung their heads stared fixedly at their plates, and Miss Drizzle never took her eyes from them.  All four of them remained silent throughout while Mr Glimmeridge chatted to Miss Needler and I as though the others were not present.  It was unnerving.

After dinner, Miss Needler took Mr Glimmeridge to his own room, which was on the ground floor for obvious reasons.  Bludgeon told his master that he would be along shortly to prepare him for bed.  Only when these three had left the room did the other four make any move.  Miss Drizzle rose without a word, marched with loud steps to the door, and reopened it.   Under her unremitting glare, the three nieces rose, stepped behind their chairs, and then, at some invisible signal, they turned in unison and trooped silently out, still hanging their heads and staring fixedly at the floor.  Miss Drizzle followed them out and the door slammed behind her leaving me alone. 

None had spoken a single word or acknowledged another person all evening. 

Thrusting back my chair, I stood up and blew.  Despite Mr Glimmeridge and Miss Needler's affability, there was something seriously at odds in this household.  I resolved that I must find out what it was, as quickly and as delicately as possible, lest I make some fearful faux pas.

Fortunately, an opportunity soon presented itself.  I went outside into a battlemented balcony off the dining room and overlooking the forbidding meer, to smoke a cigar for a few moments before retiring.  Looking over the dark water at night, and the grey mist rising from it, I felt a sudden intimation of cold brooding evil.  I was about to throw my cigar away and retreat indoors when I sensed movement at my elbow.  I turned, startled, and saw Miss Needler coming out to join me, a lace shawl wrapped round her shoulders against the night air.

I held up my cigar.  "I'll throw it away if you object."

Telling me that she had no objection at all, she came directly across to me and leant against the battlement so close that I could feel the heat of her body. 

"Look," she whispered in my ear after a moment's thought.  "Perhaps I should explain something I should have explained earlier."

"I wish you would," I confided earnestly.  "I have to say that the atmosphere in there was frightful."

"I know."  Although there was no chance of anyone overhearing us, she dropped her voice to a murmur and I had to lean even closer to her, so that we touched.  I became aware that the fabric of her evening dress was extremely thin, and that her arms under her lace shawl were bare.  The perfume of her body filled my nostrils.  I felt that I should perhaps move away a fraction, for propriety's sake, but something kept me rooted in her warm proximity. 

"Look, I can't give you all the details."

"Of course not."

"And I'm sure Mr Glimmeridge will tell you himself once he realises that you are at a disadvantage in the matter.  The problem is that he's so used to it, he seems not to notice how odd it is any more."

"Look, Miss Needler.  You need say noting that might compromise you—"

"I won't."  She smiled up at me.  "And it's Isobel."

There is something forward about a woman advancing to Christian-name terms so quickly, yet I seized the intimacy, for I was sure that I would need a confidant and friend in this remote and desolate place.  And I believed she needed one too.  The thought warmed me.

"Well then, I'm Henry," I said, blushing like a schoolboy in the mist-filled darkness.

"Look, I'm completely loyal to Mr Glimmeridge."

"Of course.  Of course."

"No!  I am loyal at him, but I think it's in all our interests that I explain his attitude to his nieces.  You see, he holds them responsible for his younger brother's death."

"What?"

"Please.  Let me finish.  You've come at a bad time, you see.  It isn't always as frigid as this.  It moves in elliptical cycles.  For weeks, sometimes for months, he softens and they all appear amicable enough — if only on the surface, for the undercurrents remain cold enough.  Then something — an anniversary, a word — I'm not quite sure what — opens his wound again, for that's what it is.  He doesn't shout, scream, or rage at them.  That's alien to his nature; he's a very kind man.  He just sends them to Coventry for days, sometimes for weeks, and so it remains until, inexplicably, the frost begins to thaw again.  He was so very close to his brother, you see."

"I understand," I said, though I didn't really.  "Of course, I shall breathe no word of this to Mr Glimmeridge."

She shrugged.  Her arm moved against mine.  "It wouldn't matter if you did.  I tell you nothing I couldn't confess to him."

"Then why are we whispering?" I laughed.

"In case the servants hear us talking like this.  They might not understand.  Their families have been with Mr Glimmeridge's for centuries.  They're as faithful as dogs, and although I've been here for five years, I'm still an interloper in their eyes."

"And Miss Drizzle?  She seems a very strange sort of governess."

"That's an understatement."

"And why should three mature young women need one?"

"Mature?"  She suppressed a giggle.  "They're very far from mature, I assure you.  According to Mr Glimmeridge, his brother spoiled them rotten and they never properly matured.  They're brainless and idle, and Mr Glimmeridge tells me that they're completely selfish.  I can't form my own view on that; I've scarcely exchange more than the occasional word with any of them.  Mealtimes apart, they keep themselves to themselves."

"Completely?"

"More or less, and Drizzle is their keeper."

That, at least, made sense, for she had certainly behaved like one, but why should it be necessary for the nieces to have a keeper?  I felt uncomfortable, and if I hadn't been in such dire need of the excellent salary Mr Glimmeridge was paying me, I think I would have left Glimmersmeer Hall there and then.

Or would I?  As we walked back indoors, Isobel tripped and reached out for my arm, which I gladly offered her.

"Perhaps you should put your glasses on," I gently chided her, and I had to smile and look away as her fingers fished down the front of her dress for them.

"You don't mind women in glasses, do you?"

"Not in the least," I said, gently patting her hand, which she had returned to the crook of my arm.

"I'm glad of that."

3. Ciphers within ciphers

At breakfast the next morning, while Miss Drizzle and the nieces sat in Coventry, and Bludgeon popped pieces of egg and kidney into Mr Glimmeridge's mouth, he told me that he kept several stout ponies and a carriage as well as the trap I had arrived on.  He insisted that I feel free to use these as if they were my own.  They would take me to Sedbergh, or even Kendal, but he advised me to go with Isobel several times first, to familiarise myself with all the landmarks before I ventured alone.   It seemed that Isobel was the only one of them who ventured with any regularity beyond the grim stone walls.

"Its not so bad this time of year," he said, swallowing a piece of bacon that Bludgeon had expertly popped into his mouth, "but mists can come down quickly in autumn and winter, so you'll want to be familiar with the routes by then.  The fells can be a hostile place in winter to anyone who doesn't know his way around."

After breakfast, I went up to the top of the tower to get some air before making my first serious foray into the library and document room.  Yesterday's rain had blown away and the day was clear and bright, though the morning breeze was chilly.  I could see the details of the valley more clearly now than I had before.  Even the meer looked brighter, reflecting the pale blue sky, and there was colour in the heather too, and some of the bog flowers.  Yet the overall sense was one of utter remoteness.

I scanned the horizon in all directions.  Apart from the birds and a few hill sheep a mile or so away on one of the ridges, there was no sign of life, no cultivation, and no habitation, not even the empty shell of a house or cottage.  It was as though England and the busy, throbbing, nineteenth-century world lay in another place, on another planet, such was the isolation.  Apart from the screech of a bird of prey, somewhere out over the fells, the only sound was the wind whispering through the sedges and beating against the lichened, stone walls of the hall.

I was still ill at ease.  I could not reconcile Mr Glimmeridge's affability, his generosity, his cultivation, and the fierce loyalty he commanded, with the yawning schism in his own family.  I was finding it increasingly difficult to talk normally to the man while three young women sat opposite me, shunned, ostracised, and somehow terrified to lift their eyes from their plates.  Odder was the fact that he seemed oblivious of how grotesque the situation was, and how awkward it was for me.  Or perhaps he wasn't oblivious of it after all.  Perhaps this was why my salary was so generous.  Yet I needed this job, and Isobel seemed normal enough.  I persuaded myself that I must indeed have come at an unfortunate time, as she had said, and that the atmosphere must surely improve with time.  With a muttered oath, I threw my cigar over the battlement and walked heavily down to the library.

 

Later that morning, Isobel came to show me more of the library's treasures; some mediaeval books of hours and books of days, wonderfully gilded and illuminated.   Feeling that I was staring at her too hard, I glanced away through the big courtyard-facing windows, and I studied again the great grey arm of the wing to my right.

"Are those windows shuttered or boarded?"

"Which?" she asked, from across the room.  She had replaced the books in their case and was drawing the curtain back across them to protect them from the light.  I had hoped that she might come and lean close against me as she had the evening before, but I was disappointed. 

"I suppose it's the east wing," I said, calculating direction from the shadow of the ancient water pump in the centre of the courtyard.

"I think they're boarded," she said abstractly, smoothing the curtain, "but I'm really not sure.  That wing of the house is closed off.  I think it's structurally unsound."

"And the other wing?" I asked, looking to the other side of the courtyard.

"Most of the rooms there are unused, some we use to store less important books, and we also use a few of the nearer ground-floor rooms.  It's mostly closed but not locked off like the east wing."  She looked across at me and her smile was dazzling.  "Why do you ask?"

I shrugged.  "No reason except that I find big, dark, houses with closed-off wings and locked, remote rooms where unseen things can happen . . . rather spooky."

A cloud crossed her brow, and she looked at me hard over her glasses.  "What sort of unseen things?" she asked in a voice that suggested I might have already intruded on some unspoken secret.

"Nothing specific."

The cloud cleared again.  "I know what you mean," she said, coming across and leaning through the open window by my side.  "I felt the same when I first came here.  I used to lie in bed at night shivering with fear every time I heard a sound somewhere in the house.  But you get used to it in time, and I'm in the next room to yours, so you won't be alone at night."

I must have jolted, if only slightly, at her unintended innuendo.  She turned towards me and looked enquiringly into my eyes.  Hers were green, and large, and beautiful . . . and questioning.

"What did I say?" she asked brightly, pushing her glasses up her nose.

"Nothing, nothing," I replied, desperately searching for a white lie to cover my embarrassment.  "The breeze caught me and I shivered.  The result of years in India, I'm afraid."

She looked at me deeply now, I and I swear that she accurately read my lie for what it was.  I wondered for a moment whether her innuendo might not have been so unintended after all.  Coming quickly to my senses, I told myself that this couldn't possibly be so, and that I was a cad for having such thoughts about an honourable lady.  I'm sure I blushed, and that was a foolish thing to do, for it confirmed her suspicion, if she had one. 

We passed the rest of the morning amicably.  We went to lunch, where only Mr Glimmeridge, Isobel, and I conversed.  The three nieces again remained rigidly silent, their heads hanging and their eyes glued to their plates, while Miss Drizzle regarded them fiercely like a hawk.  Mr Glimmeridge, hearing Isobel call me Henry, asked if he might too.  "Far less stuffy then calling you major all the time, and we're going to be seeing an awful lot of each other.  What d'yer say?"  I acceded gladly and the three of us got on famously, or appeared to, despite the vacuum of silence from other parts of the table.

And so our days progressed, mealtime by mealtime, until I found myself becoming gradually inured to the gaping rent in our strange household.

*****

It was probably about a fortnight later, on an unusually still day, when Isobel and I were packing up for the evening, that I thought I saw smoke curling up from a chimney in the locked-off east wing.

"There's smoke from a chimney in the least wing," I cried, glancing through a large courtyard window.

"Yes, there often is," said Isobel, so casually that my flesh crept.

"Often is?  How can that be, if it's all locked up?"

She looked at me, blinked, then her hand flew to her mouth and she giggled.  "It's not the ghosts, silly.  It's Bludgeon.  Apparently there's damp and rot in the timbers there.  He lights fires in an attempt to stave off the inevitable collapse."

I thought lighting fires an irrelevant response to the problem.  If you've spent time in India, you know all about rot, and fires aren't the answer.  Besides, leaving fires burning unattended in a locked off part of an old house seemed a strangely dangerous thing to do, but Mr Glimmeridge hadn't hired me as an architect or engineer, and I wasn't going to poke my nose into the way he ran his house.  Besides, another disquieting thought suddenly obtruded into my consciousness.

"You said, the ghosts?" I asked, my voice quavering, for I must confess that I've always been a mortal coward about things supernatural.

Isobel's hand flew to her mouth again and she made large eyes at me.

"Oh dear.  Have I let something slip?"

"Oh my God!  There are, aren't there? Ghosts, I mean!"

"You'll have to find out the hard way, won't you, Henry!" she teased.

"Look, are there?  Really.  Are there?"

She was laughing in fits now.  "Oh, I like you.  You're so funny."

And that was the other reason why I had decided to stay.  "I like you too," I said without thinking, because it seemed a natural if incautious thing to say, and it was true.  I liked her very much indeed.

"Good."  She stepped up to me and laid her index finger along my nose.  "So if you hear bumps and groans in the night, or fingers scribble at your window pane in the witching hours, you'll know where to come.  Won't you?"

"Isobel!" I breathed with trembling voice, leaning into her, for my ardour was growing in bounds.  "You mustn't say such things!"

"Fiddle-faddle!" she whispered, so intimately that I could scarcely hear the words.  "What's the harm of a cuddle between lonely, frightened people who like each other?"

"It's what it leads to that's the harm.  You're playing with fire."

She considered a moment, and then she nodded.  "I know I am.  But you'll want a cuddle come the winter.  That's for sure."

*****

Several more days passed without incident before Mr Glimmeridge showed me the chapel. The subject somehow arose over dinner.

"Heavens!  I haven't shown you the chapel yet, Henry.  How remiss!  We'll do it directly after dinner, and then you'll see the Glimmersmeer ciphers."  He chuckled.  "That'll give you something to rack your brains over."

"In the chapel, sir?  But I assumed the ciphers would be in the archive."

"Dear me, no," he laughed.  "Oh dear me, no.  Come with me after dinner, and I'll show you the glory of Glimmersmeer Hall."

Therefore, after dinner, Bludgeon wheeled Mr Glimmeridge out into the courtyard and towards a small building with narrow round-topped windows that stood partly immured in the thickness of the outer wall next to the gatehouse.  I had noticed it before, but I had assumed to be a storehouse of some sort, or perhaps the mediaeval garrison room. 

I opened a low door and stood aside as Bludgeon eased the bath chair over a deep step and down onto the inner floor.  Isobel followed us in, lighted a spill and walked round igniting candles that stood around the floor in tall sconces.  Soon the small chapel was full of warm, yellow candlelight, and I saw marvels.

I gasped as I beheld, running right round the walls, the finest set of mediaeval wall paintings I have ever seen.  Nearly all England's church-wall paintings had been destroyed during the Reformation, and one of the glories of our art had been lost for ever.  Of course, some few survived here and there in a mutilated or fragmentary state, but the paintings at Glimmersmeer Hall were unique, and magnificent, and I said so.  Here were Adam and Eve with the apple, the Burning Fiery Furnace, Noah, and so many of the Old Testament tales, together with a horrifying Doom at the altar end, in which fallen souls well being shovelled into a furnace by gloating demons.

I noticed that Mr Glimmeridge beheld the Doom a moment in silent contemplation, and then his eyes moved down to his deformed and hidden hands.  I was convinced then they had been burned in some terrible fire.

"Can you see the cipher, Henry?" he asked with a boyish glee, despite his shawls and his wispy white hair.

I looked about me, searching all the paintings for some clue.

"Cold, cold, cold," he laughed.

I looked up at the ceiling, but that was unexceptional, being an unpainted barrel vault.

"Colder, colder, colder," he chuckled.

"Then . . . ."

I looked down at my feet, and I saw it.

The floor was covered with large grey mediaeval-looking tiles in uniform plain grey except for the centre, where some of the tiles were lettered and some of there had differently coloured backgrounds.  The letters made no sense, being randomly distributed, as though some of the tiles had been lifted and replaced in different positions.  I knelt down and examined them. The mortar between them was uniform and unusual in that it contained small white and black flecks of some hard crushed stone.  There was no evidence that it had ever been disturbed and I formed the view that all the tiles remained positioned as they had been originally set.

"What do you think?" asked Mr Glimmeridge.

I studied it for a moment.  "You're sure it is a cipher?"

"Aren't you?" he asked, suddenly sharp.

"Pretty much," I confessed. "I can't see any other reason for such a random arrangement of colours and letters.  And it's probably Latin."

"Most likely."

"Has anyone tried cracking it before?"

He laughed. "Of course they have — countless times over the centuries, as you might imagine.  You're the latest in a long line, Henry.  All the others have failed but, unlike you, they weren't experts."

I grunted and scratched my head.  He had certainly put me on the spot.  "It's possibly a double or even triple cipher," I said, pacing the floor and examining the tiles.  "They appealed to the mediaeval clerical mind.  You apply one process, then a second, and then possibly even a third.  I'll have to make a copy of this and keep it by me."

"Of course." He smiled.  "It should keep you amused for quite a while, I fancy.  Do you think it's crackable?"

"Almost certainly," I said.  "But it might take time."

He waved a claw and looked content.  "You have all the time in the world, Henry.  I'm not a fool.  I know it's a tough nut to crack; otherwise, it would have been penetrated centuries ago.  Don't feel under any pressure."  He smiled and his eyes twinkled.  "But I know it will engage you."

"Oh it will," I said deeply.  "It will certainly do that."

We went back out into the courtyard and Mr Glimmeridge pointed a claw at a sundial on the wall above the main entrance.  I had noticed it before, but never studied it, as there seemed little about it worth studying.  It was mounted on a diamond shaped tessellated cartouche, and now that I looked closely, I could see the vague outlines of letter in the smaller diamonds.

"There's another one," he said.  "More tiles and more letters.  Do you think the key to one will unlock the other?"

"Impossible to say," I said, craning my neck.  "It's a distinct possibility, but the stone is very badly weathered." 

So they were.  Even in the evening gloom, I could see that some of the letters were completely worn away by time and moss, and others were so blurred as to be unreadable.

"Yes," said Mr Glimmeridge, "but there's a sixteenth-century manuscript illustration in the archive room.  Isobel can show you tomorrow."

"Do you have any inkling of what they relate to?" I queried as we went indoors.

Mr Glimmeridge smiled to himself.  "I have a shrewd idea, but you'd consider it fanciful, and it might cloud your judgement, so I'll keep it to myself if you don't mind . . . for the time being at least."

"Treasure?" I asked with a lopsided grin.

"Yes indeed," he said, and then noting my evident scepticism, he added.  "There are many kinds of treasure, Henry.  I don't think we're talking about gold or anything like that.  But treasure all the same."

Then he fell silent on the subject.

*****

Next day, Isobel showed me the second cipher on a wonderful manuscript that described the hall as it had been in the late sixteenth century.  There were plans, elevations, and views, all in fine woodcut.  It showed that the hall had changed little in some respects but very much in others.  The main building was virtually unchanged, but it was clear that all those centuries ago there had been many more outbuildings clustered round it, and a continuous ditch had run right the way round it, fed by the meer.

