Cat and Mouse (13 page)

“Up in the attic. Come on, now, and see.”

She temporized. “It’s too dangerous. Someone’s sure to hear us.”

“Mrs. Love’s in the other wing with Mrs. Carlyon, and Mrs. Carlyon’s under morphia. Dai’s snoring away like a grampus; you can hear him half over the house. And Mr. Carlyon…” He took her by the arm, leaning half in at the window to get hold of her. “Look by there, as we say in Wales.”

She could see nothing at first, straining her eyes along the line of his pointing forefinger. But as they grew more accustomed to the grey morning light, she discerned, though faintly, a tiny figure, forcing its way across the pathless mountainside. “It’s Carlyon,” said Chucky; but she had known that already. In her mind’s eye she could see the weary stoop, the drawn face and sad grey eyes, the abject weariness that drove him on this lonely walk in the chill dawn, to those desolate places. She thought, with love and pity: if this wretch is going to find out anything against him, I’d better know what it is.

They crept up the tiny stair to the attic room. Below them, Dai Trouble’s snores echoed faintly through the house. Mrs. Love would no doubt be safely tucked away in the room next to that of her charge, since Carlyon had again placed himself on duty that night. Into what drugged sleep had the poor monster fallen at last, that released him for his solitary wanderings?

Mr. Chucky pushed open a little door. “He must have forgotten to lock it when he came up for the wedding photograph. Come on in.”

It was dim in the attic, lit only by a square where the dying moonlight gleamed on a window-pane. She stood uneasily in the doorway. “No thanks: I don’t like this. I’m going back.”

He put his hand on her elbow and urged her forward. “Don’t be a coward. Come on!”

“Listen to hear if Dai’s still snoring.”

The faint sound of the snoring crept up the stair to them. Chucky went over to the window and rubbed on the dusty pane; far, far away on the mountainside, Carlyon moved steadily upward. “We’re safe as houses. Come
on
!”

The little room was crowded with boxes and baskets and trunks and cases of every shape and size. Chucky went up to one, fiddled with the lock for a moment, and lifted the lid to reveal dresses, blouses, coats, skirts, evening frocks—out of date now, but still exquisite. He let the lid fall, and forced open another box of underclothes, silk and satin and lace. Another box: evening dresses. In the light of his torch, there was the sudden glitter of sequins on the soft glow of velvet. And another box and another… Shoes, hats, gloves, stockings, belts; filmy nightdresses, embroidered negligées, feathered satin mules. … “Try a pair on,” said Chucky, tossing them familiarly over to Katinka. “You’re awful!” she said; but she could not resist slipping her bare feet into them and shuffling about the dusty attic floor. “Keep them,” said Chucky. “No one will ever know.”

She took them off quickly and put them back in their box. “You’re the most utterly unmoral person I ever met. I wouldn’t dream of keeping them.”

“You would if they weren’t miles too big,” said Chucky, laughing.

“This isn’t what you dragged me up to see?”

But he went on opening case after case. “Aren’t they locked?” said Katinka, mystified.

He gave a quick turn of the hand, so that she caught a glimpse of a bunch of odd-looking keys, and then, laughing, covered them up again. “An invaluable investment for the professional snooper, Miss Jones. Never be without them!” A box of furs, laid away in moth balls, a box of boxes, gloves, handkerchiefs, stockings, ostrich feather fans, all neatly packed away. … “Why on earth doesn’t he get rid of it all?” said Chucky.

“How can he? It would be—so final. And besides, they’re not his to give away; they’re hers. He can’t march up and say to her: Darling, you’ll never be able to appear in public again, so we may as well get rid of all your lovely clothes. …” As Chucky’s torch went out abruptly and plunged them into pitch darkness, she stopped on a broken word. “What is it?”

“Do you hear anything?”

She listened, holding her breath. “No, nothing.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” whispered Chucky.

“But what
is
it—what’s happening?”

It was deathly still and deeply dark. She stood by him, trembling, sick with fear. After a long minute he whispered: “Can you hear Dai Trouble snoring?”

She listened intently and caught at last a faint, regular rhythm. “Yes—there you are.
Snore
—snore:
snore
—snore…”

“He’s begun again,” he said with relief. “He stopped before, I swear it. Whew!”

“Well, come on, now, let’s get going.”

“But you haven’t seen…”

“I don’t want to,” she said. “I loathe this terrifying place and everything in it. I’m going.”

