‘Well! I reached Northerley and walked out of the station towards the sea. My satchel and case were not at all heavy, and I decided to stroll along the front until I came to a hotel I fancied, for at this season of the year there would be no difficulty in securing accommodation at any hostelry I chose. The scene was just the kind I liked. A sea breeze was beginning to blow—somehow there is always a sea breeze at Northerley—and the surf rang out in those short heavy barks which so often presage a rising wind and a falling glass; clouds sailed steadily across the sky, rain lashed my face. To my right the lights of Northerley lay strung out like diamonds on a black velvet thread, with pendants of coloured stones here and there, where a cinema sent out its orange or purple glow. On the left, the lights tailed away after a few hundred yards, and the sand dunes on which the place was built resumed their sway, looming vaguely against the dark sky. I put down my case and stood a moment, considering. The more expensive and luxurious hotels lay to the right, but the unbridled sea to the left; my right promised more creature comforts, my left, more romance.
‘While I hesitated, the sharp tap-tap of a woman’s high heels sounded to my left; I looked in that direction and saw Tiger Lily, swinging briskly along on very high heels. Her back was towards me, but it was Tiger Lily without a doubt; that pale glossy hair, that velvet beret, that shoulder curve, were hers. Amused by my own decision, I nevertheless decided to let her appearance settle my question for me; I picked up my case and at a discreet distance followed her along the promenade. She continued for a few hundred yards beyond the last high-powered lamp, then suddenly dived down a narrow lane at the side of one of the buildings, which continued here, though more sparsely than before. I walked along and looked up at the front of the place. A large brass scroll over the façade announced it as the Audley Private Hotel. It looked cheerful, with plenty of white paint and glass about it, and spring flowers on the tables by the dining-room windows. I went in.
‘The interior of the Audley Private Hotel did not quite live up to its outside appearance, but it was a pleasant place enough; a homely, comfortable, cosy boarding-house, run by a good solid north-country woman who believed in blazing fires and plenty of nourishing food. The wireless was allowed to stay on rather longer than I liked, and the numerous oil-paintings of stags at bay and waterfalls in thunderstorms made the lounge a little pompous; but the arm-chairs were deep, the linen spotlessly clean, the mattress on my bed (I punched it as a test) well-sprung; they gave me a fire in my room and the hot water was boiling. There was a slight delay in showing me to my room because, it appeared, my chambermaid was not on duty; but as soon as she remembered this, Mrs Whitaker, the proprietress, a stout buxom kindly soul with white hair and a wheeze, in purple silk, bustled upstairs herself and saw me comfortably installed.
‘When I came down again she bustled out of the office to ask me, with her kindly smile, whether I was hungry. It was long past the dinner hour, and I was loath to give trouble, especially on an evening when as it seemed they were short-handed, so I asked merely for coffee. It came promptly, steaming hot, with a fine plate of sandwiches besides; Mrs Whitaker put it down by me herself, beaming. She was now wearing a fur coat over her purple, and a velvet hat; I know little of women’s clothes, but I saw that her gloves were fur-lined and her neat shoes new and well-polished, and from her whole air, as well as that of the Audley, I judged that her banking account was what we in the north call a “warm” one. (Meaning, my dear Matthew, that no financial draught blows chill upon it.) She bade me good night, and went out by the front door, letting in a great gust of sea air as she did so. From the remarks the other guests in the lounge exchanged after her departure, it appeared that she always took “a constitutional” thus, at this hour.
‘The other guests, Matthew, as they emerged from their newspapers and began to talk, had little that was striking about them. Tiger Lily was not amongst them, at any rate for the moment. There were two thin neat spinsters, permanent residents at the Audley and rather apt to stand on their dignity on that account. There were several middle-aged mothers of families who had obviously come to Northerley to convalesce after a tiresome bout of influenza, and several fathers of families ditto; these all seemed rather desolate without the families aforesaid, and discoursed at length about their children. I listened perforce, and heard the beginning, crisis or end of many domestic dramas of which their recounters rarely perceived the real significance. They were sharp enough about each other’s affairs, however, and sharpest of all about the widowed Mrs Whitaker’s; they put their heads together and lowered their voices lest the receptionist, a prim lady with piled-up black hair and high cheekbones, who was now making out bills in the little office, should hear them, but could not refrain from the topic of Mrs Whitaker’s wealth and Mrs Whitaker’s son.
