“Did you give it to her?”
“What did she tell you?”
“Was it you? She said he had been stabbed—and he gave her the packet—was it you?”
He made some impatient movement which might have meant “Yes” and broke into a hurry of words.
“What have you done with it? It’s about as safe as dynamite—I suppose you know that by now?”
She said in a small, dry whisper,
“Did you kill her—to get it back?” And as soon as she had said it she was afraid.
He dropped the log he was holding and turned on her.
“What a mind! Didn’t you hear me tell you not to talk like a fool? You’re trying to have it both ways. If I gave it to her, she’d have given it back to me, wouldn’t she? She was anxious enough to get rid of it or she wouldn’t have given it to you. Why should I kill her? Talk sense if you can!”
She felt quite weak with relief. Of course that was true. Poor old Emily would have simply tumbled over herself to give him the packet if it was really he who had pushed it into her hand and said “They mustn’t get it.” But suppose he was one of them. Presumably they knew about the packet too, or they wouldn’t have tried to kill two people to get it.
She said, “Did you give it to her?” and got a furious “Yes, I did!”
“What did you say?”
“I don’t know—I was just about all in. Something like ‘Don’t let them get it.’ I know that’s what I had on my mind, so I suppose I tried to say it.”
Sarah saw him as if from a long way off. She could have put out her hand and touched him, but she felt as if he was a long way off. She couldn’t see his thoughts, or whether she could trust him or not. Something hurt her at her heart. It was like being pulled two ways at once. There was that feeling of being a long way off, and yet it would be the easiest thing in the world to put out her hand and touch him. A warm current of something that wasn’t fear flowed over her. Her hand relaxed. She became aware that she had bruised it. She heard him say with the utmost urgency,
“What did you do with the packet?”
She was afterwards ashamed of the meekness with which she said,
“I put it in a drawer under my pyjamas.”
“You didn’t go to the police?”
She shook her head.
“No.”
“They wouldn’t have got you down here if you had. Why did you come?”
“I didn’t know. We’ve often been to places like this before, ghost-hunting. It’s part of my job.”
He frowned at that.
“You’ve no business in a job like this—you’d better get out of it as quickly as you can. Did you leave the packet in your drawer?”
Sarah considered, and decided that it couldn’t possibly do any harm to be frank. Since Morgan Cattermole must know all there was to know about the packet she had left in the drawer, she didn’t see why Wickham shouldn’t know too. If he was on Morgan’s side, it didn’t matter, and if he wasn’t on Morgan’s side, it didn’t matter either. And she wanted to tell him—very much. She was not naturally secretive, and it would be the greatest possible relief to tell someone what she had done. She smiled suddenly and said in a different voice,
“Well, I did—and I didn’t. I put it there, but when I was out of my room last night someone must have taken it away and opened it.”
“What!”
He had turned almost as pale as when she had seen him faint. His eyes closed for a moment under dark, straining brows.
She said, “Don’t! It’s all right—he didn’t get anything—I’d taken the papers out.”
She could feel the relief which brought his colour back. It was almost as if it were her own.
“What did you do with them?”
She looked at him and said in a laughing voice,
“I’ll tell you exactly what I did. I took the papers out of the envelope and put them away in a safe place, and then I filled the envelope with foolscap and sewed it up in the oiled silk again. But when I came back to my room the sewing on the packet wasn’t mine.”
“You’re sure about that?”
She laughed.
“Oh, quite. I sewed it up with linen thread just like it had been sewn before, but Mr. Morgan Cattermole had sewn it up with ordinary white cotton.”
“Morgan Cattermole?”
“Oh, yes—it couldn’t have been anyone else. He had opened the packet and sewed it up again all in a hurry whilst I was soothing Joanna after a nightmare. I expect he took out my envelope and put in one of his own, but I didn’t unpick his stitches to see. I just left the packet there under my pyjamas.”
Wickham was staring at her with a most arresting look of surprise. He said,
“Who is Morgan Cattermole?”
“Don’t you know?”
It was odd to remember that she had ever thought his face impassive. Between fire and candle-light it now registered the extreme of angry impatience.
“Go on—tell me about him—quick! We haven’t got all night. I’m taking a risk as it is.”
She felt the shock of something she didn’t understand. It sobered her.
“He’s Mr. Cattermole’s twin. A bad hat. Wilson won’t meet him. He’s been abroad, but he turned up last night. Miss Cattermole adores him.”
“What’s he like?”
“Like his brother outside, only hair brushed down, and frightful vulgar clothes. He’s a howling cad all over—vulgar, hearty, loud—everything that Mr. Cattermole is not. I don’t wonder they don’t get on. They say he’s been abroad, but I shouldn’t wonder if he’d been—”
She bit off the end of the sentence just in time—or was it in time? A most burning blush ran up to the very roots of her hair as Wickham said,
“Why don’t you go on?” His eyes looked right into hers. “You wouldn’t wonder if he’d been in prison—that’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it? You needn’t mind about my feelings—criminals are not sensitive. But let’s get back to Morgan. What makes you think he’s been in prison?”
