The Shadow In The House

by Maxwell March

  Peter thrust his hand wearily over his fair hair.

  “All right,” he said. “All right. Only for God’s sake let’s hurry.”

  CHAPTER XXII

  The Moving Finger

  “IT’S TOO COLD for you to sit up here, miss. You’ll be ill.”

  Louise had entered the room silently. Her squat black figure moved so quietly that the girl standing by the window in the big blue bedroom swung round, a little nervous cry on her lips.

  There was nothing very terrifying about Louise, however. In one hand she carried a small portable oil stove which she set down in the middle of the room.

  “This won’t give out much heat for some time,” she said. “This is a big room. You’d better go down into the breakfast room.”

  “But I’m quite all right, Louise. I’m quite all right here.”

  There was appeal in the girl’s voice as well as protestation, but the woman ignored it.

  “The mistress wishes you to sit in the breakfast room while this room is made warm.”

  There was nothing human in the flat, expressionless voice, and Mary, looking at that broad sallow face, found herself wondering if the woman could ever have had any emotional life at all. She looked like an automaton, moved and spoke like one.

  “You’ll go down to the breakfast room.”

  It was a command, and Mary, who had grown used to being ordered about, nodded meekly.

  “Very well,” she said.

  The woman watched her go, and it was not until the door had closed quietly behind her and the gentle click of her heels had died away down the parquet corridor that the Frenchwoman allowed her features to relax. Her eyes were still dull, but a curious expression had appeared on the broad, unlovely features. It was part repugnance, part cunning.

  She dropped down upon her knees by the oilstove and lowered the wick. Then she lifted the contraption onto a long-haired rug so that the air space beneath the stove was almost entirely blocked. Then with infinite caution she raised the wick again.

  After a moment or two the stove not unnaturally began to smoke, but the woman made no effort to check the stream of black, greasy vapour which curled its way up to the white ceiling and laid inky fingers upon the delicate hangings of the lovely room.

  Instead she stood back and emitted a little sound of satisfaction, and after a while, as the noisome fumes became unpleasant, she tiptoed gently from the room, closing the door behind her.

  At the far end of the corridor she caught sight of her mistress, who glanced at her enquiringly. Louise nodded, and Mrs de Liane passed on to her own room, a faint smile upon her lips.

  Meanwhile, downstairs in the little breakfast room, which was so lovely in summer and so inexpressibly cheerless when the view from its wide east window was leafless and forlorn, Mary sat hunched up over the small fireplace and tried not to think of the nightmare of which she found herself a part. She was aware that something was happening. There was unusual activity in the house and a strange sense of foreboding utterly unlike anything she had known before. She had been frightened in the past, moved to unfathomed depths of terror, but this was different. Now she was not merely afraid: she was oppressed, weighed down with a sense of brooding evil. She felt as though the very air she breathed were solid. It was the hour before the storm.

  An instinct made her turn and glance over her shoulder at the bleak landscape, and as she did so her heart contracted painfully. Striding across the lawn towards the french windows of the room in which she sat was the person she had been avoiding so carefully for the past three days.

  Richard de Liane paused with his hand on the doorknob and peered in. The girl rose to her feet and stood looking at him uncompromisingly, warning him by her expression that she was in no mood to talk.

  He hesitated, and it seemed at first that he would turn away, but a moment later he had changed his mind again and let himself quietly into the room.

  Mary met his eyes. She had steeled herself to withstand his laughter and the light, charming way of his which always fascinated her, but she was completely unprepared for the change in him. All his swagger had disappeared. He looked forlorn, almost a little untidy, and he stood looking at her for some time, his eyes dark, his expression heavy and morose.

  “You’ve been hiding from me,” he said.

  The colour came into the girl’s face. “I’ve been avoiding you. That’s rather different.”

  He shrugged his shoulders, and the old bitter smile twisted his mouth.

  “Why?”

  “Because I did not want to be subjected to the same sort of ignominious experience that I had the other night.”

  To her surprise he nodded gravely. “It was ignominious, wasn’t it?” he said. “I felt that. All the same I think you might speak to me. We have to live in the same house, you know.”

  Mary looked at him contemptuously. “I’m not quite as hard as you are. I haven’t had the training. But I’m getting it. The tanning process is taking place. Within a week or two I shall probably have a skin like the rest of you.”

  He did not laugh. To her astonishment something very like alarm came into his eyes.

  “Oh no,” he said, “no!”

  There was passionate protest in the word, and he came forward and looked down into her face. Mary felt herself becoming breathless and was aware that her heart was racing in her side. All the same she was terribly angry with herself. He had made a fool of her again. He would always make a fool of her.

  Because she was so angry she let her bitterness overflow.

  “I shouldn’t worry yourself,” she said. “After all, you’ve rather lost any power you might ever have had to influence me one way or the other, haven’t you?”

  She was looking at him, forcing herself to smile as she spoke, and as her words sank in she saw his face change, saw the old smiling mask slip over it.

  “You’re getting a new spirit, aren’t you, Angel,” he said. “It’s very becoming. I’m old-fashioned enough to like it.”

  Mary did not trouble to repress a little shiver of distaste.

