“How could we?” said Joanna Cattermole crossly. “I’ve never known anyone called Emily, and I don’t suppose I ever shall! It isn’t a name that anyone has, except that poor thing who got murdered the other day in a train—what was her name—Emily Case.”
From the other side of the room, from the thick shadow beyond the jutting chimney-breast, there came a long, desolate sigh. Like a wavering echo a faint voice said,
“Emily Case—”
CHAPTER XXIX
Sarah felt her spine creep. She could almost have sworn that something cold had touched it. It wasn’t true—no part of this ghastly play was true. Mr. Brown had faked the message on the slate and played tricks with planchette. For all she knew, the words which he had read from the paper had already been there when they came into the room. It would be quite easy. All he need do was to turn the paper over as he took it up.
All this was in her mind before that wavering echo came. It stayed there. A cold drop might run down her back, but nothing was going to make her believe that whispering voice had anything to do with Emily Case. She stiffened herself, and heard Joanna catch her breath and say, “Oh dear!”
“Who are you?” said the Reverend Peter Brown in a solemn voice.
The whisper came again, low on the edge of sound:
“Emily Case—”
“Oh dear! Why does she come to us?” Joanna’s voice died away into a whisper.
Quite suddenly with no warning at all the low, heavy door of the room burst open with a crash. There was a sense of impact, of noise, and of force, which was startling in the extreme. The hinges creaked and strained. The latch struck the panelling. A cold air moved in the room.
Sarah stared in the direction of the sound. She could just make out the swinging, quivering door, the shape of the arched doorway against the unbroken darkness of the passage which lay beyond. Nothing moved there. The cold wind moved in the room, and all at once a high, desperate scream went up. The window rattled and shook behind them, and they all heard something fall.
Some thing, or some one. The sound was not loud. It did not seem as if it was in the room. If anyone had sat where they were sitting, Olivia Perrott’s fall might have sounded just like that—Because there was snow on the ground.
Sarah set her teeth. “It isn’t true! It isn’t, isn’t true!”
The silence came back. It was not complete at first. The door whined on its hinges. There was a faint, dry rustling from the dark passage—no more than a withered leaf would make moving in the draught upon the floor. It might have been a leaf, or a shred of paper—or the rustle of silk. Olivia Perrott might have worn silk for her wedding. Perhaps she had her wedding dress for a shroud. Emily Case had had no silk—
The rustle ceased. The door stopped swinging. The hinges quietened. Now the room was still. Only the soundless sound of pulse and heart-beats moving to the tune of the blood.
And then, out of that dark corner, a long sigh, and sighing words:
“Where is it? I gave it to you. Where is it?” And again that long trembling sigh.
Mr. Brown said, “Miss Cattermole—do you know what it wants? If you do, answer it.”
Joanna took her breath with a gasp.
“Oh, I don’t—I don’t really—” The last word broke and failed.
“Cattermole?”
“I know nothing.”
“Miss Marlowe?”
Sarah said, “Nothing,” and thought, “That’s a lie. And I don’t mind if it is, because it’s a trick, a trick, a trick.”
The glimmer of light from the lamp shot suddenly into a momentary rocketing flame. The room was there for as long as a flash may take to flare and fail again. For that space there was someone in the corner by the chimney-breast—a neat, shabby little woman in a black serge coat with a grey opossum collar and a flat, depressed-looking hat slipping a little over to one side—Horribly, unbelievably, Emily Case.
The light went out—clean out this time. They were in the dark. It filled the room like water. It rose black from floor to ceiling. It stretched from them to the chimney corner where the little shabby woman had stood and held a handkerchief to her face—a little, shabby woman who looked like Emily Case.
Everything in Sarah rose up to deny what she had seen. Suggestion and a trick of the light, the shadow of the chimney-breast and her own imagination—
The voice came whispering out of the dark again:
“What have you done with the packet? I gave it to you. What have you done with it?”