"They maintained a garrison then, of course," she said, "to counter Scottish raiding parties.  Look at the stabling . . . and there's what looks like a blacksmith."

She turned some more pages and there was a large, detailed illustration of the sundial and the cartouche, carefully drawn in ink.  We took the book outside and compared it with the original.  I entertained no doubt that this was a faithful reproduction of the original. I noticed that it was coloured, and that the colour scheme was the same as that on the chapel floor.  Clearly, the two were related after all, the stone cartouche had been painted at one time, and I imagined that if I found the key to one, I'd find the key to both, so I decided to concentrate on the small puzzle first. I made a careful copy of it, colouring it from a tin of watercolours I'd found in the study.  I then returned to the chapel, made a careful copy of the pattern of tiles and letters on the floor, and coloured that too.  These I took up to my room, deciding that they would provide an excellent way to wile away sleepless nights.

4. Noises

During my first few weeks at Glimmersmeer Hall, I had slept heavily, no doubt because of the bracing upland air.  I was thankful for this when I remembered Isobel's equivocal comments about ghosts, for if ever there was a house with a haunted look and a history to match, it was Glimmersmeer Hall.  She teased me often about my fear, and I was fully aware that she did this only in fun, yet deep shadowy truths underline many jokes, and I often wondered whether to joke about such things in such a place was to court the inexplicable.

I used to look up at the dark mullioned windows of the locked and remote rooms, and sometimes I fancied that I saw a face suddenly withdrawn, and when I did, I felt an involuntary shiver.   Of course, it was the effect of shadow, cloud and light, but the hall, with its dragons and gargoyles, its echoing stone-flagged passages, its creaks and shadows, was a place to inspire uneasy imaginings.  Then, on occasions, I saw smoke rise again from a chimney in the deserted east wing.  Whether it was the same chimney on each occasion, or another one I couldn't be sure, but there was something unnerving about a fire crackling in a remote, shuttered, and unfrequented room.  In my imagination, I saw filmy spirits in the garb of past centuries draw close and warm there hands over it, while flames passed right through their diaphanous garments and limbs.

Out on the fells there were shadows too.  I remember one windy evening, climbing up to the top of the tower and seeing the wind stir the heather and sedge into waves that thrashed and broke as if on a steeply shelving reef.  I imagined them to be the troops of a ghostly army, advancing on the hall, as I supposed the mediaeval Scots had done, stealthily and at night.

There had been other armies too.  As I started to skim and organise the mass of late mediaeval material, I learned that the Glimmeridges had held the area for Edward IV during the Wars of the Roses.  They supported Richard III but, due to their remoteness, they had arrived too late to participate in the fateful battle of Bosworth.  Nevertheless, they had fought Henry VII at the later battle of Stoke, where the head of the house, Walter Glimmeridge, fell.  The wrathful Henry had later executed his son and, for the next sixty years, the family was eclipsed and penalised, rising to prominence and wealth again, only in the reign of Elizabeth I.

The archive material consisted of a wealth of letters, diaries, estate books, mostly in the English of the day, legal documents and trial records in French, manorial accounts, and at least one manuscript biography in Latin.  The Hindi would come later and I eagerly anticipated the months to come when I would follow the Glimmeridge's into the remote and then mysterious subcontinent. 

I fell to my work with a will, and a detailed and lively picture of the late mediaeval and renaissance Glimmeridges began to emerge piece by piece.  They had been, in effect, local monarchs in this out-of-they way place.  They were the law, the power, they had the right of life and death, they exercised it ruthlessly, and so they endured.  Even as early as the reign of Elizabeth I, they had been involved in expeditions to Newfoundland, Muscovy, and Africa, and it seemed strange that such adventurous and outgoing people would ultimately find themselves ensconced within this grey and unfrequented fastness in a remote valley in Westmorland.

During these late summer days, I worked in the study, often with Isobel.  Many times, I would glance up and see her looking at me with a soft, dreamlike intensity.  She made no further mention of illicit cuddles and yet, as summer began to cool into autumn, and I felt her warmth more sharply as she stood close to me.   I felt it as she sat next to me at mealtimes.  I saw her shapely body move beneath the folds of her dress, and I knew that, come winter, I would no longer be able to resist her temptations.

Not only did I conclude that she had been right about what the winter would bring, but I also noticed the sequence of frosts and thaws she had described in the relationship between Mr Glimmeridge and his nieces.  If anything, the thaws were more unsettling than the frosts.

The nieces no longer sat at table with their eyes riveted to their plates, but like Miss Drizzle, they stared straight ahead.  Unlike Miss Drizzle, they would make the occasional and banal pleasantry: "how is you work coming on, major?", "the weather is becoming cooler, don't you think," and that sort of thing.  If I answered, they would smile insipidly, and perhaps make another pleasantry, but I could never engage them in conversation.  I could never touch their spirits, for they seemed to have none.  Mr Glimmeridge exchanged pleasantries with them too, and all seemed affable, yet none of them were talking, or conversing — not as Mr Glimmeridge, Isobel, and I did.  They simply made conversation-like noises, as though it were a necessary chore, though hardly worth the bother.  It was as if Mr Edward Lear had written a nonsense play for them to perform at mealtimes. Unlike Lear's, their language itself was not nonsense in itself, but its burden was as meaningless, for when they rose from the meal, they had, for all their petty words, said precisely nothing to each other.

I studied the nieces as best I could without making it obvious that I was doing so.   In all my life, I had never seen three more-lumpish women, outside the lower-class areas of London, where poverty breaks the body and grinds the soul.  It wasn't that they were physically unattractive young women; they were nothing.  Their expressions were bland; their eyes betrayed no flicker of light or intelligence.  They simply existed.  It was as though something or someone had beaten or washed out of them all character and personality, so that only lifeless husks remained.  How could such women marry, assuming that they ever had the opportunity to mix in society, which seemed unlikely, for they never seemed to go out, even to Sedbergh?  Neither was I aware that anyone came to visit them.  Who even knew they were here?  Who cared?  What were their prospects?  What went on in their minds?  Nothing that I could see.

When the meal was over, they would stand and troop out of the room, followed by Miss Drizzle, who had said nothing and communicated with no one.  Indeed, I began to wonder if she was a mute, though what use would she be as a governess or companion if she were?

I began to wonder what sort of companionship this dry, silent woman could possibly offer anyone.  So what was her purpose?  Then I remembered Isobel saying that she was the girls' keeper.  It was a strange choice of words, once I properly considered it.  I began to wonder whether Isobel knew more than she let on, and I wondered other things too.

"What do they do with themselves all the time?"  I asked her one day.

"Do?"

"Yes, do.  They never go out, they never entertain; they simply materialise at mealtimes and then disappear again.  It's more than odd; it's grotesque."

She smiled.  "I think they do ladylike things.  They sew, they paint watercolours—"

I knew she was dissembling.  "But where?" I demanded.  "They're invisible most of the time."

"They have a sitting room at this end of the west wing, one of the used downstairs rooms I told you about."

"Well away from the rest of the household, then!"

"As you say.  Mr Glimmeridge doesn't want them near him."

"But surely they don't spend all their lives cooped up in there with the abominable Miss Drizzle?  Dear God, it's almost unbearable to sit at mealtimes with the woman, let alone spend your entire life with her."

Isobel shrugged.  "And they do, pretty much."

"Bloody hell!  What an existence!  No wonder they have no conversation, no soul, no animation, no . . . ."

I ran my fingers through my hair, shook my head, and sighed.

Then abruptly, and without apparent cause, the household atmosphere reverted.  I arrived for dinner one day, and the three nieces were standing staring rigidly at their plates.  Bludgeon entered with Mr Glimmeridge.  He held the spoon aloft, waited for the signal, rapped the table, and all four women abruptly sat.  None said a word throughout the meal, and Mr Glimmeridge said no word to them nor even acknowledged them.  Despite Isobel's explanation, I was sure that there were undercurrents that I hadn't even begun to penetrate.  Isobel said nothing more and I cold not draw her on the subject, Mr Glimmeridge said nothing, so I could not enquire, yet even though I had now been at Glimmersmeer Hall for three months, and I got on famously with Mr Glimmeridge and Isobel, I felt an interloper, and once more I became extremely uncomfortable.

*****

It was about this time that I began to hear noises in the night. 

I have said that I slept extremely well at the outset.  I continued to sleep well, but as time progressed, acclimatisation and the puzzles on my bedside table meant that I no longer fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow.  I was sitting in bed one night, pondering the ciphers yet again, wondering if one was the key to the other, or whether there was some external key yet unknown, when I thought I heard a soft muffled cry.  I pricked my ears and sat up sharp, waiting for it to repeat, but it didn't, and there was no noise at all but the wind rattling a distant shutter somewhere.

I looked at the clock and saw that it was almost one in the morning.  My cipher had absorbed me longer than I’d thought.  I laid my puzzle back down again, blew out the lamp, and settled under the covers.

Then I heard it again, a soft high moan, somehow muffled.  I couldn't be sure whether it was louder than before, for the dark tends to amplify sound and my mind was no longer concentrating on something else.  I lay tensely waiting for a third cry, and a minute later I heard it.  This time I fancied it was louder and sharper, yet it was still so soft that if I'd been out of bed and doing things, I'd probably not have noticed it at all.  There was a strange quality to it, as if it was seeping up from a great depth, through rock or water.

I must have lain for ten minutes listening intently, but I heard no repetition, and in the end, I slept.

I met Isobel as I left my room the next morning and told her about the strange noise in the night.

She shrugged.  "There are always noises out on the fells," she said.

"But this wasn't out on the moor."

"Where then?"

"I don't know.  Somewhere in the house."

"Close by?"

"No."

I described the noise, and how it had seemed to be within the building, and yet remote.

"Maybe a servant girl with a nightmare," Isobel suggested.  That seemed possible, though I wasn't convinced.  "Or an owl on the far side of the building."  That, I admitted was also possible, though I didn't believe for a minute that it had been an owl.  Indistinct and vague it might have been, yet I was sure it had been human.

"Or one of the ghosts," she added mischievously.

My scalp crept.  "Isobel!"

However, I knew it hadn't been a ghost either.  I had known that at the time; there had been nothing spooky about it.  It had been human; I was convinced of it.  Maybe one of the Miss Glimmeridges had woken from a nightmare after all, though I wouldn't have credited any of them with sufficient imagination for nightmares.  There were so many other possibilities, not all so innocent, for I knew that, years before I had heard such sounds before, and I flushed with shame at the recollection.

Isobel slipped her arm through mine and whispered.  "Winter's coming Henry.  The cuddle is still on offer, if you're frightened."

"Behave, Isobel!"  I hissed, looking round to check that no one could have overheard her.

"Wouldn't you like one, then?"

"Shush!"

It was all very well protesting.  My heart was beating fast and my blood was rushing.  I knew that, in time, I would be the one who misbehaved, and the glint in her lovely green eyes told me that she knew it too, and that she wouldn't mind at all.

As for the noise in the night, possibilities expanded disturbingly a few minutes later, for when we entered the dining room, the rest of the household were already there.  Bludgeon was feeding Mr Glimmeridge with kippers; the three Miss Glimmeridges were staring steadfastly at their plates and picking at their food as though they thought it would bite them back.  Miss Drizzle was staring steadfastly ahead and seemed not to have touched hers.  She rarely did.  I couldn't recall having seen her take more than a dozen small mouthfuls in the three months I'd been at the hall.  I wondered if she privately cooked black pudding over the fire in her room — it would have to be black — but where would she get it?

Isobel and I went to the sideboard and filled our plates.  I helped her into her chair and sat as usual between her and Miss Drizzle.  As I sat, I noticed that the sleeve of Miss Iphegenia's dress had ridden up slightly and the lower quarter of her arm lay exposed.  My eyes must have dilated as I saw, quite plainly, across the white skin of her arm, two vicious red wheals.  I knew that sort of mark well; I had seen plenty of them and, in an earlier part of my life, I had inflicted plenty of them myself, though the memory pained me now.  I looked at Miss Iphegenia and I wondered who was whipping her.

I heard a sharp intake of breath to my left.  I felt Miss Drizzle stiffen and quiver.  I turned to see her glaring at Miss Iphegenia, her nostrils flared, and her face hard will rage.

"Cover up, girl!" she screeched, rapping her knuckles on the table with trembling anger.  Miss Iphegenia hurriedly pulled down her sleeve and glued her eyes back to her plate, but in the fleeting second that I glimpsed her eyes, I read terror in them, and I saw that she too was trembling.

Meanwhile Mr Glimmeridge and Isobel continued eating their breakfast as though nothing odd had happened, though, of course, it had, and they had seen it as plainly as I had.  Their evident conspiracy was unendurable.

"All right, Isobel," I said as I firmly closed the study door half an hour later.  "What's going on here?"

She glanced up.  "Going on?"

"Yes, going on!  We all saw it.  Don't pretend you didn't!  So I'll ask you again — what's going on?"

She stared at me, still as stone, and I wondered for a second if she was going to slap my face.  Then she seemed to make a decision; she leapt up and flew to the door.

"Where are you going?"

She went out hurriedly through the library.  I was becoming angry.  I thought she was running away and I started to follow her, but she went only as far as the main library door to check that it was firmly closed, and then she made a swift visual scan of the library itself.  She came back, checking that the document room was shut and empty, before re-entering the study and carefully reclosing the door.  She walked up to me, took me by the arms, and spoke to me slowly, softly, and precisely.

"Some rules, Henry.  Never shout.  Never whisper unless you know we're alone.  Never react.  Above all, keep an eye open for Bludgeon and Drizzle."

"But—"

She placed a finger on my lips to quiet me.  "Not now!"

"But—"

"Shush!  Tonight.  When they've all retired.  I'll come to you.  And afterwards, we'll talk.  Agreed?"

"Afterwards?  What do you mean, aftwerwards?"

"I'm thirty-six, Henry.  I'm on the shelf—"

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"Thanks!"

"I didn't mean that.  Of course you're not. Look—"

"But I have passions and I need comfort.  We both do.  Will you refuse me?  I won't refuse you."

I swallowed.  My ardour was palpable but so was my disquiet.  "Isobel.  What has this got to do with—"

"You want me to confide in you, Henry, but I need to know I can trust you.  I need an ally.  I need someone very close.  Very close."

She was in my arms now, and her soft, yielding body was panting in my embrace. 

"Of course, of course, of course," I said, my voice trembling as I held her close and kissed her.  "Whatever you say."  She was warm and irresistible.  How could I refuse? 

We broke then and she calmed herself.  She placed a finger on my lips once more and breathed almost silently, "Later."

Then strangely, though perhaps not so strangely in that bizarre house, we settled to our work as though nothing had been said between us, and no tryst arranged.

5. Counsel

There was no repetition of the breakfast incident at either of our later meals that day.  Between mouthfuls of food supplied by the redoubtable Bludgeon, Mr Glimmeridge enquired affably about my work, the three Miss Glimmeridges stared contritely at their plates, and Miss Drizzle glared at them with redoubled fury.

Later, I sat in bed trying to read, wondering if Isobel would come after all, or think better of it.  The vestiges of gentlemanly feeling in me respected her virtue, but the red-blooded man in me now longed for her to come and yield herself utterly to my embraces.  Every time I thought I heard a footstep in the corridor, I held my breath, hoping that the handle of my door was about to turn and she would appear, flushed and eager to rush into my arms.

I had never married for the reason that so many officers in India didn't marry.  It was a graveyard for English women, their children, and plenty of their husbands too.  I had gone out there in the wake of a broken engagement — my fiancée had decided she preferred someone else.  I had fled England vowing never to return, and when I arrived in Calcutta, I was nursing a great anger against all women.  

Of course, a red-blooded man needs a woman, or women.  There were establishments in Calcutta that catered for the needs of the British soldiers, and more-salubrious ones provided for the needs of the officers.  The girls were clean and free from disease, they were discreet, and they were highly skilled (at least, I was told they were highly skilled.  I had no basis at the time for making a comparison).  They satisfied a physical need on occasion, but nothing more.  However, there was one girl, Anya, who used to massage my anger out from me, and she talked to me, in English with a hauntingly calming voice.  I felt no anger against her, yet the deep desire to hurt remained.

"You are so angry, sahib" she used to say to me while her fingers worked skilfully all over my oiled and perfumed body, and the spicy smell of joss crept its drowsy message into my tortured soul.  "Someone has hurt you very deeply, sahib.  I know.  I can tell." 

Of course, she had many ways of allaying my frustrations for an evening, but the burning anger remained.  In time, we became friends, and I talked to her and told her about myself, and my deep unhealable wound.

"Ah," she said, nodding wisely, despite her youth.  "I can do only so much for you, sahib. For the deep therapy you need a different type of woman."

"A wife?" I grunted, getting up from the mat and starting to feel for my clothes in the dim, stifling lamplight of her room.

"No, sahib.  You need a whip woman."

"A whip woman?" I laughed.  "I've never heard of such a thing."

"A whip woman is not cheap, sahib, but not expensive for a great English gentleman like you."  

"Bugger the expense," I snorted, "if she scratches my itch."

So we arranged that on the following night I would return, and she would take me to the woman I needed. 

I duly presented myself the next evening and I set out with Anya through the bazaars and back streets that led down through Calcutta towards the Ganges.  I wore a hooded cloak of thin cotton to hide my uniform, for life is cheap in such places and an unescorted English officer's uniform would draw knives like lice.  We walked to the very edge of the city, and there by the river stood a house.  Anya knocked on the door and it was opened by a large fellow in a turban with a great curved dagger in his belt.  For a second I was apprehensive, and my hand stole towards my revolver, but he joined his hands, bowed, and courteously invited me in.

"You are expected," said Anya, placing her hand reassuringly on my arm.  "I am known here and I can vouch for these people."

I knew Anya well enough to be confident in her good faith, so I threw back my hood and entered the house without qualms.

The big fellow smiled and held out his hand.

"He will require a rupee—"

"A rupee!"

She placed her hand on my arm again.  "The girls are worth it, sahib, and what is a rupee to such a great one as you?"

I consented and dropped a rupee into the big fellow's hand.  He smiled with flashing white teeth, bowed, made an elaborate flourish, and withdrew.