‘A little difficult, Mrs Whitaker’s Alfred, I gathered; she spoiled him; he never had worked as he should; a fine hotel like this waiting for him, and he preferred to live in Manchester and do something or nothing in an insurance office; ah, but did he prefer it, or was it his mother who made him go? This last question was canvassed hotly, so that our voices rose rather beyond discretion, and Miss McCorquodale thought it best to come out to us. In a dry Scots tone she made detailed inquiries about our comfort, which effectually stemmed the flow of scandal, and finished us off by asking if we would care to have her mend the fire. She gave us such an accusing glance as she spoke that it was plain she meant to have a negative reply to such an extravagant suggestion. Accordingly we all gave repudiating murmurs and shook our heads, and as soon as we could, shuffled off to bed.
‘I slept splendidly, without a dream, though I was dimly conscious of wind and rain; I awoke only when the chambermaid came in next morning to raise my blinds. As she stood there with her arms, in their grey print, raised above her frilled cap and neat fair head, the sunshine poured in, turning her milky cheek to rose, her pale hair to gold. She turned, and I started; for those were the wide nostrils and golden eyes of Tiger Lily. She moved about the room, arranging towels and hot water, and I watched her covertly. She no longer wore her angry tigress look, or if she still had a feline air, it was of a tigress full-fed. She finished her duties, and left without a look towards the bed; I watched the muddied heel of her strong shoe vanish, and felt surprise that she should appear contented in those shoes and those clothes.
‘The dining-room of the Audley was a cheerful place this morning, with its row of windows looking out over the now blue and sparkling sea. There certainly had been heavy rain in the night, for the Promenade still gleamed wetly, and the iron seats, outlined in drops, glittered in the sunshine. Mrs Whitaker did not appear at breakfast, which seemed to cause the guests of longer standing than myself some surprise. As they passed the little table laid for two, demurely hidden behind a palm, where Miss McCorquodale was just finishing her last cup of tea, they all greeted her and asked for the proprietress in varying tones, which yet all showed that Mrs Whitaker was wont to share her receptionist’s early meal. The breakfast provided for the guests was solid and enjoyable; we all had nothing to do all day, so we did not hurry; we were still sitting over our first smokes and our newspapers in the lounge when the clock was well on its way towards eleven. Miss McCorquodale was busy in the office, with her everlasting accounts; of Mrs Whitaker I had as yet seen nothing this morning.
‘Suddenly a strong gust of wind rustled all the newspapers; we looked up, annoyed, and saw that the front door had been burst open by the onslaught of a young man in a considerable hurry. He was thin and dark and wiry, with drooping lids and an unshaven chin which gave him a dissipated air; he wore the usual tweed overcoat and soft felt hat of the young provincial clerk of to-day, with the addition of a long white muffler, much rumpled and rather dirty, twisted carelessly round his throat. He was certainly in a great state of excitement, for he tripped and almost fell over the rugs as he rushed across the lounge.
‘‘Corky!’ he shouted, puttin
g his head in through the little window. ‘Corky!’
‘‘Good morning, Mr Alfred,’ replied Miss McCorquodale without enthusiasm.
‘So this is Mrs Whitaker’s son, I thought with interest; the difficult one, who is spoiled and lives in Manchester.
‘‘For God’s sake, Corky!’ cried Alfred, his dark eyes glittering and his fingers twitching with excitement. ‘How did it happen?’
‘‘How did what happen, Mr Alfred?’ demanded the McCorquodale repressively.
‘‘Hasn’t anything happened? My mother’s all right? It was a hoax, then?’ cried Alfred. ‘Thank God! But who could have sent it? You didn’t send it, Corky, surely?’
