The Nonsuch Lure Page 7

  Qhapter ^jfour

  Dr. Timothy Hodge lifted the receiver as his secretary had requested on the intercom. It seemed an emergency, she said. He listened for a moment as the voice on the other end called him by his first name. American accent, obviously a friend. The doctor's craggy features broke into a pleased smile, and he leaned back in his chair. "Well, Andrew—Andrew Moffatt! I say, old friend—how are you and what's all this rubbish about an emergency?" For the next few moments he listened, his eyes focused unseeing on the shelves of medical books opposite and then, swiveling in his chair, he gazed thoughtfully out his Sloane Street window at the busy edge of Belgravia. From time to time, as the conversation continued, he turned to make a note, biting his pencil speculatively, engrossed in his friend's words.

  "Damnedest thing I ever heard, Andrew," he finally said, "anything like this ever happen to you before?" There followed another few minutes of conversation until, glancing at his appointment pad and watch, he agreed to a one o'clock luncheon. Thoughtfully, he replaced the telephone. Andrew Moffatt was clearly distraught. Cleaning a pipe, he recalled the many years they'd known each other. Their fathers had been old and devoted friends, had attended the same schools and college, served as best man at each other's wedding and had even traveled around the world together. His own parents hadn't been so hell-bent to have him with them as Andrew's had, and he'd been sent early to boarding school. Andrew, on the other hand, had a tutor who accompanied the family whenever a school term coincided with the elder Moffatts' desire to

  take him along to Bali or for Easter Week in Madrid. Inevitably, the two boys met at vacation time. They'd spent a disastrous summer at an American camp on the shores of what had to be the coldest lake in New Hampshire. There, he recalled, he and Andrew—who could already outswim, outtennis, outsail and outrun anyone else their age or older—had spent the entire summer pooling their allowances for cigarettes, cadging whatever tobacco they could find to roll their own and instructing every willing camper in the fine art of smoking. Following that, there'd been a longish period of less contact; they'd both been either in uniform or doing postgraduate work —he in Edinburgh, while Andrew was somewhere on the other side of the world, digging up civilizations in order to write long and learned architectural treatises on the buildings uncovered. Neither had married. Each had done a fair amount of hell raising, either together or apart. Each, if asked, would have mentioned the other as a valuable and close friend. Timothy was used to receiving telephone calls from Andrew from outlandish places the world over— and just as accustomed to having him turn up in London with little or no warning. He himself rarely left the city, for he'd quickly established a thriving psychiatric practice, a vocation Andrew often joshed him about. "How's supershrink?" was one of his friend's more repeatable greetings.

  Timothy's reverie was interrupted as his secretary-nurse ushered in his next patient. He checked the time, for he didn't wish to be late. Andrew had sounded shaken—actually more in need of treatment than the person now coming through the door.

  He was already seated at a table at the Empress when Timothy Hodge came in. He rose to shake hands and pummel the doctor affectionately. Yet Timothy's trained eye could detect something he'd rarely seen in Andrew Moffatt: the poor bloke was wound tighter than a spring. One of his friend's greatest charms had always been his relaxed geniality. He rarely took himself seriously. Now, Hodge could see, the man seated opposite—for all his upfront affability—was under terrific stress.

  "God, it's good to see you, Tim—and you're fantastic to see me on such short notice." Andrew lit a cigarette and gave an order for drinks to the waiter. "I really need to talk to you."

  "Glad to be of help, Andrew—I'd no idea you were even in London! How long have you been here?"

  "Only three days, Tim, and I've seen nobody. I haven't called any of our friends, because there were several things I wanted to do before I made any appointments. It's been some three days, Tim. God, the things I have to tell you! The whole experience is beginning to get to me. You'll probably think I'm going round the bend. . . . Maybe it's an early symptom of male menopause."

  "Christ, Andrew, you're too young for that." Hodge took a gulp of his drink. "Something to do with one of your women—some gorgeous dame finally gotten to you?"

  Andrew looked surprised. "Well, in a way—no, not really! At least, not in the way you're thinking. Although there is a woman involved . . . but I'll have to tell you about that later. And when I tell you, I think you're going to be convinced I've gone bananas."