She looked away with relief. Something in his eyes, something in his look, hurt her more than she would have believed that she could be hurt. And it was strange, because he had smiled, and it was then that she had felt as if she must cry out with the pain. She said in a hurry,
“Oh, I don’t know—he’s an awful person—I just thought—”
And there was the scarlet burning her face again. She heard him laugh.
“You keep putting your foot in it—don’t you? But the blushes are all yours—I’m quite shameless. What makes you think that Morgan opened the packet?”
“There wasn’t anyone else. There were only five people in the house. I don’t see Mrs. Perkins or Thompson coming up out of the basement in the middle of the night on the chance of my being out of my room.”
He said, “I don’t suppose there was much chance about it.”
She had thought about that, and it was a thought to turn away from. She hurried on.
“But Mrs. Perkins, and Thompson—it’s nonsense. Why should they? I just don’t believe it. And I was with Miss Cattermole, so it couldn’t be her. And that leaves Morgan.”
“Where was his room?”
“On the same floor as hers. He could have heard her come up to my room and fetch me down.”
“Or he could have sent her.”
He saw her wince, but he saw too that the idea was not a new one. She said with trouble in her voice,
“She wouldn’t want to hurt anyone, but—she adores him—I can’t think why.”
With startling suddenness he laid a hand upon her knee.
“What did you do with the papers?”
Cold and heat ran over her. They were back again where they had started.
She said, “They’re safe,” and felt the grip of his hand.
“They’re not safe for you—they’re damned dangerous. Let me have them and I’ll get you out of here.”
“I can’t.”<
br />
“You’ve got to. Don’t you know when you’re in a jam? I’ll get you out if you’ll trust me.”
She looked at him, and heard her own voice say,
“Why should I trust you?”
He laughed.
“Because you’ve got to. Give me the papers, and we’ll have a shot at getting away.”
She shook her head.
“Sarah, don’t be a fool! If you left those papers in the house, it’s a hundred to one they’ve found them. Morgan Cattermole would only have to walk in and say he’d left some private papers behind him and he’d get the run of the house—wouldn’t he? Or what was to prevent Wilson ringing up yesterday afternoon from Hedgeley while I was putting in time over the car, and telling Thompson to search your room or any other room? She’d have done it, wouldn’t she? And we were there quite long enough for him to ring up again and find out what sort of luck she’d had. And if they think you read the papers, and that you know enough to take in what you read, then they can’t afford to let you go. Now will you tell me whether you left the papers in the house?”
She shook her head.
He took his hand off her knee and drew back to frown at her.
“All right, don’t tell me—I’ll chance it blind. Are you coming?”
“Where?”
“Hedgeley first—put the car in a garage and go on up to town by train. I don’t want to be pinched for a car thief, but you’d never get to Hedgeley on your feet—it’s all of seven miles. Will you come?”
The thing hung in the balance between them. Afterwards she was amazed to think how nearly she had said yes. It was inconceivable, but at that moment under some compulsion which she did not understand she came very near indeed to saying yes. If it had not been for her letter to Henry Templar and the fact that she now expected him to arrive at any moment, John Wickham might have tipped the scales in the way he wanted. Some things would have happened differently, and some would never have happened.
He said, “Come—Sarah!” and Sarah said nothing at all.
His eyes smiled under frowning brows. He put out a hand towards her. When it touched her she knew that she would say yes. But before it could reach her the handle rattled and the door began to move. In a flash John Wickham was leaning over the fire with a log of wood in his hand.
Joanna Cattermole came into the room with an old fringed shawl about her.
“So terribly cold in the passages,” she said. “Oh, thank you, Wickham! Those logs will be very nice. We must keep up a good fire here. Perhaps you will just draw the curtains. There is something about snow that makes one feel very low-spirited.”
The moment had passed. No, something more than that—it had never been.
Wickham trimmed the fire, banked it with coal, and stacked the other logs where they would not catch. He went to and fro with his neat dark uniform and his handsome, expressionless face, fastening the old-fashioned shutters, drawing the curtains across them, bringing in a lamp with a ground-glass globe. When he had finished he went silently away and shut the door.
The impossibility of that moment in which she had so nearly said yes impressed itself more and more deeply upon Miss Marlowe.
CHAPTER XXIII
The evening wore slowly on. The two men remained closeted in Mr. Brown’s den. Sarah hoped earnestly that they were finding the day as interminable as she was. She could not even set the clock back sixty years and pursue the fortunes of the Underwood family, because Miss Cattermole wanted to talk, and of all things in the world, what did she want to talk about but dearest Morgan?
