The stair was enclosed on either side—a little winding stair running up between two walls. Another stabbing flash sent Caroline round the turn. She put her fingers in her ears and leaned against the wall. There could be no question of going out into a storm like this. The whole house seemed to shake as the thunder pealed overhead.
She felt that she was shaking too. She had never minded a thunderstorm before; now, for the first time in her life, she knew herself to be upon the edge of panic. She shut her eyes and tried to steady herself. The noise diminished. The wall against which she leaned began to feel solid again. She told herself that the storm had passed overhead and was going down the river. She let her hands drop and moved away from the wall.
When she opened her eyes, she saw above her a very faint streak of light. There was a door a few steps up, and the light came from under it. It was just a thin pale streak, but it meant that there was someone in the room. Caroline had a feeling that someone else’s company would be pleasant. She could say that she had lost her way in the passages.
She went up to the level of the door, and as she lifted her hand to knock, the light of another flash flared up from behind her and below, and a crash more violent than either of the others followed. Urged by a blind instinct for shelter, Caroline opened the door.
She was inside the door and leaning against the jamb with the door shut behind her before the second crack of thunder came. She could not have moved to save her life. The shock, the impact, the mere sound, was beyond anything she could have imagined. After a little while she was able to take her breath and gather her bewildered thoughts. She was inside the room from which the light had come, but there was so little light that she wondered why she had seen it. She was in the room, but she could not see it at all, because a four-leafed screen covered the door, one panel being flat against the wall on her left, whilst the other three zigzagged out from it at an angle.
Caroline took her hand from the door and moved forward, following the line of the screen. It was tall and solidly made, a heavy old-fashioned piece of furniture covered with dark crimson rep. She had taken about three steps, when, in the room on the other side of the screen, someone spoke.
“Do you think it’s going over?”
Caroline stood still just where she was. She had only heard that voice once before, but she would have known it anywhere. It was Nesta Riddell who had spoken. Beyond any possibility of doubt it was Nesta Riddell.
Someone answered her.
“Yes, it’s going over. It’ll draw down river now.”
Caroline had never heard this voice before, or any quite like it. It reminded her of a fly in treacle, or a voice heard in a thick muffling fog. It had a peculiar soft tonelessness that blurred the words, and the pitch never varied.
“Then we’d better get on with it,” said Nesta. “That last crash put me right off—but I shall have a train to catch presently, and I’ve got to know about Jim before I go.”
Caroline had taken another step, but these words halted her. She had not meant to listen, but when Nesta said, “I’ve got to know about Jim,” she knew that she was going to listen. If there was anything to know about Jim, she was going to know it. She heard the soft sound of someone moving, and the gurgle of water or some other liquid. The smooth toneless voice said,
“Look into the pool.”
“What shall I see? Suppose I don’t see anything.” This was Nesta.
“I don’t say you’ll see, nor what you’ll see—there’s no saying. If you don’t see nothing, there’s no harm done. Look in the pool.”
Silence fell on the room—a curious silence, enclosed by the sound of restless, hurrying wind and distant thunder. It was like the still place at the centre of the storm. Caroline edged forward and looked round the screen.
The room was full of a half light except for one bright patch—a Victorian room, with a round walnut table between the windows, crimson rep curtains closely drawn, a faded carpet with moribund rose wreaths on a mustard ground, a mantel-drapery of crimson plush with an edging of little silk balls, and photographs everywhere. There was a fire on the hearth banked down with coal dust. In front of it on a black wool hearth-rug stood a reading-lamp with a piece of black velvet draped round its shade. The light was directed downwards upon a bowl of dark blue glass which appeared to be full of ink. It was about the size of a hyacinth bowl, and it stood on a stool with a worked cross-stitch top. On one side of this stool Nesta Riddell was kneeling, and on the other, in a low armless chair sat a plump elderly woman. This must be the other Caroline—Caroline Bussell, Nesta Riddell’s cousin, the housekeeper at Packham Hall. She wore a dark stiff dress buttoned up to the throat, where a collar of hand-made crochet was fastened by one of those large old-fashioned brooches which contain quite a substantial quantity of hair. She had a pale flat face, pale and plump, and a tight curled fringe of faded hair controlled by a net. Her hands lay in her lap. She leaned forward over them, watching Nesta.
Nesta Riddell had taken off her coat. Her rose-coloured jumper caught the light as she bent over the bowl of ink. Her hard handsome face had a look of frowning intensity. Caroline had the feeling that she and Caroline Bussell were a long way off. She stopped being afraid that they would see her or notice her presence. They were enclosed in that odd concentrated silence.
There was no sound in the room at all, and the sound of the wind and the thunder was drowned in a steady downrush of rain. Time did not seem to pass; it stood still. Caroline stood still, with her hand on the edge of the screen. She looked at Nesta, and Nesta looked into the bowl of ink.
All at once the silence broke. Nesta said in her hard voice,
“I can’t see anything but fog.”
“Sometimes the fog comes first,” said Caroline Bussell. “Maybe it’ll clear away.”
Nesta had lifted her head a little. She bent it again and stared into the ink. The air in the room felt heavy and hot. The dark curtains hung straight at the two low windows. On the other side of the glass hung the heavy curtain of the rain.
