“The room smelt moldy, too.
“This cousin turned and ran. At the breakfast table next morning he said, as casually as he could, that he thought he had seen Norbert. He told his story to the rest of the family. There was no comment until he mentioned the scratch. Then Norbert’s sister (Emma, her name was) seems to have fainted. Afterwards she told them all what she had never told anybody before. When she was laying out Norbert’s body for burial, she had accidentally scratched the face of the dead, with the pin of her brooch, while bending over it. She had hurried covered the scratch with powder; and had never mentioned the matter since. That’s all.”
Clarke dusted his hands, dismissing the story.
“And you ask us to forget it,” muttered Tess. “Oh, my God!”
“Yes, that’s a pretty story to frighten women with, isn’t it?” demanded Logan. Surprisingly, his voice was shrill and accusing. “Go on with it! What are you giving us?”
“The story,” explained Clarke, surprised. “I do not vouch for it. I only quote it.”
Andy did not say anything. But he took out his pipe and began to fill it.
On Gwyneth Logan the story seemed to have least effect of all. Her clear blue eyes regarded the fireplace thoughtfully, and the chairs round it. She nodded.
“Yes,” she agreed, “my aunt Jennifer once told me you had to be careful with things like that. She did something very much like that when my uncle died. And, speaking of that”—evidently supremely unconscious, she seized the opportunity to turn round and appeal to us—“don’t you think it’s time for all of us to go and dress for dinner?”
V
AT ONE O’CLOCK IN the morning, I had to admit that I was getting the wind up.
Not that anything had happened, mind. It was waiting for something to happen.
The plan of Longwood House was spread out in my mind like a map. We had explored all of it, before and after dinner. The east side of the house on the ground floor—across the main hall from drawing-room and study—consisted of dining-room (with kitchen and servants’ offices behind), library, and billiard-room. This billiard-room comprised the little wing which was built off from the right side of the house, thus:
And from the billiard-room windows you could see out along the whole front, a splendor of black-and-white fleur-de-lis as the moon rose.
Upstairs, the bedrooms were small. My own room was at the rear, facing north. It had been hung with bright curtains; it was swept and garnished; an electric bulb hung from the ceiling; and there were bedside books on the mantelshelf. The trouble was turning out that light and trying to go to sleep.
At one o’clock I got up, turned on the light for the third time, and put on my slippers and dressing gown.
We had taken the wrong amount to drink at dinner. I don’t mean that we had taken too much: on the contrary, it was just enough to scratch the nerves to wakefulness. Vivid images crowded after it. Gwyneth Logan, suddenly beautiful in a low-cut black gown; the candlelight at the dinner table softening her hair and eyes and shoulders; a packet of superfemininity suggesting sheer nakedness. Then Bentley Logan, his shirt front bulging like dough in an oven, telling stories and barking with laughter at the candle flames. The rattle of a coffee cup; a careless, wrong word; a business discussion, with undertones; and the distinct impression that, when we had all parted for the night, Clarke had pressed something into Gwyneth’s hand.
It was impossible to sort out these impressions now. But it would have been easier if Clarke had not told that story about the corpse with the scratched face. I kept seeing the infernal thing in corners, when the light was out.
There was a quality of emptiness about that darkness and quiet. You remembered the wall of darkness built up for a mile around on every side. When the light switch was pressed, you were built into it, as into a catacomb bricked up. There was a faint lightness about the walls; an unpleasant hump to the furniture; a suggestive sound to the faint breeze making a window curtain jump at the corner of your eye.
You turned this side and that in the bed. The darkness got heavier. You told yourself not to be an ass, and that others were sleeping peacefully.
But were they? Wasn’t it possible to hear their hearts beat, and see their open eyes?—or was it only something over there in the corner, which you couldn’t see because your back was turned? I am trying to be honest about this and it was the peopled weight of the darkness, lurking there to do as it liked, which drove me out of bed and flung me at the light switch again.
