Cottage Sinister

by Q. Patrick

  Finding the door of the bed-room ajar, she crossed the great untidy room towards the boudoir, tapped lightly on the door and opened it after hearing Lady Crosby’s usual, quick “come in.” As she closed it behind her, however, she stared for a second in surprise at her benefactress, for Lady Crosby had risen from her chair and was looking at Lucy with an expression of fear in her eyes,—a look of anxious enquiry as if she were trying to read the girl’s inmost thoughts, and dreaded what she might find there. Nor was Lucy reassured by the nervous little laugh which broke the silence as Lady Crosby came forward to greet her with an affectionate kiss.

  “My dear child! So it’s you! How good to see you, and how sad to think of the things which have happened since we met! However, I’m not going to talk about that. The past’s the past and it’s all dead and gone. It’s the future that we must think about and plan for—you and I.”

  She led Lucy to the sofa where they both sat down.

  “It was good of you to send for us, Lady Crosby,” said Lucy. “Mother was terribly in need of a change.”

  “Your Mother,” said Lady Crosby quickly. “Yes, of course. I must see her later. So sad for her—so sad. But I wanted a talk with you first about—oh, lots of things.”

  “About who did it?” said Lucy with a flash of indignation.

  “No, I’m completely at sea about that. We’ll have to leave that to the detective from London.”

  “The detective!” Lucy gave a little shiver.

  “What I’m wondering about,” went on Lady Crosby hurriedly, “is what you think you’d better do. I shouldn’t think, of course, that you’d want to stay in Crosby-Stourton.”

  Lucy’s eyes widened at this suggestion.

  “Not stay in Crosby-Stourton! But why? I doubt if Mother would want to go anywhere else, especially just now when she’s feeling so upset and shaken. As for me, I—I hardly think the detective from London would let me….” her voice was steady, but fear showed in her eyes, followed by relief at Lady Crosby’s answer.

  “Pooh, child, that could be arranged. He’s duty bound to suspect everyone, but don’t let that worry you. No, I’m just thinking of the general situation in the village. I’m wondering if you wouldn’t perhaps both be happier if you went, say, to Canada. I could probably get an excellent post for you out there, and could arrange for your mother to follow as soon as you were settled and had a place for her to come to. They say Canada has a most wonderful climate and lots of opportunities—or perhaps I’m thinking of Australia—but I could probably manage that too, if you preferred, or South Africa. What do you think?”

  Bewilderment showed in Lucy’s face, but her answer was firm.

  “No, I don’t think it’s the thing to do. It’s awfully good of you to suggest taking all that trouble, but I really don’t think Mother could face going away. As for me, I don’t want to go unless it’s for Mother’s sake. You don’t think—I mean, you don’t want us to go away because you think there’s any more—danger?”

  But her last words were swallowed up in the torrent of Lady Crosby’s lament.

  “Just what Christopher said! Oh dear—how difficult it all is! I hoped he was wrong. You see, I talked this over with him night before last, when I first arrived from London.

  “I don’t see,” broke in Lucy indignantly, “what it has to do with Dr. Crosby.”

  Lady Crosby paused and looked at her protégée through curiously narrowed lids.

  “You—don’t—see,” she began, separating her words with emphasis, “what it has to do with Christopher? But, my dear girl, perhaps you don’t understand about Christopher. Perhaps you don’t understand what it means to him, to me, what everything means.”

  She leaned forward, laying her hand on the girl’s knee.

  “Lucy, tell me this. Has he asked you to marry him?”

  Lucy stiffened perceptibly, but her voice was calm.

  “I don’t see why you should ask me that,” she said slowly.

  “I’m Christopher’s mother,” said Lady Cynthia.

  “I….” said Lucy, and was silent.

