The Golden Ball and Other Stories
Page 20
was a word Esther couldn't have heard, you know ....
"
"No?" Macfarlane
looked at his friend curiously. Strange how people
told you things of which they themselves were unconscious!
"And then, when I was turning to go back to the house, she stopped me. She said: 'You'll be home soon enough.
I shouldn't go back too soon if I were you '
And then
I
knew---that there was something beastly waiting for
me...
and...as soon as I got back, Esther met me and
told me--that
she'd found out she didn't really care .... '
Macfarlane grunted
sympathetically. "And Mrs. Ha-worth?" he asked.
"I never saw
her again--until tonight."
"Tonight?"
"Yes. At
that
doctor Johnny's nursing home. They had a look at
my leg, the one that got messed up in that torpedo business. It's worried
me a bit lately. The old chap advised an operation--it'll be
quite a simple thing. Then as I left the place, I
ran into a girl in a red jumper over her nurse's things, and she said:
'/wouldn't have that operation, ill were you .... ' Then I saw it was Mrs. Haworth. She passed on so quickly I
couldn't stop her. I met another nurse, and asked about her. But
she said there wasn't anyone of that
name in the home
Queer "
"Sure it was
her?"
"Oh!
Yes,
you see--she's very beautiful
"He paused,
and then added: "I shall
have the
old op. of course--but--
but in case my number should be up---"
"Rot!"
"Of course it's rot. But all
the
same I'm glad I told you
about this gipsy business You know, there's
more of it
if only I could remember "
Il
in
at the gate of a house
near
the
crest of the hill. Setting
his jaw squarely, he pulled the bell.
"Is Mrs.
HawoCd in?"
"Yes, sir. I'll tell
her." The maid left
him in a low long room, with windows that gave on the wildness
of the moorland. He frowned a little. Was he making
a colossal ass of himself?
Then he started. A low voice was
singing
overhead:
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Agatha Christie
"The gipsy woman
Lives on the moor--"
The voice broke off. Macfarlane's heart beat a shade
faster. The door opened.
The bewildering, almost Scandinavian fairness of her
came as a shock. In spite of Dickie's description, he had
imagined her gipsy-dark And he suddenly remembered
Dickie's
words, and the peculiar tone of them. "You see, she's
very beautiful .... "Perfect unquestionable beauty is
rare,
and perfect unquestionable beauty was what Alistair
Haworth
possessed.
He
caught himself up, and advanced towards her. "I'm
afraid
you don't know me from Adam. I got your address
from
the Lawes. But--I'm a friend of Dickie Carpenter's."
She
looked at him closely for a minute or two. Then she
said:
"I was going out. UP on the moor. Will you come
too?"
She
pushed open the window and stepped out on the
hillside.
He followed her. A heavy, rather foolish-looking
man
was sitting in a basket chair smoking.
"My
husband! We're going out on the moor, Maurice.
And
then Mr. Macfarlane will come back to lunch with us.
You
will, won't you?"
"Thanks
very much." He followed her easy stride up the
hill,
and thought to himself: "Why? Why, on God's earth,
marry
that?"
Alistair made her way to some rocks. "We'll sit here.
And
you shall tell me--what you came to tell me."
"You
knew?"
"I
always know when bad things are coming. It is bad,
isn't
it? About Dickie?"
"He
underwent a slight operation--quite successfully.
But
his heart must have been weak. He died under the
anaesthetic."
What
he expected to see on her face, he scarcely knew--
hardly
that look of utter eternal weariness.. '.. He heard her
murmur:
"Again--to wait--so long--so long "She
looked up:
"Yes,
what were you going to say?"
"Only this. Someone
warned him against this operation. A nurse. He
thought it was you. Was it?"
m£ cm,s¥
151
She shook her head. "No, it wasn't me. But I've got a
cousin who is a nurse. She's rather like me in a dim light.
I dare say that was it." She looked up at him again. "It
doesn't matter, does it?" And then suddenly her eyes widened.
She drew in her breath. "Oh!" she said. "Oh! How
funny! You don't understand .... "
Macfarlane was puzzled. She was still staring at him.
"I thought you did .... You should. You look as though
you'd got it, too "
"Got
whatT'
"The gift--curse--call it what you like. I believe you
have. Look hard at that hollow in the rocks. Don't think of
anything, just look .... Ah!" she marked his slight start.
"Well--you saw something?"
