The Woman at The Door

by Warwick Deeping

  He had reached the big beech tree by the farm gate when he saw a man—or rather a lad—appear in the garden-space within the brick wall. The figure suggested to Luce the suddenness of wide-mouthed fear. It stood and shouted.

  “Tom, Tom!”

  A voice came from the farm buildings.

  “Hallo!”

  “There’s been a murder.”

  “What?”

  “Come over ’ere. It’s the boss.”

  Luce, standing very still under the shadow of the great tree, saw a man appear in the stable doorway. He had a bucket in his hand.

  “What’s the game?”

  “I’m not kidding. He’s lying—on the floor.”

  “Who, Ballard?”

  “Yes. Come quick.”

  The man put down his bucket and ran, though his running was a clumsy, bent-kneed business. Neither of them had seen Luce. He watched them both disappear into the porch doorway, and taking the psychological moment, he opened the gate and walked across the paddock to the farm. He arrived at the garden gate just as the pair reappeared in the doorway. The lad was looking scared, the older man rather pinched about the mouth and nostrils. And Luce produced his wilful anti-climax. He held up the jug.

  “Excuse me, can I get some milk here?”

  He caught the man’s bovine, contemptuous stare.

  “Milk?”

  “Yes.”

  The fellow spat. He was feeling a little queasy within.

  “Well, I should say not, guv’nor. We’ve got someat else to think about.”

  “O?” said Luce. “Someone—ill?”

  “Someone’s had his face blown in.”

  Luce stood his ground. So, there was no doubt about Ballard’s death. He may have looked sufficiently serious—even for a stranger, and he could suppose that he might be expected to show some interest in so sensational an event. Moreover, he was here to create a particular impression and to impose it upon any person who might be produced as a witness. He remained planted in the garden gateway, not obstructively so, but with the air of a man whose natural rights included some participation in any herd emotion.

  “Someone killed?”

  The man drew the back of a hand across his mouth, gave Luce a second stare, and seemed to be prompted by some other thought.

  “Seen the missis, Fred?”

  “No.”

  Luce was aware of them looking at each other. The lad had very pale eyes, and over them the eyelids flickered.

  “Supposing it’s—a double case, Tom?”

  The man turned about suddenly, walked back to the house, and paused in the porch as though listening, and to Luce the working of the man’s mind was almost audible. Should he go in and look for some possible and ghastly partner in this tragedy? But the inherent and heavy caution of the peasant mind seemed to prevail. He came down the brick path.

  “I’m not meddling. It’s a show for the police.”

  He appeared to address the remark to Luce, and Luce nodded at him. He asked a question.

  “Anyone else involved?”

  The man’s eyes narrowed.

  “There might be.”

  The lad was looking at the silent house as though it held other horrors. His mouth hung open.

  “I wouldn’t go in again, Tom, for—— Supposing she’s in there somewhere—with a face like——?”

  The man growled at him.

  “No, you wouldn’t! What’s more it’s just as well no one should be messin’ about in there. We don’t know.”

  He made a sudden movement towards the gate, and Luce gave way to him, looking very grave.

  “The sooner the police are called in—the better, I should say.”

  “That’s right, mister. ’Ere, you—Fred, carry on with the horses. I’m going to Brandon.”

  The lad glanced at Luce.

  “P’raps the genl’man will stay here.”

  Both of them looked at Luce, and it was then that the man was moved to ask him a question.

  “You ’aven’t got a car, sir?”

  “No; I’m afraid not. I live up at the Signal Tower. Only just settled in there. I’m afraid I can’t help you in that way. But I don’t mind staying for a little while—if my friend here—wants company.”

  He watched the man set out for Brandon, saw him open the gate by the beech tree and pull it to with a metallic clang from the iron catch. There was a finality about that sound; the machine had been set in motion, and Luce, following the lad to the farm buildings, realized how serious was his involvement. He was damning himself as an accessory, as a concealer of evidence; he had set himself to interfere with the machine’s inexorable progress; he was exposing himself to sinister suspicions. Well, what of it? He stood in the stable doorway, still holding that milk-jug as a symbol of his disinterestedness. Should he wait until the man returned with the village policeman? Was it good strategy to show himself as a casual and fortuitous super in the play?

