Daniel Durdle had reached the outskirts of the village. As he approached, he saw a curtain drawn across the lighted bedroom window of a solitary house: someone was still up in the sleeping village. Smiling to himself, Daniel recalled the thing he had not told the police—how, just before he had crept out of the Little Manor garden that night, a figure had walked to the drawing-room windows and pulled the curtains across them: the figure of Celandine Chantmerle; walking. It had scared him out of his wits at the moment, made him retreat as before an apparition. But presently fear gave way to curiosity, so he’d hung around in the vicinity. And the next day, when the news came that Sir Archibald was dead, his heart leaped exultantly. Now he had her in his grip at last—that fine, contemptuous sister of his, that whore of Babylon. He had bided his time, gloating like a miser over the hoarded secret. Now she would have to yield up to him his rights, the money, everything. At any moment he could make her go down on her knees to him. But tonight, up there on the wood’s edge, he’d seen a richer revenge.
Daniel Durdle ran to the cottage of Greta Smart, and began furiously knocking upon her door.
“When she’d put back the invalid carriage, Celandine put on her father’s coat and hat, which she had ready, and went down to the Hall, impersonating Sir Archibald. This was to be another strand in the rope to hang Charles.
“‘I seem to have a charmed life,’ she said to me this afternoon. By God, she did too, that night. Charles Blick had only left the place of assignation ten minutes before. No wonder she fainted when she heard Rosebay had made that rendezvous with him. And both the vicar and Durdle were about the place as well. However, she got away with it. Perhaps that made her overconfident. Anyway, she did nothing about destroying the clothes she had worn.”
“Are you just guessing now? The hat wasn’t there, you know.”
“It’s a theory based on the way she behaved when your men came to search the house. First, she insisted on being present when they searched her father’s room. Then, once they were in the room, she sent them down to fetch the keys of his furniture. That would give her time to take the hat out of the wardrobe and conceal it beneath the rug which covered her knees in the wheel chair. The wardrobe was presumably not, in fact, locked; but, when your men returned with the keys, she pretended to unlock it for them. I must say, the whole transaction showed great nerve and presence of mind on her part.”
“But why should she be so frightened of their finding the hat, and not bother about the overcoat?”
“Ah, that’s where Stanford Blick comes in.”
“Wait a minute, Strangeways. Would she have set fire to herself trying to burn the hat after my men had left?”
“Just possible. But I don’t think so. I believe she was getting a bit rattled. The police were apparently still interested in her. Charles Blick had not yet been arrested. And Celandine suspected that Rosebay had suspicions about her—that came out later in an interesting little slip of the tongue. I think she wanted to give one final, conclusive demonstration that she could not have murdered Blick.”
Celandine was nearing the village now. The burns were itching worse than ever, and the dressings seemed to impede movement. She asked herself irritably if she hadn’t wasted her time as well as her skin. It was easy enough to set fire to her chair and coverings, having first got out of it and locked the door; then to scream; then to get back into the chair just as Mark started to break down the door. It gave Mark an opportunity of playing the little hero, and herself only a few seconds of pain. But, she now thought with mounting vexation, it hadn’t really proved anything. Anyone convinced she could not walk would need no proof of it: the police, with their filthy suspicious natures, and Nigel Strangeways who had turned out so heartless and disloyal—if they suspected she could walk, no doubt they were capable of suspecting that she had only got back into the the burning chair at the last moment. Surely they must have arrested Charles, though, by now, after what she’d told them. It was intelligent of her to have waited till then before making the statement. Thinking of Charles Blick, she frowned. The moonlight showed her lips set in a cruel line, her face abstract and merciless as that of a carved idol demanding blood sacrifice. Damn them all—the horrible old man, and Charles, and Stanford. She might have known Stanford would be against her too, would betray her as Charles had betrayed her and as his father had betrayed hers. The Blicks—what an accursed race! A muttering of violent, childishly filthy abuse began to seep through her lovely lips. Then she whimpered a little in self-pity. But for Stanford, she’d never have had to come out tonight, walking this hard track in pain and misery.