"It must have been imagination. Just for a second I saw it full of--blood!"
She nodded. "I knew you had it. That's the place where
the old sun-worshippers sacrificed victims. I knew that before
anyone told me. And there are times when I know just
how they felt about it--almost as though I'd been there
myself .... And there's something about the moor that makes
me feel as though I were coming back home .... Of course
it's natural that I should have the gift. I'm a Ferguesson.
There's second sight in the family. And my mother was a
medium until my father married her. Cristine was her name.
She was rather celebrated."
"Do you mean by 'the gift' the power of being able to
see things before they happen?"
"Yes, forwards or backwards--it's all the same. For
instance, I saw you wondering why I married Maurice--oh!
yes, you did! It's simply because I've always known
that there's something dreadful hanging over him .... I wanted
to save him from it .... Women are like that. With my gift,
I ought to be able to prevent it happening.., if one ever
can .... I couldn't help Dickie. And Dickie wouldn't understand
.... He was afraid. He was very young."
"Twenty-two."
"And I'm thirty. But I didn't mean that. There are so
many ways of being divided, length and height and
bre
adth.., but to be divided by time is the worst way of
all .... "She fell into a long brooding silence.
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Agatha Christie
The low peal of a gong from the house below roused
them.
At lunch, Macfarlane watched Maurice Haworth. He was
undoubtedly madly in love with his wife. There was the
unquestioning happy fondness of a dog in his eyes. Macfarlane
marked also the tenderness of her response, with its
hint of maternity. After lunch he took his leave.
"I'm staying down at the inn for a day or so. May I come
and see you again? Tomorrow, perhaps?"
"Of course. But-"
"But what---"
She brushed her hand quickly across her eyes. "I don't
know. I--I fancied that we shouldn't meet again--that's
all Goodbye."
He
went down the road slowly. In spite of himself, a
cold
hand seemed tightening round his heart. Nothing in her
words, of course, but--
A
motor swept round the corner. He flattened himself against
the hedge.., only just in time. A curious greyish pallor
crept across his face ....
III
"Good
Lord, my nerves are in a rotten state," muttered
Macfarlane,
as he awoke the following morning. He re
viewed
the events of the afternoon before dispassionately.
The
motor, the short-cut to the inn and the sudden mist that
had
made him lose his way with the knowledge that a dan
gerous
bog was no distance off. Then the chimney pot that
had
fallen off the inn, and the smell of burning in the night
which
he had traced to a cinder on his hearth rug. Nothing
in
it all! Nothing at all--but for her words, and that deep
unacknowledged
certainty in his heart that she knew ....
He
flung off the bedclothes with sudden energy. He must
go
up and see her first thing. That would break the spell.
That is, if he got there safely Lord, what
a fool he was!
He could
eat little breakfast. Ten o'clock saw him starting up the
road. At ten-thirty his hand was on the bell. Then, and not
till then, he permitted himself to draw a long breath of relief.
153
"Is Mrs. Haworth in?"
It was the same elderly woman who had opened the door
before. But her face was different--ravaged with grief.
"Oh! sir. Oh! sir. You haven't heard, then?"
"Heard what?"
"Miss Alistair, the pretty lamb. It was her tonic. She
took it every night. The poor captain is beside himself; he's
nearly mad. He took the wrong bottle off the shelf in the
dark .... They sent for the doctor, but he was too late---"
And swiftly there recurred to Macfarlane the words: "I've
always known there was something dreadful hanging over
him. I ought to be able to prevent it happening--if one ever
can--" Ah! but one couldn't cheat Fate .... Strange fatality
of vision that had destroyed where it sought to save ....
The old servant went on: "My pretty lamb! So sweet and
gentle she was, and so sorry for anything in trouble. Couldn't
bear anyone to be hurt." She hesitated, then added: "Would
you like to go up and see her, sir? I think, from what she
said, that you must have known her long ago. A very long
time ago, she said .... "
Macfarlane followed the old woman up the stairs into
the room over the drawing room where he had heard the
voice singing the day before. There was stained glass at the
top of the windows. It threw a red light on the head of the
bed A
gipsy with a red handkerchief over her
head
Nonsense, his
nerves were playing tricks again.
He took
a long last look at Alistair Haworth.
IV
"There's
a
lady to see you, sir."
"EhT' Macfarlane
looked at the landlady abstractedly. "Oh! I
beg your pardon, Mrs. Rowse, I've been seeing ghosts."