  The lad passed him with a bucket, and went to a pump in the yard. Luce noticed that even while working the pump-handle he kept glancing in the direction of the house. The strange fascination of blood and violence, and of death! Sensationalism! People crowding to visit the place. Officialdom in charge! He was conscious of feeling nauseated, angered.

  The lad came back with the bucket, and paused in the doorway to stare at the house.

  “Shot in the face—he was. I wonder who done it?”

  Yes, everybody’s mouth would be asking that question, and with the same promptings of crowd curiosity.

  “I’m afraid I’ve no views. Who lived here?”

  “Just him and the missis. I wonder if she done it?”

  Luce did not respond to this challenge. He was beginning to feel restless, and to resent contact with details that would be pawed and picked at. More and more was he determined that she was to be saved from the sordid and the vulgar scrutinies of the crowd. Better—death! And then the lad reverted to the practical and the trivial. He glanced down at Luce’s milk-jug.

  “I got to get the cows in for milking. If you wait a bit, mister, we’ll manage a jugful.”

  Something in Luce writhed.

  “No, I won’t bother, but I’ll help you drive the cows in.”

  The beasts were in the next field, three shorthorns, and Luce went with the lad and walked back with him behind the stolid, pleasant creatures. They were half-way across the home paddock, when the lad became aware of the absence of some familiar detail in the day’s routine. He looked suddenly at Luce.

  “That’s funny, that is.”

  “What?”

  “Her dog ain’t about. He always was let off the chain first thing, and when the cows came in, ’e’d run over to meet ’em.”

  “I see.”

  “Besides—if he was still on the chain—there—behind the house, and something was funny, he’d be—’owling.”

  Luce agreed. It occurred to him to pull out his watch. How long had that fellow been gone? Nearly forty minutes. Should he hang about here any longer just to create a particular impression? He slipped the watch back into his waistcoat pocket.

  “I think I’ll be getting back. Breakfast, you know.”

  “You won’t have no milk with your tea.”

  “I have some tinned milk. You don’t mind being left?”

  “Not with the beasts about. They’re company, mister.”

  Luce gave him a nod and a faint smile, and walked off towards the farm gate. He was within ten yards of it when a figure in blue on a bicycle came into view. The constable dismounted at the gate, saw Luce and stared at him.

  “What’s your business here?”

  The question was sufficiently abrupt and aggressive to make Luce realize that he had a particular type to deal with, common man in authority. He did not like the look of the fellow. The constable was tall and lean and goat-like; his weather-reddened skin was stretched tight over a thin nose, eyes were grey-blue and a little insolent, lips compressed. Hard, aggre
ssive and supercilious, he was not the ordinary fresh-faced, good-humoured Bobby.

  Luce was consciously but casually polite.

  “Good morning, officer. I had just come down to try and get some milk here, but I am afraid there has been rather a sad business.”

  The constable’s goat-like eyes scrutinized him across the gate.

  “Milk.”

  Luce’s hand displayed the jug.

  “Yes, I’m practically a stranger here.”

  “Where do you come from?”

  “I’m up at the Signal Tower.”

  The man unlocked the gate, pushed it back, and wheeled his bike through. After a second stare at Luce he became a little less curt and arrogant.

  “All right, sir. I’m wanted here.”

  “Good morning, officer. Is there any other place near where I could get some milk?”

  “Nothing nearer than Brandon, sir.”

  “Thanks. That’s rather a long way, but I suppose I’ll have to try it.”