"Come, sahib," said Anya.  She led me through the house and into a courtyard where a small pool and fountain cooled the air, which was fragrant with flowers.  Two women were sitting by it and, as we entered, they rose and joined their hands to greet us.  Both were wrapped in diaphanous shawls, and I could see at first glance that they wore nothing underneath them, for I could see the dark shadows of their nipples and pubic hair.  Both made an elaborate salutation, abasing themselves before me, and then the one who appeared to be the older addressed me.

"I am Jasmine, sahib, and this is Neela."  She indicated the younger woman who, with one fluid movement, slipped the shawl from her shoulders so that she stood before me naked.  "Neela represents all women who have ever hurt you, sahib, and she begs for you to whip her."

Neela knelt before me and bowed her head in subjugation, while Jasmine produced a thick plaited whip from the folds of her own shawl, unwound it, and placed it in my hand.

"You can tie Neela up, if you wish, sahib, but it is not necessary.  She understands English well and will hold any position you command her to while you vigorously apply your whip to all the parts of her body that require punishment."

"Where?" I asked like a loon.

"Everywhere, sahib.  Her back and buttocks, of course, but also her breasts, her legs, and the fragrant flower between them."

"There?"

"But of course, sahib.  That is the part of a woman that has most often offended; the part that the injured gentleman most needs to punish.  Alternatively, you might prefer Neela to writhe unfettered under the whip screaming for your mercy, in which case you will give her no instruction and, of course, you will ignore her agonized pleas.  Either way, she will offer you no resistance.  She is your utterly."

Jasmine turned away for a seconds and started slipping rings and bangles from her fingers and arms, placing them on a stone bench before returning to stand before me.

"So much for Neela and the women who have hurt you!  Now for their mothers, their aunts, and all those who schooled and abetted them in their cruel ways.  I represent all of these.  So whatever you do to Neela, you must do doubly to me." 

Now Jasmine slipped of her own shawls, and stood naked before me.  Where Neela was slim and lithe, Jasmine was voluptuous, with magnificent breasts that terminated in and large disks with nipples almost as dark as ebony.  Her public bush was luxuriant and, as she turned round and round to excite me, her big deep bottom heaved and swayed enticingly.

"I hope you like what you see, sahib master."

"Very much," I said, dribbling like a loon.

"Now for the judgement of your whip."

Jasmine knelt before me also and bowed her head in subjugation to await my pleasure.

"We have no other wish or destiny but to completely satisfy your cruel lust, sahib master.  Do absolutely anything you wish with us both.  We are your naked whip slaves."

I stood motionless for a moment, like a child on Christmas morning who knows not which present to unwrap first.  Then I felt Anya's hand worm sinuously round my waist and unbutton my flies.  Her fingers slipped inside and started to stroke my prick.  "Do not be shy, sahib," she cooed in my ear like the voice of the serpent Satan.  "They are truly your naked slaves.  Use the whip and enjoy them without shame or embarrassment.  It will help you to ease your great hurt."

Then she slid her sinuous body round to my front.  She too knelt before me, and started sucking me.  My inhibitions fled.  With an explosion of pent-up rage, I let fly with the whip.  I don't know how many strokes I laid on my kneeling slaves in my first tirade, or where they landed on the bare wriggling flesh; neither did I hear their pleas, but afterwards, through the red haze I was aware that two naked women lay thrashing like spiked serpents at my feet, screaming for mercy.

That gave me pause, but not for long.

"Do not stay your hand, sahib!" urged Anya in my ear, lovingly stroking my swollen member.  "Think of the years of hurt you have suffered at their hands.  Think of the terrible pain they have inflicted on you.  Now hand it back with interest.  Once for anger, twice for revenge, three for punishment, and four for pleasure."  She smiled up at me eagerly.  "You have only just begun to punish your slaves, sahib.  Make their suffering terrible!  Strike on!  Enjoy yourself."

"But—"

"They writhe and scream to enhance your delight, sahib.  Take no notice of them.  They are meat for your pleasure whip.  Enjoy their pain!  Gloat over their agony!  Gratify yourself until you have completely sated your desire!"

I had my second wind now, and I plied the whip with less frenzy and more accuracy.  Seizing Neela by the ankle, I delivered three savage welts between her legs.  Her pubic hair was black but not thick, and I saw with satisfaction that the whip cut into her pink open slit, and each time it did so, her body spasmed and she screamed, her free leg flailing in the air.

Meanwhile Jasmine was on her knees, her legs apart her hands clasped behind her neck, rotating her full breasts before me.

"Punish them, sahib master," she crooned.  "These are the breasts that gave suck to those who hurt you.  They beg be whipped."

I obliged with four strokes and they leapt under each heavy lash, rotating more and more vigorously.  Jasmine was now groaning under each impact.

"Don't spare the nipples, sahib master, the nipples that gave sustenance.  Aaaaargh!  Aaaaargh!  AAAAAARGH!"

She was on her back now, her body arching and contorting with every savage stroke, as great read striped appeared where her dark nipple had been.

"AAAAAARGH!  This is justice for you, sahib master!  AAAAAARGH!  These wicked nipples deserve it!  AAAAAARGH!  Please don't spare them!"

Neela now back-arched at my feet, her stomach, breasts, and crotch undulating for my pleasure.  I switched my attention to her and laid twelve heavy strokes at intervals down the front of her body, starting with her breasts and working down to her legs, which were kicking like railway pistons now.  Then I stood astride her, lifted once leg by its ankle, and thrashed her crotch again. 

"Whip the cunt that refused you, sahib master!   AAAAAARGH!" she cried gleefully, despite the terrible pain.  "Harder, sahib!  Much harder!  AAAAAARGH!  Make it burn, sahib!  AAAAAARGH!  Roast this cunt for your pleasure, sahib!  AAAAAARGH!"

Anya had dropped my trousers and was teasing my swollen prick with her expert tongue.  From the corner of my eye, I saw the whipped Jasmine coming purposefully towards me on trembling knees.  She wrapped her hands round me and started to caress my buttocks with her skilful hands. Anya pointed my prick towards her gasping mouth ad she slid her lips hungrily over it.  Meanwhile, I felt another sensation as she started to rub her wet and gaping crack against my shin.

"This is the filthy cunt that gave birth to the one whot hurt you, sahib master," she gasped, smothering my prick with kisses.  "How will you punish it?"

I kicked her on her back and she smiled up at me as I seized one of her ankles and delivered more strokes to her crotch.

"AAAAAARGH!  Harder, sahib master!  AAAAAARGH!  AAAAAARGH!  Don't be merciful!   AAAAAARGH!  AAAAAARGH!  Pleasure yourself!   AAAAAARGH!"  

Then, grasping her by the hair, I dragged her over the stone bench.  Her big ripe bottom wriggled like a beggar before me and I whipped that too.  It leapt at each stroke and her legs frantically worked as I reduced her buttocks to a wriggling mass of black and blue welts.  I then whipped her thighs in like manner.  Turning to Neela, I dragged her across the bench and whipped her in like manner.

Thus I continued for about five minutes.  I have no idea how many strokes I laid on while the two naked women wriggled at my feet, but by the time I finished their exhortations had ceased, and both were screaming frantically for mercy.  I stopped, panting, and looked down at them.  They were a writhing mass of red cuts, bruises, and welts.

Exhausted, I threw the whip down. Anya gently pushed me back onto a soft divan, straddled me, and brought me slowly to completion while the whip women crawled groaning to the lotus pool and slipped into its cool water to salve their wounds.

I visited the place once a month for the next two years, and I soon realised how crude my first attempts with the whip had been.  Anya, Jasmine, and Neela taught me how to apply it skilfully, and how to derive pleasure from delaying the strokes while my victim quivered in anticipation, helplessly begging for mercy she knew would never be given.  They taught me how to bind a woman's breasts and make them firm before whipping them with a light and slender lash — how to make the slow pleasure of such a whipping last for hours, while the victim twitched and screamed.  They taught me how to use candles, and how to insert needles into the nipples and the vulva lips.  In short, they taught me how to torture a woman expertly. 

I might have continued in this manner had I not met Eleanor, who had come out to Calcutta with her family.  We fell in love immediately, and I had no further need of whip women.  We were blissfully happy for three months, before she succumbed to malaria.  This time, I could not blame womankind for my pain, and although I remained in India for another twelve years, I never went to the whip women again.

I heard a click, and my consciousness flew from the sultry heat and forbidden pleasures of India, and back to my draughty room at Glimmersmeer Hall.  I looked down my bed towards the door, expecting to see it stealthily open.  Instead, there was movement at my left shoulder and I squirmed round to see Isobel emerge from a hole in the wall.

"What the—"

"Shush!   Secret passage.  The place is riddled with them.  It's much more discreet than using the corridor, don't you think?"

"Well . . . ."

She produced something soft and shapeless out of her dressing gown, laid in tenderly on the pillow beside me, and gave it two loving strokes.

"What on earth is that?" I whispered, because I couldn't quite make it out in the dark.

"He's Horace, my cuddly bush baby.  He's been coming to bed with me for years, so don't be nasty to him!"

"What do you need me for then?" I chuckled.

"Don't be silly, darling.  When they made him, they didn't give him all the necessary bits, so he's rather limited.  Shall, I take my nightie off now; to save us getting all tangled up when you try in a minute?"

"Are you sure it won't embarrass Horace?" I chuckled.

"Don't be silly.  He's seen me undressed hundreds of times."  She planted a kiss on the stuffed object.  "Haven't you, Horace?  Well?"

"Well what?"

"Shall I take my nightie off now?"

"Rather," I said, tugging at my nightshirt to get that off too.

There was a flurry of dull grey in the dark room, and she was sliding into bed next to me.  I put out my hands to embrace her and she stifled a yelp.

"Gosh, your hands are cold!"

"Sorry, they've been on the bed covers."

"Why didn't you keep them warm inside if you knew I was coming?"

"Sorry," I said, briskly rubbing them together to warm them, and them reapplying them."

"Ouch!  They're still cold."

"Why don't you get Horace to cuddle you then?"

She embraced me and kissed me passionately on the lips.  "I haven't come for a cuddle, silly."

"What, then?" I murmured, running my hands over her bottom and her surprisingly firm breasts.

She pressed her lips to my ear and whispered, "What do you think?  I've come for a really long, hard, and comprehensive fucking."

"You naughty girl!" I said, playfully slapping her bottom so that she gave a little squeal.  "Wherever did you learn language like that?"

"At boarding school, of course — strict Church of England.  And I've been waiting for really good fucking ever since I met you.  So I hope you're up to the job."

"I reckon I can just about manage," I sniggered under my breath. 

"I certainly hope so." 

She took my hand in one of hers and steered it between her legs.  Her hair was soft and downy, and her hot slit was wet and wide open.  "Just in case you don't know where my cunt is," she murmured in my ear, and her breath was warm and wet.

"It's in the usual place," I said, stroking her clitoris and kissing her.  "And well-brought-up ladies shouldn't use language like that."

"They do when they're hot with lust, darling, and I've lusted after you since the first moment I saw you."

"Me too."

"Liar."

"Well, for quite some time.  Ever since you started talking about cuddles, at least."

"What?  Despite all the stiff competition?"

"I must confess that Miss Drizzle ran you close."

"Bastard!" she hissed, kneeing me playfully in the balls.  "Come on!  Let's have a nice slow juicy fuck — I've been positively panting for it for three months now." 

She rolled on her back and as I stroked her slit with gossamer-soft fingers, she moaned, her legs opened further, and her own fingers started stroking my prick.  "Give me what I need, darling!  Don't make me wait any longer!  Please."

Taking my prick in my hand I started running my knob to a fro along her crack from her clit to the mouth of her cunt, where I rubbed it several times round the rim.

"Fuck it!  Fuck it!  Fuck it raw!" she sobbed in my ear.  Then, without any warning, she thrust me off her and sat up.  "Hang on!"

"What's wrong?" I cried.

"Shush!  Do you want them all to hear?  I just want to take my glasses off."

She twisted against me, reaching for the bedside table.

"Ready now?"

"Mmmmm.  Yes."  Her hands stole round back my neck, her tongue worked its way into my mouth, and she wrapped her legs round the backs of my thighs and she squirmed down onto my prick.

"Mmmmmmm.  That's better."

Her cunt was like tight trembling velvet.  I've never felt one like it.  It shrank onto me like a hot glove and I felt her pelvis rotating under me as she fucked me.  Her breath was hot on my face, she was smothering me with kisses, and her eager cunt was toiling like a freshly whipped slave on the length of my rigid cock.

"God!  Your fucker's magnificent."

Her gyrating movements became increasingly rapid and energetic.  Her breath and mine rasped together like two saws, I could hear both our hearts beating faster, and the bedsprings were twanging away like a gamelan orchestra.

"Ohhhh!  Ohhhh!  Fuck me to death!"

Then, through all the grunting, gasping, moaning, and twanging I heard something else on the edge of my consciousness.  I froze in mid thrust, my ears pricked up.

"Hush!"

Isobel in the meantime, was chewing my Adam's apple. "Ohhhh!  Ohhhh!  Finish me off, my executioner!"

"Hush, Isobel!"

Her eyes snapped open.  Her face was livid.  "What do you mean?  Hush!"

"Shush!  Listen!  There it is again."

It was the crying noise I had heard the night before.  Distant, filtered from great depths, yet sharp, and in the house.

"There, again."

She stroked the back of my head.  "Yes I know, darling. I've heard it too.  Come on!"

"But what—"

"Shhhh!" she breathed.  "We'll talk afterward.  Come on."  She pulled the covers over our heads the blot out the noise.  "There's just you and me in the entire world while we're doing this."

"What about Horace?"

"Oh very well then!  You, me, and Horace.  But he's very discreet!"

"I've heard it many times," said Isobel later, while we lay entwined in blissful post-coital calm. "I've been here for five years.  I've heard it on and off since the start.  At first I used to scare myself to death thinking we were haunted."

"Are we?"

She laughed.  "Not that I've heard.  Odd but true."

"Really?"

"Yes, really."

"So what do you think it is?"

"It's one of the girls, of course.  It always coincides with the periods when the silences at table are at their hardest, and the three girls are looking at their plates."

"You noticed Iphigenia's arm today?" I said.

"Yes, of course.  But you mustn't be seen to notice."

"Why not?"

"Because it seems to make it worse for them, not better."

That made sense.  I lay there fondling her breasts for a moment.

"You told me when I first came here that Mr Glimmeridge hold's them responsible for his younger brother's death.  How?"

"I don't know.  It's clear that he does from words he's let slip on occasion.  I don't mean that he thinks they led his brother a dance, or broke his heart, or disappointed him, let him down, or anything indirect like that.  It's much more specific, though don't ask me how; I just know it is.  I've seen his face sometimes when the subject has crossed his mind.  There have only been about half a dozen such occasions.  Mr Glimmeridge is such a mild, kind, and generous man, yet, on those few occasions, his face has been the terrible face of an avenging angel."

"Or a devil?"

"No," she said emphatically.  "Nothing like that.  Had that been the case I would have left long since.  I only stay because he is such a lovely man, and a generous employer — a good and generous man in all respects.  Have you any idea how much money he gives to charity?  How many children's homes he supports?  Or how much he does to alleviate hardship hereabouts?"

"But many unscrupulous men like to pose as benefactors," I countered.

"Yes, but he doesn't pose.  That's the point.  Most of his work is quiet, much of it wholly anonymous.  I have never known him seek praise or recognition of any sort."

"Odd," I said.  "And where does Miss Drizzle fit?"

"Somewhere at the heart of it.  That I do know.  When I arrived five years ago, the girls were aged seventeen to twenty-one.  She was already here, ruling them with a rod of iron.  Even then, I thought it odd then that they should need a governess.  Such a man as Mr Glimmeridge could send them to a finishing school if he wanted to further their education — he has an enormous fortune, you know.  But it's even odder than that.  Have you ever spoken at length to Drizzle?"

I laughed.  "At length?  I don't think I've ever exchanged more than the occasional grim banality over the dinner table.  And those occasions have been exceedingly rare."  My hand wandered downwards and started to stroke Isobel's pubic hair.

"She's certainly banal," said Isobel, guiding my finger to precisely the right place.  "When I first came here, I made some effort with Drizzle.  She was, after all, another mature woman of education, or so I thought.  I soon discovered that she has no education at all — no French, no music, no nothing.  You cannot hold any sort of reasonable conversation with her.  She can scarcely write a letter.  No, her role is entirely that of a disciplinarian."

"So she inflicted the marks I saw at breakfast?"

"Unquestionably.  When I realised how ill educated she was, I too wondered what her role could possibly be.  One day — I'm ashamed to say — I played the spy.  It was an overcast winter's afternoon, one of those afternoons when it starts to get dark at about three o'clock.  Mr Glimmeridge was suffering considerable pain from his hands, as he does on occasion, and he was lying in his room, in a laudanum-induced sleep.  I had nothing to do, so I crept into the west wing, where the girls and Drizzle have their so-called sitting room.  The house was so shadowy and dark that I was sure no one would see me.  I made my way quietly down the passage and hovered outside their door.  I was just about to put my eye to the keyhole when I heard Drizzle's harsh voice blaze in anger, and furious footsteps approaching the door from the other side.  I leapt up, rushed to the nearest window, and plunged behind the thick drape — and just in time.  The door flew open; Drizzle emerged, and clumped down the passage in high dudgeon. 

"She left the door open and I looked carefully round the corner of the drape and into the room.  They call it the sitting room but I have never seen a sitting room like it.  The furniture consists of three mercilessly hard chairs facing a desk with a comfortable chair behind it."

"A school room?"

"Hardly.  There were no desks or tables except the one, no blackboard, no books, no map on the wall that I could see, none of the usual schoolroom paraphernalia.  There were no paintings, no easel, nor any flowers — nothing.  But in front of the desk was a sort of whipping block, the type of thing I understand they use at public schools for bending boys over when they birch them."

"Hmm!" I said with sharp recollection.  "I know the sort of thing you mean."

"Two of the girls — don't ask me which — were sitting on their hard chairs, bolt upright in their perpetual black dresses, with their hands on their heads.  The third was out front, bent over the whipping block.  The skirt of her dress was pulled up across her back.  Her bottom was bare and pointing towards the ceiling.  Even at distance, in the poor light, I could see that someone had recently thrashed it.  Thus, they waited for about two minutes in complete and immobile silence.  Then I heard furious footsteps approaching again.  I leaned back behind the drape and Drizzle reappeared, rolling up her sleeve and brandishing a long cane, the type with a curved handle.  She re-entered the room and closed the door. 