I put on my slippers and dressing gown. I lit a cigarette, was annoyed at the absence of an ash tray, wondered what to use for an ash tray, and compromised (as we usually do) by dropping the burned match into the soap dish.
In the raw reaction of seeing light, nerves crawled. I would have given five pounds for a strong whisky and soda, to send me to sleep. There was no reason why I should not go downstairs and get myself one, except that it would be an admission of weakness if anybody saw me, and it seems the height of some-thing-or-other to creep out and take whisky in another man’s house in the middle of the night.
No: no whisky. Reading might do it. The cigarette smoke rose up blue, tasting thin and bitter. I was going over to the mantel to get a book when I heard, from somewhere down in the house, a heavy thud as though a sofa had been lifted and dropped.
Then silence.
Though that noise was not loud, the whole house seemed to vibrate to it: the tingle of the window frames, the jar of the electric bulb, the fancied shift of a plaster ceiling, for the thud had been in my chest as well.
And here I made a discovery. In the shock of that noise, I think I discovered what is at the root of all the psychology of fear. The hot-and-cold feeling I experienced was one of pure relief. Something had happened: it could be investigated. It was no longer a question of lying supine, between starchy sheets, without shoes or the moral armor of a dressing gown, waiting in the dark for something to come to you. You could go to it. You could face it. And it was thereby shorn of half its terrors. We are frightened of ghosts because, in the literal sense, we take them lying down.
In the drawer of the dressing table was an electric torch, carefully brought along for just such an expedition as this. I got it out, switched it on, and went out into the hall: closing the bedroom door behind me.
This was what I had imagined myself doing. But going down those stairs was no pleasant experience.
The thud seemed to have roused nobody else. I could not remember the position of the hall light switch, and did not look for it. No creak came from the stairs, no sound from my felt slippers. In the lower hall I snapped on the torch again. Its beam brushed uneven red tiles, brushed the grandfather clock, turned left to the door of the dining-room and right to the door of the drawing-room.
From somewhere on the right—in the direction of the drawing-room—there was a noise. Turning off the torch again, I blundered into the drawing-room.
“Oh!” said a voice.
I groped forward until I bumped into a fat velvet-covered chair, and leaned across this to touch the china bowl of a lamp. I turned on this lamp, and met Gwyneth Logan just coming out of the door to the study.
She was some distance away from me, her hand on the doorknob. She wore a flowered silk dressing robe, rich-colored against the dark door, over a lace nightgown imperfectly caught at the breast. Her brown hair, masses of it, had been loosened round her shoulders. Her poise was that of one ready for flight. Her nostrils were dilated and her face crimson. With one hand—in which she seemed to be holding some very tiny object—she automatically pulled together dressing robe and nightgown; with the other she closed the door.
“Oh!” she whispered again.
Embarrassment (why?) flowed over both of us.
“I thought I heard a noise,” was my own remark, loudly spoken in the old room.
“It must have been me,” said Gwyneth, laboriously. “I was down here.”
“Yes.”
“I was�
�” Both of us had been stopped, floundering for words, when she broke off from another reason. Her words, spoken through her nostrils, were pinched for breath. Her eyes moved past my shoulder.
I heard Bentley Logan breathe before I turned round and saw him. He lumbered in from the main hall, kicking the door wide; but it did not strike the wall and so it made no sound. He wore an old purple dressing gown, too short for him in the sleeves.
“So you’re the man,” he said.
And he was carrying a .45 army revolver, his thumb pulling back the hammer to cock, so that it was practically a hair-trigger.
“So you’re the man,” he repeated in a high voice.
Now you may think that this situation had begun to resemble a French farce. But it hadn’t. It wasn’t funny at all. Logan’s face looked not so much impassioned as dry and sick. The grayish tufts of hair were ruffled at either side of his bald head; the patch of mustache worked, as though the man were either going to sneeze or weep. If you have ever seen such emotions stripped raw, you will jump back from what you see. For there was power here too; it was going to burst, and everything else with it. His eyes blinked to adjust themselves to the light.
