Oh! about the revolver. Yes. I bought that in Bath, when I had been at Little Hexham exactly a week. We drove over in the morning, and while Mrs Merridew got some things for her husband, I prowled round the second-hand shops. I had intended to get an air-gun or a pea-shooter or something of that kind, when I saw this. You’ve seen it, of course. It’s very tiny – what people in books describe as ‘little more than a toy,’ but quite deadly enough. The old boy who sold it to me didn’t seem to know much about firearms. He’d taken it in pawn some time back, he told me, and there were ten rounds of ammunition with it. He made no bones about a licence or anything – glad enough to make a sale, no doubt, without putting difficulties in a customer’s way. I told him I knew how to handle it, and mentioned by way of a joke that I meant to take a pot-shot or two at the cats. That seemed to wake him up a bit. He was a dried-up little fellow, with a scrawny grey beard and a stringy neck. He asked me where I was staying. I told him at Little Hexham.
‘You better be careful, sir,’ he said. ‘They think a heap of their cats down there, and it’s reckoned unlucky to kill them.’ And then he added something I couldn’t quite catch, about a silver bullet. He was a doddering old fellow, and he seemed to have some sort of scruple about letting me take the parcel away, but I assured him that I was perfectly capable of looking after it and myself. I left him standing at the door of his shop, pulling at his beard and staring after me.
That night the thunder came. The sky had turned to lead before evening, but the dull heat was more oppressive than the sunshine. Both the Merridews seemed to be in a state of nerves – he sulky and swearing at the weather and the flies, and she wrought up to a queer kind of vivid excitement. Thunder affects some people that way. I wasn’t much better, and to make things worse I got the feeling that the house was full of cats. I couldn’t see them but I knew they were there, lurking behind the cupboards and flitting noiselessly about the corridors. I could scarcely sit in the parlour and I was thankful to escape to my room. Cats or no cats I had to open the window, and I sat there with my pyjama jacket unbuttoned, trying to get a breath of air. But the place was like the inside of a copper furnace. And pitch-dark. I could scarcely see from my window where the bushes ended and the lawn began. But I could hear and feel the cats. There were little scrapings in the wisteria and scufflings among the leaves, and about eleven o’clock one of them started the concert with a loud and hideous wail. Then another and another joined in – I’ll swear there were fifty of them. And presently I got that foul sensation of nausea, and the flesh crawled on my bones, and I knew that one of them was slinking close to me in the darkness. I looked round quickly, and there she stood, the great Cyprian; right against my shoulder, her eyes glowing like green lamps. I yelled and struck out at her, and she snarled as she leaped out and down. I heard her thump the gravel, and the yowling burst out all over the garden with renewed vehemence. And then all in a moment there was utter silence, and in the far distance there came a flickering blue flash and then another. In the first of them I saw the far garden wall, topped along all its length with cats, like a nursery frieze. When the second flash came the wall was empty.
At two o’clock the rain came. For three hours before that I had sat there, watching the lightning as it spat across the sky and exulting in the crash of the thunder. The storm seemed to carry off all the electrical disturbance in my body; I could have shouted with excitement and relief. Then the first heavy drops fell; then a steady downpour; then a deluge. It struck the iron-backed garden with a noise like steel rods falling. The smell of the ground came up intoxicatingly, and the wind rose and flung the rain in against my face. At the other end of the passage I heard a window thrown to and fastened, but I leaned out into the tumult and let the water drench my head and shoulders. The thunder still rumbled intermittently, but with less noise and farther off, and in an occasional flash I saw the white grille of falling water drawn between me and the garden.
It was after one of these thunder-peals that I became aware of a knocking at my door. I opened it, and there was Merridew. He had a candle in his hand, and his face was terrified.
‘Felice!’ he said abruptly. ‘She’s ill. I can’t wake her. For God’s sake, come and give me a hand.’
I hurried down the passage after him. There were two beds in his room – a great four-poster, hung with crimson damask, and a small camp bedstead drawn up near to the window. The small bed was empty, the bedclothes tossed aside; evidently he just risen from it. In the four poster lay Mrs Merridew, naked, with only a sheet upon her. She was stretched flat upon her back, her long black hair in two plaits over her shoulders. Her face was waxen and shrunk, like the face of a corpse, and her pulse, when I felt it, was so faint that at first I could scarcely feel it. Her breathing was very slow and shallow and her flesh cold. I shook her, but there was no response at all. I lifted her eyelids, and noticed how the eyeballs were turned up under the upper lid, so that only the whites were visible. The touch of my finger-tip upon the sensitive ball evoked no reaction. I immediately wondered whether she took drugs.
Merridew seemed to think it necessary to make some explanation. He was babbling about the heat – she couldn’t bear so much as a silk nightgown – she had suggested that he should occupy the other bed – he had slept heavily – right through the thunder. The rain blowing in on his face had aroused him. He had got up and shut the window. Then he had called to Felice to know if she was all right – he thought the storm might have frightened her. There was no answer. He had struck a light. Her condition had alarmed him – and so on.