“There’s nothing but fog!” Nesta’s voice was fretful. She jerked back suddenly on to her heels. “There’s nothing but fog going up and down like waves—it makes me giddy. I’m not going to look any more. I didn’t come all the way here to do the thing myself either.”
Caroline Bussell spoke in her smooth voice.
“You’ve not got the patience—it needs patience. And you mustn’t have your thoughts all churned up neither—you might as well go stirring up the mud in a pond and then expect to see clear to the bottom.”
“Do it yourself!” said Nesta sulkily. “That’s what I came here for. If I could do it, I’d have done it at home, and no need to come all this way.”
Caroline Bussell leaned down and took up the bowl of ink. She set it in the hollow of her lap and drew the lamp so that the light shown upon it. All her movements were slow, smooth, and noiseless. Caroline thought of a snake’s coils moving without seeming to move—a smooth brown snake. The light from the lamp shone down on the bowl of ink and on two pale, plump hands and a fold of smooth brown skirt. Nesta Riddell was just a shadow now.
Caroline began to feel afraid. She didn’t like Nesta, but she wasn’t afraid of her. It was Caroline Bussell who was making her afraid, sitting there in her respectable Victorian clothes practising some secret art. The time seemed endless before she spoke, swaying forward a little.
“Ask—the fog is lifting.”
Nesta knelt up. The movement brought her almost to the edge of the light again.
“Where’s Jim? That’s what I want to know. Where is he?”
Caroline Bussell began to speak slowly and monotonously.
“I see the fog lifting—waves breaking—a ledge on a cliff—he is on the ledge—”
“What’s the good of that? That’s the part I know! I don’t need you to tell me what I know already! I want to know about Jim!”
Caroline Bussell put up one of her plump hands.
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p; “You have broken the picture. Perhaps it was not what you think—perhaps there was something you did not know.”
“What?”
“You did not give me time to see. You broke the picture, and it will not come again.”
Nesta made an impatient movement.
“Come down to present day! Where is he now?”
Caroline Bussell put up her hand again. Then she leaned over the bowl of ink. Her brooch caught the light. It had a rim of pale plaited gold. The stranded hair within it was pale—old pale hair, in a pale gold rim. She spoke again.
“Windows—blue—windows—up to the ceiling and down to the floor—no, that’s curtain—blue—narrow—like slits—windows like slits—narrow—one, two, three, four—I’m in the middle of the room—I must turn round—one, two, three, four, five—five narrow windows like slits—”
Caroline felt cold water run down her spine. Caroline Bussell wasn’t looking into the ink pool now. The bowl was in her lap, but her hands had fallen; they hung straight down at her side like pale, heavy weights. She had lifted her head, and sat stiffly upright with her eyes fixed on some point above Nesta’s head. The light that struck upwards showed her eyes pale and set. Her lips hardly moved as she spoke.
“Five windows—like slits—”
That was the Blue Room at Hale Place. She had said blue. How did she know? Cold drops kept running down Caroline’s back.
“Is he there? Can you see him?” Nesta’s voice was low but insistent.
“No—not there.”
“What room is it? Why do you see it if he’s not there?”
“He has been there—I can feel him there—I am in the room—I am turning in the room—I am counting the windows—one, two, three, four, five—five windows—like slits—and blue curtains—now the fireplace—deep hearth—china candlesticks—one of them is broken—I think he broke it—now the door—I am still turning—he came through the door—fear jumped out at him and he ran away—I am turning again—there is a bed set back in the wall—headpiece, footpieces, and four posts—the bed draws him—if he reaches it—no, not yet—not now—because of the other—”
Nesta leaned closer.
“What room is it? Where is it? Why do you keep on describing it? Where is it?”
Caroline Bussell sat silent.
“Can’t you see where it is? You haven’t told me anything at all.”
“Eight—green—stones—” said Caroline Bussell.
Nesta made an abrupt movement.
“Where are they? In that room? Are they in that room?”
“Eight—green—” She swayed a little, stiffly like a figure carved in wood. “Eight—green—stones—five windows—like slits—I am counting the windows—”
“You’ve counted them!” said Nesta angrily. “You don’t need to start all that again! Get back to the stones! Where are the eight green stones?”
Caroline Bussell swayed from side to side. The white of her eyes showed all round the iris. Her voice dragged.
“Five windows—blue—count—one, two, three, four, five—hearth—door—bed—”
“Where are the emeralds?” said Nesta in a furious whisper.
Caroline Bussell gave a violent start. She said in a loud, heavy voice, “He’s alive,” and the bowl of ink tilted over. The ink ran down over her brown skirt, soaking into it. The bowl slipped off her lap and broke.
Nesta jumped up with an angry exclamation, but after that one violent start Caroline Bussell sat quite still, blinking her eyes. She did not seem to notice the ink that was soaking into her dress. After a moment she said in a bewildered voice,
“Did you know that he was alive?”
Caroline took three steps backwards and opened the door. The dark winding stair was before her. She went down half a dozen steps on tiptoe, holding her breath, and then ran as if there were wolves behind her.