  Hodge laughed heartily at the Americanism. "Well, get on with it, man, I don't have all day." He smiled encouragingly. "This had better be good—"

  Andrew cut him off. "Tim, this is nothing funny. I've never been so disturbed—shocked—agitated—you name it. I think you know I'm not the kind to come unhinged easily. Hell, I've been in trouble before—sometimes with women, sometimes with the stupidly arrogant foreign authorities I've had to deal with. I've had my differences with some of my less-than-bright colleagues. I even, at one time, spent several days at loggerheads with my tax accountant! The point is, I've dealt with them all and then not given them another thought. But this—this experience I've had the past few days—has stunned me. Because, you see, I can't find any explanation for it. I've searched and searched—and lost a lot of sleep, I should say—and in the end my thoughts keep coming around to one thing: there's no explanation of which I am capable. I'm dealing with something completely outside the sphere of my own experience. So you see, I need your advice."

  "Well, you know you can have it, Andrew. There's nothing I wouldn't do to help—if I can." Hodge was impressed in spite of himself. Whatever had gotten to Andrew, it had certainly made him anxious. He wasn't sure that drinking scotch in a fashionable restaurant was the proper environment for treatment, but he could see the drink was visibly relaxing his friend, so he remained silent

  "I'll start at the beginning, Tim, and try to bring you up to date. It's going to sound like a . . . like a—"

  "A hodgepodge?" The question recalled a childhood joke, and Andrew laughed—the first spontaneously free mirth Hodge had seen.

  "Yes, a real hodgepodge, old buddy." Andrew snuffed out his cigarette, ordered more drinks and said, "Now here's what happened. . . ."

  For the next half hour he recalled for Hodge the day he'd seen the Washington newspaper clipping mentioning the Nonsuch excavations; he told of finding Julian's Journal and learning of Cudding-ton House's existence. He recalled the tolerant amusement of his friends when he finally left for England on what they considered an extravagant whim. He described his arrival and his meeting with the Caudles, explaining who they were.

  He then told of his journey to Ewell, of seeing the farmhouse on his way to the excavations. He reviewed a little of the palace's history and dwelled descriptively on his reaction at the site of the old church. He told Tim of his effort to find the farmhouse on the return to Ewell, ending up in Sparrow Field's kitchen. He was gratified to see his old friend's deep interest when he got to Mrs. Williams' comment, "Oh, sir, I think you've seen the ghost. . . ." He stopped there. "Not ready to write me off yet, Tim?"

  "Of course not—don't be an ass, Andrew—do get on with it!" Clearly, Hodge was impressed, Andrew was relieved to see. Which was fine because he was going to need all of his friend's interest and tolerance—both personal and professional—before he was through.

  He continued the story—of his visit with Rosa Caudle and the discovery of the portrait. He described it as graphically as he could —the remembrance of Chloe Cuddington's cool, gray stare caused him to stumble. Somewhat apologetically, he said, "Tim, no picture has ever affected me like that before. You've got to see it to understand. . . . Believe me, I can understand Julian Cushing's falling in love with it. In fact"—his voice was quiet—"in fact, I think I've fallen in love with it myself."

  Hodge nodded, obviously nonplussed by Andrew's intensity. He was tempted to make some easy analytical
remark—to suggest that loving a picture might be less satisfying but also less risky than the

  real thing—but, in the face of his friend's candor, thought better of it.

  Andrew continued. "Well, this is the hardest part, but bear with me, Tim. All that I've told you happened within the last two days. This morning I decided to go back to Nonsuch just once more because, frankly, that reaction at the church site kept bugging me. I couldn't understand it. Nothing like it has ever happened to me before—it seemed damned stupid, fainthearted, something I couldn't handle. ... So I went back by train—walked through Ewell—no time slip at Sparrow Field this time—walked straight to the excavations and sat down for a while to look at the pictures I'd brought along." He opened the briefcase and withdrew two glossy prints—reproductions of paintings and sketches of Nonsuch Palace. "This one is by an anonymous Flemish painter about 1620—roughly seventy-five years or so after the palace was complete. Take a look."

