She went back to her own room and fetched a candle.
What the candle-light showed her was very puzzling indeed. Sarah’s fur coat hung over the back of a chair and Sarah’s brown woollen suit lay folded on the seat, Her pyjamas and her dressing-gown were laid out on the bed. But where was Sarah? Her underclothes were not there, and nor was she. It was inconceivable that she should be walking round the house in her underclothes, yet it did not seem possible to escape from the idea. She had brought only the one suit, and it was here. Since Sarah was not here, it was impossible not to believe that she was somewhere else in her underclothes.
The thought of the bathroom presented itself hopefully to Joanna. Not really very nice to go along to the bathroom without your dressing-gown in a strange house, but it was so very close that perhaps this was what Sarah had done.
Candle in hand, Joanna proceeded to the bathroom, and found it empty.
As she came back, the confusion in her mind was shot with fear. Where could Sarah have gone, and where could she possibly be, without so much as a dressing-gown to cover her? When she came to her own bedroom door her hand was shaking so much that she felt unable to go on holding the candle. She set it down on the chest of drawers beside the lamp and went out on to the landing again.
Mr. Brown’s door stood open, and Wilson’s ajar. A light still burned in the lower hall. After hesitating for a little on the top step Joanna began to descend the stair, her long black velvet draperies trailing behind her. She held the banister and leaned upon it as she went. The trembling of her hands had spread to her whole body. All the evil that she had felt in this house seemed to be waiting for her at the bottom of the stair, yet it did not occur to her to turn back, because she had to find Sarah.
When she had reached the hall she stood there looking about her. The dining-room and drawing-room doors stood open facing one another. She turned to the right and went towards the den, and before she had taken half a dozen steps the sound of voices came to her, as they had come to Sarah a few hours earlier. She hurried forward, and then stopped dead. The door was not quite shut. She could see a thin streak of light along its edge, and she could hear what was being said on the other side of it.
It was the words she heard that stopped her. They were spoken by the Reverend Peter Brown. They were horrible, unbelievable words. She heard them quite distinctly, but she didn’t believe them. He said,
“You took a risk over that Morgan business. Better drop it. Tell your sister he’s dead and have done with it.”
She didn’t believe it, but just to hear those two words together, “Morgan” and “dead”, made her feel quite sick with pain. And why should Wilson tell her that Morgan was dead? She had seen him only yesterday morning. She heard Wilson say,
“I thought it very ingenious. And you know, Paul, there is a certain pleasure in acting a part when you can act it on your own stage, make your own entrances and exits, write your play.”
“Too ingenious.” Mr. Brown’s voice was brutally direct. “Too ingenious by half. Never be more elaborate than you need. The whole of this Morgan business is just a wanton elaboration. I never liked it, and you’ve got to cut it out.”
She heard Wilson snigger.
“Kill Morgan—my own twin brother? Oh, Paul!”
The Reverend Peter drew at his pipe.
“Did you ever really have a twin?”
Leaning against the jamb of the door, Joanna was shaken with a spasm of anger. Morgan—her darling Morgan! How dared he?
Wilson sniggered again. She hadn’t heard him laugh like that for years, and she had always hated it. He said,
“Of course I had. You just ask Joanna! She never really cottoned to me very much, but she adored Morgan—in fact she does still. That is why he comes in so usefully. Do you suppose she would have protended to be frightened and got Sarah down out of her room to keep her company—for me? Not a bit of it! She would have wanted to know why, and what did it all mean. But Morgan had only to ask.”
“When did he die?” said Mr. Brown abruptly.
Joanna’s heart gave a sickening lurch against her side. Wilson’s voice seemed to come from a long way off, but she heard it quite distinctly.
