Weekend with Death (3 page)

But the package in dark green oiled silk was a present and concrete fact. What was she going to do about it?

After a few moments' thought she dropped it back into her bag and pushed the bag under a pile of pyjamas in the middle drawer of her own chest of drawers. She then proceeded to interpret her remark to Joanna rather liberally by spending half an hour in a deep hot bath.

Dinner was at eight o'clock. Wilson Cattermole partook of stewed fruit, nuts, and a cereal which resembled chopped hay. At their first meeting he had reminded Sarah irresistibly of an ant. So earnest, so busy about what did not really seem to matter very much. His arms and legs too, brittle and tenuous. And then the thin neck, the bulging forehead, the prominent eyes. Oh, certainly an ant. But such a hairy ant. Wilson was fairly smothered in hair, fine and frizzy like Joanna's, but brown instead of flaxen. A dreadfully hairy ant, but harmless.

He sat at one end of the table and consumed stewed prunes, whilst at the other end his sister Joanna manipulated a little pair of scales. So much of Vitamin A, so much of Vitamin B, so much of Vitamin C, so much of Vitamin D, the quantities in each case so microscopic that Sarah was never able to understand just what terrible consequences might be expected if the scales were to be weighed down a little too far in either direction.

Sitting half way between the two, Sarah reaped the reward of having made friends with Mrs. Perkins. Mrs. Perkins was the cook, a majestic yet human autocrat. She regarded Wilson and Joanna with something between pity and contempt, and she made it her business to see that Sarah was served with what she termed Christian food. Tonight it was soup—beautifully hot, a mushroom omelet—perfect, and a lemon-curd tart.

When the tart made its appearance Wilson Cattermole breathed the word “Pastry!” in a horrified undertone, and averted his eyes. The meal, ceremonious in its service, went on.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “I propose to go over the notes of the Gossington case. The Society for Psychical Research may say what they like, but I am convinced that the disturbances point to a poltergeist. As you will remember, Miss Marlowe, my disagreement with them over a very similar case was the reason for my resigning from the Society. ‘Credulous' was the expression Eustace Frayle permitted himself to use. ‘An accusation of that sort, my dear Eustace', I said, ‘is one that I will not take from anyone, no matter how old a friend he may be. And if, as I have reason to suspect, my ears did not deceive me and the word which they distinctly heard you add was “Fool”, let me tell you,' I said, ‘that to be abusive in controversy merely exposes the weakness of one's case, and that I would rather be called a credulous fool than prove myself a purblind and ignorant sceptic.' Rather well put, I think, Miss Marlowe.”

Sarah had only to smile and nod. Wilson, once started on the reasons which had led him to resign not only from the Society for Psychical Research but from every other society of the kind, needed no more than sympathetic attention to maintain a steady flow of narrative. He appeared to have formed such associations only to break away from them again, and had now arrived at the proud position of being president and secretary of a society of his own. At present the membership was small, but as he said in his most earnest voice, “It is quality that counts, Miss Marlowe—quality, not quantity. There is, I believe, a Syrian proverb to that effect.” He laid a finger against his forehead and cogitated.—“Ah—let me see—yes, I can give you a rough translation.—‘A crumb of bread is better to the hungry than ten thousand grains of sand.' You do not know Syriac, I suppose? A pity. It is an interesting language.”

Miss Joanna looked across her scales at them.

“Wilson is marvellous at languages, but I was never any good at them. I think it so providential that spirits who want to communicate always seem to know English even if they've been Chinese or Red Indians before they passed over. Such a good arrangement, because I've never really been able to get on very far even with Esperanto. I find it too confusing, some of the words being real ones and some with bits cut off. It reminds me of a boy cousin when I was quite a little girl. I had three dolls that I was very fond of. He cut their legs, and arms and noses off. I remember I cried dreadfully, and we had a funeral service at the bottom of the garden with shoe-boxes, and I made a wreath of cowslips. But I shall never forget how dreadful they looked, and somehow Esperanto always seems to bring it back.”

Dinner wore to an end.

Afterwards, in the drawing-room, there was a sheaf of scribbled sheets to be gone through, the record of Joanna's interview with her smuggler.