  “You don’t understand,” Lady Cynthia began again. “It’s all most unfortunate. Oh, you can’t possibly know how I’ve schemed for Christopher, how I’ve waited, how I’ve hoped. If Christopher’s career and his marriage should justify me—justify me with my husband, I mean—there’s no telling—stranger things have happened. But you see my husband thinks I’ve spoiled the boy completely, what with his medicine and his career and his not much caring about the title and the estate. And yet you can’t help what you think, can you? I daresay if my husband had not been so—far away in the beginning I’d never have bothered with very much else. But you must have something, don’t you think so? Anyway, you see, it would all be pretty miserable for you—the way the family would feel if you married him, and you’re proud, my dear. I know that pride of yours. You couldn’t be happy in such a situation. Much better to go away and forget all about it. You’re young—so very young. Oh, God, to be young and to be beautiful! You’ll have the world at your feet. Don’t take the first little bit of it that offers. Oh, Lucy, how I’ve hoped, how I’ve hoped!”

  She was silent, staring in front of her, dry-eyed, though there had been tears in her voice. Lucy’s answer to this incoherent outburst was sympathetic but non-commital. She seemed thoroughly distressed by the distress of her patroness, and at the same time a little nonplussed by its vehemence.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” she said, “that you feel so upset about—Christopher. But I don’t see why I come into it so much. It isn’t because of me that Christopher wants to be a doctor and earn his living. He’d be doing that—anyway. If I were trying to persuade him to anything different from his usual way of life….”

  She left the sentence unfinished. Lady Crosby turned on her with a sudden energy.

  “Then you are in love with him. You’ve as good as admitted it. You are. Oh, if I only knew….”

  Lucy flushed and turned away.

  “Well, and what if I am,” she said in a low rebellious voice.”

  Lady Crosby lay back in the corner of the sofa and closed her eyes. When at length she spoke all resonance had gone out of her tone and Lucy turned impulsively towards her as if her own momentary flash of anger had dissolved in a sudden pity.

  “Listen to me, my child. If you really love him, I know what that means. If I felt it had been merely ambition on your part (as I couldn’t help hoping) there’d have been things I could have said—things I could have done. But if you really love him, and I believe you do, then there’s only one thing I can say that will touch you (your armor’s so strong—for the present!). You see, I love him too, and I have a right to ask you this. At least don’t marry him in a hurry. Don’t do it unless it’s quite clear that such a marriage would be to his own best interest, and that the world would say you were conferring the favor. rather than he. When that’s clear. I’ll be the first to plead his cause, the first to come begging you to have him.”

  Lucy raised questioning eyes to Lady Crosby’s face.

  “Of course,” she breathed. “And you mustn’t think I haven’t thought of all this. Oh, Lady Crosby, I’ve lain awake so many hours at night wondering about these very things. I do promise you, from the bottom of my heart, that I’ll never marry him to drag him down. I couldn’t do that. I’d rather never see him again, though that’s my idea of hell on earth. I swear I’ll remember what you’ve said. I won’t be selfish and I won’t marry him if it really means his marrying beneath him. But it’s not always so easy to know….” The grey eyes filled with tears, and Lady Crosby’s, meeting their gaze, turned aside to rest on the picture which hung above her dressing table framed in a heavy silver frame—an old-fashioned photograph showing a handsome, insolent young face, the face of Christopher’s father as he had looked when she married him.

  “Still,” she murmured, “you promise. That’s something. But, oh, my child, you’re right. It’s not always so ea
sy to know…. Now leave me and ask your mother to come to me. I want to tell her myself how sad and disturbed I am about your sisters. I trust you, my dear. If Christopher were here I’d send you to him now. But he’s not. He’s gone away—to Canterbury, I think.”

  “To Canterbury?” Lucy was surprised.

  “Yes. Didn’t you know? I can’t think why or perhaps it was just one of his silly jokes. Now go, dear, I want to see your mother. But wait. Perhaps….”

  Lucy, who had risen to go, hesitated as she saw Lady Crosby still staring past her, with unseeing eyes, at some nameless dread of her own.

  “What is it?” whispered Lucy, as if an impulse of sympathy had drowned the memory of her own worries. “There’s something frightening you. I wish you’d tell me. Perhaps I could help….”

  Lady Crosby glanced up, one of her rare smiles relieving but not cancelling the haunted look in her eyes.

  “No, there’s nothing. A cigarette if you please—the box on the edge of the table. Thank you, dear. Now go.”

