About an hour later she started out to the bus-stop in the lane. It was only fifty yards from the gate and she was in plenty of time for the bus, but suddenly she remembered that she had forgotten to bring a letter that she had written to her mother. She had time to fetch it, so she turned back to the house.
She ran up the stairs and opened the door of her bedroom – and came face to face with Mrs. Buckle.
She was standing near the dressing-table, propped up on her two sticks. At sight of Isobel, her face flushed painfully. Her eyes, usually so direct and candid, became nervously evasive.
“I – I just wanted to make sure everything was all right for you up here,” she said, speaking too hurriedly and smiling too brightly. “It’s so long since I have even been upstairs. You don’t mind, do you?”
Mrs. Buckle’s bedroom, where Isobel had supposed she was lying down as usual after lunch, was on the ground floor.
Isobel found she minded far more than she could say. But she was in a hurry. She did not want to miss the bus. So she only muttered something, snatched the letter and ran out.
But, sitting in the bus to Wallcliff, her anger flared up and as soon as she arrived she did something which she realised she had been wanting to do almost since her first day at the stone cottage. Going to a telephone, she rang up the Wallcliff Record and asked for Michael Howarth.
He happened to be in the office, but was not free to leave it until much later in the afternoon. Without asking any questions as to why Isobel wanted to see him, he suggested a café where they could meet at six o’clock.
Long before that time she had started to wonder just why the sight of Mrs. Buckle in her room should have made her so hot-headedly get in touch with Michael Howarth. But still, at six o’clock she went to the café and was sitting by the window when he arrived.
For a moment, she thought that he looked as fierce as he had sounded on that first afternoon. But as soon as he came in and she met his direct but rather anxious brown eyes, she saw that there was very little real pugnacity about him.
Before she had a chance to explain herself, he started talking quickly.
“Miss Allen, I’m so glad you telephoned, because I have been wanting to apologise for that frightful scene I made. When I think of it – the fatuous things I said – and your face, the calm way you looked at me, showing me what a fool I was making of myself – I tell you, I wake up in the night, sweating at the memory. I’m not like that usually. I hardly know how any of it happened, except that I’d just had a bad shock and for a little while I was almost out of my mind. But really I’m not like that.”
He gave her a smile, diffident and attractive.
“Then you didn’t actually mean any of it?” Isobel asked. If he didn’t, it took all point out of their meeting.
“No, of course not. How could I? That’s to say – ” He was still speaking fast and excitably, leaning towards her across the small table. “It’s awfully hard to put it in just the right words. I’d had a shock and, before I’d had time to cool down, I made a scene and put myself hopelessly in the wrong. It was appalling, wasn’t it? And you, just arrived, standing there, quietly showing you thought you’d strayed into Bedlam, but too nice to say so – I was hardly outside the gate before I realised what I’d done. I almost came straight back to apologise, only I don’t suppose that woman would have let me in.”
“But if you didn’t mean it, what did you mean?” Isobel said. “That’s why I wanted to see you today – to ask what you meant when you said I had come to a dangerous place. You see I know about your sister and why she left and – ”
“You mean you know their story of why she left,” he interrupted.
“Isn’t it true, then?”
“Of course it isn’t true. My sister – well, all right, you don’t know her and you think I’m prejudiced. All the same, I can tell you there is nothing crooked about Connie. She is an ordinary, hard working, nice, well-balanced girl and she went out there to do that job because she was genuinely sorry for that wretched woman. Heavens, when I think of it – ”
His square face reddened.
“She thought she could hang that rotten accusation around Connie’s neck for life,” he went on. “And here’s the worst of it – she can! Because Connie won’t fight back. She won’t try to clear herself. She has gone away, taken a job in Bristol, and says she isn’t coming back and never wants to hear the thing mentioned again. So there you are. She only told me about it just before she went away, in case I heard it from somebody else. That was the shock I mentioned that sent me out in a furious temper to Gilbury.”
“But what did happen, then?” Isobel persisted. “If your sister didn’t write that letter to the shop in Wallcliff and order all those things, who did – and why?”
He cocked his head a little on one side.
“You know, I believe you have run into trouble,” he said.
“No, I haven’t.”
“Then you’re afraid you’re going to.”
“No.”
“Yes, you are. I believe something has happened to scare you and make you grasp the simple fact that Mrs. Buckle doesn’t intend to let her sister leave her. Because that was all there was to what she did to Connie. She had nothing against Connie herself. But with Connie around, Miss Chantry was free to go back to London and she was meaning to go, too, in another day or two, when the thing happened.”
“No,” Isobel said. “No, that couldn’t possibly be true.”
“Why not?”
“Because Mrs. Buckle isn’t like that.”
“All the same, isn’t that what’s worrying you – that she might be?” The waitress came then with their order. While she bustled around them, Isobel looked frowningly out at the street.
The problem was, of course, that she didn’t know exactly what was worrying her, apart from the startled, furtive look on Mrs. Buckle’s face and the sudden flaming of her cheeks when Isobel had come upon her in the bedroom.