  He handed Timothy Hodge the print. It was an early-morning scene showing the treelined driveway with the palace viewed in the distance from the northwest. Several early risers were playing a game of bowls outside the gatehouse entrance. Another was about to capture a deer to which several mounted horsemen in late Jacobean dress were giving pursuit. The palace was a melange of turrets, towers, oriel windows, arched entranceways with lush green trees whose tops were visible over the enclosing brick wall.

  "I've seen the original painting"—Timothy handed it back to Andrew—"but I'm damned if I can remember where."

  "It's at the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge." Andrew buttered a roll. "Well, what do you think?"

  "I'm no authority on Tudor palaces, old man. I leave that bit to you. It's an uncommonly handsome-looking place. A few too many towers and flags waving for my taste, but if this was old Henry Tudor's bag, so be it. Elegant clock tower there in the center."

  "Yes—that clock—that was Henry's idea, by the way. He had six French workmen imported just to build it. It stood at the entrance to the inner court, which was where the royal apartments were. That was supposedly the most beautiful part of the entire complex. . . . Here's where it was." Andrew pointed to the Privy Gallery. He took another print, a pencil sketch, from his briefcase. "And here's what it looked down on." The sketch showed a formal garden of geometrically precise plots planted with flowers and shrubs arranged in "knots" and enclosed by a miniature fence

  painted in the Tudor colors, green and white. Among the beds a statue of a prancing white horse reared atop a pedestal. On the opposite side was an ornate obelisk, resplendent with carving. Two large columns—"they were called the 'Falcon Perches,'" said Andrew—were topped with large birds. Water fed into the figures by concealed pipes streamed from their beaks into bowls below. At each end of the Privy Gallery were the two five-story octagonal towers, covered with lifelike white panels and handsomely carved black slate frames.

  Timothy's attention was completely caught. "'. . . as there would be none such in the land.'" He repeated the king's words that Andrew had mentioned. "God, it must have been a sight to see. Now where did you say you had that bad experience the first time?"

  "It would have been right about here." Andrew took up the picture and ran his finger along the wall. "Here was where the Church of St. Mary the Virgin was located until Henry had the whole area leveled to make way for the palace. There was a large fountain about in the center of the inner court which was built over the site of the chancel, and that's where . . . where. . . ."

  "That's where that astonishing reaction got to you," Timothy finished, "so what did you do on the second trip this morning?"

  "Well, as I said, I'd decided to test the area again. I'd given it a lot of thought and concluded that it was very probable some one place might affect a person for any number of reasons. I figured maybe I'd been overtired or too warm when I was there yesterday. So I left my coat and briefcase under a tree and walked back to the same area. The day was overcast and actually a little chilly, so it was unlike the previous visit, when the sun was high and it was very warm."

  The waiter arrived with their lunch, and each took a bite or two before Hodge prompted Andrew to continue.

  "So I got to the site—I'd planned this for noon since that was about the time I'd been there before. There were very few people around—only one or two. I guess the others were taking a lunch break. I walked very deliberately to the site, not lingering anywhere else, and even before I got there, Tim, I knew I was in trouble."

  "What kind of trouble?"

  "It's hard to describe. About fifty feet away I began to feel

  different—unreasonably warm—and by the time I got to the chancel site I was suffused with heat. It was like walking into a red-hot furnace. Perspiration broke out all over my face, arms and shoulders. My shirt clung to my back. I was weak, nauseated, my legs were trembling. Suddenly, I was trembling all over, and everything seemed to recede, come back, waver a bit. My God, it was hell." Andrew's voice broke. "Sorry, Tim, but this has really hit me. Even talking about it makes me feel ill all over again. Frankly, it scares the bejesus out of me."

  "Well, let's give it a bit of a rest, and here, there's a good chap, polish off the last of my scotch, why don't you? I don't usually have two when I'm going back to the office directly afterwards."

  Andrew drained the glass. "Yes, that's better. I won't describe it again except to say that there's nothing in this world that would induce me to go back to that damned spot again. If I were going to meet that old royal bastard, Henry himself, I'd stand him up." He laughed, and Timothy joined in.