  Slowly and thoughtfully Lucy retraced her steps to the servants’ hall, where she found her mother quite cheered and strengthened by the deference and sympathy with which she was surrounded. The sight of the old lady’s smile put new resilience into Lucy’s lagging footsteps, and she crossed the room with a light tread.

  “Lady Crosby wants to see you, Mother. She’s upstairs in her boudoir. I’ll wait here till you come down.”

  Mrs. Lubbock, the very picture of elderly, amiable respectability, stood up, smoothed out her skirt, and ambled to the door.

  “I won’t be long, dearie. Lady Crosby, bless her, can’t have much to say to a poor old body like me. Eh, but she’s a kind lad….”

  Her voice trailed off down the passage, and Lucy walked a few steps irresolutely towards the outer door. Her hope of a few minutes solitude in the kitchen garden, however, was cut short by a glimpse of Briggs, straddling a bed of parsley, and deep in converse with the new gardener who had recently come down from London to succeed old Joe Birch. She turned back quickly, glad to have escaped his notice, and strolled to an opposite window.

  The upper housemaid and the second butler, who had both been most assiduous in their expressions of sympathy with Mrs. Lubbock, moved ostentatiously away as she approached. Lucy’s reputation in the village, since the murders, was equalled if not surpassed by the general suspicion with which she was regarded at the Hall, where most of the servants avoided her like the plague. The scullery-maid in particular tossed her head and made for the door. Lucy, as a child living at the Hall, had helped in her department, and the scullery-maid had taken the girl’s subsequent advancement as a personal affront. With a glorious gesture of “I told you so,” she left the servants’ hall for the scullery, whispering loudly to the cook as she passed that “some folks don’t know when they’re well off and then look what they come to!”

  Lucy sighed and dropped into a chair, too preoccupied by her recent interview with Lady Crosby to notice or care about the malice and hostility which encompassed her. Instead, she stared out of the window with troubled eyes, revolving many things in her mind—Lady Crosby’s obvious fear of something (a fear which had changed her usual benevolence and lucidity into incoherence and opposition), her own promise about Christopher, the news that Christopher had gone to Canterbury (Why?—just now when she needed him so much! But no, she had no right … ), and the way the detective from London had looked at her that afternoon when Will Cockett told him about the rinsing of the cup. She shivered a little, and sat quite still.

  At length a familiar step in the passage made her turn her head. Her mother stood in the doorway; unmistakably her mother, but a very different woman from the old lady who had left the room fifteen minutes earlier. Even the cook, placid beyond measure, dropped the penny-dreadful she was reading and exclaimed, “My word, Mrs. Lubbock, have you seen a ghost?”

  Lucy sprang up to give her arm to her mother. She helped her to a chair, where the old woman sank down pale and trembling, and then brought her a glass of water. As she did so, she inwardly deplored the excessive sympathy on Lady Crosby’s part which must have revived this storm of grief. She paused, however, as her mother drank the water thankfully, to wonder whether mere sympathy could have induced such a complete nervous upheaval.

  “What is it, Mother, what is it?”

  “Nothing, dearie. I’ll be all right in a minute. Lady Crosby …”

  But she was interrupted by the maid, Carrie, who came up to them with a message:

  “Miss Lucy, Lady Crosby asks will you come up and see her again for just a minute before you go? She says there’s something she forgot to tell you.”

  Carrie gave them both a friendly smile and pulled up a chair beside the old lady. She was one of the very few who had always refused to believe anything evil of Lucy Lubbock, and the girl gave her a grateful glance as she reluctantly left her mother and made her way upstairs for the second time that afternoon.

  Lady Crosby’s boudoir looked just as it had looked half an hour before, except that this time Lady Crosby was seated at a small writing table beside the window. She did not get up, but motioned to Lucy to sit down on the sofa. Tea had just been served, and there was a steaming cup on the table from which she drank absently whenever she paused in her writing to search for a word. During one such pause she glanced over her shoulder at Lucy, indicating the tea-tray behind her.

