Woman in the Mirror

by Winston Graham

  Of course she blew her nose and lied to him about some trifling disagreements she had had with Miss Faulkner and told him to go to bed and not to worry; but he stayed a while, hands in pockets, looking at her through his crooked glasses, still wanting to make some affectionate gesture but inhibited by his age. Eventually, just as he was about to leave, she said:

  ‘If there’s any trouble, dearest, it is mine, not yours. And if I have made mistakes in my life with you it has been from too much love, not too little. Whatever happens in these next few weeks, there’s one thing I know I shall be able to count on, and that is your loyalty and your trust.’

  Emotional speeches always angered him, and his normal tendency was to shy away from them like a nervous horse from a snake; but this one, combined with the tear-streaked face that his mother turned towards him, moved him again, more detestably than ever, and he felt the tears welling up in his own eyes.

  He muttered something, had an impulse to kiss her, resisted it, and then forced himself to do so – hating the stink of the brandy, and not even liking the feel of her tears on his lips; but glad now that he had overcome his restraint. His glasses swung by one ear, and he pulled them impatiently over his nose, muttered a grumpy good night, and with her murmured blessing in his ear went out of the room and back towards his own. As he was about to go he heard a footstep.

  Choked with angry emotion, he stood quite still in the dark and saw a tall man moving stealthily along the landing. Gregory was short-sighted but he had come to recognize people by their shape and he instantly knew that this man was the man who had brought the three hikers here and was then supposed to have gone home.

  The boy moved a step or two at a time and by the tiny light of the turned-down landing lamp saw Carew reach the foot of the second flight and go up. There was only one place that flight led to and that was the bedroom of Norah Faulkner.

  After a moment Gregory advanced until he could look up the stairs. They were empty and dark. Step by careful step, avoiding the centre of the treads, he went up too until he was three steps from the top. There was a light under Norah Faulkner’s door and the low murmur of voices.

  So there was to be a repeat of this afternoon, was there? – but with Carew this time and in far guiltier circumstances. This afternoon he had crept up the other stairs and listened at the door for some minutes before curiosity as to what Simon and the girl were doing inside induced him to push it open. But that had had at least the pretence of painting as an excuse. No such excuse here – and with another man. In the quarrel this evening his mother had done her best to cast doubts on the Faulkner woman’s reputation – anything, he thought, to make her accusations less believable. But really it was one person’s word against another. Not so here. Here was proof that the girl was a mischief maker and a cheap tart. If he could surprise them – maybe even find them in bed together . . . It would altogether destroy her credibility.

  But had he the courage to do it himself? Different this afternoon when he had a simple reason for going in. Best fetch his mother, and she could perhaps arouse Doole. He turned to go down, and there stopped. Supposing it wasn’t all it seemed. These were deep waters and he might be assuming all the wrong things. Supposing Mr Carew had just gone up there for a minute to see Miss Faulkner. Supposing he too was in the plot to expose and disgrace his mother. Supposing he, Gregory, went down and roused the house, or some part of it, and they all went up to see what was to be seen, and in the meantime Carew had come down again and left. That would make him a fool and they would lose any advantage of the discovery.

  Gregory hesitated and peered at the light again. Someone, he thought, moved in the room, because there was some change in the light under the door. He hesitated, and then he mounted the remaining stairs and very cautiously unlatched the chain that held the big oak door in place. He was afraid the hinges would groan, but the door moved with scarcely a sound, and presently it was latched. He stretched up and bolted it top and bottom.

  II

  His first intention was to go straight to his mother and tell her. When he left her he had been raging at his own impotence to help. Now, immediately, the opportunity had arisen. He was elated with what he had done but not absolutely sure of himself. He was playing for high stakes in an adult world where just possibly his reasoning might be wrong, his judgment at fault. He thought his mother would be pleased, but he wasn’t sure how she could or would act on it. If she went up immediately she might not be able to do much except create a further row with even more disastrous results. Yet you could hardly wake the three hikers and ask them to be present as witnesses. Anyway, there was no hurry. If Carew wanted to come down and couldn’t and raised the house, that couldn’t be a bad thing. It would surely play into their hands. If he didn’t find out until the early morning he would still be unable to get out. Maybe it would be better to leave it until the morning. Maybe it would be safer to have had nothing to do with it at all. The door had somehow got itself shut and bolted. What a pity. How unfortunate. Leave it alone and see what happened.

