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Richard moved quickly to the door but did not open it. The chill of the room oppressed and disturbed him. He shook his head to try and shake off the feeling, and then held his breath as the footsteps started once again slowly to traverse the two yards of the landing and to pause there again.
After only a few seconds, this time Richard heard the long slow squeak of a door being opened inch by inch, inch by cautious inch, until it must surely now at last be standing wide agape.
Nothing further seemed to happen for a long, long time.
Then at last the door closed once again, slowly.
The footsteps crossed the landing and paused again. Richard backed a few slight paces from the door, staring fixedly at it. Once more the footsteps started to descend the stairs, slowly, deliberately and quietly, until at last they reached the bottom. Then after a few seconds more the door handle began to rotate. The door opened and Reg walked calmly in.
"It's all right, it's just a horse in the bathroom," he said quietly.
Richard leaped on him and wrestled him to the ground.
"No," gasped Reg, "no, get off me, let me go, I'm perfectly all right, damn it. It's just a horse, a perfectly ordinary horse." He shook Richard off with no great difficulty and sat up, puffing and blowing and pushing his hands through his limited hair. Richard stood over him warily, but with great and mounting embarrassment. He edged back, and let Reg stand up and sit on a chair.
"Just a horse," said Reg, "but, er, thank you for taking me at my word." He brushed himself down.
"A horse," repeated Richard.
"Yes," said Reg.
Richard went out and looked up the stairs and then came back in.
"A horse?" he said again.
"Yes, it is," said the Professor. "Wait--" he motioned to Richard, who was about to go out again and investigate--"let it be. It won't be long."
Richard stared in disbelief. "You say there's a horse in your bathroom, and all you can do is stand there naming Beatles songs?"
The Professor looked blankly at him.
"Listen," he said, "I'm sorry if I... alarmed you earlier, it was just a slight turn. These things happen, my dear fellow, don't upset yourself about it. Dear me, I've known odder things in my time. Many of them. Far odder. She's only a horse, for heaven's sake. I'll go and let her out later. Please don't concern yourself. Let us revive our spirits with some port."
"But... how did it get in there?"
"Well, the bathroom window's open. I expect she came in through that."
Richard looked at him, not for the first and certainly not for the last time, through eyes that were narrowed with suspicion.
"You're doing it deliberately, aren't you?" he said.
"Doing what, my dear fellow?"
"I don't believe there's a horse in your bathroom," said Richard suddenly. "I don't know what is there, I don't know what you're doing, I don't know what any of this evening means, but I don't believe there's a horse in your bathroom." And brushing aside Reg's further protestations he went up to look.
The bathroom was not large.
The walls were panelled in old oak linenfold which, given the age and nature of the building, was quite probably priceless, but otherwise the fittings were stark and institutional.
There was old, scuffed, black-and-white checked linoleum on the floor, a small basic bath, well cleaned but with very elderly stains and chips in the enamel, and also a small basic basin with a toothbrush and toothpaste in a Duralex beaker standing next to the taps. Screwed into the probably priceless panelling above the basin was a tin mirror--fronted bathroom cabinet. It looked as if it had been repainted many times, and the mirror was stained round the edges with condensation. The lavatory had an old-fashioned cast-iron chain-pull cistern. There was an old cream-painted wooden cupboard standing in the corner, with an old brown bentwood chair next to it, on which lay some neatly folded but threadbare small towels. There was also a large horse in the room, taking up most of it.
Richard stared at it, and it stared at Richard in an appraising kind of way. Richard swayed slightly. The horse stood quite still. After a while it looked at the cupboard instead. It seemed, if not content, then at least perfectly resigned to being where it was until it was put somewhere else. It also seemed... what was it?
It was bathed in the glow of the moonlight that streamed in through the window. The window was open but small and was, besides, on the second floor, so the notion that the horse had entered by that route was entirely fanciful.
There was something odd about the horse, but he couldn't say what. Well, there was one thing that was clearly very odd about it indeed, which was that it was standing in a college bathroom. Maybe that was all.
He reached out, rather tentatively, to pat the creature on its neck. It felt normal--firm, glossy, it was in good condition. The effect of the moonlight on its coat was a little mazy, but everything looks a little odd by moonlight. The horse shook its mane a little when he touched it, but didn't seem to mind too much.
After the success of patting it, Richard stroked it a few times and scratched it gently under the jaw. Then he noticed that there was another door into the bathroom, in the far corner. He moved cautiously around the horse and approached the other door. He backed up against it and pushed it open tentatively.
It just opened into the Professor's bedroom, a small room cluttered with books and shoes and a small single bed. This room, too, had another door, which opened out on to the landing again.
Richard noticed that the floor of the landing was newly scuffed and scratched as the stairs had been, and these marks were consistent with the idea that the horse had somehow been pushed up the stairs. He wouldn't have liked to have had to do it himself, and he would have liked to have been the horse having it done to him even less, but it was just about possible.
But why? He had one last look at the horse, which had one last look back at him, and then he returned downstairs.
"I agree," he said. "You have a horse in your bathroom and I will, after all, have a little port."
He poured some for himself, and then some for Reg, who was quietly contemplating the fire and was in need of a refill.
"Just as well I did put out three glasses after all," said Reg chattily. "I wondered why earlier, and now I remember.
"You asked if you could bring a friend, but appear not to have done so. On account of the sofa no doubt. Never mind, these things happen. Whoa, not too much, you'll spill it."
All horse-related questions left Richard's mind abruptly.
"I did?" he said.
"Oh yes. I remember now. You rang me back to ask me if it would be all right, as I recall. I said I would be charmed, and fully intended to be. I'd saw the thing up if I were you. Don't want to sacrifice your happiness to a sofa. Or maybe she decided that an evening with your old tutor would be blisteringly dull and opted for the more exhilarating course of washing her hair instead. Dear me, I know what I would have done. It's only lack of hair that forces me to pursue such a hectic social round these days."
It was Richard's turn to be white-faced and staring.
Yes, he had assumed that Susan would not want to come.
Yes, he had said to her it would be terribly dull. But she had insisted that she wanted to come because it would be the only way she'd get to see his face for a few minutes not bathed in the light of a computer screen, so he had agreed and arranged that he would bring her after all.
Only he had completely forgotten this. He had not picked her up.
He said, "Can I use your phone, please?"
CHAPTER
9
Gordon Way lay on the ground, unclear about what to do.
He was dead. There seemed little doubt about that. There was a horrific hole in his chest, but the blood that was gobbing out of it had slowed to a trickle. Otherwise there was no movement from his chest at all, or, indeed, from any other part of him.
He looked up, and from side to side, and it became clear to him that
whatever part of him it was that was moving, it wasn't any part of his body.
