underground hospital’s over in that direction,” said the driver, Tom Dorey, a local assigned to transport the Ensors. Before Sydney could make any response, Gilbert surfaced from a fitful doze for his usual grumble.
“Getting up at this hour is insanity. If they weren’t paying me big bucks I wouldn’t be doing this, and the way I feel I will never repeat the experience.”
“The way you feel now has nothing to do with the hour. It’s the booze, honey.”
“Bullshit. My body and my inspiration purr along beatifically when they’re well-oiled with Guinness and Glenfiddich. They grind to a sickening halt when confronted with the fucking light of dawn.”
Impassively, Tom Dorey negotiated the sharp bend that preceded the gates of the manor. He had by now got used to his passenger’s tongue, and could restrain the audible intake of breath that had been his original reaction.
“You don’t have to do this too often, do you?” observed Sydney. “You only have to be in early today because Monty Lord asked for a script meeting.”
“Jesus wept — or he would have done if he was the writer on this movie. It’s not as if I were responsible for most of the script — Monty put his Hollywood hotshots onto that — but now he’s farting about with the bloody plot line.”
“Well, they do that, movie people, don’t they? What is he changing?”
“Don’t know the details yet, but it seems he wants to add another strand to the story, which’ll completely alter the balance of the plot — and Bianchi’s going along with it. He’s building up one of the minor characters — the countess.”
“Is the actress who’s playing the countess his mistress?”
“Now that I could understand. But no. Word is he’s got the hots for the Marchesa Vannoni herself. Shoots high, our Monty.”
“My, my,” marvelled Sydney. “She must be all of — what, fifty, fifty-five?”
“She’s in good nick — built like a brick olive press. Still, she’s not your typical Hollywood producer bait, I grant you. Ah, at bloody last.”
They had arrived at the main entrance to the manor, which stood open. On each of the lofty stone pillars that supported the gate stood the heraldic beast that had once been part of the crest of the old island family who had lived in the house — a greyhound-like creature with impossibly long legs. To the right, a short distance away from the gate, was what looked like the gatekeeper’s lodge — a two-storey building of unusual construction, with a pointed roof and an upper storey jutting out over the lower. The car continued up the drive toward the manor, which hove into view, giving the first-time visitor a shock — of pleasure, amusement, or aesthetic anguish, depending on the arrival’s sensibilities.
The original structure of the Manoir Ste. Madeleine dated from the seventeenth century, to which had been added an elegant Georgian extension. The crowning eccentricity was the new entrance hall, built around the middle of the eighteenth century by a seigneur who had obviously paid a visit to the châteaux of the Loire valley and come back enamoured of towers and turrets. On each side of the central doorway the turrets hung out over the main walls like stone torpedoes, with a slender tower just visible behind the pointed roof. It was surrounded by well-maintained parkland, presently covered with the trailers of the film people, with a coach house close to the main building.
“Thank God we’re here. I’ve got to take a leak.”
They had come to a halt in the courtyard behind the manor alongside a vintage Mercedes, a Bugatti, and a handful of army vehicles of various kinds dating from the 1940s.
“Where is everyone?” wondered Sydney, as she got out of the car. “It’s like the Marie Celeste.”
The usually busy courtyard was deserted. There was a complete absence of drivers, film people of every stripe, even the security guards who generally milled and shouted around the area, which was not being used for the film.
“Shut up, woman,” enjoined her superstitious husband, hustling for one of the portable toilets set up in a discreet corner of the yard. “They’re probably all on the other side of the building. You go on — I’m making a pit stop.”
Sydney made her way around the side of the manor house. To one side of her she could just see the grass-covered hump near the ornamental lake that concealed the entrance to the command bunker. One of the senior German officers had lived in the manor during the occupation, and it was on his orders that work had started on what was intended to be an elaborate complex of underground rooms and tunnels. The only sound was the squawking of the ducks that lived on the lake and the crowing of a rooster somewhere. There was still no sign of life, and the sensation of separation from reality she had experienced since their arrival hit her so powerfully that she felt vertiginous.
Gil had roared with laughter when he first saw the Manoir Ste. Madeleine.
“Dear God, it’s pure kitsch — if kitsch can be pure. Any moment now and Sneezy, Grumpy, and Doc will come waddling round that corner, singing their corny little hearts out.”
It was not how she saw it. Pure Castle of Otranto more like. More Transylvania than Ruritania. Any moment now and Nosferatu might come, swooping round the corner.
Perhaps it was the subject matter of Gil’s novel that made Sydney so aware of the island’s traumatic past — the bunker looming in the midst of the manor’s verdant parkland and, scattered throughout the island, the remaining traces of anti-tank walls, gun emplacements, artillery direction-finding towers, restored for the amusement and amazement of tourists.
And perhaps it was even earlier presences. For Sydney, the island was indeed full of strange noises: the ancient witches’ colony at L’Erée, the fairies emerging from caverns like Creux ès Faies to dance at Le Mont Saint or le Catioroc on the western coastline. At first she had been intrigued by the stories told by the tour guide who had taken members of the film company round the island, but all they did after a few days was feed her depression — which, she knew, had nothing to do with Guernsey, past or present. She felt a shiver of apprehension.
“I shall turn around this corner,” she thought, “and everything will change. The world I knew will be gone forever.”
She came around the corner into a blaze of light, so strong after the half-light of dawn that she was dazzled for a moment. As her vision cleared, she saw that the broad terrace that ran the length of the manor was floodlit by one of the arc lamps used on the movie, perched high on one of the huge Sky King cranes brought in from Rome. In the half-shadows around the periphery were gathered all the people she had expected to see in the courtyard: electricians, extras, grips. But there was hardly a sound.
“They must be shooting,” she thought.
Sydney looked around for the director, Mario Bianchi, and caught a glimpse of his dark ponytail and tall, slender figure under the lights, huddled with another tall man she didn’t immediately recognize. The man turned, and she saw it was the detective inspector with the interesting face who had come to the hotel the night before.
Of course, the business with the costumes. Betty Chesler, the costume designer, must have insisted. As Sydney approached the outskirts of the crowd, one of the men turned and saw her.
“Sydney! Where’s Gil?”
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