The Dower House Mystery

by Patricia Wentworth

  “Yes, I want to tell you how I came to take it, and to ask you some questions. To start with, your brother George is paying me two hundred pounds for being here; and I feel it’s up to me to earn it. I want to earn it. If I can live here for six months, the stories about the house will all die away—at least that’s what he thinks.”

  “And if you don’t stay here six months?”

  “Then I have to give back the two hundred pounds,” said Amabel.

  Julian drank his tea with a gulp and put the cup down.

  “But it’s preposterous!” he said. “What on earth was old Berry about, that he let you in for such an arrangement?”

  “He didn’t,” said Amabel—a dimple showed in her cheek—“he hated it. But don’t let us begin about that. What I really want is to ask you some questions.”

  “Berry oughtn’t to have allowed it,” said Julian. “What questions do you want to ask me?”

  Amabel left the tea-table and drew in a chair to the fire.

  “Well, I want to know,”—she paused, picked up a small log, and bending forward, placed it carefully on the fire. Her face was very near him as she turned—“Julian, what is the matter with the house?”

  “I don’t know,” said Julian. “It used to be all right.”

  “Yes.”

  She drew back; there was a silence; then Julian said quickly,

  “What’s worrying you? You’d better tell me.”

  “Yes, I want to. It’s difficult to put into words—it comes to so little, really. And yet”—her laugh had a little shake in it—“I think I can understand why the other tenants ran away.”

  “What’s been happening?”

  She hesitated; then spoke with her candid eyes fixed on his face:

  “It’s so little, really. I thought I heard Marmaduke at the door in the night, and ran down. When I got the door open he wasn’t there, but—but something laughed. Julian, it was horrid—it was, really.”

  She saw his face relax.

  “An owl,” he said.

  “No, really. I slammed the door. And then there was a cat mewing somewhere; but I couldn’t see anything. I didn’t like it a bit.”

  Julian laughed outright.

  “Brownie has probably got half-a-dozen cats.” He stopped suddenly and whistled. “No, by Jove,” he said under his breath; and Amabel met his eyes and nodded.

  “Yes. I asked Jenny this morning, and she told me—Mrs. Brown can’t stand cats, and they never have one in the house. Jenny said her mother would be taken ill at once if a cat came into the room.”

  “You don’t suppose Jenny’s playing tricks?” He pulled himself up. “No, that’s a shame. I’d bank on Jenny.”

  “I know—she gives you that feeling”, said Amabel. “I did think, before I came, that perhaps she and Mrs. Brown wanted to keep the house empty, but after I’d seen them I simply couldn’t think it any longer; there’s something about them—oh, no, it’s not Jenny; I think she’s frightened too.”

  “Yet they’ve been here all these years.”

  “I know, but,”—Amabel hesitated, leaned nearer, spoke lower—“Julian, she’s frightened all the same. She brings my tea, and clears it away, and then she doesn’t come upstairs again. She—she won’t. I asked her why, and she just drooped and said she couldn’t. Ellen brings me my supper on a tray.”

  As she stopped speaking the door opened and Jenny herself appeared, a drooping figure with downcast eyes.

  “Mrs. King,” she said in her spiritless voice; and there came in a little person, in a vivid orange-checked coat.

  Amabel saw red-brown hair and hazel eyes under a jaunty felt hat. Julian observed the ankles commended by Edward Berkeley.

  Nita King advanced, all smiles.

  “It is Mrs. Grey? I’m sure it is. And I must apologize for coming at such an hour; but I went to the station to inquire about a parcel, and they kept me an age, simply an age.”

  She shook hands, and looked inquiringly at Julian, breaking into fresh smiles as soon as Amabel mentioned his name.

  “But, Mr. Forsham, fancy meeting you here!”

  “And why not here?” thought Julian crossly to himself as he handed tea and cake and listened to an unceasing flow of conversation delivered in a high, silvery voice:

  “I felt I must come and call at once, because really, I am a stranger here too, and I know how desolate one feels in a new place. I came here, of course, to be near my cousins, the Berkeleys. I shall ask Lady Susan to come and see you too. Such a dear creature, Susan Berkeley, but not really very sociable, I’m afraid. I know some people think she gives herself airs, but I don’t think it’s that, I don’t indeed. Do you?” She turned the rather fascinating hazel eyes upon Julian with a look of appeal.