Sarah said to herself, “What I ought to do is to walk into the corner and prove to myself that there isn’t anything there. Or if there’s someone, it’s a trick. I ought to do that—I ought to do it at once.”
And right there she was faced with a mutiny. She took hold of the arms of her chair and put her weight on them. She began to make the movement which would bring her to her feet, but her muscles refused it. They let her drop back again, slack and helpless. A wave of weakness passed over her. The whisper came again, dreadfully faint:
“I gave it to you. Oh, where is it?”
Wilson Cattermole put out his left hand and laid it on Sarah’s wrist. She heard him say very quietly,
“Miss Sarah, she is speaking to you. Answer her if you can.”
Well, what was she to say? The warm weakness flowed over her in a sickly wave. She said,
“I can’t—”
It was very nearly true. She thought she was going to faint, and the idea terrified her. To lose consciousness here, in this horrible room—no, not whilst she had any fight left in her! She bit hard into the inside of her lip, and then, with the faintness just held back from swamping her, there came to her ears a gasping sigh and the sound of a fall. At once the chair next to hers was pushed back and Mr. Brown was saying in a concerned voice,
“Miss Cattermole has fainted. I’m afraid—Cattermole, can you find the door? I really think we should get her away from here. We ought to have a light, but I haven’t any matches—I forgot them.”
“I haven’t any either.” Wilson’s agitated voice came from the middle of the room. He could be heard stumbling, and groping for the door. “Can you lift her? If I keep speaking, you’ll get the direction. I’m in the doorway. Can you manage? We ought to have a torch. I thought—”
Sarah made another effort to rise. This time she got to her feet. To her dismay, she was not very steady on them. Her head swam and her sense of direction was confused. When she felt Mr. Brown go past her she followed him. One of her hands, groping, touched Joanna’s trailing velvet and clung there.
They came like that to the door, and she remembered how low and narrow the opening was, and that there were two steps up to it. The Reverend Peter would never manage it with Joanna in his arms. She stood back to leave him room, and all in a moment the thing happened. A forward movement, a quick “Here—take her!”, the clatter of feet on the bare wooden steps, and, loud and dreadful, the slam of the heavy door. She heard it, and she heard a bolt go grinding home. The door was so thick that no other sound came to her. She stood in the dark and listened, but there was no other sound.
She sank down on the bottom step and hid her face in her hands.
CHAPTER XXX
At first nothing but the sense of darkness and fear. A mist of faintness, and as this receded, the fear rising in her, flooding upwards to the panic line. She sat there and fought to hold it back. Because once that line was reached, her control would go and anything might happen. Perhaps even what had happened to Olivia Perrott. She pressed her hands hard against her eyes, and then with a sudden desperate courage snatched them away and made herself look into the darkness. It was so deep, so dense, so complete, that the dropping of her hands and the lifting of her lids made no difference. Two lines which she had read somewhere came into her mind in a very uncomforting manner.
Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall
And universal darkness covers all.
The sort of lines that would come into you
r head when you have just been locked into a haunted room. No, not locked, bolted—“Be accurate, Sarah. Don’t go on thinking about Olivia Perrott and how dark it is, or about whispering voices, or Emily Case.” Tricks—tricks—the whole lot of them—a bag of tricks to frighten Sarah Marlowe into giving up the oiled-silk packet. “Don’t think about the packet—don’t think about Emily Case. Don’t think about Sarah Marlowe, or you’ll begin to feel sorry for her, and the minute you begin to feel sorry for yourself you’re done. Say the multiplication table. Say the Kings of England with their dates—William the Conqueror 1066 and all that. Say the names of the Underwood family out of The Pillars of the House—
Felix Chester Underwood. Felix because his parents were so happy when he was born and they didn’t know they were going to have thirteen children on a curate’s pay, and two lots of twins. And Chester after his godfather, Admiral Chester, who sent him a five-pound note for his birthday, and they spent a pound of it going for a picnic in a wagonette with a bottle of invalid port and a pie.
Wilmet Ursula and Alda Mary, the first lot of twins—
Something moved in the dark corner by the chimney-breast where it had moved before.
