Cottage Sinister

by Q. Patrick

  His words were to Christopher, but their sense was for Lucy, and the girl trembled as she heard him.

  “Now,” he went on in a business-like tone, rising from the desk and tucking the notes he had made into his pocket, “I wonder if you’d be good enough, Dr. Crosby, to show me your telephone. I want to get through to Scotland Yard at once.”

  “Mother had a telephone on a shelf under the table in her boudoir,” said Christopher sullenly, pointing the way to the adjoining room.

  The Archdeacon shut the door behind him, so that his talk should not be overheard and settled himself at the little table. He gave his number, waited a few moments, and was both relieved and irritated, when he got through to London, to hear Norris’ hearty stream of comment.

  “Hullo, Archdeacon, ’ow’s things? Wot? Aow, I sye, not Lady Crosby ’erself! My word! The Old Man’ll be sure to want two men on that job now, and believe me I’m your man. My eye, I do love it when it’s the nobs. Wot? You think you’ve got it niled? Good old Archdeacon! Make ’em sing a ’ymn and keep ’em ’olding the top note till I arrive. I’ll be along tomorrow morning, and I may even bring the Old Man with me. Oh, my giddy aunt, but this’ll be nuts to ’im! A chynge’d do ’im good, you know. ’E’s getting a little fed-up and restless over this byby-snatcher in Ealing that we cawn’t seem to run in. Wot? Them notes of Myra Braown’s? Naow, ’aven’t traced them yet. May be able to tell you when I see you in the morning. Bye bye, Archdeacon. Keep going.”

  The Archdeacon hung up with a little grimace. The prospective arrival of Norris, and possibly of the Old Man himself, would not be an unmixed blessing, but all the same he felt shaken by the unexpectedness of the afternoon’s events, and in need of stalwart backing.

  In the meantime Lucy had been sitting huddled in her chair, and Christopher, after a few moments of brooding in silence, had turned from the girl towards Hoskins with an unspoken appeal. Hoskins flushed, looked distressed, and turned away.

  “After all, Crosby,” he said in a hesitating voice, “those Scotland Yard men generally know their jobs.”

  “The deuce they do,” muttered Christopher.

  Suddenly Lucy sprang up from her chair and laid her hand on his arm.

  “I’d forgotten! And you’d forgotten, too! Mother may know something. Don’t you remember? I was looking for the Inspector when I met you at the Crosby Arms. Mother seemed so upset when she came home, and said she had something to tell him….”

  Christopher’s brow cleared. “She may help us,” he said. “Hasn’t that chap finished telephoning yet?”

  At that moment the Archdeacon reappeared from the next room.

  “Come along,” said Christopher impatiently. “We were looking for you, you know, before—before this happened. Mrs. Lubbock has something to tell you at Lady’s Bower. She saw my mother too. Oh, come on!”

  “Not so fast, my young friend,” said the Archdeacon. “Before we go I want a word with Dr. Hoskins in private.”

  “All right,” said Christopher grimly. “Come on, Lucy.” The two slipped into the adjoining room, leaving the door ajar. As soon as they were out of the big room the Archdeacon turned to the doctor with a matter-of-fact air.

  “Well, Hoskins, it looks as if all three were the work of one hand. Don’t you think so?”

  “It certainly looks that way,” said the doctor cautiously. “Well,” went on the Archdeacon, “I didn’t want to upset Crosby about this, but I’ll count on you to do the necessary about arranging for an autopsy at Taunton, and so forth. The other inquest had to be postponed till Monday anyway, so the coroner can sit on all three bodies at once. You’ll be ready by then, of course?”

  “Yes, that will do.”

  “All right,” called the Archdeacon to Christopher through the half-open door. “Now we’ll be off. But first I’d like to have a word with your father about having nothing in the room touched. Would you please show me the way from here to his study? It would be best if he had a duplicate key and could lock the room up…. Here, what’s your hurry? Can’t an old woman’s story wait five minutes?” For Christopher was already herding him out of the room with extravagant energy.

  The young man cast a last, pitying glance over his shoulder in the direction of the still, shrouded figure on the bed.

