The Shadow In The House

by Maxwell March

  “The mistress remembered that you’d had no dinner, miss,” she said. “She’s most anxious that you should drink this.”

  Mary blinked at the cup. “Thank you very much, Louise, but I don’t really think I want it. I was asleep, you know.”

  The woman did not move. “The mistress said you were to drink it. I went downstairs and made it myself.”

  A pang of conscience stirred Mary as she thought of the enormous number of stairs that this hard-working woman had scaled on her behalf.

  “It’s very kind of you, Louise,” she said, and stretched out her hand.

  But Louise did not go. Evidently she had no intention of leaving until her offering had been consumed.

  Mary shivered. “I’ve been dreaming,” she said. “The house is very quiet and ghostly tonight; don’t you think so?”

  “I wouldn’t notice it, miss.” The woman turned her back upon the girl in the bed and went over to the fire, which she stirred into flame.

  Mary tasted the cocoa. It was very sweet and sickish, but she forced herself to take it.

  “It’s very late, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Just past midnight, miss.”

  “Really? Well, this is extremely kind of you, Louise.” Mary took another gulp of the unpalatable stuff.

  Louise straightened her back. “It was the mistress’s orders,” she said without turning round.

  Rebuffed, Mary finished the draught and set the cup and saucer down on the bedside table. As she lay back among the pillows she was aware of a soothing, restful, sleepy feeling. The house did not seem so quiet, the sense of apprehension not so strong. The room looked warm and comfortable, and the fire danced pleasantly.

  A thousand thoughts began to chase each other through her mind with the smooth bewilderment of a pleasant dream. Her adventures of the past few weeks rushed back to her, but now they had lost their terror and had become merely interesting unrealities.

  She looked at Louise. She was a Frenchwoman. The fact struck a chord of memory. She had heard another French name quite recently, and it came back to her.

  “Louise,” she said, “who is Jean … little Jean?”

  Nothing she could possibly have said could have had a more astonishing effect upon the square, ugly woman who stood by the fireplace. Every vestige of colour drained out of her face, and the next moment she was at the bedside, her strong hands cutting the girl’s shoulders, while a stream of French poured from her lips.

  Mary looked at her with dazed, bewildered eyes. Louise looked very funny standing there shouting, she thought in the new impersonal way in which her mind was travelling. There were tears in her eyes, actual tears, tears rolling down her broad, livid cheeks.

  “What are you saying?” she said in English. “What do you know? Where is he? Where is he? Do you know?”

  The urgency of the demand cut through the vapours of the drug which was fast overpowering the girl.

  “On the road … the back way from London to here … where you turn off down a long straight strip, a lane with high hedges. Do you know it? … a lane with high hedges …”

  Her voice trailed away, and the woman shook her.

  “Go on!”

  Mary struggled. She was very sleepy. Louise seemed very far away.

  “We met a man. He was looking after Jean for Mrs de Liane. He thought Jean was old enough to go to school.”

  The last word was distorted on her lips. Her eyes closed, and she began to breathe heavily. Louise shook her.

  “Wake up! Wake up! Did you see him?”

  Mary did not answer. Her breath was coming rhythmically and heavily.

  “Mon Dieu, le pauvre petit! Mademoiselle … mademoiselle! Dites moi!”

  But Mary did not stir.

  The woman took a deep breath and stepped back from the girl. She picked up the cup and smelt the dregs, and her small black eyes were bright with intelligence.

  “Jean!” she said huskily. “Jean!”

  For a moment she stood irresolute, and then hatred, terrible in its intensity, appeared upon her face, and she stood repeating the muttered words which the girl had told her.

  “Immédiatement,” she said suddenly. “At once … now!”

  Turning, she sped silently out of the room, switching out the light as she passed.

  She fled through the great silent house with swift, noiseless footsteps, down the corridors, down the wide staircase to the library.

  For some time she worked there feverishly, and then the little reading lamp over the big desk went out. There was a step in the hall. The front door opened, and a blast of icy air burst into the house.

  Then the door closed, and there was silence again, save for the quick patter of footsteps on the gravel of the drive.

  Meanwhile, in the darkness of the little suite at the very top of the old oak-and-plaster house, Mary slept heavily. The powerful drug had done its work. She did not move but lay as one dead, one arm flung out on the pillows, her cheek resting on her bright hair. No sound would have awakened her. An alarm could have been rung in the room below, and she would not have heard it.

  For a long time there was no sound at all in the big room, but after a time a keen ear might have detected a little terrifying sound. It was not loud and was far away in the very depths of the old wooden house—a little crackle, a scurry of mice in the wainscots and then a crackle again, and finally a roar which was not the roar of water but an angrier, fiercer sound which must have struck terror into the heart of anyone who heard it.

  Baron’s Tye was ablaze.

  Entirely unaware of the carefully built bonfire in the kitchen of the house which she had just left, Louise sped on down the gravel drive. The frosty night was still clear in spite of occasional drifts of cloud passing over the moon.

  It was very late. Down in the valley the clock in the tower of the village church struck the half-hour, and there was something ghostly about the far-off collection of huddled roofs, dark and silent in the faint light.