  As soon as he thought this Gregory knew it was right. It left things to happen without his having to take any more on himself. If the locked door turned out well he would take the credit for it; if not he could disown it altogether.

  He was not at all sure that his mother would approve of what he was going to do next, but he had been thinking of it for four hours, ever since they had found the Faulkner girl searching the study. The excuse that she was looking for Simon’s pills was nonsense. She was searching through the papers there trying to find anything that would strengthen her case against them.

  And there were things that would strengthen her case, if she came on them, for everything was not in the safe. A couple of months ago Gregory had found a sheet of paper in the desk covered with Simon Syme’s name. Simon Syme, Simon Syme, Simon Syme. All over the page. It wasn’t difficult to guess the purpose of the exercise. Then there were lawyers’ letters, income tax returns, rent books, receipts and accounts, lists of property, bills of sale. He couldn’t make all that much of them but the Faulkner woman probably could. Certainly Christopher Carew would.

  It was another facet of his mother’s stupidity, to keep so much. Of course some of these letters would be duplicated elsewhere, but not all. And not all available for anyone to pick up and see.

  So after he had bolted the door upstairs he did not disturb his mother again but went along the corridor to his own bedroom where a small reading lamp burned. He sat on the bed for a few minutes swinging his feet and not sure whether to undress first or after. He decided to undress after.

  He put matches in his pocket and slipped out again, back along the long corridor to the head of the stairs to where the eye of the night lamp glowed. Down to the hall, stumbling once. The big drawing-room had unfamiliar smells: coffee and cheap cigarettes; the remnants of a fire still glowed behind the mesh of the fireguard. The lid of his piano had been closed to accommodate a tray and some cups. He opened it again and propped it up, stared at the keyboard, tempted. Then on to his mother’s study.

  There were two lamps in the room, one with a mantel, and an old-fashioned one with a double wick and a container of pink glass so that you could see when it needed refilling. He chose this one; struck a match, took off the glass and lit both wicks, turned them down. The room edged into view. Somebody had moved a chair from its usual place and it was luck that he hadn’t fallen over it.

  He looked around, holding up his glasses as they wobbled. The enormity of what he was proposing to do struck him, and he almost funked it. It was one thing to take a private look at his mother’s papers; it was another to destroy them. And yet . . . if he did not she certainly would not, and any day she might be called to account. Even tomorrow. Within a week there might be people in this room demanding to go through everything she had.

  He knelt down by the safe. The fifteenth of April, 1936. You turned the knob four times to the right, stopping the fourth time it reached 15, then
three times to the left, stopping the third time at 4, then twice again to the right, stopping at 36. Click, the handle turned and the door came open.

  He carried the bundles of papers to the table in the centre of the room, moved the lamp nearer and turned it up. A vase of frayed gold chrysanthemums were dropping petals on the bank sheets as he began to go through them.

  He was mad at his lack of practical experience in the business world. Some things certainly would be easy to replace, and probably bank sheets were in that category. But other things – particularly her own account books – would not. And some letters. And cheque stubs? And these long thin sheets of paper recording the transfer of shares? And rent books with covering letters from men employed to collect money from tenants.

  To do the job properly someone should break into the offices of solicitors in Aberystwyth and Barmouth and Cardiff. At best this was a delaying action. Yet the very fact that his mother had employed such a variety of solicitors seemed to him a reason for hope. One firm might be reluctant to release information to another. It would all take time.

  Presently he had done with the safe and he put back the things which were obviously harmless; then he turned his attention to the desk. Here there seemed even more value in what he was doing, for much of this was handwritten stuff which was not likely to have been copied. Mrs Syme did not keep a diary but she committed too many of her thoughts to paper. No wonder the Faulkner woman was searching the room. Had she taken anything away?

