The creak of our feet on the rotten stair seemed to halt the sobbing once more. We pressed on, ascending swiftly.
I called out for Charlie, then swung the lantern round as I caught sight of the whitish shape again, still above us on the staircase. It was a figure, dressed in some sort of billowing white gown. Or shroud, I thought dully.
I strode towards the phantom shape, determined not to be rattled.
«Who’s there?» I demanded. «Show yourself!»
With Lee almost hysterical at my side, I reached the top of the staircase and was confronted by a door. Gingerly, I reached out a hand and took hold of the knob.
I swallowed, nervous in spite of myself, and began to turn it.
A hand reached out of the shadows and clasped my arm. I pulled back in undisguised alarm, thrusting the lamp aloft and shining a light down on the frightened face of Charlie Jackpot.
«Bloody hell, Mr Box! Did you see it? Did you see it?»
I nodded, a little too quickly. «I saw it!»
«The face!» he whispered. «Did you see its face?»
All at once, the door in front of us flew open and the figure in white seemed to swarm upon us.
I yelled in stark terror and batted at the thing with both hands. Lee took to his heels and pounded down the rotten stairway. Charlie threw himself behind me and we sank back against the wall as the spectre went hurtling down the stairs after the Chinaman, screaming and sobbing as though it were a denizen of Hell itself.
«Christ Almighty!» I gasped, after we had picked ourselves up off the landing. «What was it?»
Charlie shook his head. «It went… it went towards the cellar.»
I stood up and opened the lantern to its fullest extent.
Slowly and silently, we descended the stairs and approached the door to the cellar.
There was no sign of Lee.
I opened the door, taking care that it should not creak, and then took a few tentative steps downwards.
I lifted the lamp. Behind me, Charlie gasped and clapped a hand to his mouth.
Sitting in a fire-charred chair was the ruin of a woman. Dressed in a stained and tattered white robe, her hair hung about her shoulders in great, knotted clumps. It was her face, though, which drew all our attention. The eyes looked out from a skull-like visage from which the flesh seemed to have been boiled away. Great blistered lumps of skin hung like candle-wax from the jaw and cheek-bones.
«Good God,» whispered Charlie.
The woman looked at me wildly, those dreadful eyes glistening in the lantern-light. Then she began to moan once more, her whole body shuddering as though a disinterred mummy had been brought to some foul simulacrum of life.
And all at once I knew her.
«Mrs Knight?» I cried. «Mrs Midsomer Knight?»
«Yes,» said the voice of Lee behind us. «Most regrettable that you will never have chance to meet her properly.»
He was brandishing a Colt in his pudgy hand.
«Please to stay still. I can certainly kill one of you before you have chance to overpower me.» The Chinee turned his narrow black eyes upon me and smiled. «Drop gun.»
With a sigh, I dropped my revolver to the tiled floor.
Lee levelled his own gun at me, a horrible snarling grin flickering over his lips as he bent down to retrieve mine. He thrust it inside his robes. «You have done well, Mr Box. But it is time to stop toying with you. You dangle like child’s puppet. So sorry.»
He advanced on the wretched woman before us. He plucked a hypodermic syringe from somewhere in his robes, and with practised efficiency plunged it into her forearm. With a groan, she slumped forward. «Now, please to escort lady from cellar.»
He gestured with the Colt and Charlie and I manhandled Mrs Knight up the stairs and back into the hallway. Thanks to the nameless drug — no doubt the purple poppy in one of its many guises — she was the very opposite of a ghost. She weighed a ton.
Lee ushered us through the house, into a large, gloomy room dominated by a pair of disreputable-looking French windows. Its floor was an inch-thick in dust but clearly visible in its centre were four coffins, dragged in from the hallway.
Three of the coffins were sealed, the fourth open. Lee smiled. «One bird fly. She not have enough of purple poppy. Now she sleep better. Please to put her in.»
Reluctantly, Charlie and I lowered the woman into the empty coffin, its satin lining rustling in a peculiarly horrible fashion.
«Let us check on others,» said Lee with a smile. «Please to open coffins.»
Gingerly, Charlie knelt down and lifted the lid from the first of the grisly boxes.
«Raise lantern please, Mr Box,» said Lee with infuriating politeness.
Within the coffin was what appeared to be the corpse of a man, his skin waxen and deathly pale. He was of large build and had a very prominent chin. His eyes were spaced wide apart. Professor Eli Verdigris.
The remaining coffins revealed, as expected, Professors Sash and Quibble. All of them lived on. Lived on in some ghastly, drug-induced coma.
«So all is ready. The party is complete.»
«What the hell is all this for, Lee?» I demanded.
Lee said nothing but indicated that we should move towards the French windows. Charlie pushed at the rotten woodwork until the doors groaned open.
Beyond lay an extraordinary landscape, lit by flaming torches — a vista of shattered stonework, tree-lined avenues and ancient, rutted roadways. I stepped out on to the flagged ground and gasped.
«What is this place?» cried Charlie.
«You not know?» said Lee with a horrid smile.
«I know,» I breathed. «It is Pompeii!»
The torches illumined the ruins in a fearful relief, the hazy black hump of Vesuvius rearing over the lost city like the back of some dreadful beast.
«And now,» said Lee, hissing with laughter and brandishing both pistols. «It is time for you to die.»
For an instant, I despaired, letting my hands drop to my sides. But in that moment, Charlie jumped out in front of me and hurled his lantern at the Chinaman. It hit him full in the chest, there was a satisfying splintering of glass and as the startled Lee looked down in surprise, his foul gown burst alight, and he was enveloped in flame.
I darted forward and brought my own lantern crashing down on Lee’s head. He staggered and fell forward on to his knees, dropping a pistol and battering desperately at his blazing robe with his free hand.
Despite his panic and his hideous shrieks of pain, Lee raised a shaking hand and aimed a pistol at me. Roaring like an enraged tiger I ran at him full force and planted my fist in his throat. I felt the flesh give sickeningly and he toppled to the flagstones, smacking his cheek against the crumbling masonry.
Charlie was at my side in an instant. He whipped off his jacket and succeeded in putting out the flames.
«Well done, Charlie,» I said, breathlessly. «Let’s get the fat lump inside. Once he’s recovered his senses, he can tell us what the hell’s going on.»
Charlie looked down at Lee and shook his head, «’Fraid not, sir. You don’t know your own strength. He’s a gonner.»
I turned the Chinaman over. His wind-pipe was crushed and he was quite still.
«Bugger,» I said eloquently.
Exhaling heavily, Charlie sat down on the flagstones and looked at me. «Now what?»
I peered into the fiery gloom. «Now, Mr Jackpot, we wait. Sooner or later, someone is going to come and collect those coffins.»
18. Necropolis
