Du Maurier, Daphne (26 page)

“Aunt Patience, I have gone through enough out of loyalty to you. You can’t expect me to stand any more. Whatever Uncle Joss may have been to you once, he is inhuman now. All your tears won’t save him from justice; you must realise that. He’s a brute, half mad with brandy and blood. Men were murdered by him on the shore; don’t you understand? Men were drowned in the sea. I can see nothing else. I shall think of nothing else to my dying way.”

Her voice rose, dangerously high; hysteria was not far away. She was still too weak for consecutive thought, and saw herself running out upon the highroad, crying loudly for the help that would surely be forthcoming.

Aunt Patience prayed too late for silence; the warning finger was unheeded. The door opened, and the landlord of Jamaica Inn stood on the threshold of the room. He stooped his head under the beam and stared at them. He looked haggard and grey; the cut above his eye was still a vivid scarlet. He was filthy and unwashed, and there were black shadows beneath his eyes.

“I thought I heard voices in the yard,” he said. “I went to a chink in the shutters, downstairs in the parlour, but I saw no one. Did you hear anything, from this room?”

Nobody answered. Aunt Patience shook her head, the little nervous smile that she conjured for his presence trailing uneasily across her face without her knowledge. He sat down on the bed, his hands plucking at the clothes, his restless eyes roaming from the window to the door.

“He’ll come,” he said; “he’s bound to come. I’ve cut my own throat; I’ve gone against him. He warned me once, and I laughed at him; I didn’t listen. I wanted to play the game on my own. We’re as good as dead, all three of us sitting here—you, Patience, and Mary, and I.

“We’re finished, I tell you; the game is up. Why did you let me drink? Why didn’t you break every blasted bottle in the house, and turn the key on me, and let me lie? I’d not have hurt you; I’d not have touched a hair of your heads, either of you. Now it’s too late. The end has come.”

He looked from one to the other of them, his bloodshot eyes hollow, his massive shoulders humped to his neck. They stared back at him without understanding, dumbfounded and awed at the expression on his face they had not seen before.

“What do you mean?” said Mary at length. “Who are you afraid of? Who warned you?”

He shook his head, and his hands strayed to his mouth, the fingers restless. “No,” he said slowly, “I’m not drunk now, Mary Yellan; my secrets are still my own. But I’ll tell you one thing—and there’s no escape for you; you’re in it now as much as Patience there—we have enemies on either side of us now. We have the law on one hand, and on the other—” He checked himself, the old cunning in his eyes once more as he glanced at Mary.

“You’d like to know, wouldn’t you?” he said. “You’d like to sneak out of the house with the name on your lips and betray me. You’d like to see me hanged. All right, I don’t blame you for it; I’ve hurt you enough to make you remember to the rest of your days, haven’t I? But I saved you too, didn’t I? Have you thought what that rabble would have done to you had I not been there?” He laughed and spat on the floor, something of his usual self returning to him. “You can put one good mark against me for that alone,” he said. “Nobody touched you that night but myself, and I’ve not spoilt your pretty face. Cuts and bruises mend, don’t they? Why, you poor weak thing, you know as well as I do I could have had you your first week at Jamaica Inn if I’d wanted you. You’re a woman after all. Yes, by heaven, and you’d be lying at my feet now, like your Aunt Patience, crushed and contented and clinging, another God-damn bloody fool. Let’s get out of here. The room stinks of damp and decay.”

He shambled to his feet, dragging her after him into the passage, and, when they came onto the landing, he thrust her against the wall, beneath the candle stuck in the bracket, so that the light fell upon her bruised, cut face. He took her chin in his hands and held her for a moment, smoothing the scratches with delicate, light fingers. She stared back at him in loathing and disgust, the gentle, graceful hands reminding her of all she had lost and renounced; and, when he bent his hated face lower, indifferent of Patience, who stood beside him, and his mouth, so like his brother’s, hovered an instant on hers, the illusion was horrible and complete; and she shuddered and closed her eyes. He blew out the light; they followed him down the stairs without a word, their footsteps pattering sharply through the empty house.

He led the way into the kitchen, where even there the door was bolted and the window barred. Two candles were on the table to light the room.

The he turned and faced the two women, and, reaching for a chair, he straddled his legs across it and considered them, fumbling in his pocket for his pipe meanwhile and filling it.

