Mystery in White (British Library Crime Classics)

by J. Jefferson Farjeon

  “Something disturbs you?” queried Mr. Maltby.

  David started.

  “A lot disturbs me,” he retorted, quickly concealing the real momentary cause. “I think we’re all disturbed. Quite apart from the odd situation we’re in, we’ve all got destinations to go to, and how are we going to them? How are we going to get away from here at all?”

  “From my experiences in the last ten minutes,” answered Mr. Maltby, “I am perfectly convinced that for awhile there will be no possible method of getting away from here at all. Therefore, let us be grateful that Fate has at least deposited us under a roof. And a roof beneath which there appear to be many comforts. A fire——”

  “Several fires,” interrupted Lydia.

  “Indeed? The odd situation grows more and more intriguing. Several fires. And tea laid, too. If no one returns in, say, the course of the next three months, we might perhaps——?”

  “We’re jolly well going to perhaps!” smiled Lydia. “Tea’s made, and we were just about to have it!”

  “So that was not really worrying you?” inquired the old man, turning to David again.

  “Oh! What was?” returned David.

  “It was my question. Surely, not the bread-knife? By the way, I do not see it on the floor.”

  “It was on the kitchen floor.”

  “Was?”

  “It still is,” interposed Thomson again, boldly trying once more to impress his negligible personality on the company. “We didn’t touch it. We left it there.”

  “That was most surprisingly wise. I take it, you did not wish to destroy the murderer’s fingerprints?”

  Jessie gave a little gasp. The cockney made his second contribution to the conversation.

  “Wot’s the idea?” he demanded, frowning.

  “Come, come! A bread-knife on the floor!” exclaimed Mr. Maltby, insisting on his cynical humour. “Would not that convict anybody?”

  “Not unless you found the corpse,” replied Thomson, making an effort to keep up with him.

  “Don’t disappoint me? Don’t tell me you cannot supply the corpse? A bread-knife on a floor, a boiling kettle, tea laid, an unlocked front door—and no corpse! Well, well, I suppose we must be satisfied, so let us be grateful and have tea. I am sure we all need it, and if the absent host manages to fight his way back through the snow and finds us making free with his larder and his crockery, I will deal with him. If he does not return, then we can leave behind us the price of the damage, and a note of gratitude. Eh? Personally, though you may not realise it, I am shivering.”

  “Oh, you must be!” cried Jessie. “Do come near the fire! Yes, that’s a splendid idea, we’ll leave a note and pay for it, and then I should think it would be all right. I mean, if it were the other way round and this were our house, wouldn’t we think so?”

  “I’m sure we would,” answered Lydia, jumping up. “Come on, let’s bring it here! It’s cosier than the drawing-room.”

  The tight atmosphere suddenly loosened. A small table was found in a corner of the hall and was placed before the fire; the tea things were transplanted from the drawing-room; and under the influence of the warm, comforting liquid and bread-and-butter—some had been cut, and more was added, but not with the bread-knife—their predicament assumed a happier aspect. Lydia, with one eye on Jessie, who was pluckily recovering faster than nature intended, had decided that there must be no more talk of corpses and fingerprints, and she kept the conversation lively with a racy account of their journey through the snow.

  “Of course, we were all perfect idiots,” she concluded, as she poured out second cups of tea, “and we’re in a funny mess, but in my opinion we’re luckier than we deserve, not excluding you, Mr. Maltby,” she added admonishingly, “and so I vote we make the best of it!”

  “Aren’t we?” asked Jessie.

  “We are,” nodded Lydia, “and we’re going on as we’ve begun! Nobody’s going to spoil my Christmas!”

  “Hear, hear!” murmured Thomson.

