Weekend with Death

by Patricia Wentworth

  Her mind was quite clear and she was not at all afraid. Fear belonged to her body, and for just this queer space between living and dying her body didn’t belong to her. It stood there upon its feet, and it moved when she told it to move, but it wasn’t her any more. She heard her own voice say,

  “Where is he? What have you done with him?” And then, when no one answered her, it said again with a dreadful calm, “Is he dead?”

  No one answered that either. The light from the torch went to and fro. She walked round the car, and did not know until afterwards that the Reverend Peter’s hand was on her arm. The beam of the torch showed John Wickham sprawled head downwards in the ditch. His legs were under the car, his neck was turned awry, his face was down in the snow. He did not move. Someone went down into the ditch and jerked at his shoulder. The head fell over.

  Mr. Brown called out in protest, “Don’t touch him, you fool! It’s got to be an accident, hasn’t it?”

  The voice which Sarah knew was her own said again, “Is he dead?” and close above her head in the darkness the Reverend Peter laughed.

  “If he isn’t now he soon will be. Neck broken, by the look of him.”

  The word echoed in some empty place—“broken”. It echoed dreadfully. A broken neck. A broken body. A broken heart. There were so many things that you could break. And no way of mending any of them. John Wickham’s body lay broken in a ditch, Sarah Marlowe’s body stood here in the snow and felt nothing, and Sarah Marlowe’s heart was broken.

  It was then that she did feel something—the heavy compulsion of the Reverend Peter’s hand on her shoulder. It brought her round so that she stood face to face with him. She could see him, huge and hairy against the snow. He said in a deep, threatening voice,

  “What does it matter to you whether he’s dead or not? He’s the chauffeur, isn’t he? What does it matter to you?”

  Sarah said, “It doesn’t matter.”

  She said that because it was true. Nothing mattered any more. Everything had come to an end.

  He shook her a little, but without hurting her.

  “Of course it doesn’t matter to you, Miss Marlowe—how could it? But I’d like just to know what he was doing on the running-board of that car. If he’s nothing to you, you can tell me that.”

  Sarah put up a hand and brushed it across her eyes, as if she could brush the darkness away. There was a darkness between them, and a darkness in her mind. But she could answer his question.

  “I took the car out.”

  “Yes—why did you do that? It’s Mr. Cattermole’s car, isn’t it?”

  She said, “I wanted to get away—” Her voice died.

  He made her feel the pressure of his hand again.

  “Go on. You were going to explain how Wickham came to be on the running-board.”

  She stared up at him.

  “He saw my lights—I had to put them on—I couldn’t see. He came running—out of the yard. He jumped on the running-board.”

  “Is that true?”

  She said, “Yes, it’s true,” in an exhausted voice.

  After a minute he asked her sharply,

  “What did he say to you when he saw us? Did he tell you to go on, or did he tell you to stop?”

  Under the surface of Sarah’s darkened mind a thought moved. It said, “He’s dead. But if he wasn’t dead, they would kill him if they knew he had said ‘Go on’.” She said,

  “He tried to stop me. He said, ‘Stop!’ and he tried to stop the car. That’s why we went into the ditch.”

  Mr. Brown gave his hearty laugh.

  “Oh, no, it isn’t—that’s where you’re wrong. You went into the ditch because I blew a hole in your front tyre. Well, Wickham didn’t have much luck, did he?” He lifted his voice and called, “Hi, Grimsby—run the torch over that front wheel! I fired two shots, and both of them ought to be in the tyre. A bullet hole anywhere else would fairly give the show away. Go on—look lively!”

  Grimsby had the torch. He turned it here and there upon the tilted front wheel. Presently he called out, “Both holes there, boss,” and Mr. Brown called back,

  “All right, change the wheel, and don’t be all night! Can you manage?”

  Grimsby said, “You’ll have to give a hand.” And with that Sarah was marched round to the other side of the car and pushed down on the edge of the running-board.