"Then the caning started.  I could hear no voices at the start, though I was straining my ears.  All I could hear was the swish and impact of the cane.  Twelve strokes.  I didn't realise it could take so long — I assumed a minute or so — but it took much, much longer.  I reckon the gap between each stroke was about twelve or fifteen seconds, and in the interims I could hear her hard heels striking the floor as though she was walking round and round her victim, fondling her beloved instrument between strokes.  That might be fanciful but—"

"I don't think so," I said.  "It sounds consistent.  Then what?"

"After the sixth or seventh stroke the screaming started.  The intervening doors and walls are so thick that no one would hear it, except perhaps a lone goose, floating outside on the meer.

"When the twelve were finished, I was almost caught.  I was emerging from behind the drape when the door flew open again and Drizzle re-emerged.  I stood stock still, in deep shadow, and she didn't see me as she stamped back down the passage with the cane.  Inside the room, the two girls were still sitting rigidly on their chairs, staring straight ahead, their hands on their heads, and the third was still bent over the whipping block, trembling and sobbing.  Her bottom was a mess of fresh blue and red welts.

"A couple of minutes later, Drizzle reappeared, without the cane this time.  She entered the room, closed the door, and silence reigned.  I took the opportunity to make my escape."

Isobel turned into me and I cuddled her, gently stroking her flank and thighs.

"So it's not a schoolroom, but a permanent detention and punishment room," I suggested.

"That's exactly what it is."

"And the way they sit silently at the table is pretty much the way they spend the rest of their time in there?"

"I think so too, yes."

"Merciful heaven!  No wonder they're so dull and listless and . . . ."

"And what?"

"Frightened."

"Yes.  Drizzle is here to maintain an iron discipline and nothing else.  They're terrified of her."

"Let's not mince words.  She's a hired sadist," I said, reflecting that I had been a sadist too once, but I wasn't going to tell Isobel about that.  "I went to a minor public school where the discipline was draconian, and, of course, I saw a lot of corporal punishment in India," I added, skating over the detail.  "The sadist always delivers the punishment slowly, or starts, breaks off to deliver a lecture, and recommences.  We had a couple like that at school too.  They weren't the hardest caners by any means, but they so clearly enjoyed it, and protracted it, that all the boys loathed them.  Slicer and Spider, we called them.   And the ritual of preparing the girl, bending her over, then going for the cane, and again leaving her still bent over while it's returned at the end — and walking round between strokes — all that smacks of sadism too.  That sort of ritual always does."

"You don't surprise me," said Isobel, exploring my navel with her little finger.

"I'll tell you something else too.  A cane, or a strap, or a tawse, or any usual instrument of domestic discipline didn't make the marks we saw on Iphegenia's arm this morning."

"A riding crop?"

"No.  A thin whip made those, the type of whip used in the East for disciplining women," I said vaguely.  "I've seen the results in India.  The marks they leave are quite different — very narrow and very, very angry.  And if there were marks like that on her arm, there'll be corresponding marks on her body.  Iphegenia had been comprehensively whipped."   

Isobel rolled away, put on her glasses and sat up, hugging her knees.

"Do you mind if I stay with you, tonight?" she said suddenly.

I put out a hand and caressed her.  "I was rather hoping you would."  I reached down to my prick and waved it at the ceiling.  "I think I've still got a bit of steam left in the old boiler."

"What about tomorrow night and the night after?"

I sat up too and folded her in my arms.  "You don't have to ask, my dear, but I didn't think I was such a wonderful catch."

"You'll do for me," she said and she kissed me.  "But to be perfectly honest, I'm asking because I'm frightened."

"Hush, hush."  I kissed both her eyelids.  "You come any time you want.  I have a loaded revolver in the drawer and I'd defend you with my life, but . . . ."

"But what?"

"Well . . . why not leave?  Why don't we both leave?  There's something nasty going on here we're better off not mixed up in.  God knows I need the money but—"

"Me too, Henry."  We were sitting huddled close, and both whispering now.  "My situation is very much like yours.  Look, have you read any of Anthony Trollope's novels."

"One or two," I said.  They hadn't unduly impressed me.

"In one, he says that when an unmarried woman reaches thirty, it would be a kindness to humanely strangle her, because her life is over.  He is the one author who understands.  I have no family I can depend on for support, no husband, no private income.  I must live by work and try to build a future for myself.  It is so very hard for a woman to do that.  She can do so few respectable things in the way of work.  I thought that some years in my job here would enable me to raise enough capital to set up a small private school."

"I had similar ideas," I said. "But is it worth the risk?  Something really nasty is going on here."

"So it would seem, and yet . . . Mr Glimmeridge has never really talked to me about it.  He's passed comments on occasion, and there have been allusions, but he's never really explained."

"Hardly surprising!"

"You would think so, wouldn't you?  Yet there has never been any awkwardness or embarrassment on his part and, strangely, none on mine."

"Perhaps that's because he's completely amoral."

She shook her head emphatically.  "No, it isn't that.  It's because he assumes that I know, and that I understand.  And I do want to understand, Henry.  I want to understand why such a fine man is doing such terrible things."

6. Discoveries in the library

It is strange how things sometimes fall into place, and disconnected threads bind together.  I have never regarded myself a detective, in fact, I am not at all an observant person, but I should have noticed the irregularity earlier.  I was alone in the study a couple of weeks later.  Mr Glimmeridge had been experiencing particular severe pain with his hands, and had then developed a fever.  Isobel had remained with him while they waited for the doctor to arrive.

I recalled Isobel telling me about Miss Drizzle caning the niece in their west-wing detention room, and I remembered her telling me quite clearly that Mr Glimmeridge was suffering considerable pain from his hands, as he does on occasion, and he was lying in his room, in a laudanum-induced sleep.  He was suffering again now, and probably had been for several days.  Were the cycles in his behaviour towards his nieces attributable to the pain he was suffering from his injuries?  Was Miss Drizzle at her most draconian when the pain partly or fully incapacitated him?  Was this by his consent or not? 

I realised that I was building a huge web of supposition upon a slender fact that might not be relevant at all, so I put the thought to the back of my mind.

Later I happened to go into the document room.  I had already worked my way through most of the mediaeval shelves, though I had done little more so far than collate and cross-reference most of the material. I noticed that there was a yet-unopened box on the top shelf.  Reaching up in the dim room, I tried to reach it, but although my fingers could touch it, there was no way that I could get it safely down without standing on something.  Therefore, I brought a library stair from the main library, climbed onto it, and made a discovery. 

I returned with my box to the study, but instead of opening it immediately, I dusted my shoes and climbed on my desk to examine the ceiling.  The beams look sound and old enough, but they had been painted black so it was hard to be sure, and I noticed that instead of being interspersed with lath and plaster, as was usual, I was looking directly at black-painted floorboards, and they looked quite new.  Bringing in my library stair into the study, I stood it on the desk, and climbed on it to inspect the ceiling closer.  I tried peering up between the boards but they were too close to show me anything of the room above.  I braced myself on the library stair and pushed upwards, but nothing gave.

I tried this at several points along the boards within reach, moving the library step several times across the desktop.  I was about to move them to the other desk and try the boards on the other side of the room when, with my final push I was gratified with the sound of a squeaking nail, and the board pushed up about an eighth of an inch.  I jumped down from the library stair and the desk, and retrieved a long, heavy triangular-section steel ruler that we kept in the study.  Using this as a lever, I gradually managed to crowbar up a section of the floorboard above, to such a point that, with a monumental heave, it sprang, the ruler fell to the floor with a clatter, and I saw light above.  After another ten minutes' work, heaving and levering, the board finally came loose and I pushed it up and to one side.  Climbing the library stair a little further I managed to stick my head through the slot. 

  I was looking into a first-floor room, ostensibly a bedroom, but there was no bed, no carpet, and no furnishing of any kind there.  Looking at the tops of the floorboards it was clear that they were quite new, unvarnished, and unpainted, but it was when I looked up at the undecorated walls and the ceiling that I realised my suspicion was correct.

"Henry!"

"What?"  I was off balance.  My feet shot off the library stair.  I lurched at the exposed beam and managed to wrap my right arm round it as I fell.  With a jolt, it took my weight and I was left hanging with my legs cycling in the air.

"It's all right, Henry.  I'm coming for you."

There was a clattering below and strong arms were taking my weight.

"I've got you.  You can let go now."

I did so.  The arms lowered me, and I found myself standing on my desk, face to face with Isobel.

"What on earth were you doing up there?" she scolded me as though I were a naught child.

"I've made a discovery," I said with schoolboy pride.

"You mean you could have killed yourself."  She set her arms akimbo and looked up through the hole in the ceiling.  "And we can't leave the ceiling like that for someone to notice."

"Hang on, I'll—"

"No you won't.  I will."  She snapped her fingers.  "Put those steps back on the desk and hold them steady while I do it!"

"Yes, miss."

"Stop fooling and do as you're told!"

I did as she had bidden me.  While I stood on the desk and held the steps firm, she mounted them and pushed her own head through the slot in the floor above.

"Oh!"

"You see it too?"

"Gosh!  What made you guess?"

"Let's put the board back and I'll tell you.  Turn it end-to-end first so the nails don't foul on the beams."

She managed to juggle the board back into place and the nails protruding down between the beams weren't noticeable. I helped her down and returned the library stair to the main library.

"So what made to suspect?" she asked again when we'd closed ourselves back in the study.

"The archive room."  I tapped the box I'd retrieved.  "I was pulling this down from the top shelf on the wall adjoining this room.  I'd mounted the library stair for height, and I noticed that the beams were scorched where they entered the wall.  These are too," I said, pointing above, but they're been painted black.  There's no lath and plaster, just new floorboards above.  There's something else that I missed too," I said, pointing to the window.  "Look at the glass squares.  They're new too, as is the panelling in here, and also the door."

"My, my," she said admiringly.  "Quite the Sergeant Cuff, aren't you?  And the scorching in the room above confirms it."

"There's no doubt," I said.  "There was a serious fire in this room.   And if it didn't happen in your time, I fancy it wasn't too long before."

"Mr Glimmeridge's hands?"

"It's likely, isn't it?  And what about his brother's death?  After all, if he blames his nieces, it doesn't sound as though the cause was natural.  Do you know how he died?"

She shook her head.  "No.  As with so many other things, there's a conspiracy of silence."  She pondered a moment.  "There's one way to find out though.  I came to tell you, I've got to go into Kendal to get more laudanum and some carbolic acid for Mr Glimmeridge's hands."

"How is he?"

"They're paining him.  The doctor isn't worried about his chill, provided we keep him tucked up in bed, but his hands are another matter.  The skin cracks and he's worried about infection creeping in"

"Carbolic acid saved my life in India," I said.  "But how do we find out about the fire in Kendal?"

"The local newspaper archive.  When the master of Glimmersmeer Hall died, it wouldn't have gone unreported.  And you're coming too — Mr Glimmeridge said you ought.  So go and put some of your new warm clothes on."

We didn't get to Kendal until well after midday.  It was a pleasant trip for although it was already mid October, it was one of those golden autumn days that remind you of the summer gone.  The country between Sedbergh and Kendal is undulating and dotted with farms.  Once, I would have thought it harsh, but after three months at Glimmersmeer Hall, surrounded by nothing but bleak hills, it appeared lush, sprinkled with stands of trees and small villages.

We purchased our medicines quickly and headed for the offices of the Kendal Mercury.  We started scouring the archives for October 1873, when Isobel had arrived at the hall, and worked backwards.  It didn't take us long to find what we sought.  The death of Isidore Glimmeridge in his library on Christmas Eve 1872 had occupied three columns of the front page.

It seemed he had been alone when the fire started in a small room off the main library.  An overturned lamp was the suspected cause.  In order to protect the collection, it seems that he had tried to extinguish the flames himself and become trapped by them, or overcome by smoke.  His younger brother Gravell Glimmeridge had become aware of the fire, rushed in and attempted to rescue him, but he too had become trapped.  He survived only because his manservant, Seth Bludgeon had also arrived soon after and braved the flames to pull him bodily from the burning room, slamming the heavy door after them to contain the blaze.  According to Bludgeon, Mr Isidore was already dead and unrecoverable.  No one questioned his judgement, especially in view of his gallantry in rescuing Mr Gravell.   A subsequent investigation found that Isidore had been trapped and crushed beneath a bookcase that had sprung from its wall fixture in the heat of the conflagration.  The coroner returned a verdict of accidental death.

"No mention of the nieces then," said Isobel.

"You wouldn't expect there to be, would you?" I said, well aware how families like the Glimmeridges protect their own from public judgement.  "Neither can you assume that the newspaper account is completely accurate.  But at least we know how and when the younger brother died, and in such circumstances, there's always the possibility of foul play."

7. The east wing

Squalls of rain struck during our return to Glimmersmeer Hall and by the time we reached Sedbergh, the downpour had become torrential.  We decided that we could not attempt the last five miles before it eased.  Isobel told me that the uphill track would be reduced to a cascading cataract while the rain continued like this, and dangerous to attempt, especially in the gathering dark.  So we stopped to dry ourselves and eat a much-needed meal at The Bull, while the ostlers there rubbed-down and saw to our pony.

This made a pleasant change.  The eating arrangements had fragmented at the hall during Mr Glimmeridge's illness and, breakfast apart, Isobel and I had eaten in our rooms while Miss Drizzle and the nieces took their meals in their "sitting room".  I trembled to think what those meals were like.

By contrast, it was wonderful to relax in a bright and comfortable dining room, by a roaring fire, listening to the buzz of conviviality from the nearby tables, so different from the frigid atmosphere of the dining room back at Glimmersmeer Hall.

"We must do this more often," I said to Isobel as we eagerly tucked into our roast beef, for it had been a long tiring day — for me at least — and the last half hour of our journey had been wretched, for the damp had started to seep into my injured left arm, causing it to ache abominably.

"Let's," she replied eagerly.  "We're not prisoners, you know."  Her hand stole across the table and caressed mine.  Although we had spent several nights in bed together, it was at this point that I realised we were falling in love.  Her touch was far more intimate and consoling that any merely physical gratification and we moved to a new level of intimacy.

I told her of my past life, my broken engagement and later bereavement.  Of course, I omitted Anya, Jasmine, and Neela from my list of previous female encounters.  I told her of the splendours and horrors of India, of my army life there, and of the many friends I had lost to disease.  I told her of my father who had been a gentleman of no profession and private means, and who had gradually, secretly, but inexorable outspent his comfortable means to die in debt.

Her experience had been a little different but no happier.  Her father had been a clergyman enjoying a prosperous living in Hampshire.  Unusually, she had been an only daughter with five brothers.  All were now dead.

"Jack succumbed to cholera in the Cape, Fred was killed in India, Will was lost at sea, and Ed went off to California."

"What happened to him?"

"He was killed in a brawl."

"And the last brother?"

"Arthur was the apple of my father's eye, and he disgraced him.  He incurred gambling debts and tried to pay them off by forging the signature of a member of the local gentry.   As a result, my father lost his living and had to take a much lowlier paid one in Norfolk.  He's still there, but his circumstances are such that I cannot expect him to support me."

"But about your brother Arthur?"

"He killed himself."

"God, how awful!"

"Yes it was — particularly awful.  He was always something of a showman, you see, so he didn't do it quietly.  He went up to the house of the man whose signature he'd forged.  They were all outside having a garden party.  He produced a shotgun from under his coat and, in front of all of them, he literally blew his own head off."

"Dear God!  And was this the man who'd discharged you father?"

"Absolutely not.  He'd been very decent about the cheque business and he tried to hush it up for my father's sake.  But when Arthur killed himself the local holier-than-thou brigade was outraged and my father's position became untenable."  She shuddered.  "Those last weeks between Arthur's death and our departure were terrible.  They treated us like vermin."

"I can imagine."

"So, with my father's income so very much reduced, I felt I couldn't be a burden on them, so, like you, I had to find work.  The irony is that I'd always wanted to, but my father thought himself a gentleman and the idea appalled him.  But when his means were so savagely reduced, he resigned himself to it."   She laughed bitterly.  "Now I earn five times what he does." 

When we rose from the table we wondered if we would have to stay overnight — separate rooms, of course, for propriety's sake — but when we looked out we saw that the rain had stopped, and the clouds had swept from the sky, and a bright full moon was lighting the hills.  We told the ostler to re-hitch the trap, and we continued on our way, winding up through the bleak, blue hills under a cold moon.  There is nothing more desolate that driving up through the fells at night, but our close companionship kept us warm.

Glimmeridge Hall came into view only when we drew close, a blacker smudge before the dark grey backdrop of the hills, like a darkened ship, seen across the water at night.  We drove through the gatehouse and, even though it was midnight, a tweeded retainer emerged wordlessly from the black shadows to take the pony's bridle.

"I'd better take these medicines straight to the nurse," said Isobel, jumping down, for the doctor had sent a nurse to stay for a few days and sit with Mr Glimmeridge overnight.

I jumped down and made to follow, but as I did so, something flickered in the corner of my eye, and I stepped back again.  The ostler lugubriously led the trap away and I stepped forward, then back, and I saw it again: a thread of light bleeding through the narrow gap between two shutters.  The gap was so narrow that you saw the light only if you were standing at exact right angles to it.  When I took a step forward or back, it disappeared.

Isobel was looking at me quizzically.  "What are you doing, Henry?"

I motioned her towards me and, taking her by the shoulders, I stood her in front of me.  "Look up.  Do you see it?"

She craned her neck this way and that for a few seconds, and then froze.  "You're right," she said in a hushed voice.  "There's a light somewhere in the east wing."

Hearing her say it like that sent a shiver down my spine.  I imagined dark, cobwebbed, corridors flanked by rows of locked and shuttered rooms devoid of light or shadow.  In my imagination, I felt my way round a corner, and spied a partly opened door.  Through the crack, light pulsed and glimmered.  Pushing it open with my hand, I saw, on a table deep with dust, a burning lamp, around which gauzy shadows of cobwebs danced.  I looked at the dust at my feet.  No human foot had trodden here, nor had any human hand lit the lamp, but a ghostly one.

I shivered again.  But I knew that no ghostly agency was at work here.  Ghosts do not need lamps.  The cause was much more prosaic.  Someone was in the east wing.

Isobel's priority was to take the medicines to Mr Glimmeridge's room.  I followed her in.   He was sitting up in bed and appeared cheerful.  His chill seemed to have passed though clearly the doctor was taking no chances for the nurse told us that he was to stay in bed for a couple of days yet.  She seemed a kind and competent woman, and while she and Isobel unpacked the medicines, I told Mr Glimmeridge about our journey home and the reason for our late return.