“But Celandine finally gave herself away through sheer, calculated rancor,” Nigel was saying. “This evening, after the ‘accident’ to Celandine, I arranged a little trap with the vicar’s aid, as I told you. I’d previously stepped up the atmosphere by talking loudly and indiscreetly out in the garden, so that Celandine could hear from indoors. I mentioned Stanford’s dream, for example, and discovered that Rosebay had told her sister about it. I was playing upon Celandine’s nerves. Then, by arrangement, I made the vicar ‘remember’ that he’d walked back from Fenny Cross, past the Little Manor at the very same time when Charles had told us he was walking toward Fenny Cross. But he’d not met Charles on the road. Therefore either he or Charles had lied. Of course, it was Mark who really lied; and he’ll never forgive me for persuading him to do so. It wasn’t a nice trick; but Celandine isn’t a nice murderer. Anyway, she overheard this. For her, it was a godsend. It destroyed Charles’s alibi—convicted him of lying (for it would never occur to her that Mark wouldn’t tell the truth). It was pretty safe now for her to say she’d heard Sir Archibald accosting his son shortly after leaving the house, for if Charles could have proved he was nowhere near the house then, he’d have done so by now.
“Celandine probably thought she chose her moment very cleverly. After Rosebay’s ‘confession,’ she could no longer bear to withhold her knowledge about Charles, dear old friend though he was. But this is the point—a woman as intelligent as Celandine, though she was innocent of the crime herself, would have seen through that confession of Rosebay’s at once. Indeed, she admitted she did. ‘Bay’s a very imaginative girl,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know she was so much in love with Charles as to try and put her head in a noose for him.’ So why should Rosebay’s bogus confession, which wouldn’t bear a moment’s expert examination, wouldn’t put the girl in any real danger from the police, compel Celandine to come out with a damning piece of information about Charles which far more pressing circumstances had failed to force from her?”
Nigel fell silent. In a lull between the gusts, he heard feet running and a knock on a door. Somebody knocking up the village midwife, he supposed.
In the darkness, close to the post box in the wall opposite the New Inn, Daniel Durdle was waiting. It occurred to him that, if he had miscalculated, he would be the laughingstock of the village. Had she heard him, and turned back? The little group around him was already restive, beginning to eye him covertly, with doubt and somber suspicion. Greta Smart was there: and the young laborer who had attempted suicide: and Rosie, from whom, even at this unconventional moment, Greta kept herself noticeably apart.
“You’re not having us on, I hope, Mr. Durdle?” she said.
“It won’t be long now. Just you wait. The evildoer approaches.”
Two more figures, coats thrown on over their night clothes, joined the group. There was a minute’s silence, uneasy and embarrassed. Then Durdle held up his finger. His keen ear had caught the sound of footsteps. Then they all heard them—slurring, stealthy footsteps approaching from the direction where the quarry track met the main road.
“Are we all here?” asked Daniel. “You know what to do. The Lord has delivered the sinner into our hands.”
His voice, low but resonant, had them under a spell. The group dispersed, flitting one way and another into the deeper shadows.
“I’m still not sure I understan
d how Stanford Blick comes into this,” said Blount.
“Stanford has a first-rate mind. From what Rosebay and others told him, he’d worked out how his father was killed and by whom. But he’s a whimsical character too, and he prefers not to get deeply involved in things. It suited his humor to make oblique hints, never come out direct with his suspicions. He quoted Maud to us on the lawn, three times. And the narrator of Maud, you remember, is a broody young man whose father committed suicide after being ruined by a rich company promoter living at the Hall. Substitute Celandine for that young man. Then there was Stanford’s alleged dream.”
“Yes, I was waiting for that.”