  "That's quite a tale, Andrew. You know, if it were anyone but you, I'd be very skeptical. Oh, I suppose there might be a good and justifiable medical reason if I wanted to dig deeply, but my first impression would be that the person telling me something like this was fanciful, impressionable, even a bit of a kook. But not you. Now tell me"—he pushed his plate away and leaned forward— "what do you think it is—or was?"

  "I've no idea, Tim, but I do know this. It is a manifest something —obviously not material—nothing you can see and, apparently from what I can observe, no one else working there feels a damned thing. Only me. There might be others who've reacted the same, but I don't know them. I can only speak for myself. It's me. I know this is going to sound melodramatic, but honestly, it almost feels as though there's something waiting there for me. I know that sounds berserk. . . ."

  "Not at all, Andrew. Don't you remember the ghost stories we used to read at that god-awful camp when we were kids? Ghosts lying in wait for an impressionable someone to come so they could scare them to death? Or else giving them a message from the Great Beyond for someone still living? Or else spooks working out an old grudge against whoever was living in their house? As a matter of fact, I can tell you, there was a lot of sound reasoning or assumption—if not good medical diagnosis—in those old stories. Science

  today is finally acknowledging there's more to this old earth and its atmosphere than meets the eye. Prestigious universities are dealing with it under any number of unpronounceable names mostly ending in an 'ology.' But what it comes down to is this. They're attempting to explain the unexplainable: the phenomena which have manifested through the centuries—clairvoyance, astral projection, precognition, psychokinesis. Some very big guns, I'm happy to say, are doing a first-rate job."

  "Now how does all that affect what happened to me?"

  "I'm not saying it explains it, but what I mean is that I think it's all part of an unexplainable package. You had what many would call a supernormal or paranormal experience. Yet it's probably quite normal and would be explainable if we were familiar with the forces behind it and if we only knew how to explain it in terms the layman could understand."

  "Then you don't think it's just meF n

  Hodge understood Andrew's question—and his fear. "No, I don't think it's you, Andrew. I think you encountered some force—some energy—that's brutal and ugly. It's some one thing that you, pa
rticularly, are attuned to. The kids today would say your vibrations are right. The vibrations at that church site aren't right, however, and they affect you disastrously. The workers are unaffected because they're not on the same wavelength, so to speak. Yet tomorrow another person could go there and be similarly traumatized. It all comes down to how sensitive you are, and you, I know, are a sensitive person."

  Andrew was tremendously relieved to know there was even a remote explanation, that Hodge didn't think he was cracking up. Yet there seemed to be more to the situation than Hodge could or would explain.

  "I can give you some professional advice, if you wish," Hodge said lightly, "and the price is right—free."

  Andrew grinned and waited.

  "As your physician, Andrew Moffatt, I'll advise you of one thing. Stay the hell away from Nonsuch Palace. There's some malevolence waiting there for you, and it's waited a long time. All those similarities you talk about are a bit too pat to be explained away as coincidences. So there's probably more—much more—to this whole thing than you or I could even imagine or comprehend. Even if we knew the complete story in minute detail, we could absorb only so much,

  for we have only a mortal mind to accept and deal with that information. And here we're dealing with something immortal—and vastly immoral, too, I think, Andrew. So, old buddy, stay right here in London, and don't set foot in the environs of Nonsuch again. I don't think your bete noire can—or will—leave Nonsuch. So good riddance to him—or is it an 'it? You just stay the hell away, hear? And now are you going to pay this check or am I?"

  Andrew walked back to the Strand mulling over Tim's words. It might be the wisest thing to leave Cuddington House and finish his vacation in Vermont, after all. Or he could check into the Con-naught for a few days, see his London friends to whom he'd given no thought at all since his arrival, so mesmerized had he been by all the nonsense about Julian Cushing and the Nonsuch excavations. Well, he'd seen the ruins, and they'd affected him in a way he could hardly have foretold. Yet even as he considered other plans, an absurd disappointment and regret lingered; he felt almost as if he were evading a responsibility, leaving some very important business unfinished.