“We’ve got to think out a plan of campaign,” he said; “we’ve been sitting here for nigh on two days now, like rats in a trap, waiting to be caught. And I’ve had enough, I tell you. I never could play that sort of game; it gives me the horrors. If there’s going to be a scrap, then, by Almighty God, let’s have it in the open.” He puffed awhile at his pipe, staring moodily at the floor, tapping his foot on the stone flags.

“Harry’s loyal enough,” he continued, “but he’d split and have the house about our ears if he thought there’d be profit for himself, As for the rest—they’re scattered over the countryside, whining, their tails between their legs, like a blasted pack of curs. This has scared ‘em forever. Yes, and it’s scared me too, you can know that. I’m sober now, all right; I can see the damn-fool unholy mess I’ve landed in, and we’ll be lucky, all of us, if we get out of it without swinging. You, Mary, can laugh if you like, with your white, contemptuous face; it’ll be as bad for you as for Patience and I. You’re in it too, up to the neck; you’ll not escape.

Why didn’t you turn the key on me, I say? Why didn’t you stop me from drinking?”

His wife stole over to him and plucked at his jacket, passing her tongue over her lips in preparation for speech.

“Well, what is it?” he said fiercely.

“Why can’t we creep away now, before it’s too late?” she whispered. “The trap’s in the stable; we’ll be in Launceston and across to Devon in a few hours. We could travel by night; we could make for the eastern counties.”

“You damned idiot!” he shouted. “Don’t you realise there are people on the road between here and Launceston who think I’m the devil himself—who are only waiting their chance to fasten every crime in Cornwall on my head and get me? The whole country knows by now what happened on the coast on Christmas Eve, and if they see us bolting they’ll have the proof. God, don’t you think I haven’t itched to get away and save my skin? Yes, and by doing so have every man in the country point his finger at us. We’d look fine, wouldn’t we, riding in the trap on top of our goods and chattels, like farmers on market day, waving good-bye in Launceston square? No, we’ve got one chance, one single chance in a million. We’ve got to lie quiet; we’ve got to lie mum. If we sit here tight at Jamaica Inn they may start scratching their heads and rubbing their noses. They’ve got to look for proof, mind you. They’ve got to get the sworn proof before they lay hands on us. And unless one of that blasted rabble turns informer they won’t get the proof.

“Oh yes, the ship’s there, with her back broken on the rocks, and there’s chunks of stuff lying on the beach—piles of it—ready to take away, put there by someone, they’ll say. They’ll find two bodies, charred to cinders, and a heap of ashes. ‘What’s this?’ they’ll say. “There’s been a fire; there’s been a scrap.’ It’ll look dirty, it’ll look bad for many of us, but where’s your proof? Answer me that. I spent my Christmas Eve like a respectable man, in the bosom of my family, playing cat’s cradle and snapdragon with my niece.” He put his tongue in his cheek and winked. “You’ve forgotten one thing, haven’t you?” said Mary. “No, my dear, I have not. The driver of that carriage was shot, and he fell in the ditch, not a quarter of a mile down the road outside. You were hoping we’d left the body there, weren’t you? Maybe it will shock you, Mary, but the body travelled with us to the coast, and it lies now, if I remember rightly, beneath a ten-foot bank of shingle. Of course, someone is going to miss him; I’m prepared for that; but as they’ll never find his carriage it doesn’t make much odds. Maybe he was tired of his wife and has driven to Penzance. They’re welcome to look for him there. And now that we’ve both come to our senses again, you can tell me what you were doing in that carriage, Mary, and where you had been. If you don’t answer me, you know me well enough by now. I can find a way of making you talk.”

Mary glanced at her aunt. The woman was shivering like a frightened dog, her blue eyes fixed upon her husband’s face. Mary thought rapidly. It was easy enough to lie; time was the all-important factor now and must be reckoned with and cherished if she and her aunt Patience were to come out of this alive. She must play upon it and give her uncle rope enough to hang himself. His confidence would go against him in the end. She had one hope of salvation, and he was near, not five miles away, waiting in Altarnun for a signal from her.

“I’ll tell you my day, and you can believe it or not,” she said; “it doesn’t matter much to me what you think. I walked to Launceston on Christmas Eve and went to the fair. I was tired by eight o’clock, and when it came to rain and blow I was wet through and fit for nothing. I hired that carriage, and I told the man I wanted him to take me to Bodmin. I thought if I said the Jamaica Inn he would have refused the journey. There, I’ve nothing more to tell you than that.”