“Nat Garland—short for Nathaniel—you see how clearly that comes out. Automatic writing is sometimes so very disappointing, but this evening I had hardly sat down, when the pencil began to move. And that is what it wrote: ‘Nat Garland'—just like that. So I said, ‘Who are you?' and the pencil wrote ‘snug', so of course I knew it was my smuggler. They often seem to make a mistake like that when they are coming through, and you just have to be clever and guess—and I guessed at once.”

Joanna gazed at her across the tumbled papers. The sack-like garment which she wore fell away from the thin arms and emaciated neck. Her little face seemed to be all bones, the skin strained over them, chalk-white with powder except where high up on either cheek a ghastly patch of carmine stood alone. The eyes behind their pale lashes burned with an odd fire like a flame trembling in the sunlight. Her hair, fine as thistledown, seemed to hover like a nimbus. “If I wasn't so sorry for her, she'd make my flesh creep,” Sarah thought. Aloud she said,

“Don't you think it would be a good thing to put it all away for tonight?”

“Oh,
no
! I must tell you about it! Because I asked for his name, and the pencil began to move at once, and this is what it wrote: ‘Nat Garland'—oh, yes, I told you about that, didn't I? And then he said he had been longing to come through, and he began to tell me about his smuggling days. My dear—most exciting and romantic. Look—it's on this piece!”

Sarah looked at a muddle of disconnected words straggling across the page: dark—kegs—beach—hide—church.…

Joanna pointed with a long scarlet finger-nail.

“You have to translate it a little, you know. They landed the kegs on the beach in the dark and rolled them up to the church and hid them in the crypt—that word is really meant for crypt, I am sure.”

“Yes, Miss Cattermole—they told us all that at the inn when we stayed there. Don't you remember?”

The light flame in Joanna's eyes flickered a little higher.

“Yes—yes—yes. But to get it all first-hand—to hear his own account of it—that is what is so wonderful! And to know that he wants to tell it to me!” The fire went out of her suddenly. Her eyes were dull and shallow. She put up a claw-like hand and yawned, once, twice, three times. Her nails were as red as the pips on a playing-card.

Sarah thought, “The five of diamonds—they're like that—and nearly as pointed—”

The hand dropped. Joanna said in a fretful voice,

“It's gone. And I'm tired—don't you think a fog makes one feel tired? I'll just listen to the news, and then I think I'll go to bed. Wilson is always so late.”

CHAPTER IV

Upstairs in her attic, In the dark between sleeping and waking, Sarah slipped from thought to thought easily, dreamily. It was like sliding down a long, smooth slope—no hurry, no check, just a steady, easy glide.

“If she was always as balmy as this, I don't think I could stick it … Wilson always works late—but he doesn't expect me to—he really expects very little.… Not a bad ant—hairy, but considerate.… Four guineas a week for a couple of hours' work a day and putting up with Joanna.… Are letters about haunted houses work?… Sometimes it's only about half an hour, but putting up with Joanna goes on all the time.… I suppose I really am a companion like Emily Case.… Horrible thought.… Four guineas a week.… I'd like to be an A.T. or a Wren.… They don't get four guineas a week.… Must have Tinkler's rent.… Companion—four guineas—Emily Case.…”

Sarah reached the bottom of the long incline. Dark waters of sleep closed over her.

She began to dream. She was having a tea-party with Tinkler and Emily Case. Tinkler had on her grey Sunday dress with the blue and white cross-over shawl which Sarah had knitted for her. Her hair was in tight little silver curls all over her head, and her eyes were as bright and as blue as forget-me-nots. It is only old ladies who have eyes that colour—old ladies like Tinkler, who have never had an unkind thought about anyone in all their lives.

Sarah purred in her dream. Lovely to be with Tinkler—lovely.… And then it wasn't so good, because Emily Case said in her flat voice, “The blood dripped down from between his fingers,” and that wasn't at all the thing to say, when you were having tea with Tinkler. And Tinkler said in her darling voice, “Pray let me give you a little more sugar in your tea.” Then something happened. Sarah didn't know what it was, but she felt it coming up, black like thunder, and all at once John Wickham, who was Mr. Cattermole's chauffeur, had her by the wrist and they were running for their lives. Anguish of failing strength, failing breath—

She woke up choked, her face in the pillow.

