Cuckoo in the Night

by Pamela Kent

  The two years in Switzerland, while she was still striving to overcome resentment, although regret had already been overcome, were as much a part of her past as her brief engagement period to Stephen was, and she was incapable of feeling a pang now that she and her ex-fiancé were on good terms at last. He was the ideal brother-in-law, for he made much of her without doing anything at all that could offend either his wife or Janine herself, which was something of an achievement, Janine privately considered, when he had been an ardent lover to both women.

  If, for an instant, his eye conveyed admiration, it was the admiration of a brother-in-law. When, for instance, she entered the drawing-room before dinner wearing a chic little Swiss dress of black organza, that did wonderful things for her dark cloudy hair and her warm magnolia skin, he lifted his glass of sherry to her as a silent gesture of appreciation, and she didn’t even blush.

  “She walks in beauty like the night,” he quoted.

  And when his wife entered the room, startlingly beautiful in emerald green silk, and with a bracelet of real emeralds sending out shafts of fire from one of her slender wrists, he seemed momentarily taken aback by the very sight of her. All he did in her case was put a glass of sherry into her hand and ensure that she was made perfectly comfortable with her feet up on a settee, and although his eyes were a trifle unreadable he was unable to think up a quotation that would suit the occasion in her case.

  Janine was so impressed, however, by the way in which his hand alighted on her sister’s shoulder, and remained there, after he was quite sure there was nothing more he could do for her comfort, that it aroused an odd sensation like acute regret at the back of her mind, because according to both of them their relationship at the moment was far from all it ought to be.

  They were apparently on good terms with one another, but they were not really close. Yet Stephen was successful—able to provide his wife with everything she needed; they had a lovely home, they had been married for only two years, and although they had already lost one child there was every chance that in the future they would have another.

  Life for them should be quite good … And yet it was not.

  Janine felt inclined to sigh as she glanced round the charming drawing-room, that was already softly lit because it was a little gloomy out on the moor owing to thundery cloud formations, and noticed that the Chinese vase had been allotted a place of honour on a satinwood side table, and that for once Miranda was not in attendance. There was less tension in the atmosphere when the great dog—although Janine had already gone out of her way to cement a friendship that seemed to be growing between herself and the mastiff—was not in overwhelming evidence.

  She was pleased, therefore, when she discovered how quickly her sister adapted herself to the gayer note of dinner, and by the time dinner was over no one could have looked more relaxed than Chris.

  On the night of her arrival Janine had poured out coffee in the drawing-room to save the mistress of the house the trouble, but to-night Chris insisted on taking her proper place behind the table that supported the coffee-tray. And she refused to be treated as an invalid by either her sister or her husband during the rest of the evening, deciding against watching television—which was her normal practice until she went to bed—because she wanted to talk.

  And the talk, about all sorts of things that had happened to the two sisters in the past, lasted until Stephen intervened to say, firmly, that it was high time Chris went upstairs to bed. And although she protested, laughingly, when he swung her up in his arms and insisted on carrying her up to her room, she was obviously inclined to revel in the kind of attention he was showing her, and when Janine said goodnight to them she made no attempt to detain her sister, as on the previous night. She was too preoccupied with Stephen’s light jests, his insistence on brushing her hair for her, and removing her shoes.

  As he said, with a gleam in his eyes for Janine as she stood framed in the doorway, what did a woman need with a personal maid when she had a devoted husband?

  Janine said the words over to herself as she walked away along the corridor.

  A devoted husband …? Was Stephen really a devoted husband? And if he was as devoted as he made it appear why had Chris found it necessary to write appealing letters to her sister, begging her to come home?

  When it was still dark Janine was awakened by a stifled shriek that came from her sister’s room. Half awake, she leapt out of bed, snatched up a dressinggown, and fairly raced along the corridor that separated her room from the main body of the house.

