Free A Night of Errors by Michael Innes Page A

which commanded a view of the terrace now at some little remove above. ‘What about giving a shout?’
    ‘Not yet.’ His sister-in-law, although anxious for her friend, was reluctant to make the night hideous with clamour. ‘If we look in the courtyard and the avenue for her car–’
    ‘Mama, isn’t there something funny about the house?’
    They turned round, startled by the perplexity in Lucy’s voice. Then Sebastian spoke impatiently. ‘Funny? I don’t notice anything funny about it. Dash it all, one can’t see much more than the outline of it.’
    ‘That’s so. But–’
    Lucy’s sentence was left unfinished – interrupted by the sound of a car door violently slammed somewhere round the side of the house. This was followed by the roar of a powerful engine starting into life, and then by a series of rapid crescendos as gear after gear was engaged in a swift acceleration.
    ‘Well, I’m blessed!’ cried Sebastian. ‘Somebody going hell for leather down the drive – and without switching any lights on, either. Look, there he goes.’ For a second it had been just possible to distinguish a dark, hurtling object beyond the line of elms that ran from Sherris to the highroad. ‘Whoever is in that is asking for a broken neck. Surely your Mrs Gollifer wouldn’t be so crazy.’
    Slowly the uproar died away – and as it ebbed it seemed to drain from the three people standing on the lawn any reserve of nervous calm they had left. Lucy shivered. ‘Nobody,’ she whispered, ‘would drive away like that except from – from something horrible.’
    Sebastian Dromio took a handkerchief from his pocket and with trembling hand wiped his mouth. He was an old man and physical fear had suddenly gripped him. ‘Better get up the servants,’ he mumbled. ‘Better–’
    ‘But what is this about?’ Lady Dromio’s voice was a pitch higher than usual. ‘Why are we behaving in this way? We’ve seen a car–’
    ‘And there’s something funny about the house.’ Lucy had turned and was again staring at the silhouette of Sherris Hall. ‘The chimneys!’ she cried.
    ‘Lucy, whatever do you mean?’
    ‘We can’t see the kitchens from here, or the furnace. But there are two chimneys smoking, and there should be only one.’
    It was true that two trails of smoke, one small and the other larger, were rising straight into the sky, clear against the moonlight.
    Sebastian snorted. ‘Chimneys!’ he said. ‘Who the deuce cares whether there’s smoke from every chimney in the house.’
    ‘I do. No smoke without fire.’
    ‘Fire?’ Lady Dromio’s voice rose still further.
    ‘There ought to be only one – Swindle’s. Nobody else would dream of lighting a fire on a night like this. And it must be a big fire to make all that smoke.’
    ‘Nonsense!’ Lady Dromio was driven to a panic denial of the evidence of her senses. ‘Nobody could light a fire at this hour. I don’t believe there is a single fire laid in the house.’
    ‘But there is – in the study. Oliver has come home.’
    There was a moment’s silence. Startlingly it was broken by a new voice – no human voice, but a nightingale’s, piercing and full from a moonlit cedar beyond the lawn. They stood transfixed and the song rolled over them in burst upon burst of triumph and agony.
    ‘Oliver has come home.’ Lucy repeated the words almost in a whisper. Then her voice rose wildly. ‘ And sang within the bloody wood –’
    ‘Lucy, be quiet!’ Lady Dromio turned upon her adopted daughter, her face blanched and ghastly in the moonlight.
    ‘ While Agamemnon cried aloud –’
    From the house came voices, calling, and the sound of someone running along the terrace. Again the passionate song came from the cedar. They were hurrying, all three, between tall hedges, past the menacing hippogriffs, up a flight of stone steps. And to meet them came Swindle, grotesque in carpet slippers. His face was convulsed and twitching; his mouth hung open; he made as if to