  Luce made his way back up the lane, feeling that the penal code at its crudest had materialized in the person of the policeman. What mercy or human sympathy could you count on from a fellow of this type? At the moment Luce might have been looking at life through the eyes of Rachel Ballard, but his consciousness became more male and personal when he found himself alone among the trees. That meeting at the gate had involved him finally and completely in the tragedy, unless——. And what was the alternative?—that she should give herself up, pretend that she had spent the night in the woods, and conceal all knowledge of Luce and the tower.

  Otherwise? Yes, that fellow in blue would accuse him of having wilfully tampered with the case, which would be true. He had become an accessory. He was condoning and concealing homicide. They would begin to question his motives. Even his eccentric behaviour in coming to live alone in so solitary a place might appear—sexed and sinister. He was on the edge of his own particular and human precipice.

  Also, what effect might his interference have upon her fortune if society discovered that he had attempted to conceal her and to obstruct the course of justice? Would not cynical people infer——? Undoubtedly. Ought he not to advise her to obey her first impulse, to confess that there might be safety in surrender? But that was the very thing that he had felt moved to resist. To hand her over to communal justice as it was symbolized by the face of that policeman!

  It was during his return through the woods that separative man in him shrank from the complete consistency of the rebel’s choice. He had to act and think for her, not for himself. But what was his decision to be?—and of necessity it would demand instant action. For the moment he felt himself walking rather blindly back to her hiding-place, unable to convince himself either one way or the other.

  He found himself in the presence of that strange and solitary building. What did it suggest? That circumstance and solitude were somehow in league with him? The open lower window was like a mouth emitting some secret message. In a crisis such as this how did one come to a decision? Did one come to it consciously, or was emotion the key that unlocked the door?

  He was conscious of feeling profoundly perplexed as he mounted the steps to the tower. He slipped the key into the lock, turned it, and opened the door, and as he did so it occurred to him to wonder whether she was still there. What if she——? And then he heard the swift movement of her feet. He had closed the door and relocked it when she joined him.

  “O, my dear.”

  One look at her was sufficient. Quickly, he put the jug down on the window-ledge and took her into his arms.

  “You’ve been frightened?”

  “Yes.”

  “Someone has been?”

  Her face was against his shoulder.

  “No—just—fear. When you had gone. The horror of everything. O, my dear, I’m so cowardly.”

  One of his hands lay upon her head as though sheltering it. He knew now that the decision was being made for him.

  “I understand. You want life, my dear, not what man may choose to give you. I understand. We’re against the whole world, you and I.”

  And instantly she protested.

  “O, no, no, that can’t be. I can’t let you be compromised.”

  He was aware only of her pale, distracted face.

  “But I have done that, my dear, already. There is going to be no turning back for us.”

  XI

  It took Luce an hour to pacify her and to convince her that he was in earnest. And what, when he had persuaded her to agree that they could be a law unto themselves, did he mean to do? Yes, what did he mean to do? Hide here for a while? And then?

  He asked her if she did not realize that many such riddles were left unsolved, and that he was determined to try and flout the law. It was obvious that no one had seen her, and that her disappearance might remain a mystery. They would search the woods, drag the ponds and explore the rivers. A description of her would be circulated all over the country. Even the ports would be watched.

  And then? She confronted him with tragic eyes.

  “Hasn’t it occurred to you, Rachel, that a life may be reborn and lived out elsewhere?”

  Her lips moved.

  “But—you?”

  She saw him smile.

  “I’m just a lone man, one of those easy, dreamy old idiots who can live—anywhere.”

  Did she understand him aright? But was such a future possible? And if she loved him,—as she did?

  “Ruin your life, John,—I?”

  “Isn’t the real life—inside one? I have a feeling that some things are meant to happen. I don’t think I want to be alone again.”

  “But even if we succeeded, we should be—outcasts?”

  “Not quite, my dear. I have always been happy away from the crowd.”