  Lights were on in Chris’s room, and the door was standing open. Janine could see Stephen, in a paisley silk dressing-gown, bending over his wife and obviously making efforts to soothe her. Chris’s eyes were dark and enormous, and half starting out of her head, and her face was as white as blanched almonds.

  The door to the bathroom that lay between Stephen’s room and that occupied by his wife was standing open, and, even as she approached the bed, Janine could see through into the room where her brother-in-law slept, and it struck her as pleasantly lit and comfortable, with a litter of masculine objects that somehow managed to imprint themselves on her mind, and a book flung down carelessly on the eiderdown.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  And Stephen answered at once, quietly and composedly, although Chris seemed incapable of saying anything.

  “It’s nothing,” he said. “Just the result of a nightmare. It’s the kind of nightmare she often has.” But although he sounded as if he was in complete control of himself and the whole situation, his face, in the glow of the bedside light, was grim and worried. “She forgot to take her sleeping tablets last night. They usually see her through until morning, and prevent this sort of thing happening.”

  Janine bent over her sister, and then because she seemed cold and comfortless she sat down on the bed beside her and put a protective arm about her. Chris clutched at her.

  “Don’t go yet, will you?” she begged. “It was such a horrible nightmare. He was just standing there and looking at me!”

  “Who was standing there and looking at you?”

  Chris made a helpless gesture with her hands.

  “I don’t know …”

  Stephen walked to the opposite wall and tapped it.

  “There is no door here,” he said. “There never was a door.” He tapped it again. “It’s just panelling.”

  And it was, beautifully painted, delicate cream panelling to match the rest of the delicate cream paintwork.

  Chris put both hands up to her face and stared at the spot that obviously held for her a fearful fascination, and then she shuddered violently.

  “It’s always the same,” she whimpered. “The same man … I never see him very clearly, but he’s there, standing in the open doorway. And he just looks at me.”

  Stephen was measuring something into a glass. He handed it to his wife, and she drank it with the obedience of a frightened child.

  “The doctor prescribed this for occasions such as this,” he explained. “It’s a sedative. It will enable her to sleep until morning.” He shook the pillows up under his wife’s head, settled her comfortably. “I’m going to leave my door open,” he said, “so if you want anything you’ll know I’ll hear you at once if you call out.”

  She nodded drowsily. Already the sedative was having an effect, and before Janine went back to her own room her sister was deep in what appeared to be restful, tranquil sleep, with some of the colour returned to her wan cheeks, although her long eyelashes made startlingly black shadows as they rested on the delicate skin that had mauve smudges under the eyes themselves.

  Stephen accompanied his sister-in-law back to her own room, but he did not meet her eyes as they once more wished one another goodnight. Instead he stared at the carpet and remarked that he was sorry she had been so rudely disturbed.

  Janine studied the grim, worried mask of his face. There was no doubt about it, he was profoundly disturbed.

  “I t
hink you should insist that she pays another visit to the psychiatrist,” she said.

  Stephen nodded, as if his own mind was already made up.

  “I will,” he said.

  Chapter VI

  BUT the next day Chris seemed so normal that Janine hesitated to ask her whether she had slept well after Stephen administered her sedative. She actually came down to breakfast, looking quite bright-eyed and very attractive in an elegant housecoat of Chinese blue with black and silver trimming, and when Janine opened her lips to ask her how she was as she took her place behind the coffee-pot and proceeded to butter herself a piece of toast, Stephen shook his head warningly, and indicated with his eyes that it would be best to say nothing at all of what had happened in the night.

  Janine thought this was somewhat peculiar, since the entire house had been roused, but she accepted it that Stephen knew best and had probably had a good deal of experience to dictate his behaviour; and apart from remarking on the housecoat, and observing how well it suited her sister, she said nothing that had anything to do with Chris, and was not in some way connected with the brightness of the morning and the plans for the day.

  Stephen was leaving for London after breakfast, and he expected to be away about a week. Both Janine and Chris accompanied him into the hall before he took his departure, and Chris waved to him from the open doorway as his car slid away down the drive.

