There was a pause. Peter mastered a desire to shake her and said,
“Are you going to tell me what happened? You needn’t if you don’t want to, but I think you’d better.”
Mavis brightened. Now that she wasn’t frightened any more there was something exciting about having had such an adventure. And she had always liked Peter much better than Peter had seemed to like her. Perhaps this was an opportunity. She found a little scrap of a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes with it.
“Well, I really was going to Isabel’s party with Bobby, so I didn’t tell a lie about that. But then we quarrelled-”
“You and Bobby, or you and Isabel?”
“Oh, Bobby of course-about Ross. You know, Peter, it’s frightfully stupid of people to go on warning you about someone. Everyone has been warning me about Ross for months-Aunt Gladys, and Uncle Ernest, and Aunt Mavis, and Aunt Lucy. You know-all the sort of people you can’t have rows with. So when Bobby started in I just let him have it. I’d got it all saved up, and out it came. And then of course I couldn’t go to the party with him-could I? So I rang Ross up. Every time any of the aunts do any of their awful warnings I always ring him up-it just makes me feel I must. So I told Bobby I wasn’t ever going to speak to him again, and I met Ross at the end of the road.”
“Chapter one,” said Peter. “And chapter two is fun and games at the Ducks and Drakes, and we can skip that, because I was there and saw most of it. And now we come to chapter three.”
Mavis showed some slight embarrassment.
“Well, we got here-”
Peter nodded.
“I’d gathered that.”
“And when we got here he said, ‘Come in and have a drink,’ and I said it was too late, but he said oh, he’d just remembered that Lucy wasn’t here after all. And I said, ‘Do you mean the flat is empty?’ and he said ‘Yes,’ and a lot about being awfully sorry and all that-and, Peter, I thought he really was. And when he said I must come in and talk about what would be the best thing to do, I never thought-honest, Peter, I never thought about there being anything wrong-I really didn’t.”
“Evil is wrought by want of thought as well as want of heart,” intoned Peter.
“How horrid of you! I can’t think why no one ever warns me against you. I think you’re quite the horridest person I know.”
“You’d better go on with chapter three.”
He could see her warming to it. Her colour had come back, and her eyes had brightened.
“We went into the sitting-room, and there was a decanter and glasses on the table, and I said I wouldn’t have anything more, and he said I must, so he got a bottle of champagne and poured out a glass for me and a glass for him, but I really only sipped it. And then he began to make love to me, and at first I liked it, and then I didn’t. And then he got rough, and my dress got torn and I got awfully frightened, and I picked up the decanter and hit him with it as hard as I could, and the table went over and everything broke.”
“I heard it. Continue.”
Mavis shuddered enjoyably.
“Oh, Peter, I thought I’d killed him. He went right down, and he groaned.”
“Dead men don’t groan.”
“Oh, no, he wasn’t dead. I only thought he was. I felt absolutely frozen, but when he began to get up I ran away-and oh, Peter, you can’t think how glad I was to see you.”
“The pleasure was far from mutual,” said Peter, in his most disagreeable voice. “Mavis, you really are an absolutely prize, champion idiot. Anybody could have told you what Ross was like.”
“They did tell me,” said Mavis tearfully. “That’s why I did it.”
“That’s why I said you were a prize, champion idiot. Now sit up and pay attention and listen. You’ll have to stay here tonight.”
“Thank you, Peter.”
“I don’t want you to thank me-I want you to listen. You will stay here tonight. You can have the bedroom, and I’ll camp down in here. In the morning you must go to this Isabel woman and tell her the exact truth and get her to back you up. She can lend you some clothes to go home in. And now you’d better try and get some sleep.”
“I don’t think I can sleep,” said Mavis.
“Well, I can,” said Peter. “So off you go!”
When she had got as far as the door she turned back.
“Suppose I had killed Ross-” she said rather breathlessly.
Peter was arranging a pile of cushions on the sofa.