“Were you alone in Launceston?”

“Of course I was alone.”

“And you spoke to no one?”

“I bought a handkerchief from a woman at a stall.”

Joss Merlyn spat on the floor. “All right,” he said. “Whatever I did to you now, you’d tell the same story, wouldn’t you? You’ve got the advantage for once, because I can’t prove if you’re lying or not. Not many maids your age would spend the day alone in Launceston, I can tell you that. Nor would they drive home by themselves. If your story’s true, then our prospects improve. They’ll never trace that driver here. God damn it, I shall feel like another drink in a moment.”

He tilted back his chair and pulled at his pipe.

“You shall drive in your own coach yet, Patience,” he said, “and wear feathers in your bonnet, and a velvet cloak, I’m not beaten yet. I’ll see the whole band of ‘em in hell first. You wait; we’ll start afresh again, we’ll live like fighting cocks. Maybe I’ll turn sober and go to church on Sundays. And you, Mary, you shall hold my hand in my old age and spoon me my food.”

He threw back his head and laughed; but his laugh broke short in the middle, his mouth shut like a trap, and he crashed his chair down on the floor again and stood up in the middle of the room, his body turned sideways, his face as white as a sheet. “Listen,” he whispered hoarsely; “listen….”

They followed the direction of his eyes, fastened as they were upon the chink of light that came through the narrow gap in the shutters.

Something was scraping gently at the kitchen window… tapping lightly, softly, scratching furtively at the pane of glass.

It was like the sound made by a branch of ivy when it has broken loose from the trunk and, bending downwards, teases a window or a porch, disturbed and restless with every breath of wind. But there was no ivy on the slate walls of Jamaica Inn, and the shutters were bare.

The scraping continued, persuasive and undaunted, tap… tap… like the drumming of a beak; tap… tap… like the four fingers of a hand.

There was no other sound in the kitchen except the frightened breathing of Aunt Patience, whose hand crept out across the table to her niece. Mary watched the landlord as he stood motionless on the kitchen floor, his figure shadowed monstrously on the ceiling, and she saw his lips blue through the dark stubble of his beard. Then he bent forward, crouching on tiptoe like a cat, and, sliding his hand along the floor, his fingers fastened themselves upon his gun that stood against the further chair, never once taking his eyes from the chink of light between the shutters.

Mary swallowed, her throat dry as dust; whether the thing behind the window was friend or enemy to herself made the suspense more poignant, but in spite of her hopes the thumping of her heart told her that fear was infectious, as were the beads of perspiration on her uncle’s face. Her hands wandered to her mouth, trembling and clammy.

For a moment he waited beside the closed shutters, and then he sprang forward, tearing at the hinge and pulling them apart, the grey light of afternoon slanting at once into the room. A man stood outside the window, his livid face pressed against the pane, his broken teeth gaping in an evil grin.

It was Harry the pedlar…. Joss Merlyn swore and threw open the window. “God damn you, come inside, can’t you? he shouted. “Do you want a bullet in your guts, you blasted fool? You’ve had me here standing like a deaf-mute for five minutes, with my gun trained on your belly. Unbolt the door, Mary; don’t lean against the wall there like a ghost. There’s nerves enough in this house without you turning sour.” Like all men who have been badly scared, he threw the blame of his own panic upon the shoulders of another and now blustered to reassure himself. Mary crossed slowly to the door. The sight of the pedlar brought back a vivid memory of her struggle in the lane, and reaction came swift upon her. Her nausea and disgust returned in force, and she could not look upon him. She opened the door without a word, screening herself behind it, and when he came into the kitchen she turned at once and went to the dull fire, piling the turf upon the embers mechanically, her back towards him. “Well, have you brought news?” questioned the landlord.

The pedlar smacked his lips in reply and jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

“The country’s gone up in smoke,” he said. “Every cluttering tongue in Cornwall, from the Tamar to St. Ives. I was in Bodmin this forenoon; the town was ringing with it, and they’re hot mad for blood and justice too. Last night I slept at Camelford, every man jack in the place shaking his fist in the air and blabbing to his neighbour. There’ll only be one end to this storm, Joss, and you know the name for it, don’t you?”