For Courtenay was dead, had died in a monastery hospital within an hour of arriving there. It was on hearing this news that Barnes, again by his own account, wished most fervently that he had killed Count Axel when he had had the chance. But if he had, what would have happened to those occupants of the outbuilding? At that time in that place, they would almost certainly have been quietly slaughtered, and it would have taken a bold man to pronounce them better off dead. I am not as confident as Roger Harvey that Barnes’s report was acted upon, though to be sure orders to do nothing constitute action.
In any event, no answer to his request appears in the folder. The final document is a signal from the Stockholm police; Count Axel had large estates near Karlskrona; he had not resided in Sweden for thirty years; late in 1898 he had fled inexplicably from a house he owned in Portugal, leaving it full of possessions. Even in those days it could hardly have been easy for him to kidnap or buy his company and then keep it hidden; now, with governments and police quick to trace any missing person, none of it would be possible.
One small item that puzzled Barnes I can clear up. Courtenay’s last words to him had nothing to do with terror; he was trying to say a single word that I, with my Ancient as well as Modern Greek, can identify, though I have never encountered it: teratophilia, erotic attraction to monsters. No doubt Courtenay had run across it in his psychological dabblings. It stands for an inclination bound to arouse abhorrence in those fortunate enough not to share it. Nevertheless I have pondered on it and other matters a good deal these last days, since reading the contents of that folder. I have felt I have had to. Consider: I was born in June or July 1899, in the Levant; nobody living knows exactly when or where. My colouring is Nordic. I have what might be an Asiatic eye-characteristic. Also consider something nobody living knows in detail but I: near my right hip I have an old scar, very old, the relic of surgery carried out so early in my infancy that my foster-parents, who started to care for me when I was six weeks old, did not know, or said they did not know, the nature of the operation. I have read that the tendency to bear twins is strongly inherited. Finally consider what has occurred to me as I write these lines: whence do I derive what Harvey called my fascination with the bizarre?
That has decided me; I will write to Celia to break off our engagement. I have no idea whether the tendency to bear twins, or near-twins, is inheritable through the male line, nor do I propose to find out. But I must do more. I feel that an office job is unsuitable for a healthy man, even one of forty, in wartime. When I meet Harvey for our farewell drink tomorrow, I will ask him for an introduction.
Note: Acting-Sergeant Chalmers, R.F., of the Royal rifle Regiment was killed in France in May, 1940 when, showing complete disregard for his own safety, he attacked an enemy tank with hand-grenades. He was awarded a posthumous DCM.
TO SEE THE SUN
I — Stephen Hillier to Constance Hillier, Wheatley, England
Albergu snt. Ioanni,
Nuvakastra,
Dacia
31 August 1925
Darling Connie,
Well, I was always pretty sure I had the wisest of wives, but never has the truth of that proposition become as clear to me as this afternoon on the journey from Arelanópli. I had known in advance that there were no railways in this part of the world, and precious few motor-cars; I was quite unprepared for the roads. In many places, and almost everywhere in the foothills and higher, they simply don’t exist, except round the larger towns, which are few and far enough between. The equipage that brought me here was of a piece with them: a veritable box on wheels, iron-tyred wheels at that, a couple of scraggy horses straight out of Browning, ‘every bone a-stare’, and at the reins an unshaven fellow in a sheepskin jacket that looked as if he had made it with his own far from fair hands — and not taken it off since its first day on his back.
Our ride took us through some of the wildest and most beautiful scenery in Europe — distant peaks wreathed in cloud, great pine-forests that shut out the sun, mountain streams in white traceries down almost sheer cliffs, and sudden vistas of the green plain far below. But it was hard (or so I found it) to appreciate these delights at their true worth, or even to take them in at all, while being perpetually flung from side to side and bounced into the air only to be dropped an instant later on to an unpadded bench that grew harder with each descent. My attempts to contrive a cushion out of my travelling-rug were an utter fiasco, and when, after what seemed like many hours, I reached my destination, I had a violent headache and a sick feeling in my stomach, a dull pain racked every muscle and I could have sworn I was bruised from head to foot. Last but not least, my eyes, full of dust and pollen, stung and itched intolerably. How very wise of you to have stayed at home!
Now all my ills are a thing of the past. A bath, which incidentally revealed my almost complete bruiselessness, a change of clothes, and food and drink, have between them set me up again, and my eyes, though still a little bloodshot, have responded well to careful bathing with boracic solution. (Bless you for remembering to pop the tin into my luggage!) Although this place is nothing more than a village inn, it’s excellent of its kind — spotlessly clean, bone dry and providing quantities of plain wholesome food and the sturdy red wine of the region. Far from uncomfortable, too; I write this at a table by the window of a pleasant, light room of fair size, furnished with a handsome and ample bed, its mattress a little hard (that one expects) but commendably free from lumps. The landlord is a sterling chap with a swarthy skin and the unexpected blue eyes I’ve come across before in remote parts of the northern Balkans. He and his smiling, apple-cheeked wife have made a great fuss of me, bringing me plates of patties and bowls of fresh fruit quite unasked and providing enough hot water to bath a horse.
The first shades of dusk are here and I must pause to light my candle. With the passing of the day, what I see from this window has changed a little and goes on changing as I write. Beyond the dark-red roofs of the peasant cottages, sharply sloped against the heavy winter snows, there’s a level grassy stretch something like a mile across (though it’s hard to be precise) and bounded by an irregular line of low hills that give place to higher hills, these being in turn topped by summits of what must be pretty considerable elevation, seeing that Nuvakastra itself can’t be much less than two thousand feet up. Until a few minutes back, the expanse of the plateau, broken here and there by a farmhouse with its outbuildings, a mill, a church, at one point a tiny village of tiny houses, had a warm and inviting look, and the distant mountains, though indeed wild, seemed to offer a noble mystery, a kind of primeval innocence. But now, how remote, how lonely everything seems! Imagine what it must feel like to be a wayfarer on that exposed plain with night closing in, even more to be lost among those desolate ravines and crags, beset by strange sounds and half-fancied movements in the dark! What makes us think that hidden forces are likely to be benevolent?