Shudders in the Dark & Carnival Of Terror

by Ruskin Bond

  At once I was aware of a new feeling; the water was alive. If you have bathed in a moonlit pool, you will know what I mean. I could scarce believe that I was lying in bath-water, and that by merely pulling out a plug I would find myself high and dry. Some chord of fancy had been struck, or some remote childish instinct, for I was borne away from a drab flat to charmed swans and fairy lakes; there might even be a network of weeds beneath me instead of a hard layer of painted iron. Something was drawing me to itself—soon I grew conscious of that—and the sense of pleasure was darkened just a shade. No, I must not enjoy this too much. I placed my hands on the sides of the bath, and by the greatest effort withdrew from the water. As I dried myself, I thought of my laundress. ‘Yes,’ I murmured, ‘you really must be careful.’ I put my forefinger into the inch of water that remained in the bath; it was quite hot. I could not therefore have stayed in for any length of time. My watch was at the half-hour (10.30) when I stood in my bedroom, not sleepy, but a little surprised at myself.

  The next morning I mentioned the fact to my laundress, who remarked:

  ‘Oh, sir, you oughtn’t to have a hot bath at night!’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  She looked as if she might say something more, but thought better. I did not repeat the treat for a fortnight, when, after a solid evening’s grind at a novel, I stepped into the heat and steam close on midnight. But there was nothing to surprise me this time, no living pull in the water; it was just my morning’s hot bath, and I got back to bed rather sadly.

  Two evenings later it so happened that I returned from my chop-house to write a chapter just before an old college friend dropped in for a talk. I told him I was snowed up with work, and he offered to go; I had not the heart to take him at his word; would he stay for half-an-hour? He trebled that limit and left at ten. I was so tired, for some reason or other, that I thought I would turn in after a hot bath.

  It was there, the magic, with renewed vigour! At first I tried to reason with myself; we had been talking about old times and quarrels, true, but with a very real relief at having come out of them with sound hearts; we had agreed that we would not have our salad days over again, were the chance offered. There was the fraction of an excuse for my feeling dreamy and full of fancies—the fraction, no more. The drawing sense was stronger now, and I felt that a person wanted me, and that I was in some way bound to yield myself to an unknown presence. The water lapping my sides was charged with a give, that stroked my skin. It seemed to have the touch of human hair in a long flowing mass; soothing it was, and rose from my sides to my arms and neck. My will fought; I forced my eyes to the light, coiling in its bulb above, and thrusting up my head, before the wetness reached it, I managed, but only just, to raise myself, and climbed out as if I were being pulled down.

  It was not quite half-past ten when I stood in my bedroom again. I woke the next morning, sobered. We had each two liqueur glasses of cherry-brandy last night; could that explain the odd thing? An instinct drove me to the bathroom before Mrs Sams called me. I was just laughing at my absurd terrors, when I noticed a hair at the base of the bath, a long auburn hair from a woman’s head. I knew no one to whom it could belong; I threw it away at once, but asked a question or two later. My landlord had found me this laundress, and she knew the tenant before him.

  ‘Tell me,’ I asked (I often pumped her, and she has been of some use to me in my work, when local colour was wanted), ‘had Mr Moffat’s sister auburn hair, the one he lives with now?’

  ‘Lor, I can’t tell you that now, for I never saw her here.’

  ‘And Mrs Wilks—what colour was her hair?’

  ‘You gents are that strange. She lives apart from her husband, Mrs Wilks do—I don’t know what the row was over. Hair, bless you, sir, it was bobbed, and black as my cooking-stove; but that friend of hers as died, Miss Blay, her hair was red, or auburn rather.’

  ‘Tell me about her, Mrs Sams; did she stay here with Mrs Wilks?’

  ‘She died here,’ said my laundress very gravely, ‘in that there bath—same as you will, sir excuse me, if you don’t take more care.’

  ‘Did any person drown her?’ I said, trying to pass the thing off as a joke; ‘no Brides in the Bath Affair, eh?’