“A couple of years ago, in Australia. I didn’t tell her then, because I knew she would make a fuss, and later on I saw that he might really be very useful. The risk was negligible. If I could play the part well enough to convince Joanna, there really was no risk at all, and as it proved, I did play it well enough. Joanna was delighted, and there was Morgan—a most convenient scapegoat if anything went wrong. Take the other night. If Sarah had returned to her bedroom before I had completed my search for the packet and had found me there in my own proper person, there would have been a most damaging scandal, and she would have left the house before breakfast. But if she had found Morgan, it would have been Morgan who had to leave. She would have complained to me on my return. I would have deplored my brother’s behaviour and assured her that she would never be exposed to anything of the sort again. She would not have had the slightest suspicion that I was involved. Green put through a call to her, you know, whilst Morgan was there, and played her over a nice recording of my voice, all about posting a letter to you. She would have sworn in any court that I had been telephoning to her whilst Morgan was in the drawing-room with Joanna.”
Joanna Cattermole listened to all this with something more than her usual vagueness. She was to remember it afterwards. At this time there was nothing in her mind but pain—the kind of confused pain which follows upon a stunning blow. Morgan dead—two years ago in Australia—Wilson said so. And he had played at being Morgan to deceive her. If she did not take in the words, she took in the fact. With horror, but without surprise. Because long ago when they were all quite young he had pretended to be Morgan and taken her in. It had hurt and frightened her very much. Now he had done it again. And Morgan, her darling Morgan, was dead. She couldn’t believe it.
She forced herself to listen again. Perhaps it wasn’t really true. Perhaps Wilson would say so.
But they had stopped talking about Morgan. She caught Sarah’s name, and remembered that she had come down to look for her.
It was Mr. Brown who was talking. He said,
“We shan’t have any more trouble with her. A night in that yard in her underclothes ought to finish her all right—I should think it will touch zero before morning. And then before she’s quite gone Grimsby can take the motor-bike in to Hedgeley and call old Dr. Smith. He’s been past his work these two years, but he can still sign a certificate, and that’s all there’ll be for him to do by the time he gets here. We can show him the car piled up, and Wickham in the ditch at the same time.” He laughed and drew at his pipe. “There won’t be any trouble. All he’ll want is to get back to a good hot fire. I suppose there’ll have to be an inquest, but weather like this is enough to account for anything.” He laughed again. “We’re in luck!”
She heard his chair grate on the floor as he pushed it back. She shrank and trembled against the jamb. The room was full of evil. If he came across to the door now and opened it, the evil would come with him and drown her.
But he did not come to the door. She heard him go over to the fire and kick it with his foot. With an oath which shocked Miss Cattermole very much he said,
“I wonder if she’s unconscious yet.”
CHAPTER XXXVIII
Joanna straightened up. Her mind was terribly confused, the impression of evil very strong. She had to get away—now, quickly, before the door could open. She caught up her long velvet skirt and went, hurrying but careful to make no sound. Up the stair and back to her room—that was her first thought. And then when she had reached it and the door was shut she sat down on the edge of the bed and tried to think. The lamplight was yellow and soothing. There was something steady about it. She tried to steady her thought. Morgan was dead—a long time ago—two years. Two years was a long time. He was dead, and Wickham was dead—poor Wickham. And Sarah
was not dead yet, but they wanted her to die. That was the wickedness that she had felt in this house. They wanted Sarah to die, so they had taken away her clothes and put her out in the yard to freeze.
She found herself on her feet, and she heard her own voice saying in a shocked, frightened tone, “Oh, no, they mustn’t—I won’t let them!”
For once in her life she knew what she must do. She must find Sarah, and she must take her her clothes and help her to get away. She was not confused any more. She saw these three things quite clearly. They were like three steps in a stair which she had to climb. Get Sarah’s clothes. Find Sarah. Help her to get away.