  “I’ve told you I loathe you,” she said. “Must you force me to make it clear every time I meet you?”

  He stepped back from her.

  “You put things very brutally, don’t you, Angel?” he said. “But perhaps that’s my fault.”

  He turned and went swiftly out of the room by the same door through which he had come. Mary stood looking after him. Her thoughts were in turmoil, and she found that she was pressing her clenched knuckles against her mouth, while her eyes were bright with unshed tears.

  She had barely regained her composure when Mrs de Liane hurried into the room.

  “Mary, my dear,” she said, “such a tragedy! That stupid, stupid girl Louise! All over your pretty hangings, all over your clothes, the whole room covered with carbon. I’ve always said I wouldn’t have oilstoves, but of course they’re so useful—or they seem to be until something like this happens. We shall have to change your room at once, my dear.”

  It took Mary some little time to discover exactly what had happened, and she was surprised to find Mrs de Liane almost human in the face of this minor domestic catastrophe.

  They went up together to see the damage.

  As Mary followed the little figure in the grey silk dress up the wide staircase at Baron’s Tye the sense of foreboding, of breathlessness, of silent waiting, which had assailed her earlier in the afternoon came back with overwhelming force. It startled her. Mrs de Liane’s manner had been more nearly ordinary than she had ever seen it before, and yet there was something about the house growing dark in the evening which caught at her throat and filled her with heavy apprehension.

  “Look,” said Mrs de Liane, throwing open the bedroom door. “Isn’t it terrible? Your pretty, pretty room!”

  The oilstove had certainly done its worst. Carpet, bed cover, curtains were covered with greasy black carbon, while all over the walls and ceiling unsuspected gossamer spider t
hreads had sprung suddenly into inky prominence.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to have the little suite at the top of the house for the time being, my dear,” said Mrs de Liane, breaking into the girl’s exclamation of dismay. “I’ll tell Louise to find you some clean toilet things and to rescue your clothes from the cupboard. You do realize we couldn’t possibly get all this clean today?”

  “Oh, of course not,” said Mary hastily and stopped abruptly, a thrill of fear touching her heart. There had been some unusual meaning behind Mrs de Liane’s last words, she was sure of it, and the old woman was looking at her sharply with an inquisitive, birdlike glance which seemed to be searching for some suspicion or objection in her face.

  Mary’s reaction appeared to satisfy her, however, for she laughed, a little regretful sound tinged with an attempt at philosophy.

  “Oh well, it can’t be helped,” she said. “It’s a nuisance, and I’m furious with Louise, absolutely furious, the silly girl! I shall make her clean every inch of this room with her own hands tomorrow. If it wasn’t so late in the evening I should insist on its being done tonight, but that might annoy the other servants. They go home early this evening, you know.”

  Mary nodded absently. She knew that the other maids at Baron’s Tye slept in one of the lodge cottages, while the chauffeur occupied the other. Louise was the only servant who slept in.

  Why this recollection should have added to her feeling of oppression she did not know, and she strove angrily to cast it off. In her heart she realized that her interview with Richard had shaken her much more than she would ever dare to admit. As the days passed it was becoming increasingly difficult for her to get him out of her mind. She was in love with him, and he amused himself with her. It was an ignominious, unbearable situation.

  She dragged her thoughts away from him and followed Mrs de Liane obediently to the little suite at the top of the house which she had occupied on her wedding night. It was cold and deserted, and she stood by the barred window peering out over the dark garden.

  The rain had cleared but it was very cold, and there was a small moon rising. She could see the trees, black and spidery against the sky, and far away in the valley the gleam of water.

  Louise came in and built a fire in the grate. She was more taciturn even than usual, and when Mary attempted to condole with her over the affair of the oilstove she maintained a sullen silence.

  “Dinner will be a little earlier tonight, miss,” she said at last, when the fire had been coaxed into a promising blaze. “The other girls are going to a concert in the village. I think you’ll hear the gong up here.”

  Suddenly the thought of going down through the dark house to sit at a table with Richard and Mr and Mrs de Liane became unbearably distasteful to the girl. She turned involuntarily to Louise.

  “I—I have a headache,” she said. “Do you think Mrs de Liane would excuse me? I’d like to go to bed if I might. I shan’t want any food. Could you—could you put it to her, Louise?”

  Something very like a smile appeared on the woman’s broad face, and she turned her head away sharply to hide it.

  “I’ll ask her, miss,” she said, and went out of the room.

  Mary pushed up the window and peered out into the night. Escape was unthinkable. She had given up hope of that long ago. She moved restlessly. There was something strange about the house tonight, something quite different from all the other nights. There was frost in the air, and the smell of the wet leaves was not so apparent.

  She shivered. Even the garden seemed to be breathless. Even there the unnatural hush seemed to have penetrated. She saw a car turn into the drive and sweep round to the front door. That was Edmund, she supposed, coming down from his little cottage above the village where he lived with his wife.

  She heard the squeak of the brakes as the car pulled up and the sound of the door slamming, and it seemed to her that there was a nervous, irritable force about these things which she had not heard before.