  The Reverend Peter had disappeared, but someone else had taken his place, a shadow against the snow. The shadow had neither outline nor features, yet there was something horribly familiar about its aspect. If she had not been too much detached to feel, Sarah would have been shocked, because this shadow was Wilson Cattermole, and he had a pistol in his hand. It was Mr. Brown who had mentioned the pistol—“You’ll sit still and you’ll keep quiet, because he’s got a pistol, and if you don’t he’ll shoot.” It was like being warned that an ant was going to shoot you. She had always thought of Wilson Cattermole as an ant—dull, indefatigable, fussy. But an ant with a pistol was a monstrous thing and outside nature. She remembered Blake’s dreadful drawing of the ghost of a flea. For a moment everything rocked on the edge of nightmare. Then she could speak again.

  “Mr. Cattermole!”

  Yes, that was it—he was Wilson Cattermole, her employer—not something out of a bad dream.

  “Mr. Cattermole!”

  There was no answer, but she thought that the shadow shifted. From the other side of the car Grimsby called out, “Shurrup!”

  She waited a little and tried again, dropping her voice.

  “Mr. Cattermole—please—”

  There was no sign that he had heard her. Grimsby called again on a savage growl, “Shurrup, d’you hear!”

  She kept quiet after that. There wasn’t anything to do. It wasn’t any good appealing to Wilson—even if he wanted to help her, they wouldn’t let him. There was no help in him. She could feel him there, a hostile shadow, sharp, inimical, malicious. An ant could be all these things, but if she could have felt a shock, it would have shocked her. She had not thought of him like that. A little, dull man with a little, dull mind—earnest, fussy, painstaking. And now he held a pistol to her head in the dark, and a stinging hatred came from him like a poison.

  She could hear them working to change the wheel. They went to and fro. The car lurched. She wondered how they would manage. The nose was jammed into the hedge. The wheel might be jammed too. But when the light had run over it, it didn’t look as if it was jammed. It seemed to hang down over the ditch.

  The car shuddered and lurched again. The shadow of Wilson Cattermole stood over her with the pistol in his hand.

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  It might have been a short time afterwards, or a longer time—Sarah didn’t know. Mr. Brown came up with the torch in his hand. He had it switched on and hanging down so that it made bright shifting circles on the snow. But when he came up to her he turned it on her face and said,

  “Where are those papers?”

  When she did not answer, he put a hand under her elbow and jerked her to her feet.

  “The game’s up. Hand them over!”

  He kept the light on her face, and saw her stare back at him without blinking. Something odd was there. Something odd about her all along—he had seen a man who had been shell-shocked look that way—as if she was walking in her sleep. He swore to himself. Easy enough to wake her up if it weren’t that she mustn’t be marked; and women were the devil that way—they bruised before you laid a finger on them.

  He swung the light out of her eyes and back again, but she never blinked.

  “Look here, Miss Marlowe, you’re not doing yourself any good. You’re in possession of stolen property—that’s what you are. And what’s it got to do with you anyway? Come—I’ll make a bargain with you. We don’t want to do you any harm—why should we? We only want our property, and we mean to have it. What’s the good of fighting against the inevitable? It’s exasperating for us, and it’s going to be extremely unpleasant fo
r you. Because, you see, we know you’ve got the papers, and we know you’re bound to have them on you. Grimsby’s just having a look in the car, but I’m prepared to bet he won’t find anything there. You’ve got them on you, and if you don’t hand them over, I’m going to hand you over to Grimsby to search, and I don’t really think you’ll like it. No, the game really is up, and the quicker you let us have those papers, the pleasanter it will be for all of us—except perhaps Grimsby.”

  Sarah stood with the light in her eyes and heard the words go by. They were just words. She heard him laugh, and then all at once he took her by the arm and brought her round to the other side of the car again. The beam of the torch went dancing over the edge of the ditch. It struck one of John Wickham’s hands. It slid up the arm and dazzled against his hair. He was bare-headed. She couldn’t see his face. Mr. Brown said in her ear,

  “There he is—and he’s dead. Did you give him the papers?”

  “No—no—I didn’t.”

