Perfect Nightmare

Chapter Fifty-one

It was the house itself that awakened Neville. Even before he opened his eyes, he knew that all was not well, that somewhere in the house, something was terribly wrong.

It was a feeling he’d had more and more often over the last few months, when he’d listened to the silence, then risen from his bed to prowl through the house, checking doors and windows, making certain his employer’s realm was secure. Indeed, he’d already made his patrol once this night, and found Mrs. Marshall coming in from the terrace with strange tales of hearing sounds she couldn’t possibly have heard. Of course, he reassured her that it had been nothing more than shore birds, sent her back to bed, then finished his tour of the mansion before returning to his own room and his bed.

He’d slept.

But now he was awake again, and something felt wrong. Then, before he’d thrown the covers back and reached for his robe, he heard it.

The sound of breaking glass.

Instantly, his mind began cataloging the possibilities. Perhaps it was nothing more than Mr. Shields dropping a brandy snifter after trying to medicate himself through another sleepless night. Or perhaps one of the old family photographs that covered so many of the downstairs walls had fallen from its mount.

Except it hadn’t sounded like either a dropped glass or a fallen picture.

It sounded like a breaking window.

Slipping into his robe, Neville hurried silently along the corridor and down the dark stairway that led from his apartment to the kitchen, still trying to convince himself that whatever the sound had been, it was nothing serious.

But even as he moved through the kitchen into the dayrooms, the house whispered that something evil lay nearby.

Emerging into the vast entry hall, he slowed his step and listened, but heard nothing but the ancient clock’s eternal ticking; all around him the house was dark and quiet.

Just as it should be.

Yet still he heard it whispering to him, telling him that all was not as it seemed. Neville crossed the hall and slipped into the conservatory, where only a little while ago he’d met Mrs. Marshall, but now all was well in that room, too, and beyond its great glass doors, a lightening sky signaled the coming of dawn.

And by that light, he could find no broken windowpane whose shattering might have disturbed his sleep.

Neville Cavanaugh moved silently on.

The library doors were locked, which told him that Mr. Shields was once again sleeping there instead of in his room. He raised his hand to rap softly at the door, then changed his mind: if his employer was asleep, he didn’t want to awaken him, at least not until he had discovered what was amiss.

He turned away from the library and moved to the massive, circular table that stood in the center of the foyer, its intricately inlaid mosaic surface still half obscured by the profusion of yellow tulips that Mr. Shields’s sister had picked.

The tulips that were now past their prime, and should have been thrown away a week ago. Neville stood quietly, seeing neither the faded tulips nor any other visible thing, for his mind was focusing on the house itself. He knew that if he waited quietly, it would tell him of its ills.

It always had; it always would. He understood its subtleties — knew every inch of its molding, every scar in its paneling, even every vein in every slab of its marble, as well as every pleat in every curtain.

He knew every creak, moaning joint, and settled beam. As the decades passed, he had kept this house, and this house had protected him. He thought of himself and this house as partners; they understood one another.

And this night, things were not right with the house.

He could feel its ills deep in his soul.

He waited for the impressions to become more specific, but his impatience clouded any psychic message he might have gleaned, and finally he strode to the staircase and mounted the stairs, his slippers soundless on the marble treads.

The doors to the girls’ rooms were closed, as always.

The guest room door, though, was open, and when he peered inside, he saw only the empty bed, the bedding itself in disarray.

So Mrs. Marshall was up and about again, and no doubt it had been she who broke something. Certain there was nothing else to be found up here, Neville quickly went back down the stairs, searched the rest of the day rooms, and finally stepped out onto the terrace, using the same door in the conservatory through which he’d admitted Mrs. Marshall a while ago. The air was chilly, and Neville clutched at the lapels of his robe with his fingers as he moved down the length of the terrace, checking each of the French doors in turn.

He saw the breech in the last set of doors that opened into the library. A pane of glass next to the doorknob had been broken — smashed in with one of the wrought-iron plant stands of which he had never approved, and for the reason that now confronted him. The plant stand lay on its side in front of the door.

So there had been an intruder.

Neville pushed open the damaged door and stepped into the library, closing it behind him, and as the latch clicked into place, he knew that here, in this room, was the source of the distress that had awakened him.

It wasn’t merely the pervasiveness of Mr. Shields’s grief or the aroma of Mrs. Marshall’s cheap perfume. No, it was something far darker, far more disturbing. But what? The room was vacant and cold, the fireplace barely sustaining a few faintly glowing coals.

Then he saw that the Oriental rug in front of the desk was folded back.

Frowning, he approached it, and stared at the gaping trapdoor.

For a moment all he could do was peer in astonishment at the hole in the floor, barely able to believe his eyes. How many times had the carpet been rolled back over the years? How was it possible that he hadn’t known that a trapdoor was there? As he stared at it, and saw how perfectly the door would drop back into the deeply grooved parquetry design of the floor, he realized that the entire floor had been designed to disguise this trapdoor; closed, it would be all but invisible.

But where did it go?

His brow furrowing deeply, Neville Cavanaugh hurried toward the kitchen in search of a flashlight.