I told him to pull himself together and to try whether, by chafing his wife’s hands and feet, we could restore the circulation. I had it firmly in my mind that she was under the influence of some opiate. We set to work, rubbing and pinching and slapping her with wet towels and shouting her name in her ear. It was like handling a dead woman, except for the very slight but perfectly regular rise and fall of her bosom, on which – with a kind of surprise that there should be any flaw on its magnolia whiteness – I noticed a large brown mole, just over the heart. To my perturbed fancy it suggested a wound and a menace. We had been hard at it for some time, with the sweat pouring off us, when we became aware of something going on outside the window – a stealthy bumping and scraping against the panes. I snatched up the candle and looked out.
On the sill, the Cyprian cat sat and clawed at the casement. Her drenched fur clung limply to her body, her eyes glared into mine, her mouth was opened in protest. She scrabbled furiously at the latch, her hind claws slipping and scratching on the woodwork. I hammered on the pane and bawled at her, and she struck back at the glass as though possessed. As I cursed her and turned away she set up a long, despairing wail.
Merridew called to me to bring back the candle and leave the brute alone. I returned to the bed, but the dismal crying went on and on incessantly. I suggested to Merridew that he should wake the landlord and get hot-water bottles and some brandy from the bar and see if a messenger could not be sent for a doctor. He departed on this errand, while I went on with my massage. It seemed to me that the pulse was growing still fainter. Then I suddenly recollected that I had a small brandy-flask in my bag. I ran out to fetch it, and as I did so the cat suddenly stopped its howling.
As I entered my own room the air blowing through the open window struck gratefully upon me. I found my bag in the dark and was rummaging for the flask among my shirts and socks when I heard a loud, triumphant mew, and turned round in time to see the Cyprian cat crouched for a moment on the sill, before it sprang in past me and out at the door. I found the flask and hastened back with it, just as Merridew and the landlord came running up the stairs.
We all went into the room together. As we did so, Mrs Merridew stirred, sat up, and asked us what in the world was the matter.
I have seldom felt quite such a fool.
Next day the weather was cooler; the storm had cleared the air. What Merridew had said to his wife I do not know. None of us
made any public allusion to the night’s disturbance, and to all appearances Mrs Merridew was in the best of health and spirits. Merridew took a day off from the waterworks, and we all went for a long drive and picnic together. We were on the best of terms with one another. Ask Merridew – he will tell you the same thing. He would not – he could not, surely – say, otherwise. I can’t believe, Harringay, I simply cannot believe that he could imagine or suspect me – I say, there was nothing to suspect. Nothing.
Yes – this is the important date – the 24th of June. I can’t tell you any more details: there is nothing to tell. We came back and had dinner just as usual. All three of us were together all day, till bedtime. On my honour I had no private interview of any kind that day, either with him or with her. I was the first to go to bed, and I heard the others come upstairs about half an hour later. They were talking cheerfully.
It was a moonlight night. For once, no caterwauling came to trouble me. I didn’t even bother to shut the window or the door. I put the revolver on the chair beside me before I lay down. Yes, it was loaded. I had no special object in putting it there, except that I meant to have a go at the cats if they started their games again.
I was desperately tired, and thought I should drop off to sleep at once, but I didn’t. I must have been overtired, I suppose. I lay and looked at the moonlight. And then, about midnight, I heard what I had been half expecting: a stealthy scrabbling in the wisteria and a faint miauling sound.
I sat up in bed and reached for the revolver. I heard the ‘plop’ as the big cat sprang up on to the window-ledge; I saw her black and silver flanks, and the outline of her round head, pricked ears and upright tail. I aimed and fired, and the beast let out one frightful cry and sprang down into the room.
I jumped out of bed. The crack of the shot had sounded terrific in the silent house, and somewhere I heard a distant voice call out. I pursued the cat into the passage, revolver in hand – with some idea of finishing it off, I suppose. And then, at the door of Merridew’s room, I saw Mrs Merridew. She stood with one hand on each doorpost, swaying to and fro. Then she fell down at my feet. Her bare breast was all stained with blood. And as I stood staring at her, clutching the revolver, Merridew came out and found us – like that.
Well, Harringay, that’s my story, exactly as I told it to Peabody. I’m afraid it won’t sound very well in Court, but what can I say? The trail of blood led from my room to hers; the cat must have run that way; I know it was the cat I shot. I can’t offer any explanation. I don’t know who shot Mrs Merridew, or why. I can’t help it if the people at the inn say they never saw the Cyprian cat; Merridew saw it that other night, and I know he wouldn’t lie about it. Search the house, Harringay – that’s the only thing to do. Pull the place to pieces, till you find the body of the Cyprian cat. It will have my bullet in it.
In the Teeth of the Evidence Page 26
