Read The Secret Book of Paradys for Free Online Page A

hallway.
    A lamp fluttered up behind the glass. A face pressed itself there, like a prisoner’s, staring out at me.
    The door was opened.
    “Good morning, Hans.”
    “Yes, monsieur.”
    “Is he awake?”
    “Not here, monsieur. No. Haven’t you heard?”
    “Oh that. He is here. Hiding from us all. Don’t you remember he used to do that, as a revolting child. He hid constantly from his hysterical mother, and the nurse. But I recollect every hiding place.”
    I came into the house, and Hans allowed it. He looked bovine, and anxious, he looked willful, too, for I was not the master here. I was the impecunious writer, Philippe’s guest, and other things.
    But then again, I had accustomed them to obeying me, or to tolerating my commands.
    He stood there stolidly now, feet planted, relaxed.
    “Come on,” I said. “We will search him out.”
    “Yes monsieur,” said Hans.
    He plodded after me. Very likely he thought I was drunk, and was humouring me. For Philippe might abruptly return and chastise him otherwise; Philippe might even be behind it all.
    We searched the lower floor first, the two parlours and the dining room. (We would leave the basement area, I told him, the servants’ cells, until the last.) Philippe was not there, so upstairs we went. Still he was not found. In the library he did not conceal himself in the curtains or among the volumes. Beneath the massive desk there seemed some chance of locating him, but neither was he there. We ascended to the bedrooms. Hans was tired now, and had begun to remonstrate with me, for the game was gross and silly.
    “He’s here,” I said. “Can’t you tell?”
    “No, monsieur.”
    “He is.”
    Beyond the last bedroom – its canopy investigated, and even the chamberpot dragged from under the ruching – the gallery led across to the bathrooms at the rear.
    The lamp faltered in this corridor, trying to give up its ghost, as disillusioned now as Hans.
    “Trim the wick. I mean to find the bastard.”
    Unhappily, Hans trimmed away, and the light steadied as I squinted into the stone-panelled privy.
    A kind of coldness seemed to flow along this upper floor, disuse perhaps, for he had apparently been gone all the while, those sixteen nights. Or some essence of demons had been trapped between the walls, left over from his séance, and from the ghost-girl. But it was like absence rather than presence.
    Hans began sneezing nervously.
    “For God’s sake quiet,” I said, as if afraid to disturb something.
    Why? Surely Philippe must know we were upon him?
    The largest of the bathrooms, the remnant of the bath-house which had formerly stood separate from the rest of the building, raised its marble façadeinto the lamp-smear. Philippe had favoured this one’s round tub most often. I kicked the door wide open, and the watery light fell in.
    The sinking moon was there before it, coming sideways through from the vanes of glass in the roof. And there, below, Philippe lay, in the bath.
    Hans gave a high, pig’s squeal. He did not drop the lamp; habit, presumably, not to break his master’s things.
    After a long time, I said, “Did you never think to come up here?”
    “Oh monsieur,” he bleated, “only yesterday – and the maids, to clean – it was always done, every day –”
    “Then it seems he came home this evening.”
    “No, no,” he said, panting now and sobbing. “No, not possible –”
    “Not through the front door then,” I said. I looked from Philippe’s uptilted unlistening face, towards the glass vanes. One stayed open. “Climbing on to the roof over the attics,” I said, “they let him down through the skylight. How curious. How agile.”
    He was clothed in shirt and breeches, his coat and linen were gone, he was barefoot. He was white with a solid thick whiteness, like plaster. The density of his pallor, though not its colour, clogged the room, which was like a winter vault.
    “Go down,” I said. “Get Poire and the others. Send someone for