But he caught at her wrist and dragged her over with him to the far corner, and with his free hand began to ruffle through papers and pictures in a wooden box. “Marriage certificate—Angela Erleigh to Charles Lion, Marylebone Town Hall, dated a year ago, roughly. Passport—Charles Lion, wife Angela Lion. …”

“That must be his real name: Charles Lion—what heaven!”

“Oh, yes, didn’t you know? Of course he would tell his dear Inspector Chucky! He telescoped it up when he came down here; protective colouring—keep off the newspaper reporters. Ha ha!”

“How old does it say he is?”

“Your beloved is some thirty-three summers,” said Chucky, dryly.

“No beloved of
mine
!”

“Ha
ha
!” said Mr. Chucky, derisively.

“Of course he isn’t, don’t be silly. And don’t say ha ha! It’s worse than oh ho.”

But Mr. Chucky was back with Carlyon’s passport. “He describes himself as of independent means. She was an artist. Oh,
was
she?”

“That would account for their being so keen on the little Sisley.”

“The little what?”

“The picture, you fool. The snow scene. Now, look here,” said Tinka, “you’ve surely seen everything you want to. Do for heaven’s sake let’s get out of this ghastly place.”

But he caught her arm once more. “We haven’t got what I really came up to find. Another box, a deed box, perhaps. … Ah, here! Yes—look, still unlocked. He simply forgot he’d been up for the photographs.”

Bundles of papers, of letters, of photographs. “There you are, my dear, that’s it. Your dear Carlyon, on his wedding day!”

It was strange how one had built up a picture, so familiar now as to have long seemed simple fact, of what the ruined face had looked like before tragedy came to it. She realized that the picture had been indissoluble in her mind from the original old mind-picture of Amista. But here was the real Angela, the Angela whom Carlyon had married—and in a moment the old image died away in Katinka’s brain and the new took possession there. A little older than she had supposed; taller and altogether bigger than the poor, shuffling, bowed creature that had crouched, dreadfully weeping in the hall. But very pretty, very pretty and sweet, however faintly ridiculous the out-dated clothes; and radiantly happy, radiantly smiling. …

Someone was coming up the stairs.

Chucky switched off the torch and once again they stood trembling in the dark. A heavy foot trod on a creaking board. They cowered back into the shadows of the little room, but the dawn light that had seemed so faint, now flooded the whole place, seeking them out, holding them fast in its beam. The only sound in the world to them both was the hammering of their hearts and the heavy footfall, coming slowly up the stairs.

The door edged open. Slowly and silently, it was pushed steadily open. A flashlight shone suddenly and violently, sweeping them both into its bright beam; and Mr. Chucky caught Katinka into his arms and fastened his mouth on hers.

Dai Trouble stood in the doorway, a revolver in his hand, and said: “All right. Come on out!”

Mr. Chucky dropped his arms abruptly and stood beside Tinka, the picture of sheepishness. Dai said: “
Well
!” and dropped the gun to his side. Tinka started forward in a flurry of horrified repudiation, but Chucky’s hand, unexpectedly steely, forced her back against him. He said: “Dai bach! You didn’t half make us jump!”

“Jump!” said Dai. He gestured with the revolver, downward pointing, round the little room. “God’s sake, mun—what are you doing up here?”

Chucky scraped the dusty floor with the toe of a neat bedroom slipper. “Give you half a guess!” He hung his head, the picture of brash foolishness.

Apparently there was some method in Mr. Chucky’s madness after all. Dai lowered the revolver altogether, and simply stood gazing at them in astonishment, pinpointing them in the path of the flashlight, like two mummers on a stage. He said, at last: “And you on duty, mun! And for God’s sake—why up here?”

“Afraid to be caught in one of the bedrooms,” mumbled Chucky.

“You’re a damn sight worse off now that you’re caught up here. How the hell did you get in, anyway? No one’s allowed here.”

“The door was unlocked; we thought it seemed a nice little hide-out for a bit of a cuddle. … We heard him go off up the mountain and we thought…” He broke off, swinging his toe about in the dust like a child caught stealing jam. “Don’t give us away, Dai, there’s a good chap! Looks awkward, me being on duty and all, as you say; but no harm done fair play.”

Dai poked away the gun into his dressing-gown pocket and leaned back against a trunk, his short legs outthrust before him. Katinka could see that he too was enormously relieved, had come up with some trepidation, and was suffering a certain amount of natural reaction. “No harm, he says! Man, even
I
never been and poked my nose round this old attic, and I’ve been with Mr. Carlyon a year and more.”