XXIV
It was more than an hour past midnight when Caroline came to Hale Place again. Instead of going to bed at ten o’clock, or, if she had a very exciting book, at a quarter past, Pansy Ann had broken all records by staying up till nearly twelve. For nearly five hours she had talked about Robert—his looks; his character, temperament and disposition; anecdotes of his infancy and youth, as provided by old Mrs Arbuthnot; his school prizes; his industry, his perseverance, his steadiness, his filial piety; the designing females who had wished to marry him, and the firmness with which he had repelled their advances; his house, his servants, his favourite dishes; his drawing-room carpet, and whether a new one could be substituted, with excursions into furnishing in general and Pansy Ann’s own preferences in particular. It was an avalanche of Robert, a Robertian landslide. When at eleven o’clock Caroline, exhausted, had managed to say good-night and reach her bedroom, she found it not a refuge but a trap, for after a bare ten minutes Pansy knocked at the door and, wrapped in a dressing-gown, sat down on Caroline’s bed and devoted another hour to Robert.
Out in the dark, with the damp air blowing in her face and the trees of the avenue making a soft swishing sound overhead, Caroline had her first chance of thinking over the events of the afternoon. The more she thought about them, the more they frightened her. If Elmer Van Berg died and Susie went to the police with her story of Jim’s fingerprints.… Caroline simply couldn’t force her thought any farther. It encountered an icy wall of fear and shuddered back.
She passed to the scene in Caroline Bussell’s room. The woman terrified her with her smooth voice, and her hints, and her pool of ink. But she hadn’t looked into the pool while she described the Blue Room. She had looked straight past Nesta’s head with fixed eyes, and what she saw was not her own plush-draped mantelpiece with its photographs and its china vases, but the Blue Room at Hale Place. Nesta had asked about Jim, and Caroline Bussell had described the Blue Room at Hale Place. She hadn’t seen Jim in it; she had just described the room. And Nesta had asked about the emeralds—Susie Van Berg’s emeralds—eight green stones; and again Caroline Bussell had described the Blue Room. Caroline wondered, shivering, whether she knew what room it was, and where. She felt sure that Nesta didn’t know.
How could Susie Van Berg’s emeralds be at Hale Place? How could they be in the Blue Room? Caroline Bussell had never said that they were there, but she had described the room. She had described the room, and she had begun to describe the bed..… Was it possible? Nesta had stopped her. If she had only known..… “No, it’s silly to feel so frightened. She doesn’t know—she doesn’t! Suppose Caroline Bussell tells her.… She mustn’t—oh, she mustn’t! Hurry, hurry, hurry—hurry and tell Jim!” She ran the last part of the way and came breathless to the back door.
It was open; not just unlatched, but wide, stark, staring open, and that halted Caroline. She had brought a torch with her this time, and she sent the little bright ray questing ahead of her before she entered. Where was Jim? She had thought that she might find the door shut against her—he had forbidden her to come again. He might have locked her out. He might be sleeping in one of the rooms upstairs. He might be in the Blue Room asleep in the four-post bed. But if he did not expect her, why was the door wide open? And if he expected her, why was he not here?
All at once she felt the ray of her torch was a danger. Suppose yesterday’s burglar had returned. Suppose Jim were not here.… She did not wait to suppose any more, but turned off her torch and went through the hall and up the stair in the dark. The house had an empty, friendly feeling. It did not frighten her to be alone in it. Generations of her own people had gone up and down these same stairs, had been born and married and had died in the dark rooms on either hand.
She came to the door of the Blue Room and, feeling before her, found it open too. She knew that the room was empty even before she crossed the threshold. She stood in the middle of the floor and switched on her torch again. This was what Caroline Bussell had seen with those pale, fixed eyes—five narrow windows like slits, with the blue curtains drawn across them and hanging to the floo
r. “I am in the middle of the room—I am turning—” That was what Caroline Bussell had said. Caroline Leigh stood in the middle of the floor and turned slowly, counting the windows as Caroline Bussell had counted them—one, two, three, four, five narrow windows like slits. Then the fireplace—two candlesticks on the shelf, one of them broken, with the candle lying beside it.
She went on turning. Caroline Bussell had said, “I am still turning.” The door came next, then a space of wall, and then the recess that held the bed. The torch shone on the wall and flickered over the bed foot and the two carved pillars.
Caroline went on turning. In a moment she would have made the circle of the room. Caroline Bussell had not made the circle, because Nesta had broken the picture. Caroline sent the ray of her torch straight to the head of the bed, a piece of massive carving supported by pillars. The pattern of the carving was an apple-tree with Adam and Eve on either side of it, and in the middle of the tree a shield with the arms of Ralph de Burgh, whose heiress had married a Randal and brought this bed with her. The arms should have been there, a castle and three spear-heads, but—Caroline caught her breath. The beam wavered in her shaking hand. With both hands on the torch to steady it, she came up to the bed.
The shield stood out at an angle like a door and showed a dark cavity behind it. Caroline knew the trick of it well enough. Jim had showed it to her when she was fourteen. You twisted the third apple from the bottom, and it turned the latch which held the shield in place.
Outrageous Fortune Page 16