  “I don’t know,” he said uncertainly. “Perhaps there is a hurry and perhaps there isn’t. Anyway, let’s not take a chance….”

  He did not explain his thought, but merely closed Lady Crosby’s door behind him, gently, as if he feared in some manner to disturb the dead.

  IX

  It was a sad and silent party that set out in the Morris Cowley for Lady’s Bower. Lucy and Christopher sat in front—their young faces pale with the stress of emotion, their hands clasped tightly together as though each was anxious to hold on to something alive and real in a world where everything seemed to be falling around them in ruins. The Archdeacon sat in the back seat looking more bewildered than usual. He was profoundly shocked that Death should have had the audacity to strike so high up in the social scale without giving some kind of warning. He felt also a sense of injury that, through no fault of his own, he should have failed so signally in his role of protector of the women folk of Crosby-Stourton. He was ashamed and puzzled and he longed for a little peace and quiet. Above all, he wanted to be alone in his room at the Crosby Arms so that he could sit down quietly to work out all the new and interesting facets of the case with pencil and paper.

  But there was to be no peace for the Archdeacon on that day, for even now—though it had already claimed three victims in so tragic a manner—death had not yet finished with Crosby-Stourton.

  And so the little party drove on through the late midsummer twilight, with their minds full of the tragedy they had left so recently behind them. As yet they were unconscious of the fact that still another lay just before them.

  When they reached the garden gate of Lady’s Bower, Christopher took Lucy’s arm and supported her gently up the path.

  The Archdeacon walked behind in dignified and somewhat disapproving isolation. A demonstration of affection at this juncture seemed to him to be in the worst possible taste. As soon as she saw that they were at some distance from him, Lucy turned her pale face towards Christopher and whispered—so low that the Inspector’s alert ear could not catch a word of what she said:

  “I’m so sorry for you, dear! Your poor mother! I feel utterly crushed myself at the loss of my kindest friend—but you—Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry!”

  Christopher smiled at her with a preoccupied air. “Thank you, Lucy,” he said simply. Then, as though he had some instinctive foreboding of what he was about to see, he pushed her gently aside and preceded her into the cottage.

  As he crossed the threshold, Lucy, who was standing immediately behind him, noticed that the muscles of his back suddenly went rigid and that he involuntarily clenched his hands and started as though he had been stunned. He stood still for a brief moment and then, turning quickly around, came out of the cottage and closed the door. His face, which had been pale before, was now ghastly.

  “Lucy,” he said, speaking very slowly and with an obvious effort, “I’m sorry, terribly sorry, dear, but I want you to be prepared for something—something rather—terrible….”

  With a convulsive movement of her throat she brushed past him and ran into the cottage. Christopher and the Archdeacon followed her. Inured as they all were to scenes of tragedy and death, none of them were destined ever to forget the scene that met their eyes.

  The room was in a state of chaos—bottles, towels, and cups lay in an untidy mass upon the table. A chair had been overturned and a broken tea-pot lay on the floor, surrounded by a dark sinister-looking stain. Their eyes took in all these relatively unimportant details at a glance before they rested finally on the body of Mrs. Lubbock which lay in the centre of the floor—terribly twisted and contorted in the final agony of death.

  That someone had been with her at the last wa
s evident from the fact that a cushion had been placed clumsily beneath her head and the front of her dress had been hastily unloosened. The bottles and wet towels on the table also bore witness to an inexperienced and fruitless attempt at administering first aid.

  Christopher moved instantly towards the body, while Lucy stood still by the door as though petrified with the horror of the scene. Instinctively the Archdeacon placed his large bulk before her so that she could not see the young doctor make a cursory examination and compose the corpse. After a very few minutes he pulled a rug from the sofa and covered the body; then he turned to them saying,

  “Dead—I knew it the minute I saw her. I’m terribly sorry, Lucy dear. You must try to be brave.” She stared straight in front of her without apparently seeing or hearing him.

  “Here, Inspector,” he continued in a whisper, “help me carry her upstairs. She’s been dead about an hour, I should say—same symptoms as the rest. Oh, God! when will this end?”

