Nightmare

by Lynn Brock

  ‘Wretch. Don’t come near me. There. Sit there and breathe towards the fire. Good Heavens—you’ve gone into blinkers. Do take them off. They make you look like a professor of phrenology. And what on earth have you done to your mouth? It’s all fallen in or something. You look about fifty years older than the last time I saw you.’

  With a final desperate effort Mr Knayle restored his plate to its rightful place and mustered up a philosophic smile.

  ‘Ah, well,’ he said rather hurriedly. ‘We can’t all hope to remain young and beautiful for ever.’

  Mrs Farnold had just shaken off a slight attack of influenza and was aware that she was looking her full forty-seven. ‘Well, there’s no necessity to be pathetic about it,’ she said rather tartly. ‘How unfortunate that you selected this week to come up. Billy’s away. He’s had to go up to Yorkshire. His uncle’s dying again—he does it every November. Oh, by the way, I’m awfully sorry, but I could only get you a room on the top floor. The hotel’s full up. I told you that the Prossips had left, didn’t I? Why on earth did you send them here? Of course they claimed us at once as friends of their dear old pal Harvey Knayle. Billy was awfully put out. Fortunately I got influenza and retired to bed.’

  She talked about influenza. Someone had brought it back from London and it had spread through the Deepford like wildfire. Everyone in the hotel had had it or was having it or lived in dread of having it. Two of the guests had retired to nursing-homes with pneumonia, half the staff were on the sick list; influenza, it became clear, was the Deepford’s all-engrossing interest. Mr Knayle understood why the sneeze which had announced his arrival had attracted such uncomfortable attention. But he couldn’t persuade himself that there had not been some special personal absurdity connected with his entry. That titter still made him a little pink. He looked round the lounge and formed the conclusion that the people staying at the Deepford were rather a cheap-looking lot. Gracie Farnold, too, had become exceedingly plain and—well—vulgar. That semi-humorous bluntness of hers had become downright rudeness. It had been all very well fifteen or twenty years ago. But now she was simply a rude, fattish elderly woman with a reddish nose—like everything else, falling to pieces. Billy away, too, and the hotel full of ’flu. Mr Knayle decided that he wasn’t going to find the Deepford at all amusing.

  He never recovered from that unsuccessful debut. There were no opportunities to play the part of the resigned old buffer; he was one. From the first, disconcertingly, the Deepford decided that he was a resigned old buffer and left him to make the best of it. The elderly bores of the smoke-room and the bar accepted him simply as another elderly bore. The younger people took no notice of him whatever. Suspecting that Mrs Farnold’s bluntness had spoken truth and that his new glasses really did give him rather an air of professordom, he left them off for a couple of days. No one, however, seemed to notice any difference in his appearance and, remembering the oculist’s warnings, he began to wear them again. This newly-developed self-consciousness made him pettish. He refused to play bridge, although he wanted to play bridge; he refused to dance, although he wanted to dance. The uncle in Yorkshire died and Mrs Farnold went up for the funeral. He was left absolutely alone amidst the indifferent clatter of some seventy or eighty people who bored him to extinction.

  The fact that he had been relegated to the top floor increased his sense of isolation. He was the only guest who slept up there, the other bedrooms on that floor being occupied by the hotel staff. The partition walls were very thin and his neighbour on one side was a waiter who muttered all night and at intervals uttered a blood-curdling groan. Every night Mr Knayle had to leave the cheerful brightness of the third floor and disappear up a dark, narrow staircase without a carpet. This nightly eclipse began to worry him a good deal. The people who were saying good-night on the third floor looked at him with faint amusement.

  Then a rather annoying thing happened about Chidgey. One morning he found Chidgey waiting for him in the hall with a puffed cheek and a badly scratched nose.

  ‘Hullo, Chidgey,’ he asked. ‘What have you been doing to your face?’

  ‘I’m sorry to say, sir, I’ve had some more trouble. I thought I’d better let you know at once what happened, in case anything should come of it. It was this way, sir: I happened to turn into the Castle Hotel in North Street for a drink last night, and who should I find there but that old swine Prossip—’

  ‘Mr Prossip,’ corrected Mr Knayle. ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, sir, him and me had some words.’

  ‘Words? What about?’