"You should have stayed overnight in Sedbergh," he said, "rather than travel across the fells so late in uncertain weather."

Indeed, it was typical of the man to be generous and courteous in all things.  I shared Isobel's puzzlement over the disparity between his generous nature and the regime his nieces lived under.  It made no sense.  Isobel told him not to fuss, and while she sat on his bed and chatted to him, I slipped upstairs for a few moments.  When I returned, she was emerging from the room, and she carefully shut the door behind her.

"Where did you run off to?" she asked.

"To get this."  I slipped my hand into my pocket and produced my service revolver, fully loaded.  "I'm going to see what's going on in the east wing."

"It's probably just Bludgeon."

"At midnight?"

"Well, anyway, I'm sure you won't need a gun."

"Maybe not, but it will make me feel a damned sight more comfortable."

"I'm coming with you then."

"Isobel!"

I argued but there was no shaking her, so in the end I capitulated.  "Just make sure you stay close behind me and don't wonder off.  Come on!"

The doors to the east wing might have been locked.  I hadn't thought of that in my first rush of blood, but I'm sure that Isobel had, because when I turned that handle of the ground-floor door and it opened, I thought I sense her surprise.  Beyond was blackness, damp and somehow clammy, and as we closed the door behind us it enveloped us like a stifling mask, smelling of must, dust and stagnant water.

I felt Isobel shiver.

"Why don't you go back?" I whispered almost silently in her ear.

"No!  I'm coming with you."

"Well, hang on to me.  And be very quiet."

We proceeded slowly and silently.  I held my revolver ahead of me in my right hand, and Isobel followed me clinging onto my left arm, which was still aching.   I didn't want to lose contact with her, not that I thought there was any great physical danger, but it was an uncomfortable place, and it brought my chivalrous instincts to the fore.

The corridor was uncannily like the one I had imagined back in the courtyard.  Cobwebs brushed my face, and closed doors flanked us.  Behind each was a shuttered room devoid of light or shadow.  We came to a corner and turned left.  I spied a chink of light and froze.  The light was weak but it pulsed and glimmered.  It wasn't coming through a partly opened door, but down a flight of stairs — I could just make out the balusters.  We crept to its foot and looked up.  There was no light burning on the landing above, but beyond, though I couldn't see the source.  From somewhere above and beyond, I thought I heard a gasp and I froze, then another, then silence.  Balancing on my toes I slowly and quietly mounted the stair, Isobel sticking close behind me, still holding my left hand. 

As my head poked up above the level of the first floor, I looked between two balusters and along a wide and once elegant gallery with tall windows along its right-hand side.  In such places, in Elizabethan times, ladies had walked for winter exercise and men had played bowls.  The light was brighter here and I saw that ceiling had once been ornately painted but the paint was grey and green with mildew and I could see that it was flaking in great curls.  I could see large rectangles where pictures had once hung, and here and there, drapes still hung like seaweed from window recesses.  I heard a crackle and saw that in one of the cavernous fireplaces, logs were burning.

But when I saw what was on the long table at the gallery's centre, I gasped and froze.  Sensing my shock, Isobel drew up to me, and as she looked through the baluster as well, her breath caught sharply.  Four wall lamps slipped light around and across the table, brightly illuminating it.  The rest of the gallery stood in relative gloom and along all the walls, shadows wavered.  It was like a theatre, the stage lit for the performance, and the faces of the audience lit only by reflection.  For performance there was, and audience too.

The two performers were on the table.  I could not see them clearly but, from what they were doing, I deduced that they were a man and a woman.  Both were naked, their clothes piled on two chairs nearby.  As we watched, the woman gasped again.  She clawed at the man's back as he thrust into her repeatedly, deeply, and strenuously.  The table creaked as their excitement mounted and they shifted their body weight on it.

Their frantic copulation didn't shock us so much as their audience did.  For kneeling in a row by the table, their hands on their heads, and clad only in their nightdresses, were Mr Glimmeridge's three nieces.  Their faces, as they glimmered in the firelight, were blank as ever, and they uttered no word, nor made any gesture of horror or enjoyment.  They merely watched like statues, as the two performers of the table clutched at each other thrusting and gasping.

Their gyrations accelerated slowly to the crisis.  The man was jerking the woman back and forth along the tabletop as he thrust into her ever more savagely.  She was groaning and shrieking now in her wild ecstasy as he drove her like a piston towards table head.  She threw her head back over the edge, her tangled hair fell back from her face, and I saw that she was Miss Drizzle.  Despite the grotesqueness of our situation, I couldn't restrain a smirk as I recalled her cold aloofness at the dinner table.  Now her fingernails raked the man's back as he pounded her time and again.  He gasped aloud  too as he made one final monumental thrust into her, her back arched and she screamed in pleasure, then they both collapsed exhausted.      

I took my chance.  The stair was a dangerous place to hide and I had spied an Ottoman chest standing at its top.  I took hold of Isobel's wrist again and tugged her after me as we quietly crept to the top of the stair and swiftly secreted ourselves behind the Ottoman.

From this new vantage point we saw the man climb off the table.  I had suspected before but now I saw plainly that it was Bludgeon.  He ignored Miss Drizzle as he slowly dressed himself, and she ignored him as she slid off the table and walked towards the chair for her own clothes.  Despite their athletic coupling, there was clearly no warmth between them; theirs was a purely physical relief, or perhaps it was something else too, a desire to exhibit their carnal pleasure in front of the three motionless nieces who still knelt in a row, motionless and unresponding, with their hands on their heads.

Miss Drizzle picked up a dressing gown and draped it loosely round her shoulders.  She made no attempt to hide her nakedness, seeming to exult in it.  She was, as I have already said, not a voluptuous woman.  She was thin rather than slender, her breasts were small, though firm, but her nipples were dark and large, protruding from her chest like a pair of gun muzzles.  Her pubic hair was straggling and as dark as the hair on her head.  She folded her arms, clearly waiting for Bludgeon to dress.

He turned towards us to put on his underpants.  He body was muscular and hairy, unlike mine, which is very smooth for a man's, and I couldn't help noticing how enormous his penis was.  Even tough it was now flaccid, to hung halfway to his knees.  I could only imagine how large it had been when fully erect, and when I remembered how brutally he had thrust into Miss Drizzle, I considered that few women would ever have been fucked as intrusively and comprehensively than Miss Drizzle had just been fucked. 

I slid my eyes sideways towards Isobel, whose own eyes were standing out like mushrooms at the sight of Bludgeon's penis, though whether from lust or fear I couldn't be sure.  I turned away feeling slightly inadequate, though not very much, for she had not complained of my attentions. 

Miss Drizzle stood with her dressing gown hanging open, and I sensed from her angry face that she was becoming increasingly impatient as Bludgeon slowly and meticulously dressed.  At last, the deed was accomplished; he bent down and picked up a small lantern, lit it from one of the lamps, and without any word or acknowledgement turned and walked towards the top of the stairs.  Isobel and I ducked behind the Ottoman as he swung his lamp towards us.  We heard his slow heavy steps approaching and crouched down even more tightly as he passed us, and then we heard his footsteps clump as he lugubriously descended the stairs.  I peeped over the top of the Ottoman and he was gone; there was a brief flicker of light from the stairwell and then that too vanished.

Meanwhile, back in the lighted part of the gallery, Miss Drizzle slipped her dressing gown off again and paraded herself naked before the three kneeling women.  None of them dared look up.  I assumed that none of them dared do anything without her precise say-so, but I could see from the smile that played on her hard lips that something was about to happen.

"Up!" she screeched suddenly and, with one accord, all three nieces rose fluidly, no doubt from long practice, and with their hands still firmly on their heads.

"Strip!"

Their hands flew down to the hems of their nightdresses, with one motion the lifted them over their heads, let them fall at their feet, and their hands rose without pause to their heads again.  Thus all three stood naked before her, staring impassively ahead.

I could see that they hadn't been recently whipped; apart from a few faded stripes, their bodies were white.  All three had full breasts but their figures seemed to be the product of a life of inactivity more than anything else.  Their breasts sagged and they were too large in the stomach and deep in the navel to be attractive.  Their thighs were fleshly, so much so that they almost hid their tufts of pubic hair.

Still Miss Drizzle walked up and down, like a bullying sergeant, reviewing raw recruits whose lives he means to make a misery.  She walked slowly back to her chair and picked up a slender riding crop, much longer than any I had ever seen before.  She made a few cuts in the air, clearly for the nieces' benefit, though not one of them reacted or flickered an eyelid.  As she walked along the line again, she lifted the tip and dragged it across their nipples, as a boy drags a stick along a row of iron railings.  As she did so, each breast swung, though nothing else moved.

"Turn!"   

With their hands still on their heads, the three nieces turned and their bottoms came into view.  They were large and flabby, and though they too bore the fading stripes of torment, I could see they had not been ill-used over the past two or three days.  Now Miss Drizzle dragged her long crop along the row of bottoms: once, twice, three times. 

"My, my," she said in a languorously threatening voice, dripping with feline spite.  "These naughty-girls' bottoms have been shamefully neglected.  We'll have to do something about that.  Won't we?"

She walked back the end of the row and her smile was positively vulpine as she stared to stroke the first bottom with her long crop.  I fancied now that I saw it twitch.

Then she pounced.

Thwack!   

"Yes Miss Drizzle!"

Thwack!   

"Thank you, Miss Drizzle!"

She moved to the next and spent several long seconds stroking that too. 

Then, just as suddenly, she struck.

Thwack!   

"Yes Miss Drizzle!"

Thwack!   

"Thank you, Miss Drizzle!"

Then she moved on to the third.  Again, she stroked the bottom, for even longer, and more lovingly than the others.

"Anticipation is the keenest part of punishment, isn't it, my dear?" She asked, with the softest of purrs.

"Yes, Miss Drizzle," replied a small voice.

"I know," I breathed, and I sensed Isobel turn and look at me querulously.

The long crop stroked the bottom again.  "Oh yes.  Lots and lots of lovely anticipation."

The crop flashed.

Thwack!   

"Yes Miss Drizzle!"

Thwack!   

"Thank you, Miss Drizzle!" yelped the girl and she gasped again as, momentarily, her hands left her head before flying back to it.

Miss Drizzle's smile was exultant now.

"Oh dear", she said sweetly, stroking her crop lovingly with her free hand.  "I thought I told you to keep your hands on your head, my dear."

"Sorry, Miss Drizzle," came the small voice again.

"Yes, my dear.  I'm sure you are , and with good reason, because—"

Thwack!   

"Sorry Miss Drizzle!"

Thwack!

"Aaaaargh! Sorry Miss Drizzle!"

Thwack!

"Aaaaargh! Sorry Miss Drizzle!"

Thwack!

"Aaaaargh!"

She cut at the girl's bottom time and again — five, six, seven, eight strokes.  The girl was  on the floor now, sobbing and screaming.  I made to rise and stop it but Isobel responded like lightening, her hand pulling me down.

"We've got to see how this plays out, Henry," she hissed in my ear.

"But—"

"Hush!"

Meanwhile Miss Drizzle bent to her work and continued to thrash the naked girl who lay twitching on the floor, her bottom leaping and twisting at each impact.  The girl must have received a dozen fierce strokes before Miss Drizzle finally stopped and left her to sob on the floor, her hands scrabbling at her plump, tortured buttocks.

"Turn!" she screamed to the other two and they turned, immediately and wordlessly.  Despite what they had just seen happening to their sister, their faces remained impassive.  Miss Drizzle stood before them, toying with her crop like a petty sultan gloating over his assembled slaves.

"Now, my dears," she said, her voice sickly sweet again.  "Your beloved mistress has nasty, cold man stuff dripping down her inner thigh.  Which of you two good girls is going to help her get rid of it."

"Me please, Miss Drizzle," cried the two in unison, like children reciting by rote a play that has been performed times without number.

Miss Drizzle stepped up to them still contemplating her crop.  "I think you girls can sound a little more eager than that.  Don't you?" she asked sweetly.  "Or would you like to end up like your sister — writhing on the floor trying to rip your burning bottoms off?  Mmmm?

I saw fear flicker across their usually dull faces.  "No, Miss Drizzle." 

There was a moments silence while Miss Drizzle stood before them motionless, as though stilled with regret.  Then, without warning, she leapt forwards and unleashed four vicious strokes, catching each girl across the nipple with the very tip of her crop.  They cried out eagerly enough now and staggered backwards.

"Stand still!"  She screamed, before contemplating the crop again.  "Now," she purred sweetly.  "I think we'll try again.  Which of you two girls is going to lick all the man spunk out of your kind mistress's cunt?"

"Me please, Miss Drizzle," cried the two with ghoulish enthusiasm.

Miss Drizzle seemed satisfied with that.  She walked back to the table and lifted herself onto it, and then she laid back and spread her legs.  From where Isobel and I were hiding, we could see up them from a shallow angle as she spread them to expose fully the black bush of her crotch.  She settled herself and then extended a hand, beckoning the niece on the far left to approach.  The niece stepped forward, climbed onto the table where, without the need of further instruction, she knelt between Miss Drizzle's open thighs and waited patiently, her hands still on her head.  Beyond her, Miss Drizzle's hand rose, then an extended finger pointed sharply down at her own crotch.  The niece's hands came down on either side of Miss Drizzle's hips; she bent forward and started licking her mistress's crotch, her head nodding back and forth like a grazing cow at pasture.  I saw Miss Drizzle extend her hand towards her kneeling, licking worshipper and drag the long crop up and down the girl's flank and bottom in a leisurely fashion.

  "Make a thorough job of it, my dear!  Because if you don't you'll be writhing on the floor trying to rip your tits and cunt off."

The girl did not reply.  She was too busy doing her mistress's bidding.

Now a slender arm reached out towards the other waiting niece, and the extended finger beckoned.  This niece too knew exactly what her mistress expected her to do.  She climbed onto the table and knelt by her mistress's side waiting with her hands still on her head until Miss Drizzle reached up, seized the back of her neck and pulled her mouth down towards the small breasts and large nipples that lay before her like a waiting feast. 

Meanwhile, the girl who had been so severely caned still knelt bent on the floor, sobbing.

"Iphigenia!" screamed Miss Drizzle.

Like a zombie, the girl rose, her hands went back onto her head and she impassively approached the table.  She rounded it and climbed onto it, where she too knelt and waited.

"Are you going to show mummy how sorry you are, darling?" said Miss Drizzle in a new and baby voice.

"Yes please, Mummy," squeaked Iphigenia in a baby voice of her own.  A hand came up and pulled her down also, not to Miss Drizzle's other breast, but to her lips, and the two started kissing feverishly, like lovers.  I noticed too that Miss Drizzle's hands were now feverishly caressing the two girls at her breasts and her lips, working their way around their breasts, their bottoms.  Their legs opened and I could see Miss Drizzle's hand working at the crotch of the girl on her right. I saw her hand stroke up and down, then her fingers disappeared into it, and the girl started to gasp.  She now threw her arms round Miss Drizzle's neck and their kissing became impassioned.   Meanwhile Miss Drizzle's own legs tightened round the niece grazing at her crotch, her pelvis bucked strenuously and she started grunting, even through her prolonged mouth-to-mouth kiss. 

"Do shut your mouth, Henry," whispered Isobel in my ear.

"I've never seen anything like it," I whispered back, horrified.  To see women behaving like this together appalled me.

"It won't last much longer, I fancy.  She'll climax soon."

As I watched spellbound horror as the four bodies on the table heaved on a rising tide of sexual excitement.  Miss Drizzle's pelvis bucked and flexed faster and faster, her grunting became more bovine, all four bodies on the table were writhing like a great white octopus.

Then, suddenly, it stopped.  All four lay panting for some seconds.   One by one, they slid off the table, still touching and stroking each other in the most intimate places.  The sisters weren't touching Miss Drizzle like this now, but each other, suckling each other's breasts, stroking each other's crotches, kissing each other with lingering lips.  Miss Drizzle sat up on the table's edge and viewed them between half-closed eyes, as though they were protégés to be proud of, before she too slipped from the table and joined them once more.   They stroked and groped each other, they kissed each other as only men and women should kiss.  I was revolted.

I turned and stole a glance towards Isobel, and her face was stone. 

Miss Drizzle clapped her hands and the ghastly orgy abruptly stopped, the girls fell into line, and their hands rose obediently to their heads again.  That, if anything was the most ghastly thing of all; it was as though they were her marionettes or performing dogs.  Her control was absolute.

She clapped her hands once more and the girls picked up their nightdresses.  They slipped them on and remained in a line, their hands on their heads, awaiting the next instruction, while Miss Drizzle sat again on the table's edge, silently supervising them.  Then she too rose, slipped on her own nightdress and dressing gown, and then set about extinguishing the lamps, except for one.  She placed a guard in front of the dying fire, picked up the remaining lamp and walked to the stair head close by us.

We ducked down, so we didn't see the three girls file out, their hands still on their heads, but we knew that they would leave in no other way.  The lamplight slowly faded down the stairs to leave us in complete darkness.

"Do you fancy having a go on the table top?" I asked Isobel in an attempt to break the fierce silence between us.

"It's not funny," she snapped.  "My God, what that bitch has turned them into!   It's beyond punishment."

I agreed but another thought crossed my mind.  "Come on!  Quickly!  Let's hope she hasn't relocked the door to the main wing."

She hadn't — I assumed Bludgeon would return later to do that — and we were back in my room within five minutes.  We didn’t make love that night.  Though neither of us said so, and though we knew what we did together was something entirely different, what we had seen in the east wing made sex seem a dirty thing. 

"Didn't you know about Sapphic love, then?" asked Isobel as we lay in each other's arms.

"That wasn't love," I said.  "It wasn't even sex.  It was an exhibition of power, both with Bludgeon and the girls — though I would have thought even he could do better than Drizzle."

"I don't know.  Drizzle is several social levels above him, despite her stupidity.  He probably considered it a conquest too.  But what that bitch has done to those girls!" Isobel said, and she kept on saying it, over and over again.

"It's obviously a repeated ritual too," I said.  "Drizzle didn't bark many commands.  The girls knew exactly what they had to do.  That's another hallmark of the sadist — that and all the talk about anticipation."

"Anticipation is the keenest part of punishment?" said Isobel, turning towards me.  "But why did you say, I know the way you did?"

"In what way?" I said, and I think I licked my lips, which gave me away, for I saw that she was looking at me with deeply questioning eyes. "Look, I saw things in India," I said by way of explanation.

"Only saw, Henry?"

I swallowed.  Another mistake.  "Why do you ask?" I croaked, because I didn't want to lie to Isobel.