  ‘Drown? She drowned herself; she was here alone. Mrs Wilks let her have the flat while she was abroad; they had an inquest and found it drowning, but not on purpose. The landlord was quite right to tell you no tenant had died here (he had not done so); she wasn’t a tenant, Miss Blay, only a friend of Mrs Wilks.’

  ‘At what time of day did this happen?’

  ‘I wasn’t doing for Mrs Wilks then. Mrs Slocombe she was, and she died last June. It was at night, I fancy, but not very late; she weren’t found till morning.’

  And how long ago?’

  ‘Let me see, one, two years—round about Shrove Tuesday. Mr Moffat lived here one year; two years, sir, early next month.’

  I made a mental note to look up the inquest in old files of the local paper, but rashly put off the resolve. What I thought was, it is no doubt the hour that matters. Have a bath at midnight, and you are safe, but don’t have one at half-past ten. I adhered to this rule, and had many nightly baths, shrewdly picking my hour, with no ill results for the next two months; nor did I find any hair after them, either round about Shrove Tuesday or at other times; in fact, by April it had quite slipped my mind that I had been other than nervous and faddy over the matter.

  On the—I would rather not recall the date—of that month I went to have a hot bath before bed: no strange event could be said to herald it; I had been reading a play—some modern farce—nothing to fill me with alarm, in any case. I was fairly happy, and, as I lay back in the water, thought to myself, ‘I wonder if you could write an act as good as that last; no—not even in your present state of mind.’ The next feeling was a normal one also, complete absence of any desire to raise my head or move a limb, but a second later the haunting was on me. The water became alive, with a sense of great depths and the stroking of my sides. ‘Hang it all man!’ I tried to say aloud; ‘it’s not half-past ten; you’ve diddled the ghost by a full hour!’ and I stared hard at the light above me; as I did so, out it went.

  Fused! Yes, that occurred to me then, but my abject terror was none the less! The water seemed to heave and swell, like a sea, all about me, and the hair came over my face and pressed it down; there was a singing in my ears, a distinct voice crooning the words Come down, my child, into the depths with me, slowly, with a pause between each word, so that when ‘me’ was reached, with nothing after it, I thought all was up. Struggle I could not, as it seemed, but I must have done so, for the next thing I knew was that the water was running away fast; I must have dislodged the plug with my toes, and thus saved my life. How I got back to my bedroom, dripping, I have no notion—there was a lot of water in my ears; but it was twenty-five minutes to twelve by the watch on my dressing-table. I slept, thank God, without a dream.

  Mrs Sams called me at what I thought was the normal hour, and did not seem to notice that aught was amiss. I would not have a bath, and soon after breakfast, which I could hardly eat, I walked round to the electric light people; they promised to send a man at three. I had lunch out, perhaps a little latish, and was surprised to see him standing outside my front door when I got back.

  I took out my watch and said, ‘It’s two, you are here too soon; but that doesn’t matter. Lucky I didn’t take a walk!’ and led the way into the bedroom with some shrinking.

  ‘Daylight saving, Guv’nor, it came in Tuesday,’ he said; ‘you forgot to put your watch on.’

  So the visit was true to time; a new fuse was small comfort against that horror.

  Before I left that flat for my present room, where, by the way, I have to share a bathroom with my two neighbours, I looked up the report of the inquest on Miss Blay, who seems to have taken drugs. Mrs Wilks, the then tenant, who returned from Paris to be a witness, said that her friend, so far as she knew, had no love af
fair or money complex, but was ‘consumed’ with a desire to find out some author who could read her inmost nature. Mrs Wilks believed this morbid whim preyed on her mind; she was a shy young woman and had told her that she hardly dared write to those authors whose works she professed to admire; if only some unknown writer would come across her, someone she could help! The verdict was as my laundress stated.

  Mr Moffat asked no question when I went to see him to give notice; and said he would remit half a quarter’s rent. ‘You couldn’t stand it,’ was his sole comment, and we both nodded sagely. The flat is now an office.