  Gently and reverently the two men raised the old lady’s body and carried it upstairs. As the Inspector came down the narrow stairway again he thought he heard footsteps. He ran to the door and threw it open. Mrs. Greene stood upon the doorstep, wild-eyed and shaking like an aspen.

  “Thank God—thank God, someone’s here at last,” she moaned. “If you knew what I’ve gone through this last two hours!—if you knew! I did all I could for the pore old crittur as you can see for yourself. But it was no good—no good. And there was no one to help me neither. Not a blessed soul came near the cottage and her dying so as I couldn’t leave her to get no one. As soon as I saw she was past mortal help, I thought I’d better run out to try and find someone—some responsible body like Dr. Hoskins or yourself—but I was told as how you were all up at the Hall. I left a message for Dr. Hoskins and came straight back to find you here….”

  A fit of shuddering seized her and her eyes, normally protuberant enough, now seemed to be starting out of their sockets in horror at the experience which she had just gone through.

  At this moment Christopher came downstairs. Outwardly he was calm but his eyes showed what agony he had been suffering in the last few hours. He led Lucy to the window seat, and then, seeing that Mrs. Greene was present, he went across the room to her and whispered:

  “Mrs. Greene; come, we need your strength and your help. That poor girl—I’m sure it must have been a terrible experience for you—but it’s even worse for her than it was for you. Her mother, you know—go to her, take her upstairs and try to comfort her—she needs a woman now!”

  As she heard these words, the postmistress stiffened, and her bosom swelled indignantly.

  “Wait … ,” she said, and even in this tragic moment her sense of the dramatic did not desert her, “Wait….till I tell you all—yes, and her too—all about her pore mother’s death.” The Archdeacon, who had been looking large and awkward in the tiny cottage, nodded his head eagerly. “We may as well hear it now, Dr. Crosby,” he said firmly. Christopher shrugged his shoulders wearily and then boldly sat down beside Lucy and put his arm around her trembling figure.

  Mrs. Greene looked at her audience impressively, as if to be sure that she had their full attention. Then she started in a voice which trembled with emotion but was not without a touch of self-importance.

  “I was just passing by here—around five o’clock it was—when I thought I’d drop in for a bit of a chat with pore old Mrs. Lubbock. She was sitting in her usual chair—there—with her bonnet on and there was a teacup beside her on the table. She looked upset and was trembling a bit, but I spoke to her as though nothing was amiss. She answered me sort of strange and listless like, so I tried to cheer her up seeing as how she’s had a lot of troubles lately, pore soul. I told her all about my work at the Post Office and the number of letters as goes through my ’ands each year, but she didn’t seem to be paying no attention like—no, she just sat there in her chair saying nothing except, ‘I must see the Inspector—I must see that there policeman from London.’ I was worried about her, she looked that peaked and poorly, so at last I decided to get out my knitting and sit with her until Lu—her daughter (as I’d heard was off joyriding in the car) should come home.” Mrs. Greene paused to take breath and threw an envenomed glance in the direction of the unconscious Lucy. Christopher’s encircling arm pressed the girl a little closer.

  “And then—suddenly—Oh, it was too terrible, Inspector! She got up from her chair and her eyes were staring something awful … and her voice sounded kind of thick and throaty. She seemed to be seeing things as weren’t there and she kept muttering—muttering—I shall never forget it …”

  “Did you hear what she said?” The Archdeacon asked with ill-concealed eagerness as he made a prodigious effort to get out his notebook and pencil without being observed.

  “Yes, I did—” Mrs. Greene pursed up her mouth and looked at Lucy as though she were longing to point a denunciatory finger.

  “Yes, I did hear exactly what she said,” the Postmistress repeated with awful emphasis. “And I’m going to tell you the words as I heard them, and I’ll take my Bible oath that they was the exact words too.” Mrs. Greene no longer looked like a mere public servant. She might now have been Queen Victoria herself, so regal and righteous was her bearing.