One step at a time, and the first step first. It was the easiest one. She took the candle into Sarah’s room again and fetched the warm brown suit and the fur coat. When she was out on the landing with them, the second step had to be taken—she had to find Sarah. Mr. Brown had said she was in the yard. There was a yard between the two wings of the house. She knew that, because Mr. Brown had talked about it that very evening when Sarah was out of the room. There was this part of the house, and the haunted wing which was older, and they made up three sides of a square, with a wall to close the fourth side in. Mr. Brown had told them tales about this courtyard. One man had kept bloodhounds there, and when his daughter ran away from him with her lover he had loosed the hounds and hunted them to their death. Another had a poor mad wife. She had been used to walk in the courtyard, with the walls and a barred gate to shut her in. It was an evil house, full of old sorrow and sin.
She thought, “They have put Sarah in the courtyard and shut her in to freeze and die.”
She held the brown suit and the fur coat over her left arm, and the candle in the other hand. The coat was heavy, but she hardly noticed the weight. Her mind was quite taken up with how to get into the courtyard and let Sarah out.
She came down the stair again and into the hall, but this time she turned to the left. She pushed her way through the baize door and left it to swing to behind her. She found herself at one end of a narrow flagged passage. In front of her on the left there was a stair that went up between walls. She could only see the bottom step, the rest was shadow. A little farther on on the right was the open kitchen door, and, facing her at the end of the passage, what she had counted on finding there—the door into the yard. She had not thought about it consciously, but she had been quite sure that it would be there. There always was a door leading into a yard from kitchen premises. In a small house you would have to go through the kitchen and scullery to get to it, but not in a house like this.
She went past the stair and past the kitchen door. The kitchen was dark and warm. There was a little glow from the sunk fire. When she came to the door into the yard she set her candle down on the floor and unlocked it. It was only locked, not bolted, and the key turned easily. When she had opened the door she picked up the candle again and stood on the threshold looking out.
Sarah did not know how long she had been in the yard. Just for a little while the hot tea had warmed her, and Mrs. Grimsby’s kindness. Then the glow faded and an icy, bitter cold pressed in upon her. It was not just the cold of frost and wind. It was the cold of separation and betrayal. She seemed to have come to an end. Presently Mrs. Grimsby would come and draw back the bolts and let her out into a desolate wilderness. What was she going to do there? Walk until weakness betrayed her and she fell in the snow to freeze. That she could reach Hedgeley seven miles away did not seem possible. She could find in herself no strength, no determination of the will, no passionate desire to live. Any one of these things might have taken her there, but she had none of them. Her strength was sapped, her will quiescent, and her desire to live had drained away. She was very cold. The blanket kept slipping. If she hung it over her shoulders, the frost struck upwards from the ground and numbed her. If she folded it under her, the cold struck at her very heart. In the end she stood and clutched it round her. Every now and then she walked a little, moving along in the shelter of the wall with her feet on the snow.
She had been as far as the gate, and was coming back, when she saw Joanna’s candle and stood to stare at it. Of all living things Joanna Cattermole was the last she could have looked to see, standing there in the open mouth of the passage with the candle in her hand. The flame of the candle moved in the wind. The wild, light halo of Joanna’s hair moved like blown thistledown. Joanna’s eyes peered vaguely into the snowy dusk.
All at once Sarah began to run. She stumbled on the blanket and caught it up. She came slipping and stumbling and running into the circle of candle-light and held by the jamb of the door to keep herself up.
Miss Cattermole let Sarah’s clothes slip down upon the passage floor. She put a finger to her lips and said,
“Hush—hush—we mustn’t make any noise. I’ve brought your clothes.” Then, with a sudden note of curiosity in her voice, “My dear, what have you got on?”
Sarah came past her and shut the door. It shut out some of the cold. She looked fearfully at the kitchen door and saw that it was open, and the room dark behind it.
Miss Cattermole held up the candle and looked at her with astonishment. She did not know quite what she had expected to see, but the sight of Mrs. Grimsby’s second-best coat, black, voluminous, and almost trailing on the ground, surprised her very much. Above its ragged fur collar Sarah’s face quite white, her little pill-box hat slipped into something more than the fashionable tilt, and the veil dragged down over a falling strand of hair.