“Don’t you lie to me,” he said. “It’s been going on for four months.”
“Bentley!” urged Gwyneth, not quite at a scream.
“My wife,” he said. “Four months.”
“Sh-h! I tell you—”
“My wife,” said Logan. “Museums! Sneaking out and going to the—” he tasted the words with hatred, and then mimicked, “the Victoria and Albert Museum. Whoring there. My old mother would have—”
I went past him and shut the door to the hall. This was not a very sensible thing to do, for his thumb was still fumbling over the hammer of the revolver. But I was afraid he would rouse the house, and that would be worse.
Tess, for instance.
“My dear,” said Gwyneth, pretty steadily, “you’re being s-silly, and I hate you. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I tell you, I never saw Mr. Morrison before to-day!”
She almost wept over this. Its sincerity was so patent, there was so much in the last statement of a woman who feels herself wronged, that it would have impressed me. But I was surprised that it impressed Logan. Perhaps it didn’t, or perhaps he had another reason.
“No, Gwinnie?” he asked—softly, all of a sudden.
“No!”
“Then what are you doing down here?”
She moved away from the study door too quickly, letting go the knob as though it burned her. He interpreted that.
“So you were in there. What were you doing in there? And what’s that you’ve got in your hand?”
“I won’t tell you.”
“Let me see what you’ve got in your hand, Gwinnie. Come on. Let me see.”
“I won’t!”
“Look here,” I said, sliding in front of him. “Keep your voice down and stop acting like a lunatic. She’s done nothing.”
This stopped him for the moment. Perhaps, in his heart of hearts, he was half afraid to go for his wife. The man had regained his wits: he was merely fighting mad, looking for an excuse to go for anybody. There were big purple veins in his temples, and you could see the blood go up in them as in sluggish thermometers.
“You keep out of this, my lad,” he said, twitching his head round, and twitching it back as I got in front of him. “Maybe you’re concerned in this, and maybe not. But Gwinnie’s concerned in it. I’m concerned in it. I’ll settle it how I choose. Are you going to get out of my way?”
“No.”
Logan nodded. He carefully dropped the revolver, still cocked, into the pocket of his dressing gown. He nodded again. Then, breathing sweat and whisky, he came for me bald-headed.
But neither of us ever landed a blow. Gwyneth flung back her arm, clumsily, and threw at him the tiny object she had been concealing in her hand. It struck the lapel of his dressing gown and fell on the carpet: where Logan seemed to stumble over it, like a bull stumbling over a pebble. He stood still, a big lump of a fist poised in the air, and stared down at it.
It was a small key.
Nothing more than that. Much too small for a door key, it was more like the key to a jewel box or to a diminutive clock.
We heard Logan breathe. “What’s this thing?” he demanded, pulled up by pure incongruity. “What is it?”
“It’s a key,” said Gwyneth.
“I know that. The key to what?”
“I’m not going to tell you,” answered Gwyneth.
He seemed to have forgotten me. He bent over and picked up the key, a man out of his senses. He turned over the key in his big palm. His voice grew almost pleading.
“Don’t tease me, Gwinnie,” he said. “I’m that daft I don’t know what I’m saying, most. But don’t tease me. I forgive you. I know you’ve been seeing this fellow for four months, whoever he is. But, whatever you’ve done, it’s all right if you’ll just come back to me and act sensible. Just tell me: who were you with?” He pointed to the door of the study. “Who’s in that room?”
“There’s nobody in that room,” returned Gwyneth.
She opened the door to reach inside and switch on the light.
“Look and see, darling,” she invited.
Muttering something to me (I could almost swear it was an apology), Logan blundered past. She stood aside for him. She was obviously afraid of him, with a shrinking and physical terror. But, though the color remained in her cheeks, and she drew the dressing robe closer about her body, she put her hand on his arm.