“As much as anything, I suppose,” Isobel said at last, looking back at Michael Howarth when the waitress left them, “I’ve been worrying about what you were like. How much you had meant what you said about my being in danger.”
“Because you thought that might tell you something about Connie? Like brother, like sister – that sort of thing?”
“I suppose so.”
“And because knowing something about Connie might tell you something about that woman and what she may have in store for you?”
“No – I simply don’t believe you’re right about that. Although I suppose you honestly think you are,” she added.
“Well, there’s something you ought to remember,” he said. “Mrs. Buckle has been through far worse things than you or I know anything about. To be dependent on her husband for everything and then to lose him – that might have unbalanced anyone. In a way I don’t blame her as much as the impression I give. I boil at the thought of what she did, but at the same time I realise I’ve never had to face anything approaching her misery and that, if I did, perhaps I’d do worse things. The person I blame most is Miss Chantry.”
“Because she won’t stay?”
“No. Because she let her sister get away with what she did! That was horrible – that Miss Chantry didn’t stand up for Connie.”
“But how could she have known – ”
“Oh, she knew. I was sure she knew, that day when I went to see her. There was something about the way she got angry that didn’t ring true. She was somebody getting angry to stop herself admitting anything. She was covering up for her sister and feeling guilty about it.”
Startled, Isobel looked up from the plate before her. He had put into words something which she herself had obscurely felt during her first talk with Jean – particularly when she had seen the look of relief on Jean’s face when she had not gone on questioning her about the Howarths.
Beginning to feel cornered, as if in another moment she might find herself admitting the possibility of w
hat Michael Howarth believed about Mrs. Buckle, Isobel moved restlessly.
“Oh, let’s talk about something else!” she said feverishly.
He went on looking at her for a moment, then gave a smile.
“Why not?” he said, and began to tell her what it was like to be a reporter on a very insignificant newspaper in a town like Wallcliff. He talked very cheerfully and freely and his doing so somehow drew Isobel out to talk, too, in a way that she found surprising.
Ignoring the time, they both turned deliberate shoulders to the increasingly impatient waitress. But at last they had to leave.
Isobel was standing in the doorway of the café, looking out into the street, while Michael was waiting for his change, when a country bus arrived at the near-by bus-stop. Only an elderly woman got out of it, then the bus went on. It was when it was almost past her that Isobel saw Jean inside it.
Jean had not seen her. She was staring straight ahead of her and there was an odd rigidity about the set of her head, as if she were in the grip of some intense excitement.
Puzzled, Isobel gazed after her and, when Michael joined her in the doorway, she gestured after the bus.
“Where does it go?”
“To the station,” he said. “Why?”
She did not answer for a moment and he repeated the question.
She gave a slight start and said:
“Oh, I just wondered.”
They spent the rest of the evening in a cinema and Michael saw Isobel on to the last bus back to Gilbury. Waiting in the queue at the bus-stop, they agreed to meet again soon and then both at the same time fell silent. It was an easy silence, as if they felt that there was a great deal more for each to say to the other, but that this was not the time when it could be said.
As the bus came in sight, Isobel looked up at Michael and he took her by surprise by quickly and firmly kissing her on the lips. Then he stepped out of the queue and strode away.
A stout woman, standing next to Isobel in the queue, had to prod her with an elbow to bring her out of a dazed dream and get her to climb on to the bus.
When she reached Gilbury she found the house in darkness. That meant that Mrs. Buckle had gone to bed, so Isobel let herself in quietly and crept softly up to her room.
The first thing that caught her eye was a half-open drawer.
For the last hour or two she had forgotten all about finding Mrs. Buckle in her room, but now she went quickly to the chest of drawers, opened one drawer after another, then closed them all carefully. She sat down on the edge of the bed. There was no doubt about it – someone had been looking through her belongings.
She tried to tell herself that it was not important. She wanted very much to think that it was not, because now she wanted to stay. She wanted to see Michael again.
So what ought she to do? Protest to Mrs. Buckle tomorrow? Say that if she did not trust her, or for any reason wanted to be rid of her, she would leave at once? On the other hand, perhaps it would be best to say nothing about it, giving Mrs. Buckle time to grow out of her distrust – if that was what it was.
Still undecided, Isobel went to bed, having forgotten, because of all the things that she had on her mind, to wind her alarm-clock.
Consequently, it did not wake her as usual at half-past seven. When she woke, it was a few minutes to eight and she could smell sausages cooking.
So Jean, she thought, had returned after all, the evening before. But why had she not roused Isobel?
Tumbling out of bed, Isobel started to dress in a hurry.
When she went downstairs, her mind was still foggy with sleep, but even so she became aware that the house was strangely silent.
Afterwards she remembered how she had been struck by that silence and how, when she opened the door of the long sitting-room to go to the kitchen, the silence had seemed to turn into something solid and of brutal strength, overpowering her like a great, dark, moving wave as she saw what was in the room.
Mrs. Buckle lay on the floor, sprawled in dreadful stiffness in front of the dead fire. Her eyes were open, her face was clay pale. Her sticks had fallen near her.