"Who's Neela?"

"Oh my God!"

"And Jasmine?"

"Oh my God!"

See gave me a penetrating stare, and then turned half away, her face set in one of those unreadable female expressions.  "It's just that you've spoken those names a couple of times in your sleep."

"Have I?"  I sat up in genuine surprise.  "I can't think why.  It was ten years ago, and they were only . . . well . . . ."

"Whores?"

"Something like that."  I licked my lips again.  "Look, I was alone in India.  Very few Englishwomen go out there and few men who know the dangers of the place would ask them too.  It's a graveyard for them."

"So I've heard.  So the men get lonely?"

"Well . . . yes."

"So you took up with these whores?"

"Yes, but it was many years ago — more than twelve. There was also a third called Anya.  She was more than a whore to me, more of a friend.  She comforted me after my fiancée had broken our engagement.  I was full of anger and frustration."

"So why haven't I heard her name among the others?"

"Haven't you?" I said, genuinely perplexed now.  "That's odd."

"Is it perhaps because recent events here have reminded you of the other two more than of her?"

"What?"

"I only ask, Henry dear, because you've said one or two other things in your sleep that I've found a little surprising."

I wiped the sudden sweat from my brow.  "Look, it was a long time ago, in another world.  It's gone.  It's past."

Her hand found mine, but her face was still unreadable.  "I know.  So why don't you tell me about it and clear the air, since I've already guessed so much?"

I knew I had no choice.  The truth could be no worse than what she would imagine if I refused to tell her.  It would also show that I trusted her.  But I prayed to God that she would forgive me.

I told her everything, the absolute truth, hiding nothing.  I told her how Anya had introduced me to these two women, how they had offered themselves to me, tempted me, and tormented me.

"I didn't know what I was going to do before I went there," I said.  "Anya had used the term whip woman, but for all I knew, they were going to scourge me — though I'm not sure I'd have let them."  I tried a chuckle but it fell dead.  "When it came to it I was stunned, frozen, but Anya urged me on, and then, suddenly, everything went red."

"And was that the only occasion?"

"No," I groaned. 

I told her how it had become a drug, a release.  I realised that I was making excuses, but it all seemed so remote now, especially here, with Isobel.  I told her all the things they had taught me, the skills they had instilled into me.  Then I told her in more detail about Eleanor, how when I had met her, my violent urges had dissolved, and never returned.

She sat hugging her knees. "I've heard of people like that," she said at last.  "People who need pain as a sort of sexual gratification."

"Have you?" I said thickly.  "I never have before or since, and I've never understood it.  But at that time I didn't care.  I just took advantage, I'm ashamed to say."

"So do you want to whip me, Henry?"

"Good God, no!  Never!  Never!"

"That's all right then."

"So do you forgive me?"

"There's nothing for me to forgive, is there.  You've never hurt me.  You're a good man, Henry.  You've been a troubled man, and in the past you've succumbed to an evil temptation, but you're still a good man."

"Good enough for you?"

"Oh, yes."

I put my arms round her and kissed her.  "That’s all that matters."

8. The cipher

The cipher now seems a by-blow to this tale, but not quite, for it was by breaking the cipher that I put myself in a position where Mr Glimmeridge could refuse me nothing.  Solving it gave me the courage to act, and, more to the point I think, it gave Isobel the courage to act.

I lay in bed with Isobel after my confession with my mind churning.  She slept the sleep of the blessed, but I couldn't.  As you lie there for hours, tired but wakeful, there comes a point where mental images flash across your mind unbidden, and you can neither banish them nor manage them.  They flash before your consciousness in and colourful and disordered procession. At first, I saw images of Jasmine and Neela; I tried to banish them but I could not.  They danced before my fevered brain crying "Whip me, sahib master!  Whip me!  Enjoy yourself!"  Try was I might I could shut neither my eyes nor my ears to their twisting images and their constant pleading.  When their pleas turned to maniacal screams I rose and paced about the room, trying to banish them from my mind, but the more I tried the more insistently the danced before me.  "Use your whip, sahib master!  Do with us what you will!  Ignore our screams and pleasure yourself!"

Isobel still slept, and she seemed to be sleeping so deeply that I lit the lamp and tried to look at my cipher, which I had neglected over the past few nights, for obvious reasons.  It was no good.  I couldn't concentrate; I couldn't even focus my tired eyes, and my brain was in too much turmoil to think at all.  Therefore, I put it down. I doused the lamp, moved Horace,  and lay down again beside Isobel.

The exercise had one effect however; it banished Jasmine and Neela.  Instead I saw letters and tiles flashing before my tired and addled brain — the letters and colours from the chapel floor.  I had resigned myself to this dull repetition when the visions unexpectedly transformed.  I was no longer looking at the tiles but the paintings on the chapel wall.  I saw Adam and a red apple.  He was pointing up and right to where God was looking through the clouds in mediaeval disappointment.  I saw Moses pointing aloft to where two white tablets of commandment were hanging in the air above him.  I saw Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego pointing left to where the furnace was burning, its golden flames leaping out through its mouth.  I saw the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in black . . . .

I leapt up, my brain suddenly clear. 

"My God," I shouted.  "I've got it!" 

Beside me, Isobel roused.  "Got what?"

"The cipher!  I've cracked the cipher."  I leapt out of bed.  "I'm going to the library.  I'll need scissors and the original manuscript."

"Now?"

"Yes!  Now!  Come on!"

I seized my copies from the bedside table and rushed for the door.

"Darling?"  Isobel called after me.

"Yes?"

"Hadn't you better put a dressing gown on at least?"

"What?" 

I looked down and saw to my astonishment that I was mother naked.

The solution was so blessedly simple.  I would have cracked it sooner or later.  I realised that I'd been on the edge of it for some time but I simply hadn't found the right combination, though I new I would have done so in time, even without my flash of inspiration.  I cut up my diagram and laid all the pieces out on the desktop.

"Now look," I said to Isobel.  "Adam has one red apple and he's pointing up and right.  So we move the red tiles one space in that direction.  Moses is pointing upwards at two tablets of white stone.  We move the white tiles two spaces upwards.  Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are pointing right, to the golden flames, so we move the golden tiles three spaces, and the four black horsemen are pointing left so we move the black tiles correspondingly.  Thus I progressed, until all the tiles were rearranged.  "It's so simple," I laughed.  "So very simple."

I looked down at my solution.  It wasn't Latin at all but fifteenth-century English.  I read it and read it again.  "My God," I said.  I can't believe it."

"But that's what it says, my dear," said Isobel soberly at my elbow.  "No wonder Mr Glimmeridge has always been so obsessed by it."

"Do you think he knew?"

"I think he suspected."

I looked down again at the solution and shook my head again.  It was fantastic, for the solution read:

Hier lys Edward King of England and His Brother Richard Duc of York MCDLXXXVII

"Try the other one," said Isobel, eagerly.  "See if it agrees."

So we did and it did.  The inscription on the sundial over the door read:

The Glorie of York

"Do you know what this means?" I gasped.

"Of course.  The Princes in the Tower lie buried in the chapel at Glimmeridge Hall.

I swept up all my things onto a tray, put a blotting pad tightly over it and made for the door.

"Where are you going?"

"To show Mr Glimmeridge."

"But it's the middle of the night, Henry!"

"He'll want to see this."

I raced along the dark passages to his room, Isobel following anxiously in my wake.  Reaching his door, I tapped it several times with my foot.  It opened and the nurse's head appeared in the crack.

"Major?"

"I have something to show Mr Glimmeridge, if he's awake."

"Well . . . ."

From the room beyond came a reedy but eager voice.  "Henry?  Is that you Henry?"

The door opened wider and I could see him beyond, propped up in his bed.  His hands were on the counterpane.  They had been bound in white gauze and were quite presentable.  He looked at me expectantly.  It was as if he knew what had brought me to him at that hour.

"It's the cipher, Mr Glimmeridge," I cried.  "I've solved the cipher."

I've never seen a happier man than Mr Glimmeridge as he sat with the tray on his lap and the solved cipher laid out on it for all to read.

"It came to me in a dream," I said.  "I can't explain how.  I suddenly realised that the wall paintings were the key.  Thereafter it was simple.  In fact, the whole thing was so simple.  I don't know why I didn't stumble on it before.  I think I was simply looking for something different — something more complex"

"I'm surprised that no one has thought of this before," he said, and then waved a bandaged claw.  "I intend no criticism of you, Henry.  Insight is all.  You've done it.  That's all that matters."

"So what will you do now?  Excavate?"

"I don't think so," he said, his eyes bright and focussed on some distant place.  "To know is enough.  I've long suspected."

I recalled him telling me that he had an inkling what the cipher might reveal.  "How?" I asked.

He told me that some historians had long held a theory that the princes had never been imprisoned in the Tower at all.  "It made sense for Richard III to move them to his power base in the north. After all, the whole Princes in the Tower business was a Tudor invention contrived to discredit Richard and legitimise their own dynasty.  Other historians have suspected that the princes fought and fell at the battle of Stoke, or were done to death afterwards by Henry.  But there was also a chance that they fell and their followers took the sacred relics away to inter them somewhere secret and safe.  When you have read more of the archives, Henry, you will find further clues to suggest that this was so, and another hinting — vaguely, I admit — that they might indeed be here.  That, combined with the ciphers persuaded me that this was more than possible; that it was probable."

"So why didn't you just excavate the chapel, sir?" I asked.

He smiled.  "And destroy one of the finest mediaeval chapels in the land?" He shook his head.  "That would have been a desecration, don't you think?  Besides, what would two hacked bodies have proved?  It's unlikely that there would be any regalia there.  No, the cipher was the only way."  He laid a bandaged claw on my hand.  "I knew that you were the right man for the job, Henry.  And I can never reward you enough for this."

"Sir, your generosity has already been—"

"No, no, Henry.  You have fulfilled my life's ambition.  I am eternally in your debt.  I think I shall sleep now."

     

9. In the night

The effect upon Mr Glimmeridge was electric. 

He rose from his bed the next evening, took Isobel and me to the library and showed me more of its treasures.  He also directed my attention to several more books in the main collection that would help my work. 

"Dear me," he laughed.  "I'm giving you more and more source material to work through.  I doubt you'll get on to the Hindi stuff for quite a few months."  His eyes twinkled.  "You'll enjoy that.  But there's no hurry, dear boy.  You've all the time in the world.  You have a job here for life if you want it, and when I go, you won't be forgotten."

"Sir, I must object—"

"Fiddle-faddle, Henry.  I think you still don't realise what unbounded joy you have given me, so . . . ." He glanced down, and he looked as though what he was about so say might embarrass him.  He cleared his throat.  "Did you notice that my solicitor visited me this afternoon?"

"No, sir."

"Yes.  I cannot sign cheques, you see.  Isobel has power of attorney to write cheques in my name up to a certain sum, and she writes household cheques as a matter of course without recourse to me.  But large cheques require her signature and my solicitor's.  Please don't misunderstand that.  I trust Isobel implicitly.  I simply wouldn't want to place too much of a burden on her, or expose her to wicked accusations if there were some dispute."

"I fully understand, sir," I said, licking my lips, wondering what was to come.

Isobel then stepped forward and handed me an envelope.  It was clear from the expectant look on Mr Glimmeridge's face that he wanted me to open it there and then.  I did so, and when I read what it contained I had to feel for a chair.

"Sir, I . . . ."

It was a cheque for £5,000.

Mr Glimmeridge had said that their would be bonuses for good work, and he was certainly a man of his word.  I began to share Isobel's high opinion of his integrity and generosity.  I too wondered how such a man could allow the mistreatment of his nieces that both Isobel and I had witnessed.  Was he unaware?  I was tempted to think that he was, yet why had he employed Miss Drizzle if not to punish them for their suspected involvement in his brother's death.

What about that?  According to the Kendal Mercury, Isidore had died because a lamp had overturned in a room off the library (now the study) and he had remained in it to try to extinguish the fire, becoming trapped.  Then a bookcase had sprung from the wall in the heat and crushed him.

It seemed a strange course of events, yet how could the nieces be involved, unless one of them had knocked over the lamp?  Mr Glimmeridge didn't seem to be the sort of person who would revenge an accident for years on end, and even if he were such a man, how could all three nieces be equally to blame?

His generosity to me had left me in two minds.  It would be churlish to take the cheque and run.  Furthermore, I was in no doubt that if I remained in Mr Glimmeridge's employ, I would continue to prosper financially.  Clearly, I wouldn't receive cheques for £5,000 regularly; I didn't reasonably ever expect to receive so large a cheque from him again.  Nevertheless, in ten years, the cheque, my salary, and further small bonuses would probably see me about £10,000 richer than I had been when I came to Glimmersmeer Hall.

I could do better than that.  I could use the £5,000 to buy properties that I could rent out, possibly earning me another £250 a year.  I could invest the money in shares, though I didn't altogether trust shares.  I had little knowledge of business and my father's solicitor had told me that his fortunes had started to decline because of unwise share purchases, which he then tried to mend with further unwise purchases.

I doubted if Isobel would want to run away from Glimmersmeer Hall, and Isobel loomed large in my plans, in fact, without Isobel, I no longer had any.  With Isobel, I could happily remain anywhere . . . provided some action was taken to control Miss Drizzle and her treatment of the nieces.

"Happy, Henry?" asked Isobel that night as she and Horace climbed into bed with me.

"Are you happy?" I asked, for I feared that she might be feeling marginalised by Mr Glimmeridge's generosity towards me.

"I have no cause for complaint," she said.  "Mr Glimmeridge has been more than generous to me, besides, I think he has an inkling of the attachment between us and by putting you on your feet, I'm sure he's aware that he's giving me something too.  After all, would a man like you ask a woman to marry him if he felt he could not support her?"

"Would you want to be supported?" I asked.  "You strike me as a woman who likes to make her own way in the world."

She cogitated a moment.  "Yes, I think I would, but would a man like you want to rely on his wife's earnings."

"No," I said, shaking my head.  "I would want your money to be your own."

"Precisely," she said triumphantly, having read me adroitly and accurately.

"So will you?"

"Will I what?"

"Marry me?"

"Of course," she said matter-of-fact as I had known she would.  "I thought I'd just told you that.  But let's talk about that when we've dealt with Drizzle, for we have to deal with her, Henry.  Knowing what we now do, we cannot allow her to continue."

"Do you think we can do something about it now?"

"We must, and I think we'll never be better placed than we are now."

My cipher solution, had put Mr Glimmeridge into such an ebullient mood that next morning he positively beamed at his three nieces as he asked them how they had slept — a rare gesture in itself.

They registered no shock of surprise.  They registered no emotion at all.

"We slept well, thank you, uncle," they all said dutifully, without lifting their eyes from their plates.  I doubted that it was true.

"And have you heard of Henry's great triumph?" he asked them, and for once he seemed to be talking to them rather than at them.

"Congratulation, major," they chorused, like a group of hired mourners, who had no idea whom they were mourning.

"Come, come, girls," he said jovially, trying to jolly them out of six years of cold uninterest, as though they had never been.  "It's an astounding achievement.  It's what I've always dreamed of.  It's a culmination, the fulfilment of everything your dear father and I ever dreamed of."

"Congratulation, major," they chorused again, no doubt ignorant or insensible of my triumph, and all the while Miss Drizzle sat glaring at them.

Mr Glimmeridge looked disappointed.  I wondered how he possibly could be.  If he had any inkling of the lives these girls led, he could not expect them to show the slightest interest in chapels and long-dead kings, or anything beyond the torments of the coming hours.

"Girls aren't interested I that sort of thing, sir," I said as good-naturedly for despite his enthusiasm, his assumption that they might share it seemed absurd.

"Even so," he said sadly, as though their lack of rapture was a new and sore disappointment to him.  "Even so."

Bludgeon popped another piece of kipper in his mouth.

Can't you see, you foolish man? I thought.  Can't you see how these girls have had all spirit and interest beaten out of them over the years?  Can't you see that they have no thoughts or opinions left?  Can't you see that they are nothing but the slaves of that ghastly woman Drizzle?

I turned to where Miss Drizzle sat like a watchful bird of prey.  Can't you see her, you blind, foolish man?  Can't you see what she has done to them?  Are you really so blind?  Or are you so used to the creatures you have created that you forget when they were once something different?

*****

It was the next night that I awoke in the early hours and heard the moaning again.  I had been asleep, I'm sure I was, when I dimly became awake of muffled crying.  The night was still; there was no wind or rain.  I don't know how long I lay there between sleeping and waking, aware of the sound yet not comprehending it.  Yet at some point, my ear pricked up again, like a mother's to the sound of her child, and I was fully awake.

Just as before, I looked at the clock and saw that it was half-past-one in the morning.  Isobel was sleeping silently beside me and, cuddling Horace.  Not wishing to wake her, I rose, put on my slippers and dressing gown, and crept to my bedroom door.  Opening it a crack, I looked out.  The passageway was dark, nothing moved, and there were no lights under any of the doors.  I was about to close the door and go back to bed when I heard it again, high, soft and muffled like before.  I waited again, it came again, and I was sure that it was coming from down the stairs. 

I doubted that any others in the house would hear it.  Mr Glimmeridge lay in his downstairs room, along a winding passage behind two sets of doors, and the servants slept above on the second floor.  I stepped out into the passage and crept to the top of the stairs.  Then I heard it again, I was sure that it was slightly louder, and that, slowly but surely I was approaching it.  I crept down the stairs and into the big main entrance hall. The sound was definitely louder now, if only just, and it still seemed to be coming from below, deep in the bowels of the building.  Creeping under the stair, I noticed, in the pale moonlight that stole in through the tall windows, a small door and this was ajar.  I pushed it open and saw dimly a flight of steps leading downwards, clearly to the cellars below.  As I hovered, steeling myself to investigate further, the moan came again, much louder now.

I realised that I had left my revolver upstairs and for a second I wondered whether I should return for it.   It would be of no use against ghosts, but I knew I was not listening to a ghost.  Armed with the knowledge of recent days, I had no doubt of the cause.  The things that went on in Glimmersmeer Hall at night were not of supernatural agency, but the perverse pleasures of a single woman.

I felt for a handrail and found a thin cast-iron strip, stapled to the further wall.  Gradually I descended to narrow stairs and, as I did so, a dim light came into view below.  Reaching the bottom, I saw that I was at the end of a passage.  I drew my dressing gown tight round me for the air was chill, and damp, the stone walls were beaded with moisture like sweat, and it glistened in the dim light that was seeping round a corner at the far end.  Gathering up my courage, I proceeded further, along the passage and round the bend towards the light.