  “Red-haired serpent!” he said to himself, and remarked aloud that Susan Berkeley was one of the best women on earth.

  “Exactly what I’ve always said. Just a little more sugar please, Mrs. Grey. Yes, the Berkeleys are charming, and I do hope you’ll meet them soon. You know, Mr. Forsham, I’m staying at your old home just now. Mr. Bronson has been so kind to me. He let me have the Lodge—such a ducky little place. But the rain certainly did come in through the roof, so he insisted, absolutely insisted on my coming to stay with him. You see”—turning to Amabel—“his daughter is only just grown up, and perhaps he finds it a little bit dull. Of course there’s Angela’s governess, Mademoiselle Lemoine—you’ll meet her, I expect. She goes everywhere—a charming person.” She paused, and gave a little conscious laugh. “Some people have said that they thought she was just a little too charming—you know what I mean, a widower’s household. People are so unkind about that sort of thing. Don’t you think so?”

  “Some people are,” said Amabel. She looked straight at Mrs. King as she spoke, and received a beaming smile.

  “Yes, indeed. But I always think it’s so horrid. Why shouldn’t poor Mr. Bronson have a charming governess? It’s much nicer for Angela. And, as to there being anything wrong—I think it’s dreadful of people to think of such things. Don’t you? I think they must have horrid minds.”

  “Yes,” said Julian.

  “I think one should try and see good in everybody,” said Nita King sweetly. “Oh, thank you, Mrs. Grey,—yes, just half a cup—such delicious tea. Now, there are some other neighbours of ours, the Millers. They’ve built a little bungalow down by the bridge, and when they first came, really, people said the unkindest things about them. I used to get furious about it. Why should everyone assume that they are Germans just because Müller and Miller are so much alike?”

  “It doesn’t seem quite an adequate reason,” said Julian, meeting an appealing glance with gravity.

  “No, indeed. That’s what I kept on saying. Of course her name is Anne—so like Anna—, and some people think that he has a slight accent. But I do think one ought to be charitable. Don’t you? Why, if one believed everything one heard—” She broke off and threw a glance about the room. “People have even said things about this charming old house,” she declared with a ripple of laughter. “Too absurd, of course—just because it has stood empty for so long—such ridiculous stories!”

  “Ah,” said Julian with sudden interest. “Now, I wonder what your stories are. They’re all different, you know. Is yours the one about the tenant who ran away, or the much better one about the postman meeting the stray donkey in the drive? That’s my favourite, really.”

  Nita King gazed at him with a hint of reproach.

  “Oh, Mr. Forsham,” she said, “I don’t think one ought to—mock at the supernatural, I don’t indeed. Mrs. Grey, you agree with me, I am sure. We women are not such scoffers as the men. Not, of course I mean, that one need believe everything one hears. For instance, I don’t think it really can be true that—but perhaps I’d better not repeat it; it might make you nervous.”

  “I’m not a nervous person,” said Amabel.

  “No, of course you’re not, or you wouldn’t be living here, w
ould you? So brave of you! Tell me,”—she glanced over her shoulder and dropped her voice—“you haven’t seen anything, have you?”

  Amabel laughed and shook her head.

  “Not—not anything at all?”

  “Not a thing,” said Amabel.

  Mrs. King’s voice fell to the merest whisper.

  “Or—or heard anything? They say—oh, it’s all nonsense of course—they say that you hear wings, and something that cries in the night.” She shuddered violently, and sprang to her feet. “How stupid of me to talk about it. I haven’t frightened you, but I’ve frightened myself; and now I’m afraid to go home in the dark. Mr. Bronson did say that he would call for me, but he must have been kept.”

  She turned with an appealing gesture to Julian.

  “Would you just see me down the drive, Mr. Forsham? It’s so dark there, and if I saw anything,”—she broke off with another shudder—“I’m not nearly so brave as Mrs. Grey.”

  It ended, of course, in Julian walking back with her to Forsham Old House. On the way he heard that Edward Berkeley was considered peculiar; that the vicar was breaking up very fast; and that some people said—but of course it wasn’t true—that Mr. Bronson drank. He fished in vain for any definite story about the Dower House.