  The murder was planned carefully, patiently, and carried out without any fuss. The only person who was really disconcerted was the victim. The queen of crime writing at her best

  THEY NEVER GET CAUGHT

  MARGERY ALLINGHAM

  ‘Millie dear, this does explain itself, doesn’t it? Henry.’ Mr Henry Brownrigg signed his name on the back of the little blue bill with a flourish. Then he set the scrap of paper carefully in the exact centre of the imperfectly scoured developing bath, and, leaving the offending utensil on the kitchen table for his wife to find when she came in, he stalked back to the shop, feeling that he had administered the rebuke surely and at the same time gracefully.

  In fifteen years Mr Brownrigg felt that he had mastered the art of teaching his wife her job. Not that he had taught her. That, Mr Brownrigg felt, with a woman of Millie’s staggering obtuseness was past praying for. But now, after long practice, he could deliver the snub or administer the punishing word in a way which would penetrate her placid dullness.

  Within half an hour after she had returned from shopping and before lunch was set upon the table, he knew the bath would be back in the dark-room, bright and pristine as when it was new, and nothing more would be said about it. Millie would be a little more ineffectually anxious to please at lunch, perhaps, but that was all.

  Mr Brownrigg passed behind the counter and flicked a speck of dust off the dummy cartons of face-cream. It was twelve twenty-five and a half. In four and a half minutes Phyllis Bell would leave her office further down the High Street, and in seven and a half minutes she would come in through that narrow, sunlit doorway to the cool, drug-scented shop.

  On that patch of floor where the sunlight lay blue and yellow, since it had found its way in through the enormous glass vases in the window which were the emblem of his trade, she would stand and look at him, her blue eyes limpid and her small mouth pursed and adorable.

  The chemist took up one of the ebony-backed hand mirrors exposed on the counter for sale and glanced at himself in it. He was not altogether a prepossessing person. Never a tall man, at forty-two his wide, stocky figure showed a definite tendency to become fleshy, but there was strength and virility in his thick shoulders, while his clean-shaven face and broad neck were short and bull-like and his lips were full.

  Phyllis liked his eyes. They held her, she said, and most of the other young women who bought their cosmetics at the corner shop and chatted with Mr Brownrigg across the counter might have been inclined to agree with her.

  Over-dark, round, hot eyes had Mr Brownrigg; not at all the sort of eyes for a little, plump, middle-aged chemist with a placid wife like Millie.

  But Mr Brownrigg did not contemplate his own eyes. He smoothed his hair, wiped his lips, and then, realising that Phyllis was almost due, he disappeared behind the dispensing desk. It was as well, he always thought, not to appear too eager.

  He was watching the door, though, when she came in. He saw the flicker of her green skirt as she hesitated on the step and saw her half-eager, half apprehensive expression as she glanced towards the counter.

  He was glad she had not come in when a customer was there. Phyllis was different from any of the others whose little histories stretched back through the past fourteen years. When Phyllis was in the shop Mr Brownrigg found he was liable to make mistakes, liable to drop things and fluff the change.

  He came out from his obscurity eager in spite of himself, and drew the little golden-haired girl sharply towards him over that part of the counter which was lowest and which he purposely kept uncluttered.

  He kissed her and the sudden hungry force of the movement betrayed him utterly. He heard her quick intake of breath before she released herself and stepped back.

  ‘You—you shouldn’t,’ she said, nervously tugging her hat back into position.

  She was barely twenty, small and young looking for her years, with yellow hair and a pleasant, quiet style. Her blue eyes were frightened and a little disgusted now, as though she found herself caught up in an emotion which her instincts considered not quite nice.

  Henry Brownrigg recognised the expression. He had seen it before in other eyes, but whereas on past occasions he had been able to be tolerantly amused and therefore comforting and glibly reassuring, in Phyllis it irritated and almost frightened him.

  ‘Why not?’ he demanded sharply, too sharply he knew immediately, and the blood rushed into his face.

  Phyllis took a deep breath.

  ‘I came to tell you,’ she said jerkily, like a child saying its piece, ‘I’ve been thinking things over. I can’t go on with all this. You’re married. I want to be married some day. I—I shan’t come in again.’