“You didn’t, worse luck.”
Her dark blue eyes opened to their very widest.
“Would you have liked me to?”
“It might have been inconvenient. Pleasant things very often are.”
Mavis said, “Oh!” She looked mournfully at her torn dress. “It’s quite spoilt, and some of the champagne dripped on it. But I’m glad I didn’t kill him. Would it have been murder if I had?”
Peter gave a short enraged laugh.
“If you don’t want to be murdered yourself, go to bed and stay there! You’ll have to be up again at six or so.”
“Why?”
“I suppose you really haven’t got any brain. Do you want Miss Bingham to see you, or Rush, or that dreep of a charwoman?… No? Then you’ll have to get up bright and early and avoid them.”
Mavis trailed her torn dress through the doorway between the sitting-room and the bedroom. She said, “I think you’re very unkind,” and ended on a sob and banged the door.
Peter finished arranging his pile of cushions, switched on the light, and went to sleep. The last thing he heard was the clock striking two.
Chapter VII
It was Peter’s habit to sleep deeply and dreamlessly until (a) somebody waked him-and it took a bit of doing-or (b) an alarm clock went off in his ear. The alarm clock was in the bedroom, and it would go off in Mavis’s ear at six o’clock, because he had intended to go out and swim before breakfast. And at six o’clock of an August morning it was broad daylight. So when he waked up a second time in the dark he felt very much annoyed. Not a single gleam of light came through the two open and uncurtained windows. It was stiflingly hot, and the cushions smelt of feathers dust and dye, and he had a crick in his neck.
He got up and stretched himself, and as he did so he heard the latch of the outer door click home. Peter could move very quickly. He was hot, stiff, and sticky, but he reached the hall and had the light on all in a flash. There was a scurry and a scream, and there was Mavis at the bedroom door. But she wasn’t coming out. She was trying to get in-and hide. She was still in her silver dress and her silver shoes. She had one hand at her throat, and in the other she clasped the little silver bag which he had seen lying beside her on a table at the Ducks and Drakes. Her eyes stared with fright and all her colour had gone.
“What do you think you’re doing?” said Peter in a rasping voice.
She kept on staring. Her tongue came out and touched her lips. She said in a whisper,
“N-nothing.”
“Why did you go out of the flat?”
She moistened her lips again.
“I didn’t.”
“Have it your own way, but I heard you come in.”
She let go of her throat and caught at the door jamb.
“I dropped my bag. It’s got all my money. I went to look for it.”
“Back to Ross’s flat?”
“N-no. I didn’t. It was on the landing.”
“Where?”
“Just by the door. It’s got all my money. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“I’m sure you didn’t. Are you going out again?”
“N-no, Peter.” She took her hand suddenly from the jamb and retreated.
“Then go to bed and stay there!”
Mavis shut the door with alacrity. How awful of him to wake up like that-how perfectly awful!
She put the silver bag down on Aunt Mary’s bow-fronted chest of drawers with the ivory escutcheons. Then, as she turned away, she caught sight of herself in the lo
ng mirror on the opposite wall. She half cried out, and stood a long time with her eyes fixed.
At last she moved. She looked down, and began to tremble. It wasn’t a trick of the light. It was really there-a red soaked patch just under her left knee. How horrible!
She caught up the silver stuff and held it away from her. The stain was about two inches across. Not so very large-and the dress was torn already.
She went over to the dressing-table. There would be nail-scissors-Peter was bound to have a pair of nail-scissors-and she could cut the stain out and nobody would know. Unless Peter… But the jamb had been on her left and she had been leaning up against it-and why should he look down at her knee? Oh, he wouldn’t-
She had to cut away more than she expected, because the blood had smeared and spread. Then she stood with the piece of stuff in her hand and wondered what she was going to do with it. She didn’t dare open her door again in case Peter was listening.