  Louise hurried on. In the last half-hour she had made a discovery which had revolutionized her life. Even now a few half-sheets of ill-spelt writing nestled in the pocket of her coat, and her thoughts were on something that had happened long ago.

  The moonlight shining down upon her face showed that a change had taken place in it. Her closely set black eyes were bright and hard, and there was grim determination in the line of her mouth which ennobled her whole appearance. Now she was a woman with a purpose, a woman keyed up to do braver things than could ever have been expected of her.

  She passed under the thick belt of trees at the end of the drive and turned abruptly down the little path which led to the lodge cottage in which the chauffeur lived.

  Only once, when she paused outside the little dark door almost hidden by an overhanging shelf of ivy, did she hesitate or the determination upon her face waver. She recovered herself, however.

  Stepping onto the grass, she moved over to a darkened window and tapped peremptorily upon the glass.

  It took her some time to wake the man within, but he came at last to the front door, pulling on his coat over his pajamas and trousers.

  “Hello!” he said in astonishment. “What’s up? Anything wrong up at the house?”

  “Plenty.” The woman spoke grimly and pushed past him into the little kitchen-sitting-room, which, with the bedroom, composed the entire accommodation of the bungalow.

  There was such authority in her manner, such determination in her voice, that he admitted her without protest and, after lighting an oil lamp, raked together the white embers in the little stove.

  “Don’t worry about that. It’s not cold.” The woman spoke sharply, and when he turned to peer at her in amazement she stepped close to him and looked up into his face.

  “Jack Walker,” she said, “you’ve known me for five years, haven’t you? And during that time I’ve done you a few good turns.”

  He stepped back from her; her passionate intensity was alarmin
g.

  “Yes,” he admitted cautiously. “Yes, you’ve helped me several times. I admit that.”

  “Helped you!” she said contemptuously. “I’ve shielded you. I’ve known we were both in the same boat. Mrs de Liane has some hold over you, hasn’t she? I don’t want to know what it is, but I can guess. They never caught the man who escaped from Pentonville just before you got this job, did they?”

  The man had whitened at the beginning of her remarks, and now an exclamation escaped him. Louise waved him silent.

  “I haven’t come to talk about you,” she said. “The time has come when you can help me. This is where we can get even with this woman if we work together. Oh, it’s no good pretending any loyalty to her: you know as well as I do that neither of us would stay in her employment if we could get out of it with safety. You’ve got to help me now, Jack Walker. You’ve got to get out the car and take me to a cottage just off the London road because in that cottage there’s a child.”

  Her voice quivered, and he glanced at her sharply.

  “I don’t know anything about it,” he said. “The mistress never let me go up to the house. I know where it is, though.”

  “You know!” she gasped at him.

  “I know that there’s a cottage off the London road where there’s a child in which Mrs de Liane takes an interest. That’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it?”

  “You never told me? Le pauvre petit Jean!”

  The man’s surliness reasserted itself.

  “There’s a good deal I don’t tell,” he said grimly. “Anyway, why should I?”

  Fearing she was antagonizing him, the woman laid a hand on his arm.

  “Listen to me,” she said. “Long ago I was the nurse to Madame Lebonheur. I don’t suppose you recognize that name. …”

  The man looked at her curiously.

  “There was a big French financier called Lebonheur who went smash and was sentenced to seven years imprisonment. D’you mean his wife?”

  She nodded, her lips white and her small black eyes strangely near tears.

  “He knew the crash was coming. So did Madame. She was beside herself with worry, and when the baby came she died. Just before they came to arrest him, André—that is to say Monsieur Lebonheur—gave me all Madame’s jewels. ‘Take the child, Louise,’ he said. ‘Take Jean and look after him. You’ll have enough money from the sale of the jewelry to keep him until I come out. Take care of him. I trust you, Louise, I trust you.’ Then they took him away.”

  The man was looking at her steadily, and she went on quietly with her story.

  “I came to England. It seemed the safest place. But I was very frightened. I was an ignorant country girl, you see, and it was a great responsibility. On board ship I met what seemed to be a very kind little old lady. She took pity on me, and I told her my story.”

  A grim smile spread over the man’s face.

  “I know the missus in that mood,” he said. “That’s how she took me in.”

  Louise’s passionate voice continued:

  “We all stayed at the same hotel in Folkestone. I slept very heavily during the night, so heavily that I know now I must have been drugged, although at the time it never dawned upon me that the coffee which the kind old lady had given me just before I slept contained anything other than it was supposed to do. In the morning both Jean and the jewels had disappeared.

  “I was beside myself. I was a stranger in a strange land. I could not speak the language. I wanted to go to the police, to the French consul, but Mrs de Liane dissuaded me. She seemed to me to be so kind, and she took me into her service and promised to do her best to help me find the child again. In these last five years I have found out what she really is, and deep in my heart I have known that it was she who was responsible for my whole tragedy, but I have not been able to get proof until tonight. Now I have the proof, and I must find the child.

  “André comes out in the early part of next year. He will find me, and what shall I be able to tell him if I have not got the child?”