‘‘If you’ll tell me what you’re talking about, Mr Alfred, I’ll tell you whether I had anything to do with it or not,’ said Miss McCorquodale severely. ‘At present, I just can’t make head or tail of you, and that’s the truth.’
‘She gave a pointed glance towards his hat; Alfred impatiently snatched it off, then leaning back against the office wall, pulled out of his overcoat pocket the torn orange envelope of a telegram.
‘‘Look, Corky,’ he said in a hoarse tone. ‘I got this shortly after eight o’clock this morning. Read it.’
‘The receptionist took out the telegram. Her change of expression as she read was so startling that all the guests, who for some time had been keenly if covertly interested in the dialogue, now cast all pretence aside and listened shamelessly. What we heard was sufficiently surprising.
‘‘Come at once, your mother is dying,’ read out Miss McCorquodale. She stared at the young man for a moment in horrified silence. ‘But, Mr Alfred!’ she broke out then: ‘It’s all ridiculous—your mother isn’t ill—she’s safe and sound in her room. At least, I think she is!’ cried the good creature, suddenly blanching. She ran out of the office and climbed the staircase in a stumbling sprawl, calling: ‘Lucy! Maud! Lucy! Mrs Whitaker!’
‘There was a scurry of feet above, but no cry of reassurance. Alfred Whitaker went to the foot of the stairs and stood there, looking up eagerly, waiting; without quite meaning to do so we all clustered about him. Footsteps sounded in every direction above our head, and fragments of conversation clamoured at our ears. ‘But, Lucy, surely you saw her.…No, madam.…Yes, madam.…No, Miss McCorquodale, she wasn’t there when I took her tea.’
‘Miss McCorquodale appeared at the head of the staircase, her good decent face a blotched and contorted mask. Tiger Lily, and another maid in uniform, came behind her.
‘‘She isn’t here,’ whispered the receptionist. ‘She isn’t anywhere. Her bed hasn’t been slept in. Nobody has seen her since she went out for her walk last night.’
‘She sat down on the top step and burst into tears.
‘‘But the telegram!’ cried young Whitaker, turning towards us, his sallow face lined with worry. ‘The telegram! Who can have sent it? It isn’t signed. My landlady brought it up to me in bed, this morning. I’d been at a dance last night, you see, that’s why I was a bit late this morning, and she brought it up to me in bed. It seems as if somebody must have known something about my mother’s—disappearance, if that’s what it is.’
‘‘May we see the telegram?’ demanded one of the spinsters, eagerly.
‘‘I think you should inform the police immediately,’ I said.
‘‘I suppose we should—yes, certainly,’ replied Alfred in a dazed tone, drawing the telegram from his pocket again and holding it out for all to see.
‘We all crowded to look over his shoulder. I too had taken a step and bent towards him, when I heard a stifled exclamation from the head of the stairs. I looked up; Tiger Lily was glaring at me with the same fury in her lovely eyes that I had seen the night before. She has recognized me, I thought, by my limp and glasses, I suppose; but why this anger now? I looked down at the telegram, which read, in the tapes of pale print these new machines inflict on us:
‘And as I looked, I knew, in one lurid flash, why Tiger Lily was angry at my presence.
‘For the thin first finger of Alfred Whitaker’s long sallow hand bore a ring with a green stone which I had seen before.