She found matches on the mantelpiece, and used the whole box before she could persuade the heavy, wet stuff to burn. Even so some of the little tinsel threads were left, but she pushed them right away under the grate, and felt sure that no one would notice them there. Then she stripped off the ruined dress and rolled it into a ball. There were still some of Aunt Mary’s clothes in the flat, and she would just have to find something that would cover her up until she could get to Isabel. It didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered except that she was here and she was safe.
She kicked off her shoes, lay down on the bed, and went fast asleep.
The Dresden china clock on the sitting-room mantelpiece struck three.
Chapter VIII
Lee Fenton opened her eyes with a sense of coming back from a very long way off. She had been so deeply asleep that just for a moment her mental focus was out and she did not know where she was. There was an open window on her left with the morning light streaming in, the light of another hot and airless day. There was a fireplace straight in front of her, and over the mantelpiece the enormously enlarged photograph of old Cousin Andrew Craddock, Cousin Lucy’s father.
With that it came back to her that she was in Lucy’s bed, in Lucy’s room, in Lucy’s flat. She became a little wider awake and pushed away the sheet, which had got tucked up under her chin. There was a most extraordinary weight upon her spirits-a horrid sense that something had happened, and that in about a half a minute she was going to remember what it was. She pulled herself up in bed and stretched. It wasn’t the Merville man. There had been some nasty moments, but she had got away and could afford to snap her fingers. It was not Miss Fenton’s habit to hang shuddering over an unpleasant might-have-been.
She sat up frowning. A dream-that was what it was. She had had a perfect beast of a dream, and some of the nightmare feeling was still hanging around. She couldn’t remember the dream, but it must have been a particularly bad one for her to feel like this. She threw the sheet right off her, swung her legs over the edge of the bed, and stayed there staring, with a hand on either side of her, pressing down hard upon the mattress and the old linen sheet which covered it. The hem of her pale pink nightgown was stained a handsbreadth deep with blood… and her right foot too.
Just for a moment the black curtain which hid her dream trembled and grew thin. From behind it came somebody’s voice crying out in a frightened way.
The curtain thickened and darkened again. She was looking at the blood on the hem of her nightgown, and at her blood-stained foot. All at once she jumped up. The nightgown fell round her to her feet. The stain ran right across the front of the hem, but broader on the right-hand side, as if she had stepped on it with that stained right foot.
She made a little sound of disgust and ran out of the room and across the hall to the bathroom. She washed her foot, and threw the nightdress into cold water to soak.
It was when she was coming back that she saw the blurred print of her foot on the threshold of the room where she had slept. She found her dressing gown and put it on, and then went back to switch on the hall light. The prints ran all across the hall from the front door to the threshold of Cousin Lucy’s room. When she stooped down and looked closely she could trace them across the Turkey carpet to the bed.
She stood by the front door for a long time before she opened it. There were the prints again, running straight from the door of No. 8 to the door of No. 7-straight from Ross Craddock’s flat to the one where she had slept-and dreamed a horrible dream.
She went back into the flat, took a pail of water and a swab, and washed the prints away, first the ones on the landing, and then, very carefully, the ones inside the flat. She poured the water away, and rinsed the bucket, and washed the swab quite clean before hanging it up to dry. The sheets were stained. She wondered what she should do about them. You can’t wash sheets in a flat. At least, you can wash them, but you can’t get them dried and ironed-not in time. In time for what? Rush was an early riser. If he came stumping up the stairs… Well, let him come-she had washed the landing clean. But behind the door of No. 8-behind Ross Craddock’s door-She cut her thoughts short. The door was shut, the door was locked. There was nothing to do about it. Get on with the things which have to be done here.
She took the sheets into the bathroom and sponged out all the stains. She hung them over a couple of chairs by the open window to dry. They wouldn’t take long on such a hot morning. Whilst they were drying she had a bath and dressed herself.