  ‘You haven’t been talking to someone?’ he demanded, suddenly cold.

  ‘About you? Good heavens, no!’

  Her vehemence was convincing, and because of that he shut his mind to its uncomplimentary inference and experienced only relief

  ‘You love me,’ said Henry Brownrigg. ‘I love you and you love me. You know that.’

  He spoke without intentional histrionics, but adopted a curious monotone which, some actors have discovered, is one of the most convincing methods of conveying deep sincerity.

  Phyllis nodded miserably and then seemed oddly embarassed. Wistfully her eyes wandered to the sunlit street and back again.

  ‘Good-bye,’ she said huskily and fled.

  He saw her speeding past the window, almost running.

  For some time Henry Brownrigg remained looking down at the patch of blue sunlight where she had stood. Finally he raised his eyes and smiled with conscious wryness. She would come back. Tomorrow, or in a week, or in ten days perhaps, she would come back But the obstacle, the insurmountable obstacle would arise again, in time it would defeat him and he would lose her.

  Phyllis was different from the others. He would lose her. Unless that obstacle were removed.

  Henry Brownrigg frowned.

  There were other considerations too. The old, mottled ledger told those only too clearly.

  If the obstacle were removed it would automatically wipe away those difficulties also, for was there not the insurance and that small income Millie’s father had left so securely tied, as though the old man had divined his daughter would grow up a fool?

  Mr Brownrigg’s eyes rested upon the little drawer under the counter marked: ‘Prescriptions: private.’ It was locked and not even young Perry, his errand boy and general assistant, who poked his nose into most things, guessed that under the pile of slips within was a packet of letters scrawled in Phyllis’s childish hand.

  He turned away abruptly. His breath was hard to draw and he was trembling. The time had come.

  Some months previously Henry Brownrigg had decided that he must become a widower before the end of the year, but the interview of the morning had convinced him that he must hurry.

  At this moment Millie, her face still pink with shame at the recollection of the affair of the ill-washed bath, put her head round the inner door.

  ‘Lunch is on the table, Henry,’ she said, and added with that stupidity which had annoyed him ever since it had ceased to please him by making him feel superior. ‘Well, you do look serious. Oh, Henry, you haven’t made a mistake and given somebody a wrong bottle?’

  ‘No, my dear Millie,’ said her husband, surveying her coldly and speaking with heavy sarcasm. ‘That is the peculiar sort of id
iot mistake I have yet to make. I haven’t reached my wife’s level yet.’

  And as he followed her uncomplaining figure to the little room behind the shop a word echoed rhythmically in the back of his mind and kept time with the beating of his heart. ‘Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!’

  ‘Henry, dear,’ said Millie Brownrigg, turning a troubled face towards her husband, ‘why Doctor Crupiner? He’s so expensive and so old.’

  She was standing in front of the dressing-table in the big front bedroom above the shop, brushing her brown, grey streaked hair before she plaited it and coiled it round her head.

  Henry Brownrigg, lying awake in his bed on the far side of the room, did not answer her.

  Millie went on talking. She was used to Henry’s silence. Henry was so clever. Most of his time was spent in thought.

  ‘I’ve heard all sorts of odd things about Doctor Crupiner’, she remarked. ‘They say he’s so old he forgets. Why shouldn’t we go to Mother’s man? She swears by him.’

  ‘Unfortunately for your mother she has your intelligence, without a man to look after her, poor woman,’ said Henry Brownrigg.

  Millie made no comment.

  ‘Crupiner,’ continued Henry Brownrigg, ‘may not be much good as a general practitioner, but there is one subject on which he is a master. I want him to see you. I want to get you well, old dear.’

  Millie’s gentle, expressionless face flushed and her blue eyes looked moist and foolish in the mirror. Henry could see her reflection in the glass and he turned away. There were moments when, by her obvious gratitude for a kind word from him, Millie made him feel a certain distaste for his project. He wished to God she would go away and leave him his last few moments in bed to think of Phyllis in peace.