Sarah let the blanket drop and began to unbutton the coat.
“I’ve brought your clothes.” Joanna spoke in a breathless whisper. “Oh, my dear, you must get away quickly. We ought never to have come here. I told you there was evil in this house. You must get away quickly. They are very wicked men.”
Sarah nodded. She let the coat fall on the top of the blanket and began to pull on her own skirt and jumper over Mrs. Grimsby’s grey knickers and thick woollen vest. Then she picked up her coat and slipped into the soft, warm fur. A long shudder went over her. All this time she had not spoken, and still she did not speak.
Joanna Cattermole put up a thin, shaky hand and tried to straighten the little crooked hat.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said in a whispering voice. “They were in Mr. Brown’s room talking—downstairs, in his den—but he called him Paul—he did it twice. It seems strange when his name is Peter, but Wilson called him Paul. If we go through the hall, perhaps they will hear us. They were talking, you know, and they said you were in the yard. You know the door doesn’t shut, and I listened, and they said you would freeze, and they said—oh, my dear, they said that Morgan was dead!”
Sarah spoke for the first time. She said,
“But he was here. I heard his voice this afternoon.”
Joanna fell back a step and shook her head.
“They said he had been dead for two years. It couldn’t be true—could it? But they said it. They said Wilson had dressed up and pretended to be Morgan. It was for some bad purpose, my dear—to get some papers out of your room. He told me to say I had had a dream, and to keep you with me as long as I could, but I thought it was one of Morgan’s practical jokes—he was always so fond of joking. I wouldn’t have done it if I had thought there was any harm in it. I wouldn’t have done it for Wilson—but I thought it was Morgan.”
Sarah said, “Stop!” She put a hand to her head, felt the loose strand of hair, and pinned it up. Then she said slowly,
“Mr. Cattermole spoke to me on the telephone whilst you were in the drawing-room with Mr. Morgan.”
Joanna shook her head.
“It was a gramophone record—they talked about it. They didn’t know I was listening. They said Morgan was dead. Oh, what are we going to do?”
Sarah was being forced back to life and thought. Joanna’s effort had spent itself. She stood confused and helpless with the tears running down her face. Sarah took her by the arm.
“Will you do just what I say? You w
ill—won’t you?”
Joanna nodded.
“I want you to go back to your room. You needn’t go into the hall at all—this stair comes out in the passage. Take Mrs. Grimsby’s coat and blanket with you. They’ll kill her if they know she helped me. You must find a way of giving them back to her tomorrow, and tell her if there’s anything I can ever do for her, I’ll do it. Now go quickly! And thank you a million times!”
“What will you do?” said Joanna with a sob.
Sarah kissed her.
“Get out of the dining-room window,” she said.
CHAPTER XXXIX
Sarah dropped from the window ledge and, steadying herself, looked back. The dining-room was dark behind her. She had closed the door into the hall. She tried now to close the window, and succeeded in pulling it down to within an inch or two of the sill, but there it stuck and there she had to leave it. It did not matter—nobody was likely to come into the room until the morning. She wondered how far the night had worn. Then she turned resolutely and made her way towards the stable yard.
She came soon upon the track which they had trampled down when they came back from the car. She set her feet on it with relief. It was much easier to walk on than the untrampled snow. But there were seven miles of snow between her and Hedgeley.
She stopped thinking about Hedgeley. It did not matter. She thought about the car, and John Wickham lying there in the ditch. And with that she turned the corner of the haunted wing.
A yard away on the frozen track someone moved, tall and black against the white dimness of the snow. John Wickham stood above her and said her name, and when she put out her hands with a soft, desperate cry the hands which took them were living hands. They held her up with a hard, insistent clasp. His voice said,
“I was coming for you. Good girl! Now we’ve got to hurry.”
Weekend with Death Page 22