  Watching two attractive women out of the corner of his eye, and comparing them with his usual company at meals—and with the company he was going to—he had no present complaints. In fact, provided his nervous system could stand it—of that he was not quite sure, for his head was aching badly, but the tea and the fire gave him optimism—he believed he might welcome the eventual unearthing of a corpse, so that he could impress new stirring qualities upon these Venuses. “In any case,” he decided, with the deliberate daring of his fevered thoughts, “I’ll think of them to-night.” Yes, it should be a bigger aeroplane that crashed in his nocturnal fancies. An aeroplane for two. And a slightly larger cottage. Or what about a house-boat on the Broads? The aeroplane could crash near the house-boat, where he would have been spending a lonely holiday, studying birds, say, and he would bring them there, and give them his room, and sit heroically outside all night.... Atchoo!

  “I say, you are getting a cold!” exclaimed Lydia. “What about another log? And adding twopence to the bill?”

  David, squatting on a stool by the couch, carefully avoided Jessie’s bandaged foot as he bent forward and added a fresh log to the fire. The bandaged foot was a few inches from his nose. With the annoyance of an independent nature, he was trying hard not to notice it.

  “What about your story, sir?” he asked Mr. Maltby. “We’ve not heard that. How did you find this place?”

  “Yes, you left before we did, didn’t you?” said Jessie. “Do tell us what happened? We tried to catch you up, you know, but then the snow covered your footsteps; we really felt quite anxious about you!”

  “Please don’t tell me yours was a search party!” exclaimed the old man, “and that I have led you into this?”

  “Oh, no! We’d have gone anyway. Wouldn’t we?” She appealed to the others. “Don’t you remember, we were all talking about it. I think I was the one to start it, wasn’t it, or wasn’t I, I’ve forgotten? And then you suddenly jumped up as if you’d seen some one, and we thought we did for a moment, and we said perhaps it was Charles the First! Oh!” She turned to the cockney. “Was it you?”

  “Me? No!” exclaimed the common man. “I wasn’t on that train!”

  He spoke with startling vehemence. Mr. Maltby broke a short silence by remarking:

  “I came upon our friend—upon Mr.——?”

  He paused invitingly.

  “Eh?” jerked the man.

  “Some of us have exchanged names,” said the old man. “Mine is Maltby. May we know yours?”

  “Why not? Smith.”

  “Thank you. Now we shall know what to write on our Christmas cards. I came upon Mr. Smith just outside here. In fact, we almost fell into each other’s arms. I did think at first that he might be the person I saw leaving the train, but apparently I was wrong. How did you get caught in this terrible weather, Mr. Smith?”

  “Well, it ain’t pertickerly interestin’,” replied the cockney.

  “But we are interested,” insisted the old man.

  “Well, I was jest walkin’,” said Smith.

  “Yes.”

  “From one place to another, and the snow come on, and I got caught, like yerselves.”

  “Where were you walking to?”

  “Eh?”

  “We were trying to find another station,” said Jessie.

  “That’s right, so was I,” answered Smith.

  “Another?” murmured Mr. Maltby.

  “Wotcher mean?” demanded Smith. “I can try and find a stashun if I want to, can’t I, without arskin’ nobody’s permishun——”

  “I apologise,” interrupted Mr. Maltby. “I was merely wondering, since you weren’t on our train, why you should be searching for another station——”

  “I never said another! She did!” He jerked his head towards Jessie.

  “I apologise again. Which station were you looking for?”

  “Eh?”

  “I wonder whether it was the same as ours.”

  �
�Wot was yours?”

  “Hammersby,” said Jessie.

  “That’s right, ‘Ammersby,” nodded Smith.

  The old man frowned slightly.

  “Strictly speaking, Hemmersby,” he murmured.

  The atmosphere was growing tight again. All at once Smith turned on Mr. Maltby and exclaimed:

  “Well, now you’ve ‘eard abart me, wot abart you? I told yer I ‘adn’t nothin’ interestin’ to say, but p’r’aps you ‘ave?”

  “Yes, I have,” replied Mr. Maltby. “Quite interesting. When I left the train... ”

  Then he paused. His eyes wandered from Smith to Jessie, and from Jessie to Lydia.

  “You know, I haven’t had my second cup of tea,” he said.

  “You haven’t passed your cup,” answered Lydia. “Thank you. Yes? When you left the train?”