“A year?” cried Katinka. “Only a year?” But it had been Carlyon’s original fibs that had given her the impression that Dai was a servant of long standing, the fibs he had told her to prevent her from following up the mystery that would lead her to mutilated Angela.

“Only a year. Only since after he was married.”

“I thought it was simply ages!”

“No, no,” said Dai. Unconsciously he was settling himself against the box, he had forgotten where they were and that it was his business to get this inquisitive stranger away from Mr. Carlyon’s locked room. “On the honeymoon, it was. His man gave him some trouble and he sacked him and wired to the agency to send him someone else; and me being a Welshman too, they thought I would do. Out on the Riviera they was then. It was there that it happened.”

“So you were with him at that time?”

“Yes, I was there,” said Dai, sombrely. “And after, I came and fixed up this place for them. This is my valley. I lived here when I was a boy, and though it’s twenty years since I left the village…”

“And half the women after you!” said Chucky, grinning.

“Duw, duw!” said Dai, shaking his head. “True it is, Mr. Chucky, bach—but there you are, I’ve repented of all that now and had my punishment—two punishments, if it comes to that! The wages of sin is death, Mr. Chucky—or life! Well, there you are!” He shook his head again, mournfully, his mind on the regrettable past.

“But about your being with Mr. Carlyon, Dai?”

“That’s all there is to it, Miss Jones. He wanted a place to bring that poor creature to when she come out of the hospital. ‘Right you!’ I says. ‘Leave it to me,’ I says. Old Mrs. Doctor Williams, she built this house, when the old man died. She meant to move down to Swansea, somewhere posh: Cherry Grove, Swansea, that was her idea, and build a fancy house and live in comfort. But when it comes to the time, she can’t find it in her heart to leave the mountains. ‘Right you,’ she says. ‘I’ll have my cake and eat it too,’ she says. So she builds a Cherry Grove house in the mountains.” He looked proudly round him and you could see his thoughts rove over the house below them, complacently. What had been agreeable to old Mrs. Doctor Williams was evidently just the ticket for Dai Trouble too.

Katinka was in a fever to leave the forbidden attic before Carlyon should return from his walk and find them all there, but she saw that they were winning a way back into the little man’s favour, and might yet have a chance of keeping him silent as to their nocturnal adventuring. “Dai—what I wanted to ask you was this. You know that ring of Mrs. Carlyon’s—the one like a sphinx? I keep feeling that I’ve seen it before.”

Mr. Chucky looked up sharply, but said nothing. Dai reflected, drawing on a cigarette. “She has a ring like that, but she doesn’t wear it often. Mr. Carlyon doesn’t like her wearing it.”

“I wonder why. Do you know?”

He shrugged. “He thinks it reminds her of the old days, I suppose.”

“That would apply to any of her jewellery—to anything she has. Do you remember this ring particularly? From the old days, I mean.”

He thought again. “Well, no. But I was the chauffeur in them days, you see, I’d only be seeing her out of doors. She’d be wearing her gloves or the little muff. Ah—that little muff! I can see it now—a green coat and skirt she had, with the brown skins round her shoulders and the little brown muff. He loved her in that outfit. It was chilly down there, in spite of all the sun—a chill wind there was, and he’d say, ‘Wear your sables,’ he’d say, and she’d come out in the furs and her hands in the little brown muff. So I wouldn’t have much chance of seeing her rings.”

“Were you there when the accident happened?”

“No,” said Dai. “That was my day off, the pity of it! One minute, off they go, so gay, and that night he’s sitting there with his head in his hands, and she in the hospital. I never saw a man so broken up in my life.”

“I suppose he blamed himself?” said Chucky.

“He kept saying that it was his own carelessness. He lifted his hand to light a cigarette and—you don’t know those roads, mun! One slip and you’re done. ‘I’ve killed her, Dai,’ he says, sitting there with the tears running down through his fingers and falling on the ground, actually falling on the ground, pat, pat, pat, I give you my word. ‘She’s not dead yet, mun,’ I says, consoling. ‘How can she live, mun?’ he says, ‘in this state. Better she dies.’ ‘Turn you to God, Mr. Carlyon, sir,’ I says to him.” He broke off abruptly: “Are you a religious woman, Miss Jones?”