The Woman at The Door

by Warwick Deeping

  “Rachel.”

  He heard a key turning in the lock. So, the lad’s knocking had alarmed her, and she had fled upstairs to the upper room.

  “It’s all right, dear; only a telegram.”

  She put her hands in his.

  “I had just finished laying the table, John, when that knocking began.”

  “It’s just as well that I locked that door. No, the telegram was of no importance. We’ll go down and eat. But just one word of warning. We must not talk down there. If two voices were heard by some Listening Tom.”

  She nodded at him.

  “Yes, John.”

  “And there is one thing I want you to notice about the table. I have been making friends with the police inspector. Supposing, that for the sake of allaying any suspicion I had brought him in for a drink? I think you had better stay upstairs when I am out.”

  Then, he remembered his minor purchases, and produced them from his pocket.

  “All that I dared buy. Our shopping has to be surreptitious.”

  What a present for a lover to produce, a comb, a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste! but she held the things in her hands as though they were very precious.

  “I can’t pay you, John. I haven’t a penny.”

  He put an arm round her.

  “Is that going to worry us?”

  Below, he paused in the sitting-room doorway with his arm about her, and pointed at the table. She saw at once how the laying of those two places might have betrayed them. He felt the quick intake of her breath.

  Her lips moved, but no sound came from them. She turned her head, looked up at him, nodded. And then she went to the stove. She had four of the sausages he had brought back ready for frying. Sausages! How very unromantic, and yet how completely so!

  This dumb meal was less silent than it seemed. She was very quick to catch the meaning of his glances and his gestures. Moreover, he went and fetched a writing-pad and pencil, and scribbled notes for her to read. Was she worrying about poor Peter? No. He would bury the dog after dark. Yes, the woods were being searched, and for the next few days they might expect the casual and the curious to be in evidence. Also, he was going down to the farm to help in the search, collect rumours, and impress upon the world a conviction that he was no more than a disinterested supernumerary.

  He scribbled a final warning.

  “Better not wash up or do anything that would make the slightest sound while I am away.”

  Then he burnt the scribbled page, leaving the ash in the grate, kissed her, and went out to see what the world down yonder was doing.

  3

  He found them dragging the farm pond.

  More police were in evidence, keeping casual curiosity at a distance. A young constable, posted at the farm gate, had challenged Luce.

  “What’s your business, here, sir?”

  Luce had smiled at him, and said that he had been helping in the morning’s search, and that he had a piece of information that might interest the inspector. The constable had let him through.

  The dragging of the pond had as yet produced no results, and Luce, joining Inspector Ford, was allowed to stand and watch.

  “By the way, Inspector, I don’t know whether it might have any bearing on this business, but I met the dead man a few days ago.”

  “Where, sir?”

  “He called on me. He had a proposal to make. But that was of no particular significance. What did impress me——.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That Ballard was not quite—sane.”

  “In what way, sir?”

  “He wanted me to sublet part of the tower. I refused. Well, a man who is normal does not lose his temper badly over a mere incident like that.”

  “He lost his temper?”

  “Remember, we were complete strangers. He was so savagely insolent—that if I had been a little younger—I might have kicked him down my steps.”

  The inspector was watching the pond.

  “Yes, and he had that reputation, sir, and if his wife’s disappearance did not lead us to suspect——.”

  “He could not have shot himself?”

  “The doctor has examined the body. It could not have been a case of suicide.”

  “I see. I’ve known of a case where a dog knocked over a gun.”

  But the inspector had ceased to listen to him. The iron drag had emerged with an object impaled on one of its hooks, a woman’s shoe. A constable freed it from the hook and brought it to his superior. Luce watched the inspector’s large hands turning the shoe over and over. What would he make of it?

  “Go on dragging, Carter. Sims, go in and bring me a pair of shoes from the bedroom.”

  The shoes were brought and compared with the one that had been recovered from the pond.

  “Same size. This hasn’t been in the water long. Too good a shoe to throw away. Worn down just a little at the heel.”

  Luce listened and watched, but he did not ask to be allowed to examine the shoe.

  “A three—by the look of it. Any number visible on the other shoes, Sims?”

  “Yes, a three, sir.”

  “Good.”

  The voice of the man on the drag rope was heard to exclaim excitedly: “I’ve got something, sir.”

  All eyes were on the pond. The dripping rope ran in, and a dark object came to the surface in the shallows, a battered car with its handle caught by the hooks. No one smiled.

  “Not much use to us, Sims. How deep is that water?”

  “Pretty deep in the centre, sir.”

  “Go on dragging. One of you put on those waders, and take a pitchfork and probe around.”

  The search continued, but the Beech Farm pond surrendered no more secrets. It retained in its mud that second shoe, and if the police were puzzled, Luce was ready to allow them to play with that problem. It was not reasonable to assume that a woman would throw one shoe into a pond, or even to wade into it wearing only one shoe.

  He filled and lit a pipe.

  “I’ll be getting back, Inspector. I’ve got a neglected garden on my hands. I thought I would come down and mention that—incident.”