The sounds were louder and clearer now, I could hear the high gasping moan of a woman, and now I could hear the whip strokes that preceded them.  These grew louder as I approached a door at the very end.  Light was pouring through a grille set into it.  Approaching this, I looked through, and gasped.

Glimmeridge Hall had been built around 1400 as a defensive position against the marauding Scots.  Troops had been garrisoned there.  Prisoners would have been incarcerated there and, of course, tortured in the manner of the day.  I looked through the grille and beheld the very place where this had happened.  It was a large room with a deeply vaulted stone ceiling.  A deep, wide hearth stood at one end of it, and manacles hung from all the walls.  Across the room at a height of ten feet ran a heavy beam, and from on of these a niece was suspended naked, or partly suspended, for the balls of her feet just touched the ground. 

Her body twisted as she danced on one foot, then the other, and she was gasping.  The cause was plain to see, for her body was reticulated with sharp narrow stripes, the sort of stripes I had seen much earlier on Iphigenia's arm at the breakfast table.

While she twisted at writhed, the other two nieces knelt naked on the floor nearby, their hands on their heads, the faces impassive.  Miss Drizzle, satanic in black, was walking round her suspended victim, a long, slender whip in her hand.  She flicked it lazily this way and that, stepped back, and surveyed her victim like a painter, considering where to apply the next brushstroke.  She made her choice, flicked her wrist, the whip snaked towards the suspended woman and leather cracked against flesh, the hanging body arched.

Crack!

"Aaaaargh!"

Miss Drizzle was clearly not in conversational mood as she silently perambulated round her victim again, flicking the whip this way and that.  At leisure, she selected another place.  The whip snapped again, the suspended girl writhed.

Crack!

"Aaaaargh!"

She drew the length of the whip lovingly through her free hand and viewed her victim once more as she slowly rotated in air, her feet scrabbling frantically at the ground to retain purchase.  The whip cracked, her breasts leapt as her whole body spasmed.  She threw her head back and screamed.

"AAAAAAAAAAARGH!"

I'd seen enough.  I threw open the door and almost tripped as I stepped down into the room.

"What the devil's going on here?" I barked in my most authoritarian military voice.

For a moment, none of the women responded.  Then Miss Drizzle slowly turned and regarded me coolly.

"None of your concern," she said with slow, cold menace.

I stuck out my chin.  "I think it is.  How can you justify this infamous conduct?"

Miss Drizzle sneered.  "I don't have to.  Not to you, at least."

I took a step forward, infuriated by her insolence.  "You damn well will, you know!"

She stood her ground, negligently playing with the whip.  "I am in charge of discipline here."

"I'm sure Mr Glimmeridge gave you no instruction to behave in this bestial manner."

"Mr Glimmeridge?  Oh, the cripple," she sneered.  "He wanted a result and didn't much care how he got it."

"We'll see about that," I said, taking another step towards her.

She raised the whip, threateningly.  "Back!"

I stepped forward again.

"Back, I said!"

"Give me the whip. Miss Drizzle!"

She threw back her head and laughed.  "Oh!  You want the whip, do you?"

I didn't even see it coming.  There was a blinding flash of red-hot pain across my eyes and my hand flew up to my face.

"Aaaaargh!  You bitch!  You've blinded me."

I felt myself hit the cold stone floor.  I knew that I was crawling, weeping blood into my cupped hands.  Everything was red and black.  She'd whipped my eyes.  Dear God, she'd taken out my eyes.  I screamed.

I felt strong hands on me, cool strong hands.  "Get away from me!" I screamed, lashing out.

"Hush!"  A hand stroked my brow and I felt moist cool lips on my forehead.

"Who's that?" I whimpered.

"Hush, darling.  It’s Isobel."

"Isobel?  What are you doing here?"

"I found you gone and followed you down."

"Get out!  Get out for pity's sake and save yourself!"

"Hush, my dear."  I felt her hand stroke my face.  "She didn't hit your eyes, though I think she meant to.  The bruising might close them, I dare say, but you can open them yet awhile."

"I can't!"

"Yes, you can.  Come on."

With a huge effort of will, and fighting the pain, I managed to open my eyes a crack.  My relief was overwhelming.  I saw Isobel's face swimming above me.

"Oh!  I can see."

"Of course you can."

But beyond Isobel I could still see the other one, Drizzle, and she still held the whip.  I tried to struggle to my feet.  "Fly, Isobel!  I'll stay and defend you."

Isobel threw back her head and laughed, just as Drizzle had.  "Don't be so melodramatic, darling.  This Woman Licker's no match for me."

"What did you call me?" It was Drizzle's voice, low and throbbing with menace.  Isobel gently lay me down, rose, and confronted her.

"I called you a Woman Licker," she said pleasantly.  "After all, it's what you do, isn't it?"  She walked towards Drizzle now.  "Come on, Woman Licker.  Let's see if you've got what it takes to discipline me."

I saw Drizzle's arm go up, and I screamed out.  "Isobel!"  .

The whip swished but Isobel's hand shot out, as fast as it had the day she stopped me falling off the trap.  She caught the flail and the two women struggled with it.

"Come on, Woman Licker," scoffed Isobel.  "Is this the best you can do?"

With a scream of rage, Drizzle rushed at Isobel's face with her talons raised.  Isobel caught her wrists and, for a while, they wrestled, but in the struggle, Isobel seemed to lose ground.  Drizzle forced her talons ever closer to her face while she arched back, apparently weakening.

"Isobel!"  I shouted.  "Isobel!" 

"Don't fuss, Henry," she said, matter of fact.  Then she suddenly twisted back, dropped, and then twisted again.  Drizzle flew through the air, a black smear, and landed on the stone floor some feet away from me with an agonising crunch.  "You should have had five brothers, Woman Licker," Isobel jeered, pushing her glasses back up her nose as Drizzle struggled to rise.  "I can acquit myself well in any brawl."

Drizzle picked herself up slowly, her face a mask of black hatred.  Then she dropped her head and flew at Isobel, who merely lifted her foot and drove her heel into Drizzle's lowered face.  With a scream, she went down.

"You're not listening, are you, Woman Licker?" Isobel told her with relish, for the name clearly stung her adversary.  "Come on, Woman Licker.  Try again."

Drizzle now lunged across the floor for the whip, which she had dropped earlier, but Isobel was too quick for her.  She was across the room in three strides, and as Drizzle's hand closed on the whip she viciously stamped on it.  Drizzle screamed again and rolled away, nursing her injured hand, and Isobel stooped to pick up the whip.

She ran it several times through her own hand as she stood over her fallen adversary.

"I've used these things too, Woman Licker.  I've been a horsewoman since I was six, and I've driven horses and pairs since I was thirteen."  She gave the whip a couple of flamboyant cracks to demonstrate her skill.  Then her face hardened.  "Strip!"

"Isobel!"

"Be quiet, Henry!  I should have done this a long time ago.  The Woman Licker's little reign of terror is over."  She turned to Drizzle, who was crouching on the floor like an animal at bay about to spring.  "Are you deaf, Woman Licker?  I told you to strip."

Still Drizzle hovered.  Isobel turned and walked away.  Drizzle sprang, but again she was too quick for her.  She spun on her heel and brought the whip down sharply on Drizzle's back.

Crack!

"Aaaaargh!"

"It'll be two next time you fail to obey, Woman Licker," Isobel calmly told her, negligently flicking the whip back and forth before her startled eyes.  "Then three, then four.  Strip!"

Still Drizzle hovered at bay before her, seemingly unable to comprehend this change in her fortunes. 

Crack!

"Aaaaargh!"

Crack!

"Aaaaargh!"

She rolled away across the floor, her hands scrabbling grotesquely at her back. 

"That's nothing, Woman Licker," Isobel told her calmly.  "You'll scream properly when I whip your pathetic tits and crotch.  Strip!"

Drizzle twitched, and I thought she whimpered, her face a mask of disbelief.  Slowly her hands went up to the buttons of her bodice and she slowly started to undo them.

"Faster!"

Crack!

"Aaaaargh!"

Crack!

"Aaaaargh!"

Crack!

"Aaaaargh!"

"Isobel!"

"Be quiet, Henry!"  Isobel turned to the two nieces who were kneeling naked on the floor, with oyster-dull eyes.  "You two.  Untie your sister!"  Neither moved.  Neither face registered any emotion of response.  Isobel cracked the whip.  "Move!"

As though ignited by a necessary spark, both rose and crossed to where their sister hung from the crossbeam.  I marvelled at how the cracking whip had animated them, but they had spent six years being trained to respond to nothing else.  Drizzle had drilled them to it, like soldiers who leap to suicidal commands in the heat of battle, because the commands have been hammered into them by days and months and years of endless drilling.

Isobel stood over Drizzle, whip in hand, while the girls unanchored the suspending rope and lowered their sister.  They unbuckled the leather gauntlets that had tethered her wrists, and she screamed as the blood rushed back into her hands.

"It will pass," Isobel told them gently.  "And you will never have to endure it again."

Without a word, the three girls looked up at her, their eyes wide with awe and adoration.

"Dress yourselves and take your sister back to her room," Isobel commanded them and all they wordlessly obeyed.  Meanwhile Drizzle, comprehending what was going to happen to her once she was naked undressed herself slowly in a trance, but Isobel no longer seemed interested in her cooperation.  Thrusting her whip in her dressing gown belt, she stooped and seized Drizzle by the hair.  The fallen woman tried to struggle but Isobel merely twisted it until her hands flew up to her scalp, and then dragged her towards the dangling rope.

"No!" she groaned.  "No!  Please no!"

Isobel ignored her and started wrapping her wrists in the leather cuffs.  All fight seemed to have gone out of the governess now.  She made no struggle at all, and her head hung like a rag doll's while Isobel hauled her up.

"Is this necessary?" I asked, still nursing my painful face while I watched the woman in the black dress, now hanging open, slowly rise until she was suspended with her feet just touching the ground.

"Most necessary," Isobel told me crisply.  "In a few days, when Drizzle has recovered from the brutal whipping I'm about to give her, she will write and sign a full confession and letter of resignation.  It will be full and factual, because if it isn't she will know precisely what will happen to her.  Won't you, Woman Licker?"

"Please," moaned the hanging woman while Isobel started to rip her dress from her body, then her corset, her stays, and her stockings, until she hung completely naked from the rope's end.  Her breasts seemed even smaller now as she hung from her wrists, her arms stretched above her.  Even her pitiful cries of "please, please," were small and sounded half-hearted as if, despite her fear, she knew that she would receive no mercy at Isobel's hands.   Or perhaps she was merely saving her strength for the more heartfelt pleading she knew would come in a few minutes.

Then the merciless whipping started.

Crack!

"Aaaaargh!"

Crack!

"Aaaaargh!   Please!"

Crack!

"Aaaaargh!  Please!  Please!"

Crack!

"Aaaaargh!  Mercy!  Please!"

Crack!

"AAAAAARGH!"

On and on Isobel whipped like some dreadful, inhuman machine, while the dangling woman danced on the rope's end.  At first she twitched as each stroke fell, then, as the pain became unbearable, she started writhing continuously, and still she pleaded, as though the very act of pleading, pointless as it was,  would take some of the pain away.

Crack!

"AAAAAARGH!  MERCY!"

Crack!

"AAAAAARGH!  MERCY!  MERCY!"

Crack!

"AAAAAARGH!  MERCY I BEG YOU!"

Crack!

"AAAAAARGH!  MERCY!  PLEASE!  PLEASE!"

Crack!

"AAAAAARGH!  I'LL DO ANYTHING.  MERCY!"

"Isobel!"

"Quiet, Henry!"

The remorseless whipping continued on and on, until there came a third phase.  Drizzle's writhing slowed and then stopped altogether.  The head that had been throw back screaming at the ceiling drooped and hung.  She who hand danced in air like a woman in flames now swung lazily at the rope's end like damp washing.  Her screaming had softened to a moan, bright red lines of fire criss-crossed her body, and these were beaded with blood.  Her whole body glistened with sweat, and she had evacuated her bladder; the contents still dripped from her toes.  Meanwhile Isobel continued mercilessly.

Crack!

"Ugh!"

Crack!

"Ugh!"

"She'd had enough, Isobel!" I called.

"Not quite!"  She reached up and seized her victim by the chin.  "Ready to confess now, Woman Licker?"

There was no response. She stepped back and laid the whip viciously and accurately across Miss Drizzle's large nipples.

Crack!

"AAAAARGH!  YES!  YES!"

"Sure?"

Crack!

"AAAAARGH!  YES!  YES!  YES!"

"Really sure?"

Crack!

"AAAAARGH!  PLEASE!  PLEASE!  PLEASE!  ANYTHING!  ANTTHING!  YES!  YES!"

Isobel unhitched the rope anchor and Drizzle fell to the floor with a sickening crash.  She folded her whip and inserted it back into her belt before bending low over  Drizzle, seizing her again by the hair and forcing her head right back.

"Now, listen carefully, Woman Licker," she said between clenched teeth.  "Disobey me by one syllable and I shall bring you back down here.  I shall hang up by the ankles, and I shall give you one hundred strokes right down your gaping women-licking slit.  After all, it will make a nice change from women's tongues.  Won't it?" 

Drizzle nodded.

"I said, Won't it?"

"Y-yes," moaned Drizzle like a woman half asleep.

Isobel twisted her hair and she yelped, her exhausted body twitching pitifully.

"Yes, what?"

"Yes, mistress."

"You'd better remember it.  Because if you don't I'll assume that you want a lot more whip.  Understand, Woman Licker?"

Drizzle whimpered.

"I said, undersand!"

Crack!

"AAAAAARGH!  Yes, mistress."

"And again."

Crack!

"AAAAAARGH!  Mercy, mistress."

Isobel came across to me and reached down with her left hand, her fingers beckoning.  "Come on, Henry.  Grab hold, and I'll help you upstairs."

"I'm all right, I'm—"

The fingers snapped.  "Come on, Henry!"

She hauled me to my feet and supported me with her hand under my arm while I put my right arm round her waist, for she told me that she needed her right arm free to use the whip.  I was feeling less groggy now, but my face hurt abominably.  I wondered what Drizzle must have been feeling like, though I confess I didn't much care.

"Never mind about the lamp," said Isobel.  "We can leave it safely here to burn out, and we'd better take Drizzle with us and lock her in her room."

"But how can she—"

"She can crawl, Henry.  And, by God, she'd going to."  With her foot she roughly nudged the woman on the floor between her buttocks.  "Move, Woman Licker!"

Drizzle made a small painful movement towards the door, but it clearly wasn't enough.

"I said, move!"

Crack!

"AAAAAARGH!"

"Aagh, what?"

Crack!

"AAAAAARGH!  Y-yes, mistress."

"And again!"

Crack!

"AAAAAARGH!  Mercy, mistress."

Slowly but inexorably we made our way upstairs.  Every time Drizzle faltered, she received another two or three strokes of the whip to encourage her on her way.  We made our way up through the cellar door and into the entrance hall, round to the foot of the main staircase, and as we turned to climb it, I noticed movement above and saw that the mezzanine was crowded with dark figures.  Every servant in the house had assembled there, and was looking down at us.

Isobel appeared to be not the least intimidated.  She encouraged Drizzle up the stairs with two more strokes of the whip across her naked back, and there was a murmur from above.  The murmur rose to chatter, then excited chatter, and finally it broke into applause.  A couple of the maids came down the stairs towards us.  When they reached Drizzle they turned and started kicking her on her way.  Then they were all around her, nudging her onwards with their toes, chivvying her, kicking her, and mocking her. 

They were all round us now.

"Well done, miss."

"Good for you, miss."

"Give the bitch some of her own back, miss."

A couple went to get water to bathe my face, the others followed us to Drizzle's room and offered to stand guard outside it.  In a corner, I saw Bludgeon standing grey faced.  He didn't join in the merriment, but neither did he dare to oppose.

"Of course, they all knew," said Isobel later as she dabbed at my bruised cheeks.  "None has ever dared speak about it to me about it — I've always been too close to Mr Glimmeridge.  But I could sense the atmosphere often enough to know what their sentiments were."

"So why did they stay?"

She shrugged.  "There isn't much work round here and Mr Glimmeridge is an excellent employer.  Their wages are good for the work they do.  Their working and living conditions are excellent.  If they are ill he calls his doctor for them, and he looks after them in retirement.  None of these will ever end up in the workhouse.  Besides which, many of their families have worked here for generations; it's all they know; it's their home and the centre of their world."

"What do we do now?" I asked.

"I've spoken to the servants.  No word will be said about last night.  I'll tell Mr Glimmeridge that Drizzle is ill and I'm looking after the girls."

"Won't he want to call in his doctor?"

"I'll tell him that I'm looking after that too.  He never wants to know details about her.  Then, in a week or so, I'll get Drizzle's confession and resignation out of her.  Someone will drive her to Kendal station, put her on a train, and she'll be gone."

"What about Bludgeon?" I asked.

She smiled confidently to herself.  "He'll make no trouble.  He has too much to lose, most of all, his good name."

10. Exile

Mr Glimmeridge's response of Miss Drizzle's absence was amazing.  At breakfast, after Isobel had broken the news of her strange and sudden illness, he was positively ebullient. 

"You're doing the necessary, my dear?" he asked. 

"All the necessary, Mr Glimmeridge."

"Excellent.  Good girl.  Knew I could rely on you."

The nieces were at the sideboard, unsure how they should behave in Miss Drizzle's absence. 

"Come on, girls," I said, giving one of them a nudge in the ribs so she squealed.  "Get stuck in.  Miss Drizzle isn't here to tick you off."

One of then giggled, then all three giggled.  They nudged me back and started heaping food on my plate as well as their own.  "So what will you girls do without Miss Drizzle?" Mr Glimmeridge asked them, addressing them more easily than I had seen him do before.

"I thought we'd go into Sedbergh," said Isobel.  "They need some new things."

"Excellent idea!  Excellent idea!" said Mr Glimmeridge.  "And the weather looks as though it's going to hold today.  "Yes, by all means, go and buy some things."

It was as though with Miss Drizzle's absence, a malign pestilence had dissolved and lifted from us all to seep like smoke through the dining room ceiling.   We all ate our breakfast merrily except Bludgeon, who stood popping food into his master's mouth and looking for all the world like a man on trial for his life.