  As he increased the pile he wondered whether he could in any way disguise what he was doing. If he opened the window and broke the catch and left a gaping safe it might look as if some marauding tramp was responsible. But the papers had to be burned – he could not safely hide them or bury them somewhere out of doors. There was a convenient grate in this room – seldom used because of the two radiators – it would do well enough.

  He looked at the pile. Some of it, while having a bearing on the estate generally, probably had no relevance at all to his mother’s contrivances, but it was better to err on the side of safety. It was a fine lot, and some of it on stiff paper might be difficult to burn, so he had better start right away.

  And then he hesitated again, screwing up his courage, nerving himself for this act of destruction. ‘If there’s any trouble, dearest, it is mine, not yours. Whatever happens in these next few weeks, I know I shall be able to count on your loyalty and trust . . .’

  He carried the first bundle to the fireplace, stuffed it in, struck a match and applied it to a couple of corners. He was right about the stiff papers; it was going to be slow. Trying not to think now, not to let doubts enter in, he concentrated on the practical mechanics of the task. It was like starting a bonfire out of doors; there was a technique: you fed the easily inflammable in and mixed it with the slow stuff.

  The fire began to burn. A grey cloud of smoke eddied into the room, and he coughed. The chimney was cold and would take time to draw. More smoke than fire. Then he looked in the wastepaper basket and saw a bunch of carbon copies of his mother’s speeches which she had been weeding out earlier in the day. The paper was flimsy and there were about fifty sheets. He crumpled these and fed them in.

  More dense smoke for about fifty seconds, then a sudden satisfying yellow blaze. The whole small fireplace was alight.

  He looked at his watch. One o’clock. More than ever scared and anxious to be done, he carried the rest of the papers and pushed them through the bars. The fire roared and blazed, and he was on tenterhooks when some of the paper fell out blazing into the hearth. There was no fender and he grabbed the nearest book and used it as a brush to sweep the sparks and the bits of burning paper off the carpet.

  He squatted on his heels at a safe distance, the thick lenses protecting his eyes from the heat. The fire was making more noise than he had ever known, and he was worried that someone in the house might hear it and come down. The last thing he wanted was to be caught, but he couldn’t leave for another few minutes until the paper burned down.

  At present it wasn’t burning down. Or rather, the flames were a little less but the noise was greater. It was a roar. It was making a noise like a vacuum cleaner only deeper. A couple of sheets of paper fell out, burning and twisting, and he could see the ink discolouring as he leaned forward to push them to safety. As he did so a shower of burning soot fell out and two or three sparks fell on his hand.

  He leaped back, sucking his hand and stamping out the bits of soot with his foot. The damned chimney had caught fire.

  Was it dangerous? He knew that in towns the fire engines were always called out when a chimney caught fire. This was roaring now like an angry furnace. Bits of burning soot kept spattering down into the grate and every now and then a larger lump came down and burst, sending showers on to the carpet.

  Sweating with heat and with alarm, he stamped here and there among the smoke, putting out the bits of fire as they fell; but he was only wearing carpet slippers and one or two sparks caught and burned, and he singed his fingers trying to knock them off.

  Cursing and panting, he worked to prevent any serious damage, but as the worst of the fire subsided in the grate the weight of burning soot increased. It was the accumulation of years. Three great masses came down at once, and the largest of the three struck the top bar of the firegrate and burst like a bomb. In a few seconds there were three separate fires on the carpet and the room was thick with smoke.

  He stamped one out and the fire caught on his slipper. He kicked it off and then was powerless. Water. Something to quench it. He looked round. The vase of chrysanthemums was on the table beside the lamp. He jumped across, pulled out the flowers and snatched up the vase. As he pulled it off the table the bottom of the vase hit the lamp and toppled it on to the floor, where both the lamp glass and the glass container broke. For a moment all was darkness – then a new light came, yellow like the fire but paler, as the paraffin ran and spread across the carpet.

  III

  Somewhere in the smoky darkness Gregory lost his glasses. One moment they were precariously on his nose, one side piece secure, the other dangling. Then he darted at the flames and they fell and hung momentarily from his ear before vanishing in the yellow-lit smoke. He groped for them, panting noisily. Without them only colours were clear; outlines merged and he lived in a world of opaque brilliance.