  “Well, just before she fell over unconscious like, I distinctly heard her say that Lucy was gone to get the Inspector. Then she mumbled something about unnatural daughter. I heard them two words plain, and then—” here Mrs. Greene paused and glanced triumphantly around her, “I heard her say several times—and I heard it as plain as daylight—‘to kill one’s own flesh and blood, one’s own flesh and blood, I can’t believe it, l can’t believe it.’ That’s what she said over and over again, and may God forgive me if I lie. Why, the very last words as she uttered when she lay on the floor—there—was, ‘I can’t believe it, but the Inspector will soon be here and maybe he can piece it all together.’”

  Mrs. Greene paused and the room seemed silent as death itself, when suddenly a strangled cry rang out from the window seat and Lucy burst into a fit of hysterical weeping. “It was my fault—my fault,” wailed the girl, “if only I’d hurried, if only …”

  Christopher bent over her for a moment, and then, raising his head, he looked at the other two with a stern and angry expression. Mrs. Greene was just about to continue when he cried:

  “Stop … Mrs. Greene … stop! Have you no heart, woman! Inspector Inge, she must stop! As a physician I insist that Lucy hear no more of this horrible … ghoulish … story! Within the last few hours I, too, have lost my mother, so I can understand something of what this poor girl feels. For myself I ask nothing—but for her—I ask—or rather, I insist—that she hear no more of this now. She’s on the verge of a collapse. Have you no eyes?” He turned his back on them angrily and bent over Lucy. She clung to him sobbing distractedly.

  “Come, Lucy, I want you to come upstairs now. I’ll send for Carrie to be with you to-night. I want you to try to sleep, my poor child, you’re all worn out.”

  Very tenderly and with the utmost gentleness he raised the weeping girl and half carried her up the stairs. After they had left, Mrs. Greene folded her arms implacably and looked at the Inspector as much as to say, “There’s guilt if ever I saw it.” The Archdeacon looked after the young couple anxiously. He was essentially a kind-hearted man and he did not like to cause unnecessary suffering to anyone. Mrs. Greene, however, had no such scruples. Her chief concern was the fact that she had been cheated out of the major part of her audience, and she cleared her throat as if anxious to continue her story. But she got no further, for at this moment there was a knock at the cottage door. The Inspector opened it to admit Dr. Hoskins.

  “Ah! there you are, Mrs. Greene—I got your message and came right over.” The doctor looked pale and absolutely fagged out.

  “Too late—a whole hour to late,” replied Mrs. Greene dramatically.

  With less drama and more simple directness t
he Archdeacon outlined the reason for Mrs. Greene’s urgent call and summed up her account of Mrs. Lubbock’s last moments. In a very few minutes the doctor had examined the body and roughly corroborated Christopher’s earlier findings.

  “Yes, Inspector, it was the same drug as the rest of them. I can swear to that. And she’s probably been dead about an hour. I suppose this means another autopsy report. Well, that makes four altogether now. Oh, dear!” his voice sounded infinitely weary. “And when this little holocaust is over, I’m going to find myself a nice quiet practice somewhere in the East end of London—or Chicago!”

  “I suggest that we both have a look at the tea things now,” interrupted the Inspector, who welcomed the chance to get into action again after all these emotional outbursts. “Mrs.

  Greene, are you sure this is the cup that Mrs. Lubbock was drinking out of?”

  Mrs. Greene nodded emphatically.

  The doctor advanced to the table and peered myopically into the cup. Then he dipped the tip of his finger in the dregs of tea that lay at the bottom and tasted them very cautiously with his tongue. Next he tasted what was left in Lucy’s cup in a similar manner, and finally he bent over and repeated the performance with the liquid tea leaves that still adhered to the broken teapot. He then went back to Mrs. Lubbock’s cup once again.

  “Unmistakable,” he muttered, “just dip your finger in here, Inspector. It won’t be enough to hurt you, but don’t swallow any of it. So. Now tell me if you notice any funny after-taste.” Very gingerly the Archdeacon did as he was told.

  “Why, yes,” he said eagerly, “the tea is sweetened, of course, but I do believe I notice a faintly—very faintly—bitter after-taste. Something like—er—quinine.”