All this time she hadn’t let herself think. When there wasn’t anything more to do she found that her knees were shaking. She sat down on the edge of the bed, and all the things which she had been trying not to think about came rushing into her mind. Something dreadful had happened. It would come back to her out of that dream which she couldn’t remember. She had wandered in a horror of darkness, and in that darkness something dreadful had happened. She did not know what it was. The black curtain hid it, but presently she would know.
The thought terrified her. She tried to think how much longer that shut door of No. 8 would remain shut. Ross employed a man to valet him and keep his flat. He came in by the day. She began to wonder how soon he would come. Not before seven, she thought. She supposed he would have a key. Well, then, he would open the door and go in… She got no farther than that. Her mind felt numb and blank.
She went into the kitchen and looked at the clock, an old eight-day wall-clock with a heavy tick. You could see it the moment you opened the door. The short hand stood at five, and the long was very near to the half hour. But she remembered that it was fast, so it was really only five o’clock. Cousin Lucy was always talking about having it regulated, but the clock had been half an hour fast for at least ten years, and would probably go on being fast to the end.
When the sheets were dry she put them back on the bed, tumbling and crumpling them so that the washed places should not show. It was now about a quarter to six. She opened the flat door and looked out. Rush was moving down below. She could hear him sweeping the hall. She ought to put a note out for the milkman. It was extraordinarily stabilizing to think about things like the milkman coming, and having to go round to the shops for groceries. She tried hard to keep her mind on groceries and the milkman.
It was no use, she couldn’t do it. Her eyes went to that shut door, and her thoughts went too. She couldn’t take her eyes away, and she couldn’t stop her thoughts. There is a dreadful sort of nightmare in which you can’t run away and a pursuing something is coming nearer, nearer, nearer. But this was worse, because she couldn’t even stand still. The thing behind that shut door was drawing her-her eyes, her shuddering thoughts. With a frantic effort she dragged them away and ran across the landing to the door of No. 9. Peter-she must get to Peter-then perhaps she would wake up and find it was all a terrifying dream. The quarrel on which she had dwelt with so much satisfaction last night had dwindled to a speck. Peter was Peter, and if she could get to him, everything would be all right.
She rang the bell, and waited with an agonized
fear lest he should be away. Her finger went again to the bell, as if its persistent ringing must reach him wherever he was and call him back. But when the door opened and she saw him she was suddenly calm. She said, “I want to come in,” and stepped past him into the hall.
If it had been anyone but Lee, the door would not have been opened widely enough to let the visitor in. But Lee-Lee who was on her way to South America with a damned dago… No, thank God, she wasn’t-she was here.
Peter opened the door so that there should be no mistake about it, and Lee was inside and the door shut again. He said, “Lee!,” and she said, “Peter!” and he put his arms round her and said, “Darling!” And what Lee would have said to that he wasn’t to know, because at that moment the bedroom door opened and Mavis Grey came out. She was wearing the late Miss Mary Craddock’s best thin summer dress, a dark grey silk with a pattern on it of mauve forget-me-nots and black leaves, and at any other time her appearance in this incongruous garment with its shapeless bodice and its long, full skirt, would certainly have made Lee and Peter laugh. At the moment their reactions were of a different nature.
Peter said “Damn!” very heartily, and Lee released herself with a jerk. This was natural enough. It was Mavis whose behaviour was surprising. She stared at Lee, and all the colour went out of her face. Left high and dry, the brightly painted lips were in abrupt and shocking contrast with its pallor. She gave a faint sobbing cry and stammered out words which made no sense.
“You-I thought-oh!”
Lee had turned very nearly as pale. She went back until she came to the wall, and leaned there. Mavis put out a groping hand and fell.
Chapter IX
Mavis’s swoon was sufficiently prolonged to be alarming. They got her on to the bed, and after a while she came round and began to cry in a hysterical manner. It was manifestly impossible to take her down two flights of stairs and along to the end of the street, whence Peter had proposed to despatch her in the direction of Isabel.
The Blind Side Page 4