  He brought the light sharply back on to her face.

  “If you’re lying you’ll pay for it! You can’t get away with it, you know. If you gave them to him, he’ll have them on him, and we’ll find them when we find him in the morning.”

  Grimsby had come up. He said in his coarse voice,

  “Shall I go over him, boss? Paper’s easy to spot—I needn’t move him.”

  “No!” The word came like the crack of a whip. “No one’s to touch him! Let him lie there and freeze! It’s a sitter that way. He piled up the car, and we didn’t know a thing about it till the morning—that’s the tale. The way the door’s hanging open he could have been shot out of the driver’s seat. It’ll look all right, even if anyone comes along and finds him before we do.” He turned back to Sarah. “Now, Miss Marlowe, you see how it is. If you did give him the papers, we’ll get them anyhow. If you didn’t, you’ll hand them over now, or we search you.”

  His voice reached only the surface of Sarah’s mind. Words floated there: “John is dead. And I shall be dead too before anyone comes. They are talking in front of me as if I was dead already. They wouldn’t do that if they meant to let me go.” She felt no distress at the idea of her own death. It was all like a dream. The things which surrounded her, the people, even her own body, were remote and insubstantial. She looked with wide, blank eyes at the light.

  “Wake up!” Mr. Brown’s voice boomed in her ear. “You’ve got those papers, and we know you’ve got them. Hand them over”!

  Under the surface her mind stirred. She remembered the sham pocket. She had rolled it up in the handkerchief from her neck and pushed it into the front of her jumper. It had slipped down under her breast. She could feel it there now as she took her breath.

  For the first time since the car had crashed she began to think. The sensation of being detached from her surroundings persisted, but she herself, Sarah Marlowe, began to think again. The line which her thoughts took was an extremely simple one. John Wickham was dead. He hadn’t wanted them to have the packet. She herself would soon be dead. It would be a good thing if she could save the papers before she died. Someone might find them afterwards. You never know. And John would be pleased.

  Wilson Cattermole spoke for the first time. He said in his nervous, fussy way.

  “Now don’t you think we should go in? I really do feel—” (afterwards she thought that was the strangest thing of all, to hear him talking like that—a nervous irritable ant—a fussy, respectable valetudinarian ant)—“bitterly cold—most unsuitable—get in by the fire—”

  She caught up the last word and considered it. If she could burn her packet, they would think it was the real one. But papers don’t burn as easily as all that.

  Mr. Brown said, “All right, all right,” and swung her about. The beam left her face to light their way. They went in between the pillars and up the rough track towards the garage. There was a hedgerow on the left. The ice-coated twigs and branches creaked and rattled. The hedge ran down to a deep ditch. She heard Grimsby caution Mr. Cattermole to keep away over to the right.

  “There’s a deep ditch on the left under the hedge.”

  A deep ditch—She kept that in mind. She put her hand down the front of her jumper and eased the packet out. Mr. Brown was on her left, she had her right arm free. She could see the hedge, all white and furred with snow. If she could throw the packet in amongst all that clutter of thorn and bramble, would it help? Not if they were to find it, because there was nothing there except the pages she had torn from the “Penguin”, wrapped up in lining-paper. And they would guess at once that she had the real papers on her. There would be no other reason for making up a sham packet and letting them see her throw it away. And it would be no good doing it unless it took them in. If they believed it was the real packet and they couldn’t find it—that was what was in her mind. If it fell where they couldn’t find it until the morning.…

  Her thoughts ran hither and thither like creatures in a cage, searching desperately for a way out. This wasn’t a good way—perhaps it wasn’t a way at all. Perhaps the packet would catch amongst the thorns and be found and opened at once. Perhaps—

  There wasn’t any way out. But she would throw the packet into the hedge. It was too light—it wouldn’t even reach it. She held it under her coat and thought, “I’ll count twenty, and then I’ll throw it.”

  It was the best that she could do. Between the brambles and the ditch, they might not find it till the morning. They might not even look too hard if they were sure that it was there. It was only a chance, but it was all that she could think of.