  Ten minutes after Julian and Mrs. King had left, Jenny announced Mr. Bronson. He came in, shook hands, and seemed surprised that his guest had not waited for him. Amabel looked at him with interest, and decided that the Old House might have fallen into worse hands.

  Mr. Bronson had good manners and an agreeable voice. He was a strongly built man in the late forties, with a pale, clean-shaven face, very straight eyebrows, and the lightest of light grey eyes. He wore rough tweeds, and they seemed a little incongruous; one would, somehow, have expected broadcloth and a heavy gold watch chain. He sat down, and talked pleasantly enough for about quarter of an hour. He hoped that Mrs. Grey was comfortable, didn’t find the house damp or—er, anything. Presently he took his departure, and Jenny crept in to take away the tea things.

  Chapter VIII

  Amabel was reading that evening when Ellen came in with the tray. She finished a paragraph before she looked up; but what she saw brought her quickly to her feet.

  Ellen was leaning against the wall, the tray sloping at a highly dangerous angle, and her face—

  Amabel rescued the tray, set it down, and half pulled, half pushed Ellen into a chair.

  “I come over so queer. Oh, my dear ma’am, shut the door!” Ellen’s lips were very white, and the words came in gasps.

  “Yes. I’ve shut it. What’s the matter? No, don’t try and speak for a minute. It’s all right; there’s nothing to be frightened of.”

  Ellen held her hand painfully tight.

  “Oh, my dear ma’am!” she said, and burst into tears.

  Amabel let her cry, and busied herself with pouring out a cup of tea. When Ellen had drunk it she said in a sobbing whisper,

  “All the way up the stairs behind me, and I never dropped the tray. I don’t know ’ow I ’eld it, but ’old it I did. Oh, my dear ma’am!”

  “That was splendid of you,” said Amabel. “Now, do you think you could tell me what happened—just from the beginning, you know, quietly?”

  “I never turned my ’ead to look, because I dursn’t,” said Ellen. “I never turned my ’ead, but I know’d that it was there.”

  Amabel was conscious of an answering shudder, but she kept her voice firm and cheerful.

  “Now, Ellen, do begin at the beginning. You got my tray—and then?”

  Ellen shivered.

  “I got your tray same as I always do, and I come along with it, and as I come past the Browns I calls out to Jenny, and she says ‘all right.’ And then I come into the ’all with the tray, and when I was ’alf-way up the stair I thought I ’eard Jenny come after me. Well I just stood with the tray in my ’and, and I says ‘Is that you, Jenny?’ And all at once I knowed it wasn’t Jenny. And I took and come along just as fast as I could, and I ’eard it come after me, and I dursn’t turn my ’ead.”

  “But perhaps it was Jenny,” said Amabel.

  “It wasn’t no yuman being,” said Ellen. “There’s yuman things, and there’s things that isn’t yuman.” She paused. “Don’t ask me how I knowed, for there’s things as I couldn’t put into words—but it wasn’t Jenny.”

  Amabel went to the door, opened it, and stood in the lighted passage. It was empty and shadowless. She walked as far as the stair-head and looked down into the hall below. To right and left the closed doors of the dining-room and drawing-room. There was a red and blue Indian rug, very faded; the old chest with the Dutch mirror above it; three or four chairs standing primly against the panelling; the portrait of a great-uncle of Julian’s in wig and gown—these familiar and peaceable objects alone met her gaze. She switched off the light in the lower hall, and turned back to the sitting-room. As she closed the door, there came to her faintly the mewing of a cat.

  She and Ellen ate their supper together, and left the tray in the sitting-room until the morning. When they went to bed Amabel opened the connecting door between the two rooms, and set a chair against it to keep it in position. It was just as they were getting into bed that they heard the sound of something thudding against the front door.

  Ellen was in the room in a moment, an odd figure in a red flannel dressing-gown, her hair in tightly plaited tails. She caught Amabel by the arm and held her with stiff, bony fingers.

  “Oh, ma’am, you’ll not go down!” she cried.

  “Ellen dear!”

  The thudding came again—scratch, scratch, thud, thud; and then a thin, faint sound, half whine, half howl.

  “If it’s Marmaduke—” said Amabel.

  She was sitting on the edge of the bed, her long fair hair thrown back, one hand at her throat. Ellen clutched her tighter.

  “You mustn’t go down. Oh, you mustn’t!”