  ‘About that Agatha, sir. It was him as set the police on to me about her—I know it was—trying to put off his own dirty work on me. I told him so to his face, before the whole bar.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, the long and the short of it is, sir, I let him have it in the jaw, and then we had a bit of a scrap. They turned us out into the street and a crowd got round us, and the end of it was a bobby came across from the station opposite and took our names. I suppose I’ll be summonsed. Just my luck—out of one trouble into another.’

  The Deepford’s office was unable to supply any information as to Mr Prossip’s new address, and Mr Knayle’s first impulse to write a little note of personal regret was put aside from day to day and eventually abandoned. Chidgey had received no summons and the Deepford had at last provided Mr Knayle with an interest. He had been introduced to Tolly Duckett’s widow.

  The Farnolds had returned from Yorkshire and one afternoon Mrs Duckett came up to tea. She was a dainty, still girlish little thing with a bright, sweet smile and rather long grey eyes which were sometimes almost green. There was something in the smile and the shape and colour of the eyes that called up other eyes and another smile. Her voice was very quiet with an undertone of brave loneliness, which somehow excluded the Farnolds but at once admitted Mr Knayle to intimacy. After tea the Farnolds joined some friends at the other end of the lounge and he was left alone with her. When he moved his chair so that her eyes and smile faced him directly, he discovered that the smile was sometimes a little twisted and that one eye had sometimes a slight cast. But the cast and the twist came and went. They were not there when he lighted her cigarette for her and touched her little cool hand. Something warm and eager stirred in him when, after a long, silent scrutiny of him, she said, ‘You know, you are exactly as I’ve always thought you must be.’

  Afterwards he escorted her to her lodgings in Burford Avenue and in the darkness she talked of her unhappy married life. As he went back along Burford Avenue he was a little glad that it had been unhappy.

  He was still endeavouring to appraise the exact quality of Mrs Duckett’s soft ‘Good-night’ when he reached the mouth of a laneway which ran back from the avenue at some little distance from her lodgings. To his surprise, Whalley came out of the lane, looking at his watch, and after a hasty glance in his direction, hurried away before him. Mr Knayle’s surprise was so great that he came to a stop for a moment. There was at first no doubt whatever in his mind that he had seen Whalley. But almost at once his first certain impression began to break up. Whalley was at Bournemouth. If he had been able to recognise Whalley, Whalley would have been able to recognise him and would have stopped. Of course he was wearing his new glasses—and Whalley had never seen him wearing them. But had he recognised Whalley? It was too dark to recognise a face at nearly ten yards distance—he had merely had a general impression that the figure and walk were Whalley’s. He decided that he had been mistaken and went on, quickening his step as a clock in the town struck a half-hour. Half-past seven. Mr Knayle always shaved for dinner, and there were still shades of that soft ‘Good-night’ to explore.

  Mrs Duckett came up to tea with the Farnolds several times and one day brought her little boy Cyril, a silent elf of five, whose large, wistful eyes still looked back at another world. Mr Knayle plied him with cakes and took him on his knee and told him stories by the fire. Cyril’s little warm, fragile hand held his tightly du
ring the walk to Burford Avenue and at parting he held up his face to be kissed. Mrs Duckett’s laugh was mysteriously soft and tender. Fleeting visions of tranquil domesticity strayed through Mr Knayle’s thoughts as he went back to the hotel. Here was a purpose and a usefulness. Dear little chap— That little nestling hand had asked for protection—those wistful eyes knew the cruelties and treacheries that lay ahead. One could do so much—form that little soul—prepare it for its battle. And there would always be something to go back to …

  Cyril came again with his mother two days later and again Mr Knayle was left alone with them by the fire. He realised suddenly that the Farnolds always left him alone with her, and his blue eyes fixed themselves upon her with uneasy speculation. The cast and the twist were very noticeable today. There was no resemblance at all really—just something that was a little annoying because it was nearly a resemblance.

  And why on earth did she keep on about Tolly Duckett and the discomfort of living in lodgings and the difficulties as to Cyril’s future and then back to Tolly again?

