The Mist in the Mirror by Susan Hill Page A

path.
    ‘Hetty, my wife – Mr James Monmouth, our visitor.’ He then extended his arm to the young ones. ‘And Evelyn – Isaac – Japhet, and – ’ here, he swept the baby out of his wife’s arms – ‘Hector,’ he concluded with a flourish.
    I was ushered into his study, a young maid brought tea, the children were banished. It was a handsome room overlooking lawns and bare cedar and elm trees, with the open playing fields beyond. Books lined the walls, mainly, I saw, works of history, and a fire burned in the grate. His desk was piled high with papers.
    ‘I have everything a man could wish for, and the best of all, Monmouth, is that I know it, I know it. Happy that man!’
    Coming from any other, it would have sounded intolerably smug but I could only smile, warming even more to Dancer, disarmed by his innocent pride and pleasure in his life, and work, his family and his situation.
    ‘You will stay to lunch, of course,’ he said, ‘though I fear it will be a bear garden. Still, they must stare their fill of you and ask you every question under the sun and then they will have had enough and leave you be.’
    ‘It is very good of you to be so hospitable and I am extremely grateful, but …’ I set down my teacup, ‘the fact is, I am very anxious to go into the library and be shown the Vane papers so that I may begin work at once.’
    Dancer stopped swivelling in his chair. The room was silent His face was serious now, and wary.
    ‘Plenty of time for that,’ he said.
    ‘No, Dr Dancer, there is not. I cannot intrude upon the school and take your hospitality for granted for too long.’
    ‘Oh, we are perfectly happy to have you, perfectly …’
    ‘Nevertheless, I wish to get down to work.’
    ‘So be it then. I will take you directly after lunch.’
    He got up and went to the window, hands clasped behind his back. From elsewhere in the house, I heard muffled roars of rage, then running footsteps. Laughter, the banging of a door.
    ‘I take it,’ I said calmly, ‘that you, too, are about to use your best efforts to deter me from the work I propose to begin.’
    After another few, silent moments, he came back to his chair, but again sat very still, staying any movement with his feet upon the floor.
    ‘What do you know of Conrad Vane?’
    Briefly, and somewhat wearily, too, for I had answered the question before, I told him.
    ‘Oh yes, yes, all that, the travels, the exploration – all that was perfectly in order, so far as I know. Admirable even, in its way.’
    ‘But then …’
    ‘All that came much later, at the end of his life. It was incidental, it did not make up for the man, nor for what went before.’
    I waited for him to continue.
    ‘Do you know why you are so intent upon pursuing your interest in the man, what it is about him that so fascinates you?’
    ‘No, I confess to you that I do not, it is a mystery, a puzzle. But from many years ago, when I first read of him, in a book in my late Guardian’s library, I was strangely drawn to him and the fascination – for you are right, that is exactly what it is – has never waned, indeed, I have felt myself to be more and more in thrall to it.’
    ‘To have come under his spell?’
    I shrugged.
    ‘There is a power, an attraction, exerted by evil …’
    ‘Oh come!’
    ‘Yes, evil. Others have found themselves drawn by it – magnetised, as they were in his lifetime. Conrad Vane was an evil man, Monmouth, evil and depraved, and he used the power of wickedness, a dreadful power, over others, the innocent, the naive, the immature, the foolish. I have read, and I have heard some of the stories and investigated them, to my own satisfaction. It was enough.’
    ‘And what are these stories? What did he do?’
    ‘He was cruelty personified – the stories are of that and of corruption of the innocent as well as more ordinary, unpleasant human traits – spitefulness, deceit, brutality, debauchery, viciousness, cunning. It began when he was a