Free The House of the Wolf by Basil Copper Page A

silence between them: ‘Why do you keep your bedroom door locked?’
    Nadia Homolky shrugged, her fingers still firm round the glass.
    ‘I am happy here. This is my home. But the Castle is a strange and gloomy place at night, as I have said. Since I have been an adult my parents have encouraged us to lock our doors at night.’
    Coleridge raised his eyebrows.
    ‘Us?’
    ‘I am referring to the family and the household staff, Professor. Those that sleep within the Castle itself, in the residential wing here. It seems a reasonable thing to do. If you have lived in this country . . . It is remote and savage, as you have seen. And we have wild animals that are unknown in places like France and England.’
    ‘You have made your point,’ Coleridge conceded. ‘But it could be awkward if someone were taken ill and unable to summon help.’
    The girl raised her glass to her lips.
    ‘Father holds master keys in case of emergencies,’ she said.
    She again smiled briefly.
    ‘You are not suggesting that one of these superintelligent wolves is clever enough to use one of the master keys to gain access to the Castle?’
    Coleridge was constrained to smile too.
    ‘I hardly think so, Miss Homolky. But let us just take a look at this room of yours, and perhaps I may be able to set your mind at rest.’
    The girl led the way back up the curved staircase so swiftly that Coleridge was hard put to it to keep pace with her. Their footsteps echoed from the beamed ceiling and seemed to stir reverberations that hung in the air long after they should have dispersed, or so the guest felt as he hurried in the girl’s wake.
    He paused as she turned to a small octagonal table in a dark corner and picked up a silver-banded oil lamp which had already been lit.
    ‘It is so dark in some of the corridors we are reduced to this,’ she said. ‘I have been pestering Father for a long while to extend the electric lighting to our bedrooms, but he prefers to augment his income by diverting it all to the guests and staff of The Golden Crown.’
    Coleridge thought it politic to say nothing and wrenched his features into a blank expression. Nadia Homolky saw through him immediately and seemed amused. She turned up the wick of the lamp, throwing a golden glow onto the ancient panelling and the sombre-visaged oil portraits that hung in gilt frames on the balcony on which they found themselves, and opened a small, low door set into a stone buttress.
    Coleridge was amazed at the proportions of the wall, which made a short corridor to a connecting door. It must have been almost eight feet thick and aroused his antiquarian interest, as this sort of thickness was usually reserved for outside defence.
    He glanced at his silver-cased watch as the girl opened the far door. It was still short of eleven o’clock in the morning, but it might have been midnight for all the light that penetrated here.
    The girl led him down another very short stair with beautifully carved balusters. Coleridge perceived that this was modern work and guessed it might be one of his host’s own improvements, for private use by the family. So it proved a few moments later, for Coleridge realised with faint surprise that he was again back in the corridor leading to his bedroom and down which he had walked to the main staircase on his way to breakfast.
    The girl put the lamp upon a table they passed and left it burning. They were at the main stairhead now, and she ushered the professor up another staircase to the right which evidently led to the private apartments of the family, for here were more intimate touches: flowers carefully arranged in pale blue porcelain vases on occasional tables and the bright light of the snow shining through great vaulted windows at their left, which had gaily coloured scenes of some ancient battle with knights in armour, all carried out in stained glass of particularly rich shades of green, gold, and red.
    They cast a bizarre patina on the faces of Coleridge