  The big man was vaguely courteous. The public had a passion for providing one with vestigial information.

  “Much obliged, sir.”

  And Luce idled off, hands in pockets, his pipe stuck in the corner of his mouth.

  XIII

  On that second night she protested. She had taken both his room and his bed, and if there were to be improvisations, why should she not share in them? And perhaps, in pleading, she had raised her voice forgetfully, and he had shaken his head at her and pointed to the open window.

  “Be careful.”

  For the night was black and still, too black and still for the work he had to do, bury the dead dog, and he had changed his plan. He had meant to bury the dog in the woods, but to blunder about among the trees on such a night was not practicable, and he remembered that he was engaged in digging the garden. Freshly turned soil would not attract attention here, and if he laid poor Peter three feet deep in the soil, no casual spade would be likely to disinter him. Meanwhile, he had suggested that she should go to bed, for he was sitting up with the lights out until one in the morning. Even ghosts and late lovers would not walk at that hour, and in the soft soil of the garden his spade would be almost soundless.

  He had to take her by the arm to the foot of the stairs, and here they stood whispering.

  “I have slept in all sorts of places, my dear, in ditches and on cabin floors. Don’t waste your pity.”

  “But take the mattress, John. I can manage with the blankets.”

  “I won’t. Good night, dear. I’m sitting up late.”

  She seemed to hesitate for a moment, and then she put up her face and kissed him.

  “Good night, my dearest dear.”

  She was gone, and he listened to her footsteps, and supposed that the argument about the bed was over. He walked back into the sitting-room, pick
ed up a book and sat down. A deal floor, a rug and a blanket and a couple of cushions offered more space and foundation than a couple of basket chairs. Moreover, he was not one of your lean creatures whose bones make ready contact with concrete reality.

  Time for reflection! But very soon a little sound disturbed him, movement upon the stairs, the rubbing of some soft substance against the walls. He had left the door half open, and he might suppose that she had forgotten something, but why this secret, surreptitious descent? Something was pushed softly into the room, the mattress of his camp-bed.

  She was half-way up the stairs before he reached the door. He followed her up, with the rolled-up mattress under his arm.

  “Rachel.”

  Her voice answered him from the other side of the closed door.

  “Please, John.”

  Trying the door, he found it locked.

  “I’ll leave the mattress on the landing.”

  “No, John, please.”

  And then he realized that it would be graceless to refuse her.

  “All right. But you shouldn’t have done it. Do you know how to make a sleeping-bag of the blankets?”

  “Yes, I can manage, John.”

  When he had made up his bed, Luce put out the light and sat down at the open window. The dog’s body had been brought downstairs and was lying in a cupboard in the vestibule. The night was very dark and still, no wind in the trees, a few stars visible, and to Luce there was a finality in the silence and the darkness. It was both obvious and mystical, cloaking and containing the complex collectivism of man. Neither metaphysics nor metapsychics could transcend the policed and placarded social scheme.

  Yes, this was finality, outlawry, and yet he did not question the sanity of his choice. A great emotional experience carries its own justification. Two days ago he had been a middle-aged dilettante dawdling through the time-space illusion; now, he was a man, almost primitive man, alert, cunning. And how desperate indeed was their outlawry! They had taken to the woods. They could be hunted.

  Had he been too final? What if he had tried finesse, spun a tale for her and persuaded her to tell it? But would she have told it, and if she had, would society have accepted the story? An angry man threatening to shoot a dog, a struggle for a gun, tragedy! And would not society have asked why she had run to take shelter with another man?

  The inevitable sex nexus! Even a recluse can be wise as to the world’s cynical smile when sex becomes postulated, and no doubt the world was right. Subtilize the problem as you will, was not sex—even in its ultimate tenderness—the raw earth out of which all loveliness grew? Yes, he had been wise to choose a ruthless and desperate finality.

  Even the burying of her dead dog was of profound importance, a secret and devoted act done in the darkness. He waited two hours since the quenching of the light. He had left the spade ready by the steps. The night should be safe now. He rose and stood by the window, and was just able to distinguish the shape of the big pear tree. The very stillness of the night reassured him. He went out with the dog’s body, locking the door after him; he found the spade, and walked to where he had been turning up the weedy soil. Placing the dog on the ground, he set to work. It did not take him long to dig a deep and narrow trench. He laid the dog in it, shovelled back the earth, treading it down so that there should be no surplus soil. He left the top spit loose, knowing that he could go over the ground in the morning, remove any suspicious subsoil, and rake out all footmarks.

  He had stepped back on to the undug ground, and had shouldered his spade when a sudden sound startled him. It suggested the cracking of a piece of dead wood. The night was so still that the fracture of a mere twig could make a noise like the snapping of a full-grown branch. Luce stood stock still. Woodlands at night could produce you strange noises, but on such a night as this nothing could be taken for granted. Was someone on the prowl? But who? A tramp? He stood rigid, listening. And then he was convinced that he could distinguish the movement of feet along the sandy path beyond the shaggy laurels. Thank God, he had locked that door. Some intuitive streak of cunning made him get slowly and silently to earth. He lay prone, flat among the weeds like a skulker in no man’s land.