  “I poured you out some, too, my dear. Do take it while you’re waiting. I’ll be just a moment. Does it look about right? Oh, but how stupid! I forgot that you don’t take sugar. Pour that cup away and make yourself some fresh.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I really don’t care,” said Lucy, mechanically taking the cup from the tray. She sat in silence, sipping the tea, and watching Lady Crosby’s back as she bent over her letter on the writing table. Soon the letter appeared to be finished. Lady Crosby rose abruptly, blotted what she had been writing, and sealed it up in an envelope. She then sat down on the sofa beside Lucy, handed her the envelope, and looked her very seriously in the face.

  “Keep this letter, my dear, no matter what happens. You are a good girl, and I trust you, and I believe you love my son. If ever Christopher, or any one dear to him,” (she paused with a significant look at Lucy) “should be in danger, or their happiness seriously threatened, open it. Otherwise, destroy it unread before you die, and may God forgive you if you do otherwise than as I say.”

  Lucy was startled and impressed by the deep solemnity of her voice and by the quiet weariness of her expression, both so different from the rush and vehemence of her former manner. The girl sensed again a fleeting impression that Lady Crosby was undergoing some overpowering dread, though it seemed now as if the dread had materialized and had become less terrible by the absence of any hint of mystery or any gleam of hope. But the memory of her mother, sitting wan and miserable in the room below, recalled her thoughts from the troubles of her benefactress. Mystified and saddened, but hopeful, too, she took the letter and rose to go. Lady Crosby rose also, and kissed her once.

  “Now, child,” she said, “that’s all. By the way, will you take this tea tray? I’ve finished with it. And tell Carrie I have a headache and don’t want to be disturbed until time to dress for dinner. Thanks, dear. Good bye.”

  Lucy put Lady Crosby’s empty cup and her own on the tray and took it up as she was bid, but she lingered for a second in the doorway. Almost she could have believed that she heard a spiritual cry for help, that Lady Crosby had called her back to tell her something that must be told. So strong was the feeling that she looked over her shoulder to see. She saw only that Lady Crosby stood quiet by the window, looking out, a fresh cigarette at her lips. “It was the striking of the match,” thought Lucy as she closed the door. Nevertheless, she sighed a little, uneasily, as she went.

  Lucy and her mother passed through the servants’ hall into the courtyard, where the smart Daimler and the even smarter Briggs were waiting to take them home to
Lady’s Bower. Briggs had (in his own words) “poshed himself up for the occasion,” and, as Lucy came out of the house, he nudged the new gardener in a confidential manner and whispered that he “ ’ad ’opes in that quarter.” ’Opes that were undoubtedly the creatures of his own imagination and certainly “fed on the chameleon’s dish,” but ’opes none the less! Being an irrepressible and irresponsible Cockney with good looks and well-brilliantined hair, he implicitly believed that leather breeches, a smart uniform and a suave London manner could eventually remove mountains where any country girl was concerned, even though the particular mountain, as in this case, was the “young squire’s” passing fancy.

  But he needed all his adroitness and suavity to arrange matters so that they all three sat in the front seat of the car, with Lucy next to the driver and Mrs. Lubbock on the outside. Lucy had made it rather obvious that she wanted to sit behind with her mother, for she had noticed, to her anxiety, that the old lady’s lip was trembling and that her usually serene countenance looked pale and anxious. She watched her mother with growing concern as the car sped on, and was so much preoccupied with this, and her own private worries, that she entirely ignored the fact that Briggs was doing a great deal of unnecessary gear-shifting in the neighborhood of her right knee.

  “Mother, dear,” she whispered at length, “do you feel all right?”

  Mrs. Lubbock started slightly, then glanced involuntarily towards the chauffeur, muttering.

  “S’sh, Lucy. Talk to him, dear, and be civil. Don’t pay no attention to me.”

  There was little need, however, to talk to Briggs, for he kept up a continual flow of brilliant persiflage for Mrs. Lubbock’s benefit, while his gear-shifting hand worked overtime for Lucy’s. But his sallies were not appreciated in either quarter. The girl replied to his questions with preoccupied monosyllables, edged away from him with such emphasis that she almost crowded her mother out of the car, and, when at length they reached Lady’s Bower, climbed out with a sigh of relief which the sanguine Briggs promptly interpreted as most flattering to himself.