  Panic was very close now, real screaming panic, but he fought it down, not quite believing it could be as bad as it looked, knowing that his cool, detached mind could still deal with this minor emergency but not certain how.

  With his one slipper-shod foot he stamped on the burning paraffin, but it always seemed to escape like some evil and miraculous snake which avoided the blow before it was struck. The room was so filled with smoke that he coughed and retched and tears filled his eyes.

  He tried again, going on hands and knees, feeling with ten outstretched fingers to find the frame that meant eyesight to him; but suddenly in the middle of it, his hand caught fire with pain. He stood up, holding his fingers in his mouth trying to stop the hurt. Then he bolted. It was out of his control now, but others would soon make short work of it. Doole with the fire extinguisher on the wall of the kitchen, Timson with a hose brought in from outside. It was a nasty mess but not difficult to deal with. In an old inflammable house like this there had to be ample fire precautions, and there were. (He could even pretend that he had discovered the fire and it was nothing to do with him. It might well be the perfect explanation.)

  He ran from the room, found darkness outside, stopped short and groped down the passage, fingers on wall. The large drawing-room was dark and he stumbled across it, brushing his leg on a chair. The next passage and the dimly-lit hall. He could see so little that light was as much a hindrance as a help, increasing the deceptive colours. He weaved his way across, grasped a banister but almost missed the stairs because it was the right-hand banister and not the left as he had thought.

  Up the stairs now. No problem here. The wide pla
teau landing at the top with his mother’s room to the left near the bathrooms. Better to wake her because she would immediately and competently take charge. Doole was too far away, at least for him to find without his glasses. Besides, there was a bell in his mother’s room which went direct to the butler’s room.

  Make up a story before you get there. Couldn’t sleep, decided to go down for a book, smelt smoke, went in and found . . . He hurried across the landing towards his mother’s room, knowing exactly where the door was, then hesitated as to his sense of direction. But of course. He took another couple of steps, and walked into space.

  A worm twisted in his stomach; he shouted and put out his hands. In a second’s anticipation he realized where he had made his mistake; then the impact cut across his mind.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I

  Althea Syme was dreaming. These last few days her rest had been disturbed by unpleasant fantasies halfway between waking and sleeping. She dreamed that Marion had returned and was turning her out of the house. Marion had always disliked her, and snubbed her when as a young widow she had come to stay here with Hubert and Arabella. Marion had seen through her flattery and her sycophancy and had had no room for her at all.

  In the dream they were all young again. Marion, her hair flowing, and Gregory a little boy of eight, slim then, and his voice clear and bell-like. Marion was demanding to be told of all the transfers of properties which had been made in Simon’s absence. ‘But,’ Althea said, ‘it’s all perfectly legal. Twice a year I’ve been up to see Simon in Norwich and got his signatures for the transfers.’ ‘Because he didn’t care!’ Marion said. ‘He didn’t care what happened in those days because he thought I was dead. But not later. In this last eighteen months since he began to recover, he’s signed nothing since then. They’re forgeries!’ ‘Not forgeries,’ Althea pleaded. ‘It was only implementing what had been arranged earlier. He agreed to it all earlier. He didn’t want the property. He didn’t want anything. He was happy to pass it on to Gregory.’ But Marion said: ‘You’ve been here long enough, battening on Simon and cheating him. Go back to your two-room flat and your unsuccessful journalism. Take your horrid little boy with you.’ And she had replied: ‘Why should I be turned out? And why should my boy go? He’s a Syme on both sides: he’s more entitled to this house than anyone else! Besides, you’re dead! Didn’t you realize it? You’re dead and can’t interfere any more!’ Then another girl came into the room and it was Norah, and she was wearing only a flimsy nightdress that showed all her slim soft body through it, and she came across and leaned against Althea and whispered: ‘Marion’s dead but I’m here. I’ll help you to lock Simon away. Listen to him knocking! Listen. I’ve locked him in! Listen to him knocking!’