When she had beaten the feathers out flat she slept and dreamed again, but nothing that she could remember—incoherences of flight and turning wheels—Wickham calling her—and Joanna turning over an endless pile of scribbled papers.…

At the breakfast table Wilson Cattermole remarked that she looked pale, a circumstance for which she was presently to be thankful, because it would have been horrid to come down all milkmaid and then turn the colour of a bad cream cheese. No, the fact of her pallor had been well and truly established before she picked up the paper and read the first disturbing headline:

WOMAN MURDERED IN LEDLINGTON TRAIN

Joanna asked twice for the salt whilst she gazed at it.

“I'm so sorry, Miss Cattermole—”

Sarah passed her the mustard. Her eyes were fixed upon the sharp, black print:

The deceased has been identified as Miss Emily Case—

Something in Sarah said, “Oh, no!”

Joanna's voice echoed it. “Oh, no—” But this was a plaintive voice, not the violent one which rang through Sarah's mind. “I don't ever take mustard. If I might just trouble you for the salt—”

Sarah passed her the salt. It went down the table and out of sight. Her eyes came back to the paper:

When the 5.30 down train arrived at Ledlington nearly an an hour late yesterday evening, Mr. A. J. Snagg made a terrible discovery.…

She skipped the next few lines, because she was not interested in Mr. Snagg, and didn't want to know how many years he had been a porter at Ledlington, or his reactions to the discovery of what he himself described as a murdered woman. There was, however, no getting away from them. Mr. Albert Snagg and his emotions were inextricably entangled with the narrative. You could have knocked him down with a feather when he opened the carriage door—he said so himself. Never had such a thing happened in any train he'd ever had anything to do with, and he hoped he'd never have anything happen like it again.

There was the pore thing all of a heap with her head smashed in. Looked regular like one of these motor accidents. And dead as a door-nail, as the saying is. You wouldn't think anyone would do a thing like that—only a lunatic. But seemingly it was robbery he was after, for there was her bag turned out and her pockets turned out, and everything in the two cases she'd got with her thrown out all over the carriage.

The print of the paper ran and dazzled before Sarah's eyes. She had the horrifying thought that she might be going to faint, and she remembered about putting your head down and letting the blood run into it. She let the paper slide on to the floor and stooped down to pick it up. Her head cleared. She heard Wilson Cattermole say,

“I see Cyrus Hoxton is dead. A very contentious fellow. Did I ever tell you, Miss Marlowe, how I was able to set him right on the date of the Ankerton affair—a particularly interesting series of phenomena with which he should have been conversant? I put him right—he was at least a dozen years out—and I do not think he ever forgave me.”

Sarah responded mechanically. His voice flowed on. He was telling her without the omission of a single word just what he had said to Cyrus Hoxton, and what Cyrus Hoxton had said to him, and what they had written to each other, and how they had both resigned their membership of some society which she had never heard about.

And under all this, like a dark current moving against the tide, her thoughts surged in fear, in horror, in a kind of obstinate scepticism. It wasn't Emily Case.… The papers said it was.… But why should anyone murder Emily Case? Because—Sarah cut across that sharply. She didn't believe it. She didn't believe a word of Emily Case's story. She didn't believe she had been murdered for the sake of a package done up in dark green oiled silk. The package was upstairs inside Sarah's bag, in Sarah's middle drawer under a pile of pyjamas. Emily Case hadn't got it. Why should anyone murder Emily Case for something she hadn't got?

The telephone bell rang. She got up and went into the study to answer it. Wilson Cattermole called after her.

“One moment, Miss Marlowe—if it is a man called Smith, I will speak to him myself. A really interesting case of haunting in Essex. I wrote to him whilst you were away, and I am rather expecting him to ring me up.”

She went on across the hall to the back room where she wrote letters and listened to monologues and earned her four guineas a week. Sometimes when the monologues were very long she didn't feel she was earning it any too easily.

The telephone bell rang again as she came in. She put the receiver to her ear and wondered what Mr. Smith's voice was going to be like. And then it wasn't Mr. Smith at all. It was Henry Templar saying,