  She looked a little forlorn, Janine thought, as she stood there, the bright blue of the housecoat draining most of the colour out of her face, while her brilliant titian hair formed a kind of rich and luxuriant cloud on her shoulders.

  Janine thought her eyes were dark and much more strained than they had been at breakfast, and she attempted to cheer her up.

  “He’ll soon be back,” she said. “After all, what is a week? You’re lucky he isn’t going to be away longer. If he was in the navy, or a merchant seaman, or something of the sort, he might be away for months—even years—at a time!”

  “That’s true,” Chris agreed.

  “And at least Stephen won’t be so very many miles away.”

  “It’s not the miles I’m thinking about,” Chris returned, as she stared with sightless eyes away down the broad sweep of the drive that, having made its sudden and abrupt curve round the side of the house, disappeared altogether.

  Janine regarded her with a faintly uncomfortable feeling. She didn’t ask what it was that Chris was thinking about. Instead, she said:

  “And I’m here! It’s not as if you’re going to be alone.”

  Her sister turned and met her eyes with a sudden, faint smile in her own. The smile grew, but at the same time she heaved a sigh.

  “Yes; I’m glad of that,” she said.

  The rest of the day passed in a completely uneventful fashion. They had an early lunch and tea on the lawn, and after tea Janine took Miranda for a long walk on the moor, very nearly losing herself when she turned for home, because she forgot that without landmarks one is inclined to progress in a circle, and she had omitted to take careful note of the few really distinctive landmarks that are to be found on any moor of size and depth, and to her one jagged Dartmoor tor looked very much like another, and one reservoir reflecting the deep blue of the sky almost exactly similar to the one she had skirted earlier.

  In the end it was Miranda—slightly disgusted because the walk was over-long—who took her home, and Chris was very thankful to see her.

  “I thought you’d got lost,” she said, as she linked her arm in that of her sister’s and led her into the drawing-room, sweet with the scent of roses at that hour.

  “As a matter of fact, I did,” Janine admitted, and laughed. “I’ll be more careful in future.”

  Janine poured them each a glass of sherry, because Chris always seemed too languid to perform these functions either for herself, or for anyone else who was with her. She saw Chris comfortably established on her couch, and supplied her with a lighted cigarette.

  “Tim Hannaford is the authority on the moor,” Chris told her, as she exhaled smoke thoughtfully. “I doubt whether he could ever possibly lose himself, because he knows it so well. And by the way, you’ll probably meet him to-morrow, because his grandmother telephoned while you were out and asked me to take you over to tea to-morrow. I don’t quite know how she knows you’re here, since we’ve had no contact with Tor Park since your arrival … unless, of course, Tim smelt you out that night he put up on the library sofa! Perhaps he ran into one of the maids before he left and she mentioned that I had my sister staying with me.”

  “Perhaps,” Janine murmured.

  They sat up rather late that night, playing a form of two-handed rummy which at least kept both of them pleasantly diverted until sheer weariness overcame them and Janine started to yawn. Chris drank her hot milk which she usually drank before retiring to her room, and Janine thought there was a certain disinclination about her for leaving the relaxed atmosphere of the drawing-room, with its discreetly shaded lights and flowers, behind her. Her own room was very charming, but it was the room in which she dreamed unpleasant dreams; and long before they were half-way up the thickly carpeted stairs Janine realised what was passing through Chris’s mind.

  She knew—although it had never once been discussed—that last night the dream had been peculiarly vivid, and there was a kind of dull acceptance of horror in her eyes as she said goodnight to Janine.

  The latter accompanied her into the room and cast a cautious eye around it.

  “If you want anything you have only to call,” she said. “I’ll come at once.”

  “I know you will,” Chris answered. “And,” she added, as if she was comforting herself, “you were aways a light sleeper.”

  As if they were both being hypnotised by the same magnetic influence their eyes went to the farther wall, in the middle of which there should have been a door. The door that enabled Chris’s dream “man” to enter the room.