***
‘And that, my dear Matthew,’ read the young man, beginning the last sheet, ‘is my whole story. You’ll say there’s absolutely nothing in it? Perhaps not. But it all fits so well, doesn’t it? Put it this way: Alfred is in debt, and needs money. Mrs Whitaker has already given him too much, and won’t give him more. There is the usual entanglement with the girl—he would see plenty of his mother’s maids if he lived at the Audley, and it would be easy enough to get entangled with Tiger Lily. Mrs Whitaker begins to suspect this entanglement, though not its full extent, and sends her Alfred to Manchester to be out of Tiger Lily’s way and do some work. But Alfred has debts, and Tiger Lily is difficult, and—though I shrink from writing this—they decide to murder Mrs Whitaker, who is old and wheezy, on her evening walk. (I can’t forget how often I heard them say: sand, in the sand.) In the morning Tiger Lily sends the telegram—with a false name on the back, of course, and from the station, at one of those little wooden pigeon holes through which only the hands can be seen—and Alfred’s landlady brings it to him while he is still in bed. Which is meant to prove, don’t you see, one, that somebody else, presumably the murderer, knows that Mrs Whitaker has been done in; two, that it happened in the night; and three, that Alfred has been in Manchester throughout that period. Alfred makes a great fuss, rushes off to Northerley, demands to see his mother, thinks the telegram may be a hoax; oh, decidedly it is not Alfred who can have done this deed! That is what he wants us to think, Matthew. He has a well-faked dance alibi for last night, you notice, and takes the trouble to tell us about it at the first opportunity. But it is faked, Matthew, because you see, I can break it. He was at a station distant only twenty minutes from Northerley, between eight and nine last night. And I can prove it. Or can’t I? That’s what I want you to tell me, Matthew. Am I just being a fool? Allowing a dark station and a whisper and a ring and my own overworked nerves to make a fool of me? But in that case, why should Tiger Lily hate me so? No— I think murder’s been done, Matthew. The police have been notified, and are searching high and low for Mrs Whitaker; they’ll find her in the sand dunes, I believe. Dead, certainly. Very probably strangled by that long white scarf.
‘Meanwhile, as I write this, Tiger Lily passes often through the lounge, and her eyes are more the tigress eyes each time they rest on me. I wish I were well out of Northerley. I’m leaving by the first possible train. Alfred is supposed to be helping the police in their search; but is he? I’d give a good deal to know the whereabouts of that young man, for I’m greatly afraid that he’s a murderer.
‘Well, that’s the whole story, Matthew; you shall advise me on it to-morrow. It’s not yet quite time for me to catch my train; but I think I shall leave now—I’m tired of Tiger Lily’s eyes—and perhaps take a little snoop round those sand dunes, myself. If she is found there, strangled, poor Mrs Whitaker, that would decide me to tell the police what I know, at once.
‘Till to-morrow, then. What sort of a show I shall make at lecturing to-night, I really do not know!
‘Ever yours,
‘W.Q.M.’
***
The sallow young man in the reception office of the Audley Private Hotel refolded the letter, and gave a quick look round him. The lounge was empty. He stepped out of the office, crossed the lounge, and halted by the fire which blazed on the hearth. With another furtive look about him, he suddenly threw the sheets he had been reading into the brightest flame. He took up the poker and rammed them viciously home, beat at them and scattered them to make them burn the faster. When they were ashes he stood erect, and laughed.
At this moment a fair young girl in maid’s uniform brought in an evening paper on a tray. Her face was mutinous, and she seemed about to make some fierce complaint; but a door opened upstair
s, at the sound the young man shook his head vehemently at her, and she was silent. The young man, hearing footsteps on the stairs behind him, opened the newspaper and glanced at it with a casual air.
A name caught his eye. ‘Sir Thomas Cadell,’ he read, ‘is making excellent progress towards recovery from his recent attack of influenza, and hopes by next week to be able to resume his university duties. During his illness Sir Thomas, we are told, was not informed of the disappearance of his friend Mr William Quarmby Manetot, as he was not in a fit state to receive any bad news. It is now thought possible by the police that Sir Thomas may be able to shed some light on the movements of Mr Manetot, for it appears he was in communication with Sir Thomas the day he disappeared.’
The newspaper dropped from the young man’s hand, and he stood silent, staring in front of him.
‘What are you looking at, Mr Alfred?’ demanded the girl in a petulant jeering tone.
‘Sand!’ said the young man hollowly.
The House of Screams
Gerald Findler
Gerald Findler is, by a country mile, the most mysterious of the contributors to this anthology. This story was rescued by Robert Adey from the highly obscure Doidge’s Western Counties Annual, an illustrated publication combining fiction with a directory of people, places and services. Adey is the world’s leading expert on locked room and impossible crime stories, and he was so impressed by Findler’s tale that he included it in The Art of the Impossible, co-edited with Jack Adrian.
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