The thirteen Underwoods ignobly deserted Sarah, thinned away into the darkness, and left her alone with the thing that had moved. She stood up. It is an old, old instinct which gets you to your feet and sets your back against a wall and your face towards the enemy.
Sarah went up the two steps behind her and set her back against the bolted door. She was afraid, but she had herself in hand. She wouldn’t run, or scream. She said in quite a loud, firm voice,
“Is there anyone there?”
She had braced herself to hear the whispering voice again, but it did not come—only that faint dry rustle as if a leaf was moving upon the boards—or the hem of a silk dress. As the sound of her own voice ceased and the rustle died and went out into the silence, she got a startling answer to her question. It came from behind her, right at her back. There was a rusty creak of the bolt. The door flung in and pushed her with it, so that she came down the steps at a run which took her half across the room. After the door the energetic entrance of John Wickham, calling her name.
“Sarah—are you there? Sarah! Where are you?”
“In the middle of next week,” said Sarah.
And then she wasn’t. She was in his arms, and thankful to be there. He might be a bank-robber and a traitor, but he was most solidly and convincingly human. He held her hard, and he kissed her harder still. And Sarah held on to him with both hands and kissed him back. It was a thoroughly demoralizing and humiliating performance. She was to blush for it afterwards, but at the time those human arms and those human kisses were heaven. She shook from head to foot and pressed against him in the dark.
“Take me away!”
When she had said it once she couldn’t stop. It kept on saying itself.
“Take me away—take me away—take me away!”
He left off kissing her and dropped his hands on her shoulders.
“I’m going to—that’s what I’m here for. Sarah, stop it! Do you hear—stop it at once! Someone will hear you. Stop it, I say!”
She stopped, but the words went on in her head.
He said, “That’s better. We’ll go right away. You ought to have come when I told you. You just played into their hands. Come along! Have you got the papers?”
The words froze her where she stood. The papers—oh, yes, the papers—that was what he had come for. That was the plan. They were to frighten her, and he was to come in and pretend to help her. Why, she had heard him boast of how easily he could take her in. Her mouth still felt his kisses. There was a pain that went through her like a sword. She stood quiet under his hands. She said quietly,
“I must go to my room.”
“You can’t—it’s not safe, unless—are the papers there?”
It wouldn’t matter how unsafe it was if the papers were there. He meant to have them. Well, there were two people playing this game. She said, still in that quiet voice,
“Yes, they are there. I’ll get them.”
For a moment he stayed like that, still holding her, and then he let go.
“All right, we’ll chance it. Come along!”
And with that he had her by the arm and was hurrying her out under the arched doorway into the passage—and on.…
They were in his room with the door ajar, listening. Her mind was in confusion. How much of this was according to plan? That was the worst of only hearing a part of it. “An actor in his time plays many parts.” Was he playing one now, when he listened for sounds from the house, or now, when they had crept to the end of the passage and seen the landing empty before them? She didn’t know. She only knew that she couldn’t and wouldn’t stay another hour in this house, and that at the very worst, with a choice of being murdered by Grimsby and Mr. Brown or by John Wickham, she would rather Wickham did it. And anyhow she didn’t much care. Only she meant to save the papers if she could, because if she did she might come to feel that she had got back whatever it is you lose when you kiss someone whom you despise.
She got across the landing to her room and lighted a candle there. She must leave her suit-case—it didn’t matter. She stood in front of the glass and put on the little pillbox hat with its stiffened veil. Her face was as white as paper and her eyes were burning bright. She put up a hand to her lips and felt them tremble. She thought, “I kissed him because I was frightened.” Something laughed scornfully inside her and said, “What a liar you are! You kissed him because you wanted to. You have wanted to for a long time, and now you’ll go on wanting.”
She stamped her foot and said, “I won’t!” and ran out of the room and across the landing without caring whether anyone saw her. She had blown out the candle and picked up her handbag. She came running down the passage to the door of Wickham’s room.