  Her voice died away, and the man stood looking at her curiously.

  “You’re in love with him?” he enquired brusquely.

  The woman met his eyes squarely. “There are some men who are made to be loved,” she said quietly. “You take me to find Jean. You must get the car out and take me at once.”

  The man hesitated, but at last, after what seemed an unbearable interval, he shrugged his shoulders.

  “Well, I’ve done enough dirty work in the last five years,” he said. “I may as well do something on the level for a change. It’s stealing the car—I suppose you know that?”

  “What does it matter?” the woman said wildly. “I have proof, I tell you! I can get her arrested. I can get her imprisoned.”

  The man took down his heavy greatcoat from its place behind the door.

  “All right,” he said quietly. “Come on.”

  Together they pushed the car out of the garage behind the chauffeur’s cottage and onto the main road before starting the engine. The night was still fine, and the white road stretched out in front of them like a ribbon among the ploughed fields.

  As they passed the brow of the hill Walker looked over his shoulder and pulled up.

  “I thought I saw something like a light down there in the house,” he said. “It’s gone again now. If she was to telephone to the police to stop us …”

  The woman tugged at his sleeve.

  “Come on. Hurry. She will not telephone the police. Once she knows I am gone she will be afraid of the police.”

  The man sighed and let in the clutch.

  “I don’t know why I’m taking this risk for you,” he said. “But there’s some things one doesn’t forgive. It was dirty to take the child. That’s how she kept you with her, I suppose … always promising?”

  Louise nodded. “Always promising,” she echoed. “Come. Hurry. Drive faster.”

  They pulled up at last in a narrow lane. The man climbed out.

  “There’s the house,” he said, pointing to a ramshackle building silhouetted against the brightening sky. “There’s a light. I’ve never been up there myself. She used to leave the car here.”

  But Louise had not heard him. Already she was halfway up the narrow overgrown path which led through the dilapidated garden. He could see her square figure moving silently through the dawn.

  He came up with her just as she reached the window, and together they peered in through the dirty panes at the scene within.

  It was a poor room lit by a single oil lamp. From the furniture and the remnants of a meal still on the table it was evident that it was the family sitting room. Lying on a bed made of a couple of chairs pulled up in front of the fire was a child, a slatternly woman bending over it, weary exasperation upon her face.

  Louise had no eyes for the woman. Her gaze was fixed upon the little boy with dark hair and bright, feverish cheeks who tossed and turned upon his uncomfortable bed.

  She caught her breath. “He has grown up so like Monsieur André!” she whispered.

  “Are you sure it is him? You haven’t seen him since he was a baby.”

  Louise looked at him contemptuously in the dusk.

  “I would know him anywhere,” she said. “Le petit Jean … le pauvre petit Jean.”

  She turned on her heel, and he caught her arm.

  “Here, what are you going to do?”

  “Go to him,” said Louise simply. “But naturally.”

  Crossing the garden, she raised her hand and beat loudly upon the wooden door.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  The Fire

  STANDING ON THE LAWN, his white hair dishevelled and his dressing gown huddled round his shapeless form, Ted de Liane made an unforgettable picture. He had lost his head completely and was shouting meaningless words at the excited villagers who were fast crowding upon the scene.

  Baron’s Tye was blazing like a funeral pyre. In the window of her beautiful Chinese room Mrs de Li
ane stood silhouetted against the glare within. She was wonderfully calm, and her tiny figure, clad in its silk shawls, seemed to sway in unison with the dancing flames around her.

  The dark garden was already alive with people. Ted, awakened by the smell of smoke, had come down, forced his way through the long windows in the library and given the alarm by phone.

  At the moment the fire was confined to the back of the house, but the light lath-and-plaster construction of the building left very little hope that the local fire brigade might get the blaze under control before the whole place was destroyed.

  At the very top of the house a barred window stood open. It was the window of the bridal suite. Within the room Mary slept heavily, completely oblivious of the roar beneath her or of the fumes pouring up into the room.

  It was just before the dawn. The moon had slipped out of sight behind the heavy banks of cloud on the horizon, and a light wind had sprung up which fanned the flames into a furious tarantella.

  All the lower half of the back of the building was a seething mass of fire. Long flames curled out of the windows, casting an unsteady light over the scene as far even as the river at the foot of the valley.

  Every minute more and more people from the village crowded into the grounds, and a chain of buckets had been formed from the stream to the kitchen windows. But in spite of the feverish activity of the workers the feeble splashes of water did very little to discourage the flames.

  Ted de Liane was shouting for Walker, but the man did not appear, and it was one of the farm hands who fetched a ladder from the coach house and carried Mrs de Liane down to safety amid the cheers of the crowd.

  She lay, a little limp bundle, in her husband’s arms, and as the village women bent over her murmured something incoherent and then appeared to lose consciousness.

  Some considerable time elapsed before she revived, and it was while Ted de Liane was still bending over her that the village policeman, a rugged individual considerably flustered by his position of authority, came hurrying up.

  “I see all the maids are out, sir. They sleep out, don’t they? There’s no one else in the house, is there? I haven’t seen Mr Richard.”