  “I’ve changed my mind,” he responded. “This isn’t the moment for ghost stories.”

  “When is the moment?”

  “Perhaps this evening, if we are still here, and if we are in the mood.”

  The cockney rose abruptly.

  “Well, I won’t be ‘ere, and I ain’t in the mood,” he exclaimed. “So long, and thanks, miss, fer the tea.”

  He walked to the front door.

  “Just a moment,” Mr. Maltby called after him, “you’ve dropped your ticket.” Smith paused, as he held it out. “Euston to Manchester.”

  “That ain’t mine,” growled the man.

  He completed his way to the front door and pulled it open. Snow poured in on him from the choked dusk. Something else came in, too. The echo of a muffled shout.

  “Hey! Help!”

  The man darted out, with David after him.

  CHAPTER V

  NEWS FROM THE TRAIN

  THE first thing David did on emerging from the front door was to pitch head first into a mound of snow. For a moment or two he nearly suffocated, while countless soft, icy pellets invaded his back as though he were being bombarded by silent salvos from heaven. Then he scrambled out, and strained ears choked with snow for a repetition of the shout. Already he had lost his sense of direction, for all he could see was a bewildering succession of snowflake close-ups, almost blinding vision.

  During the forty-five minutes he had been in the house the weather had travelled from bad to worse. Snow rushed at him unbelievably from nowhere caking him with white. He would have retreated promptly saving for the knowledge that somewhere in this whirling maelstrom was a man in a worse plight; but how to find the man, if his despairing cry was not repeated, seemed a stark impossibility.

  He made a guess, plunged forward, and sank waist-deep. Some one helped him out. It was Thomson, trembling and gasping. They stared at each other, their faces close. And, as they stared, the voice that had brought them from the warmth of the fire summoned them again.

  “Help! Some one! My God!”

  The voice sounded a long way off, but actually it was close. Stumbling towards it, Thomson suddenly went flat. The mound he had fallen over writhed. Two rose where one had just fallen.

  The addition was the elderly bore.

  He was hatless, blue, and frozen. He tried to speak, and failed. The snow that melted round his staring eyes had a suspicious resemblance to tears. The man who had pooh-poohed English snow was receiving more than his deserts.

  “Come on!” shouted David, flinging an arm round him.

  Clinging to each other grotesquely, they swerved round and began stumbling back. The bore went down twice, the second time bringing his rescuers with him. When they were once more on their feet, they found a vague feminine form before them.

  “Go back, you idiot!” croaked David. “Which way?”

  “Not the way you’re going, idiot yourself!” retorted Lydia.

  She directed them back. Inside the hall they sank down and gasped.

  “Well, what about Dawson City now?” panted David.

  The bore offered no reply. Even if he had been physically capable of speech, his bemused brain could not have directed his tongue. He lay in the large chair in which he had been deposited, his eyes fixed vacantly on the ceiling, his face a mess of melting snow. Not attractive at the best of times, he now presented a most unsavoury appearance, and was temporarily too distressed to worry about it.

  “This house is becoming a hospital!” Lydia whispered to Mr. Maltby.

  The old man did not hear her. He was gazing towards the closed front door. The wind was rising, sending doleful music round the house, and periodically rattling the windows as though trying to get in. Suddenly, unable to stand it, Lydia dived towards a lamp and lit it. The illumination glowed on a strange scene. Three exhausted men, recovering at various rates of progress, but none in a hurry; Jessie Noyes, with her bandaged foot, and struggling against a return of fear; Lydia herself, frowning and tense; and the old man still gazing at the closed door.

  “What is it? Do you hear anything?” demanded Lydia.

  “I hear a lot of things,” answered Mr. Maltby. “But not our friend Smith.”

  “No, he’s gone, and good riddance,” said David.