  Almost absentmindedly—and certainly unguardedly—Janine spoke.

  “I suppose there never was a door there?”

  She could have bitten out her tongue the instant the words had left her lips, for there was no doubt about the startled expression that leapt into Chris’s face. And not only did she look startled, she looked as if she had asked herself that same question on more than one occasion.

  “No,” she replied, almost curtly. “There never was a door there. Stephen has seen the plans of the original house—before all the alterations were made to it, I mean—and he has been able to confirm that there was never a door there.”

  Janine said something about it being extremely unlikely in any case, and then she kissed Chris quickly and went to her own room. And once there she sat for a long time before her open window, gazing out into the mysterious shadowiness of the garden, and the sinister stretches of open moor that pressed close to it.

  Somewhere far off in the house Miranda barked, and the sound should have acted as a very strong deterrent to anyone planning to force an uninvited entrance into the house. It was lucky for Tim Hannaford that the mastiff knew him—apparently it was he who had procured the puppy for Chris—and therefore he was not in the least handicapped when he made his illegal entry. But as the house had been his own until fairly recently no doubt he didn’t consider it illegal entry.

  He might even, in his whimsical way, consider that he had still a right there … a right bestowed by numbers cf Hannafords in the past.

  When she and Chris turned in at the drive of Tor Park that afternoon she was by no means anxious to renew her acquaintance with Mr. Hannaford. Tor Park was a very stately and dignified house, with a tremendous sweep of lawn providing a most pleasing prospect for anyone surveying the world from the windows that also overlooked a terrace. A dignified butler opened the door to them, and they were shown into a room that commanded that pleasing prospect of lawn sloping down to a reed-fringed lake, and Lady Hannaford received them from a straightbacked chair that seemed to have none of the comfort
s of an invalid chair, and excused herself from rising by explaining that her arthritis was being particularly troublesome, and she was more or less housebound until the treatment she was receiving started to show results.

  Lady Hannaford was startlingly like Tim Hannaford, Janine thought, as she met her eyes for the first time. A clear brown, like cairngorm, they had once been very handsome eyes, and even now they were shrewd and alert. She had very white hair that had probably, also, been brown at one time, and a weather-beaten skin that was intensely wrinkled round the eyes, and at the corners of the quietly humorous mouth.

  She was very tiny, very fragile-looking, and there appeared to be little or no flesh on the thin fingers with which she grasped her visitors’ hands. But that she was pleased to see them there could be no doubt. She looked penetratingly at Chris, and then bestowed upon Janine her undivided attention.

  “So this is your sister, Mrs. Blair,” she exclaimed. “I have been most curious to meet her!”

  There was a most disconcerting twinkle in the bright brown eyes as they continued to meet Janine’s. The latter was fairly certain that her nephew had recounted a recent, somewhat unorthodox adventure to her, and that she looked upon the intrusion into a young woman’s bedroom as a highly diverting titbit … entertainment at its best.

  Almost certainly, in her youth, she had been as unconventional as her nephew. And it was only her age, and her infirmity, that prevented her indulging certain freakish tendencies of her own.

  “You look healthy, Miss Scott,” she told her. “Not so healthy that I would describe you as a hockeyplaying type, but clear-skinned and transparent-eyed, and that’s what I like to see in a young woman. I understand you’ve been teaching in Switzerland. Did you like it?”

  “Not much,” Janine admitted.

  Lady Hannaford chortled.

  “I was sent to a finishing-school in Switzerland when I was eighteen, and I didn’t like it much there, either. I liked the Swiss doctor who attended the school, and a certain blond-headed German dancing-master … but apart from that it was very dull. We were never allowed to do any mountain climbing, and we didn’t ski in those days. It wasn’t considered ladylike. By the way,” turning to Chris, “you don’t look any more robust than when I saw you last. Why don’t you get your sister to take you in hand now that she’s here, and let you into the secret of all that healthy vitality of hers?”