“Listen, my dear,” she urged in her soft voice. “Before you look, let me have a word. I know it isn’t your fault. I know you don’t sleep well at nights …”
It was the wrong approach. He turned on her.
“And I know,” he said, “you gave me double my usual sleeping dose to-night.”
She shut her eyes, patiently. “If you will think that, my dear, you must. But please, before you go storming the house down and frightening people with that horrible revolver, listen to what happened. You’re an awfully silly boy sometimes.” She opened her eyes. “You know I’ve never met Mr. Morrison before; now don’t you?”
(He did know it. How, I couldn’t say.)
“Well, then!” she cried, shaking his arm. “I was waked up by a noise like a bump. A loud noise. I came down to see what it was. That is, I mightn’t have had the courage to come clear down, you see. Only on the stairs I met Mr. Morrison, and he offered to come with me. He’d heard it too. So we had a look round but we couldn’t find out what made the noise, and indeed I still don’t know what it was. Now there’s the plain, silly truth.”
I had to admire her.
Gwyneth Logan told this string of whoppers with candid blue eyes opened to their widest, with no flicker of an eyelash or lessening of their chiding appeal. She leaned closer. Her mouth had a pout of accusation.
“I’m not going to tell you about the key,” she went on, shaking her head firmly. “I’m going to punish you. But oh, dear, you’re not jealous of a key, are you? Do you see anything wrong with that? As for the rest, though, it’s perfectly true.” The blue eyes swept round. “Isn’t it, Mr. Morrison?”
(Well, what are you to do when a woman puts you in a position like this?)
“Quite true,” I lied—and regretted it.
For the hearing of this conversation was not confined to the three of us. With a subconscious fear of interruption, I had been glancing from time to time toward the door to the main hall. I had not actually seen it open, even to the foot-wide extent it stood now. But two things became plain. First, there was a light on in the main hall. Second, somebody’s right hand was placed against the doorpost, as though the left hand had extended to open the door.
That right hand was familiar, down to the turn of the fingers and the gleam of the pink nails. It belonged to Tess. I could imagine her as clearly as though she were in front of us.
The fingers hesitated,
tightened hard round the doorpost, and then were withdrawn. The door closed with a soft click which disturbed neither of the Logans.
“Now look!” said Gwyneth, stepping aside. “See if I’ve been up to any bold, bad wickedness. There’s nobody in the study.”
She was right.
Logan went to look. He even made sure that all the windows were locked on the inside. He was not merely troubled, as I was, by the puzzle of a key without any lock. Unless the woman were a sheer romantic liar—and, often, the dreamy expression of her eyes made this seem probable—that key must have some meaning. But there was no lock in the room.
Nor any person, nor even any ghost. Bare lights shone down on the rugs of the floor on the brick mantelpiece with its glistening tier of pistols; on typewriter table; on cane-bottomed chairs, bookshelves, the radio-gramophone, the triptych, and the noble ship model.
Logan was still half-demented, not himself. He kept his face turned away from us. His shabby flannel dressing gown was hunched up round his shoulders, and his leather slippers creaked from fireplace to table. He undoubtedly had taken a double ration of sleeping drug that night. He could not fight it. While Gwyneth came over to pat him reassuringly, her bright brown hair as rich as fleece round her shoulders, Logan suddenly plumped down in a chair and pressed his hands over his eyes.
The tragedy occurred just after breakfast next morning.
VI
I CAME DOWN TO breakfast with a headache and a bad taste in my mouth.
Though it had gone nine-thirty, nobody else seemed to be stirring. It was a damp, overcast morning, unnaturally warm for so early in the year. The downstairs hall smelt of it, a dusky place. That morning’s post, together with the Times and the Daily Telegraph, had been piled on the oak settle before the fireplace.
The Man Who Could Not Shudder (Dr. Gideon Fell series Book 12) Page 5