“He said he’d awakened from it at eleven-nine. At first it sounded too pat to be mere coincidence—that he should have dreamed it within a minute of the time when Durdle heard those dragging sounds from the Little Manor. But it was neither coincidence, nor guilty knowledge on Stanford’s part. It was pure deduction. He knew that the murderer, impersonating his father, had come to the back door of the Hall at eleven-thirty. He could reckon it would take Celandine the best part of ten minutes to walk down there, and that it would previously have taken her another ten to wheel the body up to the quarry and return and put the invalid carriage away. Ten and ten from eleven-thirty gives you eleven-ten. Stanford’s ‘eleven-nine’ was just an artistic touch to make it sound more lifelike. He calculated the removal of his father couldn’t have taken place any earlier, since Charles had only walked away from the rendezvous between eleven-five and eleven-ten, and he’d have heard suspicious sounds if Celandine had been doing her work before eleven-ten.
“Stanford’s ‘dream’ gave us a sort of eerie, symbolic version of the murder. The reason he made it up was to point out—remember what he said?—‘Both wore dark overcoats and those curly-brimmed Homburg hats—the Edwardian fashion that has come in again. Pop was quite a dandy.’ Stanford banked on Celandine’s having worn her father’s hat to impersonate his. He used the word ‘Edwardian’ so as to inject that idea into our minds, without committing himself any further.
“We know he told Rosebay his dream, too, and she told her sister. That must have scared Celandine considerably. ‘A dark Homburg hat’ might mean anything: but the Hall cook could probably recognize a dark, curly-brimmed, Edwardian one, if she was shown it—the very double of the one which the dandified old Sir Archibald had worn that night. Which is why I asked you to have a man guarding the incinerator at the Little Manor. Celandine has got to get rid of that hat somehow, and she knows it.”
A figure approached cautiously out of the darkness, the faint moonlight picking out the silver band on the walking stick and the bulky white envelope it carried. The watchers could hear its breathing, rasping and uneven. It moved, like a not quite perfected automaton, toward the post box. Daniel Durdle slid between the figure and the wall, his thick glasses dully gleaming.
“So we’ve got you at last,” he said, and at the same instant Rosie exclaimed: “Oh dear lordy, it’s Miss Chantmerle!”
Celandine whipped round, to see a semicircle of villagers hemming her in to the wall. She neither screamed nor sobbed. A hideous spasm went over her face, contorting its beauty as a flaw of wind twists an image in a clear pool: then it passed, leaving a cold, angry expression.
“Let me pass, please,” she said to Daniel.
“Not so fast. We have caught you red-handed in your iniquities and—”
“Get out of my way, you greasy, canting clown! Are you going to listen to this figure of fun? a sickening hypocrite like—”
“Just let us see that envelope, Miss Chantmerle,” said Greta Smart, thrusting forward, her arms akimbo.
“Certainly not. This is outrageous. Go home, all of you.”
“Ah, I thought so,” said Greta bitterly. “Pretenden you was a cripple, and all the time creepen down here to post your filthy dirty letters. You’m no better than a murderer. You killed my brother.”
The group closed in on Celandine, like a ring of dangerous animals.
“You’re making a terrible mistake,” she said, a slight quaver in her voice. “I—I only found out I could walk a few—it must have been the shock of my accident. I got burnt quite badly this afternoon. I—”
“To hell with that!” growled the young laborer. “Let’s take her off to the police.”
“No, let the poor soul speak,” said Rosie, the village tart. “Maybe she can explain. ’Tes only fair.”
“The police will tell you it’s this holy horror, Durdle, who wrote the letters; they’ve known it for days.”
“Whyn’t they arrest’n, then?” said a gaunt woman with her hair in curling papers.
“Won’t you let us see that envelope, Miss Chantmerle?” said Rosie. “We’m glad you can walk again, aren’t we, folks? A proper miracle, enn’t?”
Celandine held out the envelope for her to see. The others crowded round. The young laborer flashed a torch on it and read out the address slowly.
“Why, that’s in Scotland, right up north, see?” said Rosie. “She’m not written to any of we. Now let her go, do.”
Durdle’s sleek voice came, insinuating. “Don’t you be taken in. Suppose there’s a number of envelopes inside that big one, envelopes full of nastiness, to be posted back here from Scotland. She’s clever. Shall we ask her just to open that envelope and let us see what’s inside it?”