  A moment later he was to bless this inspiration. A beam of light flashed out beyond the laurels. It seemed to feel its way like a finger probing the darkness. At the gate in the fence it became an eye whose glare lit up the wooden slats. Someone with an electric torch! Everything behind that white eye was invisible to Luce. He saw the beam swing in and strike towards the tower, and now the shape behind it could be distinguished, a man in dark clothes. Luce saw him steal up to the steps and flash his light on the green door. He mounted the steps, tried the door, and came slowly down again. Luce, lying prone with his chin on one fist, was suddenly aware of his other hand clutching the spade just as he had clutched his rifle amid those shell-holes in Flanders. He held a weapon and the elemental man in him would have used it. His teeth were clenched; he was breathing through pinched nostrils.

  The torch was sending wavering beams hither and thither, and then Luce realized that the intruder was exploring the outside of the tower. That finger of light groped its way up to the lower window. Luce could see the man’s back, and separated from it by a faint crescent of paler substance, the dark swell of his head-piece. A police helmet! His dear friend, P.C. Pook?

  A second later Luce’s face was down among the weeds. The light had swung round and was playing over the surface of the garden. Would it reach him? Would that damned fellow come trampling across the soil? By God, if he did——! And for a moment he was savage man, clutching his weapon. The edge of the spade smashing through that helmet! He could remember saying to himself, “Good God, don’t be a wild fool!” He raised his head two inches, looked, and saw the beam of light travelling away from him.

  It disappeared round the corner of the annexe, and Luce took his chance. He got on his feet, and stooping, put ten yards more ground between himself and the tower, and going to earth again, lay watching. He saw the beam of light re-appear beyond the tower. It wavered hither and thither for a few seconds, and then went on towards the gate.

  Had he been seen? Most certainly he had not, or authority would have challenged him. And suddenly the light went out. He heard the click of the gate, and the sound of footsteps passing away along the path into the woods.

  What an escape! He was sweating. If the thing had happened a few seconds later that damned limb of the law might have surprised him walking back to the tower with a spade over his shoulder. And what explanation could he have offered? That he had been burying the household rubbish at one o’clock in the morning? Or going to dig for a badger? The inevitable investigations by daylight, some patch of sandy subsoil betraying deep digging! He lay there with his chin on his fist. He did not move for fully an hour, for might not Mr. Curiosity be still on the prowl?

  At long last when he did get on his feet Luce did not make straight for the tower steps, but went round by the back of the tower and came to them that way. He stood for a little while, listening, before mounting the steps. Would Authority send up another star-shell? He felt the flurry in his fingers as he probed for the keyhole with the key. He opened and closed the door with immense and deliberate carefulness.

  That sudden craving for tobacco! Yes, just like the war. He filled his pipe, yet even the striking of a match seemed tempting providence. But a pipe was a necessity, and to kindle it and maintain the illusion of darkness, he put a blanket over his head, and lit a match. How good the tobacco tasted! And again he was reminded of the war, and of a half-starved man’s relish of simple things after some bloody occasion. Had he forgotten how to kill his man, smash in a head, as he might have smashed the head of that prying police constable? There was a wildness in him that night.

  But he lay down and slept as he had sometimes slept in the war, like a fierce but tired animal, and next morning he was out early with spade and rake, prepared to parade a show of industry should anyone come explo
ring. The spot where he had buried the dog showed a powdering of lighter soil, and he raked the surface for some yards about the focus until the shades of colour were undistinguishable. Nor did his attention to detail end here. He dug for an hour, and here and there he purposely brought up some of the lighter subsoil and left it as camouflage.

  About seven o’clock he was shaving when he heard her on the stairs, and he went and closed the window.

  “Excuse my soapy chin.”

  Surely, outlaws should be gaillard people, but while smiling at her, he watched her eyes. Had she slept? Was she suffering from any flutterings of sentiment? He was beginning to despise mere sentiment.

  “What would you like for breakfast, John?”

  Admirable sanity!

  2

  When Brandon saw Mr. Temperley wearing his Panama hat and brown linen coat it could say that summer had come, and proceed to the casting of clouts. Also, it is probable that Brandon village assumed that it knew all that was to be known about Mr. Temperley, what he wore and what he ate, and when he went to bed, and what his old handmaids thought of him. In this particular case familiarity had not bred contempt, for this little old emperor of a man with his white head and his vivid face and those eyes that looked black in certain lights, was very much a person. Mr. Temperley was believed to know the whole of Brandon’s business, and Brandon, in its cock-sure moments, could and did return the compliment, which was mere vanity. That there might be quite another and strange old gentleman concealed in that familiar flesh was beyond Brandon’s imaginings, not the Mr. Temperley who sat in his cane-backed chair amid deed boxes and legal manuals and estate maps; nor was it the Mr. Temperley who pruned his standard roses. That other essential and secret self had not mortgaged itself to society.