  Cyril began to play. He crept round one side of Mr Knayle’s armchair and jabbed him in the ribs and then crept round the other side of the chair and did the same thing. He went on doing this and when Mr Knayle said, ‘That’ll do, old chap,’ he put out an immense tongue and squawked, ‘That’ll do, old chap. That’ll do, old chap.’ For half an hour he punched Mr Knayle’s ribs, and each time he punched he screamed, ‘That’ll do, old chap.’ Then, fortunately, Mrs Farnold returned and, pleading some letters to write, Mr Knayle made his escape.

  There was no one in the writing-room and he stood for some time before its fire, surveying the hearthrug blankly and retracing, step by step, the alarming path along which he had been led towards catastrophe. It was now perfectly clear that Grace Farnold had set a deliberate trap for him. She had inveigled him up to Guildford for the purpose of marrying him to this hard-up friend of hers with a cast and a crooked mouth and a loathsome little beast of a boy. It amazed him that such crude, audacious cunning should have been able to trick him so easily. Grace Farnold’s perfidy shocked him. And worse than the knowledge that he had made a consummate ass of himself was the feeling that he had been disloyal. That thought twisted his face into a grimace. ‘Oh you little old cad,’ he said aloud.

  The hearthrug failing to supply any consolation, he arranged at the office to give up his room next morning, and then went up to town to see The White Horse Inn.

  3

  It was raining heavily when he got back to Guildford that night a little after midnight, and, as he opened his umbrella outside the station, he looked about for a taxi. There was only one in sight, already engaged by a heavily-built man who was endeavouring to climb into it on his hands and knees while the driver watched him from his seat with a sardonic grin. As Mr Knayle neared him, he abandoned this attempt and, subsiding slowly backwards, came to rest in a sitting position on the muddy footpath. It was Mr Prossip, very drunk and very blasphemous.

  Aided by the driver, Mr Knayle at length got him into the taxi and then got in himself. Having given his address, Mr Prossip fell asleep and left Mr Knayle to muse a little over the fact that he must have frequently passed the Prossips’ new residence. From this thought he passed on to Mrs Duckett and he was still thinking of her twisted smile as he rang the bell of ‘Hindhead’s’ hall-door.

  Mrs Prossip, in a dressing-gown and a state of irritable anxiety, opened it. Her eyes took in Mr Knayle in surprise and then fastened themselves on her husband contemptuously.

  ‘Oh it’s you, is it? Here’s a nice business. Marjory hasn’t come back.’

  ‘Hasencomeback?’ repeated Mr Prossip. ‘Wharyoumean?’

  ‘I mean that she hasn’t come back.’

  ‘Oh, she’ll comeback, allri’,’ said Mr Prossip with bitter confidence. ‘Mawjory’ll comebackallri’. Donyouworry.’

  ‘You drunken brute,’ exploded Mrs Prossip. ‘How dare you talk that way of your own daughter, when she may be lying dead at this moment?’

  ‘Tha’lldo, tha’lldo,’ retorted Mr Prossip, waving his muddy hand. ‘Dongetsited. No use standing here in the rain anyhow.’

  They went in and Mrs Prossip explained the cause of her anxiety. Her daughter Marjory had gone to Farnham that afternoon in her car to see some friends named Reid. As she had not returned by nine o’clock Mrs Prossip had telephoned to the Reids and ascertained that Marjory had left them a little before seven. At latest she should have reached ‘Hindhead’ at half-past seven. But it was now getting on towards one o’clock in the morning and Marjory had not appeared.

  ‘Oh, she’llcomeallri’,’ said Mr Prossip again. ‘Donyou worry, Emma. I know. Ringupospil.’

  But Mrs Prossip had already rung up both Guildford and Farnham hospitals. Mr Knayle had an idea while he strove not to yawn.

  ‘Perhaps your daughter has gone somewhere in Guildford. She may have put up her car. Where does she garage?’

  ‘Round in a lane off this road. It’s only just a little shed.’ Mrs Prossip was silent for a moment while she scratched the back of her neck. ‘The funny thing is that I thought I heard the car about half-past seven from my bedroom, going up the lane. I wonder, Mr Knayle, if you’d mind going round and looking through the window. If I gave you a torch you’d be able to see whether the car was inside. You can’t mistake the lane. It’s only a little way down the road—to your right from our gate.’