  “If it’s Marmaduke—if he’s hurt or ill—”

  “It isn’t Marmaduke,” declared Ellen fiercely. “It isn’t a yuman, natural thing at all, and you shan’t go down, my dear. Why, if it was Marmaduke, ’e’d bark same as ’e always ’ave done. It stands to reason ’e would, and not go making that there creepsy, ’owling sound.”

  “If he’s been hurt—” said Amabel again.

  She spoke just under her breath, and they both stayed motionless, listening. A minute passed, and another. Ellen’s grasp had begun to relax, when, for the third time, something thudded against the door, and a faint crying followed. Amabel started to her feet.

  “Ellen, I must go down. He may have been caught in some trap and have dragged himself loose. No, it’s no use. I really must go.”

  She was out on the landing turning the lights on before Ellen could stop her, and without giving herself time to think, she ran down the short flight into the hall, and heard Ellen follow her. They stood by the door for a moment, and then Amabel turned the key with a jerk. She meant to open only an inch or two, but the door swung back as heavily as if someone had been pushing against it. She began to say, “Duke, are you there?” but the words never passed into sound, for, with a suddenness that was like a blow, all the lights went out. She heard herself give some sort of a cry. She heard Ellen scream. And then something passed between them in the dark, and the door swung to with a slam. Some one touched her. She thought it was Ellen, and said her name; and as she fell against her, a dead weight, the mewing of a cat seemed to fill the hall.

  Amabel never quite knew how she got Ellen upstairs again. The mewing went on all the time, sometimes faint and pitiful, sometimes long-drawn out and with a horrid note of pain.

  Ellen was not quite fainting, but very near it. In Amabel herself, thought, energy, and feeling had narrowed to one single aim—to get upstairs, to get to her room, to get into the light. Once on the level, it was not so hard—about fifteen steps to the bedroom door. They managed it, and she guided Ellen to the bed.

  There were c
andle and matches on the chest of drawers, she knew; but, before feeling for them, she tried the switch by the head of the bed. Instantly the light came on; the whole room showed at once—Miss Harriet’s bureau; the great press which filled all the wall space opposite; the bed with poor Ellen sunk in a heap against the foot of it; and one thing more—in the middle of the floor a chair lying over on its side. Amabel looked beyond it, and saw what she had known that she would see. The connecting door between her room and Ellen’s was shut.

  When Ellen had recovered a little they brought in her mattress and bedding from the next room, and spent the rest of the night together, after locking both doors.

  It was after breakfast next morning that Ellen presented a tearful ultimatum.

  “If it was just a plain, ordinary ghost, I’d put up with it,” she declared. “My Aunt Ellen that I was named for was ’ousekeeper in a real big ’ouse that ’ad an ’aunted wing. Many’s the time that she’ve told me of it. A lady in ’er night-dress, with ’er ’air down ’er back, that one was—and never did no ’arm to nobody, pore young thing. That’s what I call a yuman ghost. ’Er name was Lady Sapphira, or Sophia, or some such. But as for these ’ere ’orrible ’owlings, and footsteps, and cats where there ain’t none—it’s not in nature, and you can’t get from it. Oh, my dear ma’am, you won’t stay, will you?”

  Amabel turned rather a white face upon her old servant.

  “I must stay, Ellen. But you needn’t,” she said.

  Ellen produced a large and very neatly folded handkerchief with her name embroidered across one corner. She shook it out and buried her face in it. Through muffled sobs she could be heard protesting her willingness to “do anything in yuman power, only another night like last night is what I can’t do, not for nobody, not even for you, ma’am.”

  “I won’t ask you to,” said Amabel. “You shall go back to the cottage. Miss Lee will be very glad to have you, I know.”

  The scene lasted a long time, prolonging itself, indeed, until the moment of Ellen’s tearful departure. Amabel had to combat Ellen’s own plan which was to have a room in the village and “come up every day and do for you, ma’am.” Ellen could not see that this was likely to raise a new crop of stories about the Dower House. She wept, protested, argued, and then wept again. If Amabel felt a lonely sinking of the heart as she watched the cab disappear down the weed-grown drive, she felt also a certain relief. As it turned out of sight, a telegraph boy on a bicycle shaved past it, swerved, and came zig-zagging up the slope towards her.