He pulled her in and said quick and sharp.
“Clever girl—have you got them?”
Sarah said, “Yes.”
CHAPTER XXXI
There was a light in the room, a candle set on the mantelshelf. They looked at each other. Sarah said,
“And now what?”
“Down the back stairs and out into the yard—if we can make it.”
“Why shouldn’t we make it?”
“We have to pass the kitchen door. It’s always open.”
She shook her head impatiently.
“Some other way then.”
“Do you fancy the front stairs? I don’t.”
“Isn’t there a way down through there—where we’ve just come from? There must be.”
Wickham laughed.
“There is. The door at the bottom is locked and Grimsby keeps the key. It’s the back stairs or nothing. Don’t worry—I’ll get you out.”
The words came and went between them quick and low. And hard on that the sound they had heard in this same room the night before—a heavy step in the passage. At the first sound of it Sarah ran past him to the window. The idea of being shut in the cupboard filled her with horror. To be bundled in there with all those stuffy dresses, caught there perhaps, and dragged out if Wickham gave her away—no, and no, and no!
She ran to the window and got behind the curtains. They were old and heavy—serge lined with something smooth and cold to the touch. They were the colour of badly cooked spinach. She stood behind them and thanked heaven the window was shut. Even so, the cold from the glass beat against her back. She could feel it right through her fur coat, and the smell of the serge, a really horrible smell of dust and dye, came up in her throat and nose and made her want to sneeze. If she did, it wouldn’t need Wickham to give her away. She pinched her nose hard.
And then she stopped wanting to sneeze. Mr. Brown was in the room, and at the sound of his voice she forgot everything except that she must hear what he was going to say.
He came in, and he shut the door, and he said in the voice that would sound hearty howe
ver he kept it down or whatever abominable thing he was saying,
“Where the devil have you been?”
Wickham said, “I didn’t know you’d be wanting me.”
The Reverend Peter went on.
“Well, I’m wanting you now. The girl’s in there, locked up in the haunted room, and if she isn’t screaming her head off, it’ll be because she’s passed out. So there’s your chance. I’ll show you the way and clear off, then you cut in and play the rescuing hero. If you don’t get her arms round your neck, I’m a Dutchman. The whole thing went with a bang, and there won’t be much stuffing left in her. Promise to get her away and she’ll eat out of your hand. Come along with you!”
Anger rushed through Sarah with so much heat that she quite stopped feeling the draught at her back. And the fiercest glow came from the shaming fact that she had done exactly what that revolting parson had expected her to do—and worse. She had not only thrown her arms round John Wickham’s neck, but she had clung to him and kissed him. It was one of those incredible things which make you feel you are in some horrible dream, and that presently you will wake up and find that it has never happened.
She heard Wickham laugh, and she heard them go out of the room together and shut the door. There was no time to be angry—she had got to do something. He would be back in a minute. What was she going to do? If she could get down the back stairs to the car, would she be able to get it out and away? It was a very slender chance, but it was the only one, and she must take it now—at once. But when she opened the door a cautious inch the door into the haunted wing was standing wide and she could hear their voices—Wickham’s and Mr. Brown’s. However dimly the landing on her right was lit, they could not fail to see her cross the passage if they were looking this way. She would be a black shadow against the glow from the landing.
She stood there listening. Mr. Brown would not stay. He was bound to leave Wickham and come back by himself, because the very essence of the plot was that Wickham should appear to be acting on his own. You can’t make any plausible show of rescuing a distressed damsel if the villains of the piece are all queued up outside putting their eyes on sticks to see how you get on. No—Mr. Brown would have to come back and keep well out of sight, and Wickham would have to give him time to do it. So there was Sarah Marlowe’s slender chance. She would have just so much time as John Wickham’s prudence should dictate to get down the stairs and out to the garage. The back door might be locked or the garage door, and the keys in Wickham’s pocket for all she knew. She did not even know where the garage was, but take it or leave it, there was her chance.
Weekend with Death Page 18