  ‘I believe I know it,’ said Mr Knayle, thinking that it was a little curious that he should have thought that he had seen Whalley coming out of a lane in which Marjory Prossip garaged her car.

  But he was merely bored sleepiness, when he reached the little shed and, as he flashed his torch over its doors, stumbled a little over some object with which both his feet had collided. When he lowered the beam of the torch to the ground he saw that he had walked on a hammer, the head of which was bound about with a thick winding of, he thought, insulation-tape. It was very muddy and wet and he left it there, concluding that it was Marjory Prossip’s property and that it was no affair of his if she left her tools lying about outside her garage. There was nothing to be seen through the window of the shed which was curtained on the inside with a piece of sacking. When he had reported his failure to Mrs Prossip, he went off in the taxi thinking that it had been rather cool of her to send him up a muddy, smelly lane for nothing.

  His thoughts became drowsy and disconnected. Out of Burford Avenue now—done with the Prossips—he would never come across the Prossips again, please God. Done with Mrs Twisty-lips. Tomorrow done with the Farnolds and the little dark staircase and the muttering waiter. Done with all the Deepford tomorrow and going back—going back to what? What was he going back to? To sit and brood and fall to pieces. And nothing to bring back, now—nothing of her left—the last of that sacred, secret wonder sullied and trampled under foot. Nothing of her left anywhere, except in a bloodless fish and a fusty old abortioner—

  He cancelled that last thought hurriedly. It had not been a thought. Those savage, ugly little labels had merely sprung into his mind and sprung out again. They had never been his—merely things that other people with unpleasant minds might have said or thought about Whalley and Ridgeway—but not he. He had never thought of ugly, savage little labels for people. He knew that beneath Whalley’s cold curtness lay a grief that could find no help or use in words or friendship—that beneath Ridgeway’s old dressing-gown lay beauty.

  When the taxi stopped at the Deepford he was planning a long, low, snug house—somewhere in the Cotswolds, perhaps, but within reach of a good butcher—with three little bachelor suites. There would be a cosy common sitting-room with three big armchairs. They would sit there awhile in the evenings—not talking much, but together. The fire would crackle and the wind would sigh outside the windows. Sometimes they would talk about her and keep her—

  Hopelessly impracticable, of course. That overdraft in January. Perhaps everything going smash in a few months. The world in ru
ins and fury—guns roaring and searchlights flickering and wheeling—Harvey Knayle scrambling for a place in a food-queue. Still, it was something to have thought of. He resolved, somehow, to get closer to Whalley and Ridgeway.

  CHAPTER XII

  1

  MR RIDGEWAY was scraping a muddy pair of boots in front of his subterranean hall-door one foggy Thursday morning when someone addressed him by name. Raising his eyes, he was momentarily surprised to see Knayle standing looking down at him with a newspaper in his hand. The voice had not sounded like Knayle’s.

  ‘Hullo,’ he yawned. ‘You’ve got back, then?’

  ‘Yesterday afternoon,’ replied Mr Knayle. ‘I say, Ridgeway—’

  ‘Had a pleasant time?’

  ‘Oh, so-so. I say, Ridgeway—have you seen the paper this morning? The Prossip girl’s been murdered.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mr Ridgeway, when he had picked up the other shoe.

  ‘A most extraordinary thing,’ went on Mr Knayle. ‘I very nearly found her. As a matter of fact, I did find the hammer she was murdered with.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Mr Ridgeway.

  Fortunately Whalley came down the outside staircase just then. Mr Knayle felt that his adventure deserved at least intelligent attention.

  ‘Good morning, Whalley. When did you get back?’

  ‘On Monday.’

  ‘Have you seen the paper this morning?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The Prossip girl’s been murdered. A most shocking business, poor creature. Battered to death with a hammer. I was just telling Ridgeway—a most extraordinary thing—I very nearly found her—I actually did find the hammer. That is to say, I saw it. Of course I didn’t know at the time that it was the hammer. But I actually saw it lying outside the shed. She was actually lying dead in the shed when I—’

  ‘Well, but where did all this happen, Knayle?’ asked Mr Ridgeway. ‘Why can’t you tell the thing consecutively? Don’t jump about that way. Where was she murdered? Where was this shed you’re talking about?’