  It wasn’t a chance at all, but she would take it. She began to count in her mind, one—two—three—four—five—six—seven—eight—nine—ten—

  Mr. Brown, still holding her by the left arm, stopped and called over his shoulder,

  “Mind the old well as you come round into the yard, Cattermole.”

  The word dropped in on Sarah’s counting and stopped it dead. A well—that would be much better than the hedge.

  Wilson Cattermole said in his nervous, fussy voice,

  “But you’ve got the torch. I really don’t like this at all. It’s dangerous—positively dangerous.”

  Mr. Brown laughed jovially.

  “Oh, there’s a parapet. You’d have to try quite hard to fall in. I was just being careful—I’m a careful man, you know.”

  “I don’t call it careful to leave Wickham lying there in the ditch. You would not let us touch him. Suppose he is not really dead.”

  Sarah felt a momentary cold horror. He spoke in the trivial, fretful manner to which she was accustomed. A familiar thing bent to murderous uses—The horror passed. Mr. Brown said cheerfully, “I’d have a nervous breakdown if I worried like you. Take it easy, man. If he isn’t dead, he’s alive, and then one of two things happens—he’s well enough to walk or he isn’t. If he isn’t, he’ll freeze where he lies and be dead before morning. If he is, what happens?”

  “That,” said Wilson Cattermole, “is what I invite you to consider.”

  “All right, we’re considering it, aren’t we? Say he comes round and by a miracle he can get up and walk—the car’s ditched, and it’ll take more than him to get her out. What does he do? Comes back to the house of course. We haven’t got anything against him, have we? He tried to stop the girl, by her own account. Why shouldn’t he come back? And suppose he doesn’t—is he going to walk seven miles to Hedgeley—or if he does, is he going to get there?”

  “He might,” said Wilson Cattermole.

  “All right,” said the Reverend Peter, “you go back. Sit up all night with the corpse if you want to—I’m not stopping you. The doctor can pick you up when we get him out in the morning.” He turned to Sarah and said in a genial voice, “The doctor will be for you. You won’t be able to say you didn’t get every attention.” He laughed. “As a matter of fact you won’t be able to say anything very much by the time he gets here.”

  They had been standing at the
corner where the track ran into the yard whilst this talk went on. Now Mr. Brown swung the torch up and sent the beam to the right. It shone on the low parapet of the well. There were two uprights, and a cross-piece from which the buckets hung. The open, empty mouth was black.

  It was no more than a dozen feet away. Sarah pulled the packet out from under her coat and threw it with all her might along the line of the beam. It struck the coping. The light dazzled on the coral and green and brown of the handkerchief which wrapped it. It hung for a moment on the edge and was gone. The black mouth had swallowed it.

  Mr. Brown said sharply, “What’s that?”

  Sarah said, “Your papers. You wanted to know where they were. They’re in the well.”

  CHAPTER XXXV

  Mr. Brown burst out laughing.

  “That’s the spirit!” he said. “I like a girl with some go about her. I didn’t think you had it in you. Pity we shan’t have time to get better acquainted—it might have been amusing. But business before pleasure. And if by any chance you’re thinking that you’re one up over this, I’ll just tell you that the bottom of a well is a very nice safe place for those papers to be. They might have got into the wrong hands, you know. That is why we were just a little bit anxious about them. You don’t want your family secrets exposed to the vulgar gaze—something indelicate about it, don’t you think? So they can stay at the bottom of the well until daylight, and if we can’t get them up then, they can stay there until they rot, though I don’t mind telling you I’d rather see them burned before my own eyes in our good kitchen fire. Family secrets had better go up in smoke, don’t you think—especially when they are of a kind which your meddling Intelligence takes an interest in. You knew that, I suppose?”

  They were crossing the stable yard diagonally. The lantern still burned on the coach-house shelf. Its pale golden light came a little way across the snow and lighted them.

  They turned the corner of the haunted wing. Sarah said,

  “No—I didn’t know. She gave it to me. I didn’t know what it was.”