“Yes, that’s right. Come on, Miss Chantmerle,” said Greta Smart. “If you’re innocent—”
“No, damn you—I’m sorry, Greta, I’m not very well. But really I can’t let you—”
“She’s afraid, the witch, the daughter of Satan!” Daniel Durdle made a grab for the envelope. Celandine stepped back. There was a rasping swish, and she had drawn the steel blade from her father’s swordstick.
“Get back, all of you. Let me pass, or I’ll use this. I mean it.”
“So that proves it!” Durdle’s voice had a demented ring. “Whore! Murderess!”
He lunged forward to seize Celandine, and his body was spitted on the blade.
“What the devil is going on?” said Blount. Between the gusts of the storm, they could hear more banging of doors and pounding footsteps. “Must be a fire. Let’s go and see.”
What they found was a group of people at the far end of the village, who had been aroused, some by Durdle’s first knocking-up of victims of his own poison-pen letters, some by the following wind or rumor, bending over Durdle’s body. Rosie was trying to staunch the blood which flowed from the left side of his stomach. Cries and shouts were borne on the wind from the direction of the hillside, and the dogs at Templeton’s farm began to bark.
“She’s got away. They’re chasing her. Miss Chantmerle.” It took Blount a minute to get the facts straight; then he ran over to the New Inn to telephone. By the time he came out again, Daniel Durdle was dead.
Nigel was running up the road to Templeton’s farm. The gale rocked the elms behind it, and burred in the upland grasses. Everything was in movement, in flight. The new moon went tearing through the cloud rack overhead: by its light, as Nigel emerged from the clutter of farm buildings and ran diagonally right toward the quarry track, he beheld an extraordinary spectacle. Outlined against the sky, a woman’s figure, moving with a queer, lolloping gait, appeared on the ridge of hill. Other figures, four or five of them, were close behind her. There was a flicker of miniature lightning, as she turned to threaten them with the blade of her swordstick. They stopped, huddled together, then moved on again when Celandine moved, keeping their distance.
The progress of this spasmodic pursuit, taking its time from the fugitive no one dared to close with, was slow enough for Nigel, running hard on his right diagonal, to have some hope of intercepting it. Surmounting the incline, and coming out on the plateau, with the little wood ahead to his left, he had arrived level with the pursuers. They were toiling up the rough track, barely trotting now, behind them a straggle of other villagers who, awakened by Durdle’s first alarm, had arr
ived at the New Inn in time to see Celandine break through the cordon and disappear into the darkness. A few minutes had been wasted in explanation, and attending to Daniel Durdle. Then most of them had followed the original five, the victims of Durdle’s own letters, who were casting about in the direction Celandine had taken. The dogs barking at Templeton’s farm put them on the track. And here they were—women in curling pins, in hairnets, with wellingtons or bedroom slippers on their feet, nightdresses showing beneath the hems of their coats; men carrying pitchforks or shotguns, one wearing a nightcap. As they came up with Nigel, they all started babbling:
“It’s Miss Chantmerle! . . . She’s the poison pen! . . . Killed Mr. Durdle, she have! . . . She’m a witch!”
Nigel could not stop them. This was the witch-hunt, the lynching he had told Durdle would happen. They were going to lynch the right person, for the wrong reason.
“Stop!” he yelled. “She’s not the poison pen! You—”
A cry came from the darkness, twenty yards ahead. Celandine had reached the sward where the daffodils tossed, only to see Constable Clotworthy, roused by Blount’s telephone call, advancing upon her from the ride through the wood. The moon sailed out from behind a dark cloud. Everything else in the world seemed to stand stockstill for a moment. Then Celandine turned, ran a few yards with that terrible, pathetic gait of a child whose legs are in irons, and went over the quarry’s edge. There was no scream, no faint cry from her, even: only, after the silence, a thudding splash. . . .
The Dreadful Hollow Page 24