"Not
really,
sir? There's queer things to be seen on the moor after
nightfall, I know. There's the white lady, and
the Devil's
blacksmith, and the sailor and the gipsy--" "What's that?
A sailor and a gipsy?"
"So they
say, sir. It was quite a tale in my young days. Crossed in
love they were, a while back .... But they've
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Agatha Christie
not walked for many a long day now."
"No? I wonder if--perhaps--they will again now "
"Lot'! sir, what things you do say! About that young
lady---"
"What young lady?"
"The one that's waiting to see you. She's in the parlour.
Miss Lawes, she said her name was."
"Oh!"
Rachel! He felt a curious feeling of contraction, a shifting of perspective. He had been peeping through at another
world. He had forgotten Rachel, for Rachel belonged to this
life only .... Again that curious shifting of perspective, that
slipping back to a world of three dimensions only.
He opened the parlour door. Rachel--with her honest brown eyes. And suddenly, like a man awakening from a
dream, a warm rash of glad reality swept over him. He was
alive--alive! He thought: "There's only one life one can
be sure about! This one!"
"Rachel!" he said, and, lifting her chin, he kissed her lips.
The Lamp
It was undoubtedly an old house. The whole square was old, with that disapproving dignified old age often met with
in a cathedral town. But No. 19 gave the impression of an
elder among elders; it had a veritable patriarchal solemnity;
it towered greyest of the grey, haughtiest of the haughty,
chillest of the chill. Austere, forbidding, and stamped with
that particular desolation attaching to all houses that have
been long untenanted, it reigned above the other dwellings.
In any other town it would have been freely labelled "haunted," but Weyminster was averse from ghosts and
considered them hardly respectable except as the appanage
of a "county family." So No. 19 was never alluded to as a
haunted house; but nevertheless it remained, year after year,
"To Be Let or Sold."
Mrs. Lancaster looked at the house with approval as she drove up with the talkative house agent, who was in an
unusually hilarious mood at the idea of getting No. 19 off
his books. He inserted the key in the door without ceasing
his appreciative comments.
"How long has the house been empty?" inquired Mrs. Lancaster, cutting short his flow of language rather brusquely.
Mr. Raddish (of Raddish and Foplow) became slightly confused.
"Er--er--some time," he remarked blandly.
"So I should think," said Mrs. Lancaster dryly.
The dimly lighted hall was chill with a sinister chill. A more imaginative woman might have shivered, but this
woman happened to be eminently practical. She was t
all,
with much dark brown hair just tinged with grey and rather
cold blue eyes.
155
156 Agatha Christie
She went over the house from attic to cellar, asking a pertinent question from time to time. The inspection over,
she came back into one of the front rooms looking out on
the square and faced the agent with a resolute mien. "What is the matter with the house?"
Mr. Raddish was taken by surprise.
"Of course, an unfurnished house is always a little gloomy," he parried feebly.
"Nonsense," said Mrs. Lancaster. "The rent is ridiculously low for such a house--purely nominal. There must
be some reason for it. I suppose the house is haunted?"
Mr. Raddish gave a nervous little start but said nothing
Mrs. Lancaster eyed him keenly. After a few moments she spoke again.
"Of course that is all nonsense. I don't believe in ghosts or anything of that sort, and personally it is no deterrent to
my taking the house; but servants, unfortunately, are very
credulous and easily frightened. It would be kind of you to
tell me exactly what--what thing is supposed to haunt this
place."
"l--er--really don't know," stammered the house agent.
"I am sure you must," said the lady quietly. "I cannot take the house without knowing. What was it? A murder?"
"Oh, no!" cried Mr. Raddish, shocked by the idea of anything so alien to the respectability of the square. "It's--it'smonly
a child."
"A child?"
"I don't know the story exactly," he continued reluctantly. "Of course, there are all kinds of different versions,
but I believe that about thirty years ago a man going by the
name of Williams took Number Nineteen. Nothing was
known of him; he kept no servants; he had no friends; he
seldom went out in the daytime. He had one child, a little
boy. After he had been there about two months, he went
up to London, and had barely set foot in the metropolis
before he was recognized as being a man 'wanted' by the
police on some charge--exactly what, I do not know. But
it must have been a grave one, because, sooner than give
himself up, he shot himself. Meanwhile, the child lived on
here, alone in the house. He had food for a little time, and