At ten, Isobel departed for Sedbergh with the girls on the hall's four-wheeled conveyance.  I saw them off wondering when they had last been allowed beyond the confines of Glimmersmeer Hall.  It was a cold, crisp day.  No doubt in London it would be wet, but up here in Westmoreland the winter same sooner, and already I could feel its promise of the air, distant yet but not so very much so.

I went upstairs and spoke to one of the tweeded retainers outside Miss Drizzle's door.  He told me that a couple of the women had been in to bathe her wounds and tidy her up.  "After all," he said callously, "we don't want her dying on us just yet."

They were my sentiments entirely.

A week later, Isobel took me again to the interrogation chamber deep in the cellars of Glimmersmeer hall.  She securely closed the door at the top of the steps down to it, and when we arrived, I saw that she had prepared everything for Drizzle's confession.  The fire was burning brightly and lamps were lit all round the room.

"I thought we'd make it as cheery as possible," she said, as I looked at the woman in the black dress who sat firmly tied in a tall upright chair.  "After all, I'm sure Drizzle appreciates that it's in everyone's interests, especially hers, that she cooperates.

The woman in the chair tried to struggle, but could make only token movements against the ropes that restrained her arms and legs.  Neither could she make any sound, for a large ball of fabric had been pushed into her mouth and secured with a strip that also held her head firmly against the chair back. 

A table was set before Drizzle and on its surface stood an inkwell, pens, and a heap of writing paper.  It looked like a scene from the Inquisition.  Next to the paper stood a lamp and next to this a tray with a cloth draped over it.

"Now, continued Isobel pleasantly.  "When Drizzle's gag is removed, she is going to dictate a full and free confession of all her misdeeds — all of them — after which she is going to dictate her letter of resignation.  Then she is going to sign both documents.  Aren't you, Woman Licker?"

One of the retainers standing by the chair loosened the gag and pulled the piece of fabric from Drizzle's mouth.

She took several deep gasps, drinking in the air.  "Cow!  Fucking cow!"

The retainer cocked an eyebrow towards Isobel, enquiring whether he should replace the gap, but she took her head.  She walked up to Drizzle's chair and sat on the table-edge opposite her.  Drizzle glared at her defiantly while she took two lengths of fine twine from her pocket and laid them on the table beside her.  She leant forward and taking the bodice front of Drizzle's dress in both her hands, she ripped it open.  Then she felt inside, took hold of Drizzle's undergarments and ripped those too, before pulling the top of the dress down over Drizzle's shoulders, exposing her breasts, and the vicious network of ship cuts that were still fading.  She picked up one of the lengths of twine, which I noticed was already tied into a loop and slipped it over Drizzle's left breasts, she took hold of the nipple between her finger and thumbnail so that Drizzle gasped.

"Please.  What are you going to do?  Pleeeease don't!" wailed the bound woman in the chair.

Isobel ignored her, viciously pulling the twine tight so that the breast bulged like a small balloon.  She repeated the same process with the other one.

"Pleeeeeease.  Pleeeeeease don't!"

Drizzle sounded so pitiful that I had to steel myself, but Isobel was deaf to her.  She tightened the twine round the other breast until both stood proud from Drizzle's narrow chest like darkening beetroots.   I knew from my own experience that Drizzle's breasts were being prepared for torture.  I had told Isobel about it when I had confessed my past misdeeds to her.  I had an inkling of what was to come.

Lifting the cloth from the flat dish, Isobel withdrew a stick of sealing wax, unwrapped it and, raising the glass of the lamp on the tale top, started to melt it. 

Drizzle's eyes widened in horrified anticipation.  "No.  No, you can't—"

"Anticipation is the keenest part of punishment, don't you think?" quipped Isobel, quoting her victim, then, quick as a flash, she thrust the molten tip of the sealing wax into the underside of Drizzle's left breast.

"AAAAAARGH!  AAAAARGH!  YOU FUCKING COW!"    

"Tut, tut!  Language!" murmured Isobel sweetly, returning the tip of the stick to the lamp flame.

"No!  No!"  Drizzle's voice was ragged.  "Please!  Not again!" she gasped.  "No!  Plea—"

The molten tip plunged into the underside of her right breast.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!  YOU FUCKING, FUCKING COW!"

Now Isobel took Drizzle's left breast between the thumb and first finger of her left hand, just behind the nipple so that it stood up proud.

"Not there!  Pleeeeease, pleeeeease!  Not there," wailed Drizzle as Isobel reapplied the sealing wax in the lamp flame, then, without warning, thrust it sizzling into the nipple.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!  FUCK!  FUCK!  FUCK!"

She repeated the process with the right breast.  Drizzle was even less articulate now.  Her head lolled from side to side and she dribbled.

"Plea . . . no . . . plea . . .  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!  FUCKING BITCH!" 

"We really must do something about your appalling language, Woman Licker," said Isobel as she walked slowly towards the roaring fire.  "Now, I hope you realise by now that I will have absolutely no scruple over what I do to you.  I will extract your full confession by any means." 

What was I doing all this while?  I was rigid with shock.   I could not be appalled.  I had done as much to women once — almost as much at least — and with much less cause.  All the same, I watched, horrified, as Isobel calmly picked up a piece of thick cloth, wrapped it round a poker that was heating in the fire, and withdrew it.  The tip glowed incandescently as she bore down on Drizzle with it.

Drizzle struggled like a woman possessed.  Her eyes rotated in her skull.  "Please,  please no."  She stared appealingly to me.  "Please.  Tell her not to.   Please," she whimpered.

"Isobel!" I cried.  "Enough!"  

"Quiet, Henry!"

Drizzle was trembling and speechless with fear as Isobel lowered the glowing tip towards the lap of her dress.  The woman shook now in big jerks.  Her face gleamed with sweat and the face itself was contorted with sheer terror.

"Please!  Please!  Please!" she gulped in ever-shorter breaths.

There was a sizzling sound as the tip touched and burned through the fabric of her dress.

"Please!  Please!  No!  No!  No!  I'll do anything.  Please!"

The tip continued to descend until somewhere, hot metal touched flesh.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!"

Isobel withdrew the iron.  The lap of Drizzle's dress was on fire.  A tweeded retainer picked up one of the buckets of water, which I noticed stood behind them, and emptied it over the sobbing governess.

Isobel replaced the poker in the fire.

"Better keep it hot unless we need it later," she said pleasantly as she returned to the table, wiping her hands on the cloth.  She sat down in the chair opposite Drizzle and took up a pen.

"That was just a small sample of what's going to happen to you if you don't cooperate, Woman Licker.    Next, we'll try something different.  Perhaps we'll use your slit as a poker rest.  Or perhaps we'll introduce the glowing tip, quarter-inch by quarter-inch, into your vagina, leave it to cool for half an hour, and then wrench it out again.  It'll make a change from all those women's fingers, won't it?"

She waited for a second.

"I said, won't it!"

Drizzle flinched against her bonds.  "Y-yes, mistress," she whimpered.

Isobel nodded, satisfied.  "Now for the confession."

I soon saw why the confession was necessary.  It exonerated Mr Glimmeridge to a large extent.   He had placed an advertisement in one of the London papers — "Wanted, governess for three very wicked young women — only strict disciplinarians  need apply" — or words to that effect. Mr Glimmeridge, the scholar from Westmorland would not have understood the many innuendos in such an advertisement.    Miss Drizzle had applied among several others, but only she had been willing to move to Westmorland and take up residence in a remote country house in the hills.

I asked her if Mr Glimmeridge had said what the young ladies' exact wickedness was.  Drizzle said no.  She had assumed that he had some young girls up there that required regular spanking, for his own gratification, but she soon discovered that he had no such inclinations.  He seemed genuinely convinced that they required discipline for their own good.  He took no interest in the details.  He simply didn't want to know about that.  He merely wanted them kept under the strictest control.

To start with, Drizzle had erred on the side of caution, and her disciplines had been mild — for her.  But time passed, nothing changed, Mr Glimmeridge still showed no interest and expected the status quo to be maintained for ever it seemed.  Drizzle became bored.  Her own sexual inclination, which she had assumed the appointment would indulge, were frustrated.  So slowly, she had turned the screw.  The girls had become more and more docile.  As her treatment had grown more excessive, far from resisting and running to their uncle, they seemed to withdraw into their shells, and become almost doglike in their servility.  Days of discipline now became days of punishment and nights of sex.

They seemed neither to love it nor hate it.  They simply obeyed, driven into complete submission.

"Did you enjoy that?" I asked, amazed.

"Oh yes, it's the ultimate accomplishment," she replied with a weary exultation.

"And your real name?" asked Isobel, unexpectedly.

"Real name?" said Drizzle, startled.

"Your real name."

Drizzle hesitated.  Isobel picked up the stick of wax again and lifted the lamp glass.  "Untie her legs," she said to the tweeded retainers.  "And hold them wide open." 

"No . . . no . . . please no," pleased Drizzle as the two men knelt to untie her and Isobel came round the table with the sealing wax.  "Driscol," she said.  "Driscol!   Driscol!   PLEEEASE!  DRISCOL!"

"Yes I thought so."  Isobel nodded and turned to me.  "For the past six years one Martha Driscol, whore, has been wanted by the police for beating a client to death in a whipping brothel in Camberwell.  The descriptions match perfectly"  She smiled.  "You don't have such places only in India, Henry."

"Why didn't you just inform the police?" I asked her later when Drizzle had been taken sobbing back to her room.

"And expose all the Glimmeridges to ridicule?  No one would understand how innocent he is.  And what about the girls?  We'll let Drizzle, or Driscol recuperate for a few days.  Then we'll put her on a train for Liverpool with a ticket for New York.  She'll be no trouble after that."

"And when shall we tell Mr Glimmeridge?"

She thought a moment.  "Yes, we must do that.  We still don't know the full story, but more importantly, he must know that whatever his nieces' crime.  They've suffered enough.

"So?"

"When she's gone. Once she's on that ship, that'll be the end of her.  And after my conduct, which I noticed appalled you — you need never be ashamed of your past misdeeds in front of me.   Need you, Henry?"

Together with a couple of retainers, I accompanied Drizzle to Liverpool, We put her on the ship, and we saw it leave with her on board, first stop New York.  She had said nothing to me on the journey, which was as well because I had nothing to say to her.  The only person who seemed sorry to see her go was Bludgeon.  We had decided to make no mention of his involvement for Mr Glimmeridge's sake.  I've never worked out exactly what the relationship was between him and Drizzle, though I noticed that the nieces never spoke to him.

11. Confession

"Of course, the story in the Mercury wasn't quite accurate," said Mr Glimmeridge a week later when he, Isobel, and I were sitting once more in the magnificent library.

When we confronted him with Drizzle's confession, he had been appalled.  He had wanted the girls kept in a disciplined environment for their own good, but he had never dreamt that his advertisement would attract such a person.

He asked Isobel to fetch a particular envelope from the safe and remove the contents.  Then he sat before us with a single slip of paper on the table between us. 

"You'd better see this first," he said, pushing it towards us with a bandaged hand.

I turned it over and read.

We Ignatia, Iphegenia, and Isidora sign this blood pact to kill daddy and uncle in their wretched library so we can have the house and sell it and enjoy a happy life in London.  After all, he's been beastly rotten to us and never lets us have any fun, so there's no other way.

Below were three signatures, written in what looked like blood.

"Good God," said, passing it across to Isobel.

"Precisely, said Mr Glimmeridge.  "This was found in the aftermath — not by the police I'm glad to say.  It's childishly written, of course.  I'd told Isidore again and again that the girls were not maturing properly, that their education was deficient, and they were emotionally backward."  He sighed.  "But Isidore, for all his fine qualities, believed that women should not be educated.  He could see no fault in his three little girls, as he liked to call them.  He was one of those strange men who did nothing positive for those he loved.  He thought he loved his daughters, but he merely spoiled them, and in a way that gave them no pleasure, but merely turned them into monsters.  I'd told him for years that he was ruining them, that they would have no life, no prospects without discipline and education, and that he should at least cultivate in them some social graces so that they might marry and live fulfilled lives.

"But he didn't.  He always seemed to think of them as children, and so they remained."

"The letter makes that plain, sir," I said.

"Precisely.  They for their part wanted London, and The Season, and balls, and God knows that else.  That sort of thing interested neither Isidore nor me, but, more to the point, they would have made fools of themselves in such an environment.  It would not have given them the joy that they thought it would — quite the reverse.

"So, lacking all moral education, they decided to kill us for the reasons they gave.  Isidore and I were in the study on Christmas Eve six years ago.  It wasn't a study then but a sort of workroom library annexe.  There were a couple of large tables with papers and open books strewn all over them.  I remember we were drinking brandy by the fire when the door opened and the girls came in with their hands behind their backs.

"'Hello, girls!' said Isidore, terribly jolly, addressing them like small children as he always did, but really having little time for them.

"'We've got a present for you, daddy,' they said in unison.

"His eyes bulged.  'A present?  For me? Show me, girls.'

"And they did.  All of them held large jars of liquid, which I soon learned was inflammable.  Something in me or something in their eyes caused me to sense danger.  I leapt up, but in that instant, they hurled the jars: one at the fire, one at the table, and one at the wall.  Taking the lamp from the table they ran for the door, then threw the lamp too.

"As soon as the liquid hit the fire and the lamp burst on the floor the room was a sea of flame.  I rushed for the door, but, of course, they had locked it from without.  We knew that we didn't have long to live unless we could get out.  The only other escape was through the window, but when we opened it, the apertures were too small for us to get through.  We knew that we had to break one of the main leaded panels, but we needed a tool the break it with.   

"'The shelves!  Rip the books from on the shelves,' yelled Isidore.  They were the last words he ever spoke, apart from screams.  We ran to the shelves and started stripping the books off one of the shelves.  But when we tried to move the shelf itself, we found that it was fixed fast.  In the rising flames and heat, we tore frantically at the shelf.

"It was me who noticed that the bookcase was toppling.

"'Isidore!' I yelled, lunging at him.

"I managed to get a hand on him and pull him away, but too late.  I was just clear of it, but as the bookcase fell, it caught Isidore across his back, flinging him to the floor under its weight.  He screamed twice and then . . . and then . . . ."

I laid my hand on his bandaged one.   "I understand, sir," I said softly, and my own eyes were full of tears.

After he had recovered himself, he told me that the rest of the story was much as it had appeared in the Mercury.

"I was on the floor scrabbling at Isidore.  I thought it was all up for me, but suddenly there was a draught of air, the flames reared.  I thought it was death, but instead there were strong hands under my arms.

"'You can't save him, Mr Gravell, sir.  He's gone, sir.'

"I looked up and saw that it was Bludgeon.

"'Leave me with him!' I yelled.

"'No, sir,' he said shortly and started hauling me out of the room.

"Apparently he'd been in the courtyard and seen the fire through the window when it started.  He'd come rushing in screaming for an axe, which thankfully someone found quickly.  They managed to chop their way through the locked door just in time."

"But how did he know the door would be locked?" asked Isobel.

"He didn't," said Mr Glimmeridge, bemused.

"But the axe, sir," I said.  "How did he know he would need an axe?"

"Ah!"  Mr Glimmeridge's face cleared.  "They asked that at the inquest.  He said that an axe is always a useful tool in a fire, to chop away and hook away burning members."

"Ah, of course," I said. 

Even so, I wondered. 

"I cursed Bludgeon a few times over the succeeding days," said Mr Glimmeridge.  "I was badly burned, my hands were charred, I had lost my brother and I knew that my nieces were murderesses.  But in time I began to realise that life it worth living, no matter how painful, and the man's courage was outstanding.  I owe him my life."

"And then you hired Drizzle," I suggested, not wanting to linger on the subject of Bludgeon.

He shrugged.  "What could I do?  I didn't want to see them; I didn't want my nieces in the house, but I couldn't just hand them over to the police.  They would have hanged, after all."

"And then there would have been the damaging publicity?"

He waved a bandaged claw in the air.  "No, Henry.  I didn't care about that.  I'm a reclusive man and my family's glory is in the past.  I might have done my duty by the law except for the fact that my nieces were my brother's creatures.  It didn't mitigate their guilt much, but it did a little.  Isidore was not entirely without blame . . . not entirely.

"So I thought I would hire a strict governess, someone who would keep them in order . . . punish them, yes, but not to the degree that she did.  I suppose I wanted to see repentance.  If only they had repented . . . . "

"Drizzle beat all sense of good and evil out of them . . . and twisted them in other ways besides," said Isobel.

He nodded slowly.  "Yes, yes, I see that.  But it was never my intent.  I simply wanted to bring them to repentance.  Had they repented, I could have forgiven them."

"And can you now?" I asked.

"Now?"

"They've suffered enough, Mr Glimmeridge," said Isobel in a voice that brooked no refusal.

He bowed his head.  "If you say so, my dear, I suppose they must have done."

*****

Mr Glimmeridge was never entirely reconciled to his nieces, but life at Glimmersmeer Hall did improve.  He invited people to the house and encouraged them to make local friends. Iphegenia became involved in local charities and good works, the other two much less so but they managed to drag their lives from out of the abyss to some extent at least.   He sent them abroad on holidays with companions and tutors he could trust.  He allowed them to visit London, where he kept a small house.  But after a couple of visits they showed little inclination to return, having discovered, no doubt, that they were not readily invited into the merry whirl of ball, beaus, and endless diversions.

Three years later Ignatia died of pneumonia.  She had been the eldest and, I always suspected, the leader in their plot to kill their father and uncle.  After her death, Iphegenia and Isidora seemed to grow closer together and achieve contentment of a sort.  Five years after that Mr Glimmeridge himself died.  He did not leave the estate to his nieces but to a trust.  The two girls received enough to buy a decent house on the outskirts of Sedbergh and live on a very comfortable pension.  We heard that this closer proximity to the society of others drew them out and they bloomed, becoming quite grand ladies in this little backwater, though we never heard that either of them married.

Isobel and I married about three months after the events detailed above.  We remained with Mr Glimmeridge for the remainder of his life.  I finished his family history, and I did require my knowledge of Indian languages to do this.  After his death, we discovered that he had left us each a  legacy in his will.  That he did this did not surprise us, but the sheer size of it did.  We moved to Norfolk to be closer to Isobel's ageing parents, whom we could now support handsomely.  Isobel opened her girls' school and I devoted myself writing a book about the early British involvement in India, and to pursuing the life of a country gentleman, for I could now well afford to do so.

As for the chapel, the trust sold Glimmersmeer Hall to an American recluse who, on reading my history of the Glimmeridge family excavated the chapel.  They found no graves there, leaving us to wonder whether the chapel was a cenotaph, or whether the ciphers had merely been an elaborate and glorious hoax.