Sable Night by Archie Roy

Author:Archie Roy
Language: eng
Format: epub

10. Intruder

I wakened that night from a nightmare in which Shostakovich was rehearsing a ragged Berlin Philharmonic in his Seventh Symphony. He wasn’t pleased with their performance, especially since the percussion section sounded like distant siege howitzers. After a particularly large crump he stormed offstage, came back with a metronome, put it on the rostrum, and set it tick-tocking in admonition. ‘While this plays,’ he shouted, ‘I am undefeated !’

I woke up in total darkness, consciousness rushing in to scatter the dream even as reconstructed rationality recognised the elements that had gone into it. And then I froze, my eyes staring into the blackness. For I could still hear the beat of the metronome. And I was sure now that that last thump had been real.

The steady insistent tick-tock continued. Then I remembered the metronome standing on the Bechstein in the sitting-room. I listened. Was that a soft shuffling noise I heard? I could not be sure. Slowly, I drew back the bedclothes, gently twisted my legs out of the bed, crept to the open bedroom door, listened. All I could hear was the metronome’s beat and the faster thump of my heart. I slid my fingers up the wall on my left, touched the light switch. Cupping my right hand above my eyes to shield them as much as possible I switched on, hyperalert to jump aside or spring forward if the need arose. But the harsh electric light revealed an empty room. On the floor beside the piano-stool the metronome stood, its lazy, weighted, metal finger swinging to and fro, to and fro like an upturned pendulum.

I searched the house methodically, feeling cold bare floor or rough carpet or furry rug touch my naked feet in turn, every muscle in my body tense with caution. But the cottage was empty. Returning to the sitting-room, I picked up the metronome and switched it off. If it had been an intruder, he had escaped by now.

What had he wanted? I looked around. Everything seemed to be in order. And yet someone had been in the cottage. Was there something hidden somewhere, something Ruth had hidden, that neither the police nor I nor the previous searcher had found? I had found nothing unusual among Ruth’s possessions—except for the screwdriver in her handbag. Was it someone’s she had borrowed, and meant to return? Standing there in my pyjamas, my brain alert and active, I was hardly aware that I was gazing at the gleaming white-and-black keyboard of the grand piano until I found that in some way my mind considered it to be relevant. My brow tightened. Could it be possible that inside … ? I strode across, lifted the lid, secured it open with the bar slotted in, and searched inside, above and below the glinting harp-shaped bronze framework holding the stretched wires. There was nothing. I lowered the lid, looked underneath to make sure no package was taped to the underside, and straightened up. I returned to the vicinity of the couch, but my eyes were drawn back to the keyboard and again I thought of the screwdriver.

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