Later, when they had managed the tricky operation of turning the cars on the narrow icy road, he followed the Land-Rover back along the track. What were they going to do now? The thought of another night in that icy bedroom or of spending any more time at all in that ghastly house repelled him. Who were these people? He was still speculating uneasily when the vehicles drew up before the pillared entrance to the house.

They got out reluctantly. Apart from the change to daylight, it was a depressing re-enactment of their arrival the previous night. Paul collected their cases from the Capri. Carol shut the tailgate. Pollard, reddish hair dotted with white flakes of snow, came over from the Land-Rover.

‘Come in and we’ll have a council of war. And some coffee.’

The huge hall was a shade warmer than before, though no more cheerful. The door to the left was open and it was through this opening that Meredith came. He halted, patently astonished to see the Wilsons.

‘Good heavens! Couldn’t you get through?’

‘I’m afraid we’re in trouble,’ said Pollard. ‘The bridge on the hill road has gone.’

‘Gone?’

‘Landslide carried it away. Must have happened last night. Possibly just after these people came over it. I’d guess the heavy rain followed by the snow set off an earth slip.’

Meredith’s forefinger settled his glasses on the bridge of his nose. He ran a hand through his thick, tousled grey-brown hair.

‘Then we really are in trouble. For there’s no other way out.’

5

5 The House’s Story

They sat in the lounge round the fire, coffee-cups in hand, Paul, Carol, Meredith, Bourne, Hunt and Captain Pollard. The huge room, high-ceilinged, with old-fashioned leather sofas on either side of the fire, and three down-at-heel armchairs before it in an arc, was as depressingly dingy as the dining-room.

Through the windows they could see the ferocity with which the rising wind dashed its white shock-troops against the panes of glass.

The cars will be getting buried again, Paul thought gloomily. As if it mattered. A careful consultation of the map had shown that the road they had tried to follow that morning was the only one a car could use. Meredith had pointed out the peculiar isolation of the house, a combination of its location and the depopulation of the area since the First World War. Roughly speaking, Ardvreck House was set in a semicircle of land sloping down to the rocky shores of the sea-loch which formed the straight part of the boundary. The hills, rising steeply to almost two thousand feet all around, formed the half-circle girdling the area. A spur of almost sheer rock five hundred feet high jutted out into the waters of the loch to the west.