  Meanwhile it was very necessary that every detail should be decided upon and all eventualities foreseen. She should sleep in the second floor room while he occupied an improvised bed on the floor of the living-room. It did not seem to him likely that the tower would be searched, but it behoved them to be prepared for such an occasion, and he remembered that there was a large, built-in cupboard in the room on the top floor. In the case of an alarm she was to lock herself in that room and shut herself up in the cupboard. It would be his affair to bluff the searchers, assume an air of amused candour, and exclaim, “Now, where the devil did I put that key?” Obviously, he would be unable to find it, and he did not think it likely that they would insist on forcing the door.

  He went up to look at these two upper rooms. The locks were fairly stout, and would defy mere perfunctory curiosity. Moreover, he felt himself capable of creating an atmosphere of friendly candour. “You can take my word for it, there is no skeleton in my cupboard.” He was not the sort of person whom they would be likely to suspect, and so far as he knew no living soul could say that he and Ballard’s wife had met each other. He stood at that upper window, thinking. What his immediate need? Food for two people. And then? A pair of woman’s shoes, a hat, and various accessories. The purchasing of food would be easy, but the procuring of feminine accessories would be a far more difficult affair. It would be dangerous for him to try and buy them in the neighbourhood. Yes, he would have to go to London, and purchase each article separately. But—a woman’s hat?

  Meanwhile, the food question challenged him. His stores were running low, and she might have to remain hidden here for days. He would walk into Brandon and visit the village shop. He was a large man and could claim a large appetite, and the careful buying of food need not raise suspicion. Moreover, they could ration themselves.

  He descended the stairs to find her sitting beside the body of the dead dog. It occurred to him instantly that the body of the dog would have to be hidden until he could bury it. That cupboard upstairs would serve.

  He spoke to her gently.

  “I feel I ought to go into Brandon and lay in some more food.”

  “Must you, John?”

  �
�Yes.”

  He explained the details of his plan to her. They had to take every precaution against a surprise visit. The dog’s body could be placed in the cupboard, and at night he would bury it in the woods. He took Peter in his arms, and she followed him up the stairs. He showed her the cupboard and gave her the key of the room.

  “You understand, dear. If anyone should turn up while I am away, run up to this room and lock yourself in.”

  She stood mute and motionless. It occurred to him to wonder whether he had persuaded her to accept the finality of their conspiracy against fate. He had the key of the green door in his pocket. He gave it to her.

  “That’s my pledge, Rachel. Remember, that if you show yourself now—it might be fatal to both of us. They will be searching the woods. Someone might see you leave this place.”

  She let the key lie in her palm. Then her fingers closed upon it.

  “Yes. I understand.”

  2

  Luce was on his way to Brandon with his camping haversack slung over his shoulder when he met two men on bicycles in that deep and rutty place where the Ford van had got itself bogged. With the trees in full leaf the track was even more like a green tunnel, but the ground had dried into caked furrows. The leading man dismounted from his bicycle, partly because the track was treacherous, but also because he was not very sure of the way. Luce saw that he was an inspector of police.

  He spoke to Luce.

  “Are we right for Beech Farm?”

  The inspector was a fresh-faced man, large, well fleshed, and essentially human, and Luce smiled at him. This big, blond creature was to his liking.

  “I’m a newcomer here, but if you turn left when you reach the heath, I think the path takes you down to the farm.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Nice and fresh after the rain.”

  “You’re right, sir.”

  They wheeled their bicycles over the rotten ground, mounted and rode on, and Luce went his way, not sorry that he had met the man who would be in charge of the case. Even this trivial coincidence might be of some value, in that human contacts can be given useful significance. Luce felt that, if he chose, he could stroll up to the inspector and be treated as an interested and privileged member of the public. He found himself wondering whether the news of the tragedy had reached Brandon village. If so, it would be public merchandise in the village shops. But on that serene morning Brandon seemed pleasantly interested in nothing but its own affairs, and far less vocal than the rooks in the high elms. Luce’s first visit was to the shop that retained its privilege of providing articles of universal utility, from brooms to sausages. Already he was on friendly terms with the owner, and could assume an air of gentlemanly playfulness.