The Norfolk Mystery. Ian Sansom
speeding past inches from the car, which was spitting up stones and dirt – we were now driving along a single-track road that had clearly been made for horses’ hoofs rather than high-speed Lagondas.
We breasted a small hill and began careering down the other side, approaching a bend at both unsuitable angle and speed.
‘Slow down, miss,’ I said sharply.
‘What?’
‘Slow down.’
As we sped unwisely towards the bend she turned and looked at me and there was a look in her eye that I recognised – the same look I had seen in men’s eyes in Spain; and the look they must have seen in mine. Desperation. Fear. Joy. A shameless, stiff, direct gaze, challenging life itself. Terrifying.
She was understeering – out of ignorance, I suspected, rather than daring – as we approached the bend, and I found myself reaching across her, grabbing the wheel and tugging it towards me, attempting to correct the angle and bring the car in more tightly.
‘Look out!’ she screamed, as we swept down upon the bend, the rear of the Lagonda swinging out from behind us, her foot slamming down instinctively on the brakes.
‘Don’t brake!’ I screamed – I knew it would throw the car – and grabbed down at her ankle and pulled it up, reaching down with my other hand to apply a little pressure in order to transfer weight to the front.
It worked. Just.
We skidded to a halt, engine and tyres smoking, my head first in her lap and then juddering into the Lagonda’s pretty dashboard. The engine cut out.
‘Oh!’ she yelled. ‘You maddening man! What on earth do you think you’re doing?’
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ I yelled back.
At which challenge she threw her head back and laughed, a great throaty, hollow laugh, as though the whole thing were a mere prank she’d rehearsed many times. Which she may have.
‘What am I doing? I’m living, Sefton! How do you like it, eh?’
I sat up, straightened myself, opened the car door and climbed out.
‘What are you doing?’ she called.
‘I’m getting out here, miss, thank you,’ I said.
‘But you can’t!’
‘Yes I can.’ I began walking on ahead. ‘I’ll find my own way now, thank you, miss.’
‘How dare you!’ I could hear the stamp of her pretty little foot. ‘Get back in here now! Now!’
The rich and exotic beauty of the English countryside
I walked on ahead, feeling calm.
‘Sefton!’ she called. ‘Did you hear me, man? Get back in here, now.’
Then, realising that I had no intention of obeying her orders and that she had indeed lost control of the situation, she promptly started up the still smoking engine, stamped her foot on the accelerator, and sped past, hooting the horn as she went.
‘See. You. Later. Sluggard!’ she called, snatching triumph with one last toss of her head. The look in her eyes remained with me for some time.
It was a trek to the Morley house. My head was throbbing. My foot was sore. I stopped off at a cottage on the road to a place called Blakeney, asking for directions, and the old cottager came out – a fine country figure, rigged out in greasy waistcoat and side whiskers of the variety people used to call ‘weepers’ – and pointed back the way I’d come. ‘But I’m terrible blind,’ he warned, as I departed. I wasn’t sure if he meant literally, or if it was some amusement of his. Whichever, he sent me the wrong way, and it was long past supper time when I eventually arrived, sans suitcase, sans pills, sans everything.
A thin new moon was set high in the sky.
I felt wretched. Outcast. Like an apparition. Or a newborn child.
THE FAMOUS MORLEY HOUSE, St George’s – described by Burchfield as ‘a true Englishman’s castle’ and by Bolton as ‘his legacy in bricks and mortar’ – was at that time only twenty years old, Morley himself having overseen its construction. Some, I know, have written off the house as a work of Edwardian folly, others have celebrated it as a testament to a great Englishman’s passions. But it was far too dark for me to make a judgement that first evening. Country dark is a darkness far beyond what city-dwellers imagine and at St George’s, at night, one could almost swim in the thick black swirling around one. I passed up the driveway, between imposing entrance gates – atop which, in glinting moonlight, sat St George on the one hand, dragon dutifully slain, and the Golden Hind on the other – and up past what I assumed to be a small lake, and walked, exhausted, between an avenue of old trees and finally up stone steps to the house, with statues of Britannia and lions rampant guarding the entrance. The door, an anachronistic mass of carved oak – like something by Ghiberti for a cathedral – stood open.
A true Englishman’s castle
‘Good evening!’ I called, peering into the house’s gloom. ‘Mr Morley? It’s Sefton, sir. I’m sorry I—’
For half a moment there came no reply and then suddenly in the entrance hall there was cacophony, the whole house, it seemed, screaming out in agony in response to my call. The noise was that of cold-blooded murder. Startled, I drew back, almost tripping down the steps, my heart racing. I shut my eyes and actually thought I might be sick – the maddening Miriam, no food, no pills, only a little tobacco. I had slipped back into a dream of Spain. But then, after several minutes, when the incredible noise continued and no one came, and with no intention of retracing my weary footsteps back down the driveway and all the way back to misery and London, I peered cautiously into the hall.
There were, thank God, no demons. It was no dream. The grand entrance hall to St George’s – as readers of Burchfield will recall – had been set up as a kind of a zoo and a natural history museum. The walls all around were hung with glass cases and shelves holding displays of skulls and bones, and turtle shells, and sets of teeth and taxidermised beasts: one case seemed to comprise a collection merely of snouts. And then below these displays of their ancestors and relatives were the living animals themselves, a literal tableau vivant. Rather poor taste, I thought – keeping animals in a kind of animal catacomb. Drawing my eye, directly opposite the great doorway, was the celebrated aquarium, set up on a simple wooden plinth, the whole thing not less than the height of a man and perhaps more than twenty feet across – nothing like it outside the major aquariums of Europe – and designed as a kind of Alpine garden, thick with pebbles and vegetation, and with brightly coloured fish weaving their way through crystal-clear water and decorative stonework. I was drawn towards this extraordinary, oddly luminescent sight and moved mesmerised towards it, noticing a clipboard attached to the plinth, which seemed to record feeding times and observations. ‘Dytiscus,’ read the notes. ‘Dragon-fly larvae?’ But I was distracted by all this for only a moment before there came a sudden whoosh and swooping above my head, as a couple of – could they have been? Neither Burchfield nor Bolton make mention of them – jackdaws made their presence known. As my eyes became accustomed to the gloom I glanced all around me and made