Christmas at Candleshoe by Michael Innes Page A

my father says only a lunatic would buy Candleshoe, because it’s dangerous and unhealthy and inconvenient.’
    ‘These are things which you should explain to your mother.’ Jay is apparently unoffended by his lieutenant’s revelation. ‘And please say that Robin’s father is a doctor, who ought to know.’
    ‘And the place is haunted.’ Robin is now eager. ‘There are two ghosts. And each is of a very specially terrifying sort.’
    Jay seems at once to recognize this as a false cast. He silences Robin with a look. ‘Probably your mother would like to buy the ghosts too?’
    ‘Probably she would.’
    ‘Ghosts can’t be bought. It’s a vulgar error to think they can.’
    Grant receives this censure submissively. It is his inward opinion that Jay is right. The Candleshoe ghosts will in all probability not ‘go with the house’. They are much more likely to accompany Miss Candleshoe and Mr Armigel to Constantinople or Crim-Tartary.
    ‘May your mother be offering Miss Candleshoe the money now?’
    ‘I guess not.’
    ‘But soon?’
    ‘She might.’
    ‘Then don’t you think you had better go?’ Jay says this terribly quietly; he may fire minatory arrows at strangers, but he knows what it is to ask a guest to leave; he has strung himself up to it.
    ‘Maybe we better had.’ Greatly daring, Grant puts out a hand and gives Jay’s arm a friendly pat. ‘I’ll slip out and see to starting the car. But as we’ll have to go by the fields again, I’m afraid we’ll need a pilot. Perhaps I could give some of your friends a lift home?’
    The two boys confer in whispers. Grant remembers that the threat constituted by his mother is no more than an additional and unexpected danger at Candleshoe. Such as it is, it is a real danger; but in the minds of these strange children it is secondary to some more exciting peril of their own invention. It is on this that they are taking counsel together now.
    ‘There is an enemy approaching the house.’ Jay turns back and speaks in his most level tones. ‘We have had a message flashed from our sentry at the end of the drive. That is why the alarm-bell went.’
    ‘I thought it was something like that.’ Grant is surprised to feel an uncomfortable pricking down his spine. The children’s proceedings, he must finally acknowledge, cannot by any stretch of language be called a game. He is not in contact with make-believe, but with illusion – with fiction held as fact. He knows that learned persons would deny the difference; would declare that children are still playing when the suspension of their disbelief is entire; that they can be at once actors and spectators in a theatre where illusion is unflawed. But Grant feels this uncomfortable pricking, just the same. He would like to give the two boys a shake and say, ‘That’s enough for tonight.’ Instead he asks, ‘What sort of enemy?’
    ‘We can’t tell you that now,’ Jay answers as he and Robin move through the lobby to the outer door of Candleshoe. ‘But if we believe you when you say your mother won’t really buy this house, and if we accept you as a friend, will you do something for us?’
    ‘I’ll do anything that doesn’t strike me as dangerous and foolish.’ Grant is guarded.
    But Jay frowns, finding this a poor reply. ‘It is dangerous.’
    ‘Is it entering these enchanted woods?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I said “dangerous and foolish ”. The woods aren’t that. So go ahead.’
    ‘Will you please take the torch, and go out of the house with a bit of a row when I unbolt the door? And then go and have a look at your car and come back – all in a very open sort of way? When you want to come in again you must knock’ – Jay pauses and glances round him warily – ‘and say Christmas at Candleshoe .’
    ‘Is that the password?’
    ‘It’s the password for tonight. Will you do it?’
    Grant nods. ‘Sure. But what’s the big idea – distraction technique?’
    This puzzles Jay – but Robin gets it and