“He was such a clever little boy. And so pretty too, with his fair hair done in ringlets and a white sailor suit for Sundays. My dear mother was so proud of her twins. I was three years older, though I don’t suppose anyone would think so now. And I was called after my father’s sister Jane, only my mother thought it such a very ugly name that she turned it into Joanna for me. And Aunt Jane must have been annoyed, because though she didn’t say anything about it at the time, when she died, which was not till thirty years later, it came out that she had left all her money to found scholarships for girls who had been baptized Jane. So it all went out of the family, and my father was terribly put about. Names are so very difficult, don’t you think? My mother was a Miss Wilson, so of course it was quite all right for her to give the name to one of the twins. It used to vex her terribly if anyone turned it into Willie, but of course they did. People will do that sort of thing. I remember being called Jo at school, and how angry it made her. But Morgan was called after my father’s great friend Samuel Morgan. They were quite like brothers, and my mother said if she was asked to have a child called Samuel she had only one answer to give and that was no, so they called him Morgan. It wasn’t any use arguing with my mother, because she never changed her mind, and if she said anything, that was the way it had to be—even my father knew that. Such a strong, determined character, but he always let my mother have her way. It felt so strange, you know, my dear, when they were gone, because I had always lived at home and had no say in anything, and if Wilson had not let me come and live with him, I really don’t know what I should have done. You see, I have always had someone to tell me what to do, and it is very difficult to get into new ways when you are as old as I am.”
Sarah felt a sudden compunction. Under the foolish, fitful, elderly ways there was this child who had never been allowed to grow up. She patted the thin elderly hand and said,
“Yes, I know—I was only twelve when my father and mother died.”
“I never get any messages from them—don’t you think that is strange? But you don’t believe in the messages, do you? Morgan doesn’t believe in them either—he never did. Dear Morgan—it was such a pleasure to see him again. He has such high spirits—so full of fun. Why, when he was a little boy—you wouldn’t believe the tricks he used to play on everyone, and never the least bit afraid, not even of my father, though the rest of us were, dreadfully. I remember his balancing a very heavy dictionary on the top of the study door so that it came down on my father’s head. He was quite bald, and the edge of the book cut him right across the scalp. Oh dear—he was so angry, and the more Morgan laughed, the angrier he was. It was just his high spirits, but of course my father might have been very seriously hurt. And another time when Aunt Jane was staying with us he set a booby-trap for her with a jug of cold water—one of those very large china jugs with a big flowery pattern all over it—and besides quite soaking Aunt Jane—she was in bed for two days afterwards—the jug was broken to bits, and as it was part of a double set which belonged to the spare room, my mother was dreadfully put out, and Morgan was most severely punished. Nothing would stop him playing practical jokes—so high-spirited, and such a sense of humour.”
Things are seldom so bad that they mightn’t be worse. Sarah took comfort from the thought that she had never had to be a visitor in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Cattermole in the playful days of Morgan’s childhood. No wonder Aunt Jane had left her money to found scholarships.
“Now Wilson,” said Joanna—” Wilson was always such a studious little boy—”
As if he had heard his name, Mr. Cattermole came into the room with the Reverend Peter Brown behind him.
Presently Sarah slipped away and went upstairs. It was bitterly cold there, but she wanted to be alone, and she wanted to think. It had been snowing now for at least four hours, and there was still no sign of Henry Templar. Of course he might not have noticed the snow at once—you don’t take all that notice of the weather in London. On a gloomy afternoon with the lights on, the snow might have been coming down for an hour or two before he gave it a thought, and even then it might not occur to him at once that it would make the ice-bound roads passable again. He might be at a cinema or a concert, or he might be at his club. With the roads as they were it would take him a good two hours to do the forty miles, and if he didn’t get off till after dark it might take him a good deal longer than that. It was now getting on for seven o
’clock, and the snow had started before three.
She stamped her foot on the top step, and heard Wickham say,
“What’s that for?”
The voice startled her. She hated dusky landings with wall-lamps which only gave just enough light to see how dark it was. She looked about for Wickham and couldn’t find him. Then he came out of Mr. Cattermole’s room and right up to her, and dropped his hands on her shoulders.
“Are you coming?”
She said, “How can I?”
“Quite easily. Look pale at dinner and don’t eat—say you’ve got a headache and go to bed. When the others have pushed off to their séance in the haunted wing, get up and go down to the drawing-room. I’ll meet you there and take you out to the car. It’s as simple as mud.”
It was beautifully simple. It was quite impossible. Called upon to give a reason to herself for this impossibility, she found a useful set of conventions ready to her hand. She couldn’t leave her job at a moment’s notice and on what amounted to no provocation at all. She couldn’t run away and leave Joanna who had been kind to her. She couldn’t run away when she had asked Henry to come down and he might be here at any moment.
She lifted her eyes to the face she could only just see. It was very near her own. His hands were hard upon her. And all at once she wanted quite dreadfully to go with him. The house frightened her, the Grimsbys frightened her. It was the sort of house where anything might happen—things you didn’t believe in. There was a feeling of things like this asleep in the dark, ready to stir, and uncoil themselves, and pounce out of their hidden secret place. It came, and was gone again between one caught breath and the next. If it had lasted any longer, her hands would have gone up to catch at his, and the words which trembled in her mind would have come tumbling from her lips—“Take me away—take me anywhere you like! Oh, for God’s sake take me away!”
Thank goodness she had come back to her senses in time. She drew a long breath and said,
“I’m afraid it can’t be done. I couldn’t just go off like that.”
Weekend with Death Page 14