At one side of the hearth, the little coffee-table had been overturned and the sherry decanter and two glasses were on the carpet beside it. The dining-table and the floor around it were littered with broken china and spilled food. The reading lamp was shattered.
And, adding a sharp accent of unnatural horror to the ghastly situation, it seemed that someone in the kitchen was placidly cooking sausages for breakfast.
To have reached the kitchen, Isobel would have had to pass near to the dead woman’s rigid feet. And this was more than she could do.
With her heart pounding, she tried to raise her voice. But even as the words came out, she heard a click from the kitchen and realised that, of course, there would be no answer. There was no one there. Probably there had been no one there for hours. The sausages were in the oven and the oven had been turned on by the automatic time-switch, which had now just turned itself off.
Isobel and Mrs. Buckle were alone in the house – had been there alone together all night.
Jerking herself away from the supporting doorpost, Isobel ran upstairs to Jean’s bedroom. It was empty and the bed had not been slept in. The cupboard doors stood open. The clothes were gone.
Going downstairs again, holding the banisters tightly because the walls around her were spinning, Isobel went to the telephone.
Instinctively, through a blur of tears, her fingers began to dial the Wallcliff number which Michael had given her the evening before.
For an instant she felt steadied and comforted to hear his voice. But the next moment this little feeling of security faded, for he was telling her to telephone the police immediately.
“Listen,” he said. “If things are as you say in that house, you must get the police before you do anything else. And I’ll be out there with you as fast as I can get there.”
That was what she had wanted to hear.
“Yes, please – come quickly, Michael!”
Ringing off, she started to dial the police-station. But before she had any answer from it, someone knocked on the front door.
Startled and unreasonably frightened, she sprang to open it. Dick Fogden stood there.
“That woman!” he exclaimed excitably, as Isobel stared at him. His long, mild face was agitated and flushed. “I tell you, I’d never have believed it – that she would walk out and leave her sister. But she has just rung me up from London to say so. Asked me to come over here and find out if you were all right. You – not Alison.”
He stopped, peering at Isobel, the fact clearly entering his mind that she was not all right, that something was very much the matter.
“What’s happened?” he continued more calmly. “Jean said they had a quarrel – something to do with some jewellery. I didn’t understand a word of it. Where’s Alison?”
Isobel could not answer. She gestured towards the sitting-room. Dick Fogden hesitated, then strode forward. At the doorway he gave a cry. Then there was silence.
After what seemed ages to Isobel, though it was only a minute or two, he came out again. His face was haggard and his jaw trembling.
“So Jean – did that – and went away,” he said. “No!” Isobel cried sharply.
“Oh, yes.” He gave a slow nod of his head. There was an emptiness in his eyes that scared her.
“She almost told me so herself,” he said. “She wanted me to see that you were all right. She thought of you finding this.”
“That can’t have been what she meant,” Isobel said. “This happened after she left – it must have.”
“Do you know when she left?” he asked.
“Yes, I do, I saw her in Wallcliff, in a bus going to the station. It was the bus that leaves here at seven-forty.”
“That’s what she told me – that she and Alison had a quarrel about some jewellery and that she left on the bus and wasn’t coming back. She said – ” He frowned, tr
ying to recall Jean’s exact words. “She said she thought she’d done the only thing there was to do.”
“She can’t have meant murder!”
“Then who else did it? You? Me?”
“I don’t know. Someone who broke in after she was gone. Anyway, we ought to be calling the police.”
He exclaimed then in astonishment that she had not already done so and reached quickly for the telephone. Leaving him with it, Isobel went to the door and took a few steps out into the garden.
It was with a wonderful lifting of the heart, only a minute or two later, that she heard, through the singing of the birds in the brightness of the morning, a motorcycle in the lane. Then Michael was at the gate. Isobel rushed to meet him and flung herself into his arms.
She started speaking quickly, because she wanted to tell him as much as she could before he met Dick Fogden. But Michael began muttering to himself that, as usual, he had been almost criminally insane to let her return to this house last night, when it had been so obvious that she was in trouble. “Michael, listen – please, listen!” Isobel begged. “Dick Fogden is in there, telephoning the police and no doubt telling them that Jean Chantry murdered her sister. And he has been saying something about a quarrel between Jean and Mrs. Buckle over some jewellery. But none of it makes sense. Someone must have broken in here after Jean left. She couldn’t have murdered her sister. She loved her.”
Michael held her a little away from him, looking down at her. “Darling, I love you so,” was his only answer.
“Oh, Michael – !”
“Yes. I wanted to get that in, just in case I go and make a fool of myself in there. I always seem to make a fool of myself when you’re about. But if I do, try to remember how terribly I love you – even if I was a fool last night to let you come back to all this.”
Isobel’s eyes were shining in her pale face.
“How could you possibly have guessed anything about it?”
“Because it was plain you had been having trouble with Mrs. Buckle, so I ought to have suspected something.”
The Casebook of Jonas P. Jonas and Other Mysteries Page 7