  She left the window and went over to the fire, where she sat for a long time crouching over its warmth and peering into the flames.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  The Little Sound

  “MY DEAR RICHARD, I am sure I am right. Mary is a dear girl but oversensitive. Accept Edmund’s invitation for a day or two, and the chances are she’ll come round.”

  Mrs de Liane, placid and charming as ever, with the candlelight shining down upon her white hair, studied the toe of her satin-shod foot on the fender as she spoke. They were all in the drawing room, Ted de Liane, Edmund and Richard. Ted was hovering in the background, and the two younger men stood side by side on the hearthrug in front of their mother.

  “She wouldn’t come down to dinner this evening. That was your fault, Richard. Now don’t be unreasonable. I can quite understand the girl doesn’t want to face you after marrying you under false pretences.”

  “How can you talk like that? You make me sick!”

  The words escaped the young man before he could control them, and the old woman, raising her eyebrows, looked at him coldly.

  “So that’s how it is, is it?” she said. “In that case, my dear, I think you’d better go at once, because the girl evidently doesn’t like you, and if you stay you’ll make a fool of yourself, if nothing worse.”

  Richard de Liane’s lean figure drooped.

  “I’m afraid you’re right, Mother. You usually are,” he said quietly. “All right, Edmund. I’ll get a pair of pajamas and meet you at the car. Good night, Mother.”

  He went out of the room, and Edmund Beron took a step forward. His face was livid, and his whole body trembled.

  “What are you going to do?” he said, bending down so that his face was within an inch or two of the old woman’s own. “What are you going to do?”

  She patted his cheek. “Nothing, my dear, nothing. Take Richard up to your house and keep him there. Understand? Keep him there.”

  The man drew back from her. “All right,” he said unsteadily. “All right. I’m in your hands.”

  Mrs de Liane did not answer, and he marvelled at her calm in the face of the disaster which overshadowed her.

  Richard’s voice called him from the hall, and he pulled himself together with a start and went out of the room without speaking.

  Mrs de Liane waited until the sound of the car had died away and the house was silent. Ted de Liane sat watching her from the other side of the room, and she became aware of his little frightened eyes fixed upon her. She stirred herself like a small grey cat and stretched her toes out to the blaze.

  “There is something very lovely about this fire,” she said. “It’s very peaceful here, isn’t it, with the two dear boys out of the way, and the servants home, and only Louise and you and I in the house.”

  “And the girl,” said Ted de Liane. “And the damned girl. She’s going to be the end of us, Eva. I’ve known it ever since I set eyes on her.”

  Even to the man who had known her so long Mrs de Liane’s reply was surprising.

  “Well, it’s either her or us, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s very late, Ted. I think I shall go up to bed. That’s a very nice room of yours, with the steps going down to the garden. It’s a very nice house altogether. I should be sorry if—if anything happened to it.”

  “If we lost it, you mean?”

  “Yes,” said Mrs de Liane thoughtfully. “If we lost it. However, it’s our comfort and safety that counts, and one sometimes has to make sacrifices for that. But I’m tired tonight, Ted, and I don’t want to talk. Go to bed.”

  Because he was used to obeying his wife in every particular, Ted de Liane went off grumbling. Mrs de Liane followed him, apparently with the intention of going into her own room, which was on the same floor, but as soon as his door had closed behind him she retraced her steps and, looking like some little grey ghost in the gloom, crept down into the service quarters.

  She was down there alone in the great kitchens for some time. She moved with remarkable agi
lity for so old a woman, and time and again her little figure passed by the patch of moonlight coming through the big kitchen window, unwieldy bundles in her arms.

  Nearly an hour later Ted de Liane, hearing a sound in the bathroom which connected his room with his wife’s, pushed the door open cautiously, to see her closing the door of the medicine chest. On the table by her side was a cup of cocoa.

  She turned round sharply, and for a moment there was something akin to apprehension in her eyes. The next moment, however, she was smiling.

  “I’ve just remembered that poor child didn’t have any dinner. Louise reminded me and went down and made a cup of cocoa for her in the housemaid’s pantry. She can’t sleep very well either, poor child, so I put an aspirin or so in it. Louise is going to take it up to her now. Go back to bed, dear. It’s terribly late, and so cold and frosty.”

  Ted de Liane returned to his own room without a word, but as soon as the light in the bathroom went out he crept back again and went over to the medicine chest. For a long time he studied the contents thoughtfully, and the expression on his weak face might have been ludicrous in any other situation.

  “Veronal …” he said. “Now I wonder what that’s for? What’s she up to now?”

  It was typical of Ted de Liane, however, that he did not attempt to find out. He shrugged his shoulders, decided that whatever it was it was none of his business, and went back to bed.

  Louise, still in her prim black dress, met her mistress in the corridor. She took the cup without question and made her way up the little winding staircase which led to the tiny suite, so inaccessible from any other part of the house.

  Mrs de Liane hesitated. Then she glanced at her watch, which dangled on a gold chain round her slender neck.

  “Three quarters of an hour,” she said under her breath. “Yes … yes, I really think so.”

  Meanwhile Mary had been awakened out of a fitful sleep by the entrance of the Frenchwoman, who had turned on the light and now came quietly towards her.