  “Very good riddance, if he’s gone,” replied Mr. Maltby. “We are to take it that he has succeeded where the rest of us would fail.” He gave a little shrug, and turned to the latest addition in the arm-chair. “When you have got your wind back we would like your story, sir. Meanwhile, to save your inevitable questions, here is ours. We all got lost. We all came upon this house. Necessity drove us in, and necessity retains us here. And apparently there is no one in the house excepting ourselves.”

  “Then, how the devil did you get in?” the bore managed to gulp at last.

  “The door was not locked.”

  The bore gazed round, and began to take notice.

  “Making yourselves at home, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “Thoroughly,” agreed the old man. “Will you have a cup of tea?”

  “My God! Will I?” Lydia poured him out a cup. He swallowed it too quickly and choked. “I don’t suppose anybody could rake up a towel?”

  This time Thomson obliged, fetching one from the kitchen.

  “And what time would you like your shaving-water in the morning?” inquired Lydia.

  In the process of mopping his face, the bore paused and looked at her suspiciously.

  “I’m glad you think it’s a joke,” he muttered.

  “The thought, I’m sure, is entirely self-defensive,” interposed David. “You remember, Tommy made jokes in the trenches. Or—er—don’t you remember?”

  “I expect I remember better than you do, young man,” retorted the bore, showing definite signs of recovery through the tea and the towel. He did not mention that his speciality during the war had been the making of munitions a long way from the sound of them. “But I am afraid my sense of humour isn’t any too bright at the moment. I’ve been through a hell of a time.”

  He glanced at Jessie, as the only possible source of sympathy. Nice little thing, that blonde ... nice to get to know....

  “Yes, will you tell us about the time?” asked Mr. Maltby. “We are curious to know why you left the train.”

  “You left it,” answered the bore.

  “And we were not thought highly of for doing so,” remarked David. “I seem to remember an uncomplimentary observation.”

  “Are you trying to pick a quarrel, young man?”

  “If you continue to call me ‘young man,’ I shall certainly pick a quarrel. Please remember that we’ve been through the hell of a time, too, and had the hell of a time lugging you out of a snowdrift.”

  “All right, all right, I apologise,” grunted the bore. “We’ve all been through the hell of a time. And, if you want the truth, I left the train to escape another hell of a time.”

  “What, did the train get on fire?”

  “It did not.”

  “What happened?”

  “Perhaps I could tell you if I wasn’t interrupted every other word.”

  �
��Sorry.”

  “Don’t mention.” He turned to Mr. Maltby. “Did you happen to see into the compartment next to ours, by any chance?”

  “Which one?” inquired Mr. Maltby. “There were two. The one you were sitting back to?”

  “Yes! How did you guess?”

  “You wouldn’t understand if I told you. No, I didn’t see into it.”

  “Did any of the rest of you?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Ah! Well, you were spared something. At least—well, that depends on—on the time it——”

  He stopped, and glanced again at Jessie. Her wide blue eyes were apprehensive.

  “Wonder if I’d better go on,” he muttered.

  “I think you had,” replied the old man. “If it is self-defensive to joke, it is also self-defensive to get used to shocks. The shock you are about to give us is unlikely to be our last.”

  “Oh, you know I’m going to give you a shock, then?”

  “There is nothing occult in my perception of that.”

  “Perhaps you know what the shock is?” exclaimed the bore, stiffening suddenly.

  “My dear sir,” remonstrated Mr. Maltby, “do not look at me as though I were a murderer! I did not kill the person in the next compartment.”

  The bore became limp again as Jessie stifled a little shriek. He flopped back in his chair, and gave another mop to his face with the towel.

  “Who—who told you—any one had been killed?” he gasped.

  “You did,” answered Mr. Maltby smoothly. “Emotions very highly developed frequently render words unnecessary. They progress along an ever-narrowing path, until at their peak they cease to be personal and achieve a universal aspect. We in this room merely appear to be different from each other when engaged on small concerns, but when we are fundamentally affected—with horror, love, excessive pain, excessive bliss—we are all the same.”

  “What the devil are you talking about?” muttered the bore.

  “Homicide,” replied Mr. Maltby. “Who is this person who has been killed?”