Weekend with Death (12 page)

At a very early stage in the proceedings he encountered the oiled-silk packet, and immediately noticed, as Sarah had noticed, that two inches of the stitching featured an ordinary white cotton instead of the prevailing linen thread. At this evidence of carelessness he made a clicking sound with his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Having been instructed by their employer that the packet now contained nothing of interest, some agents would have left it at that, but not Mr. Green. He reopened the packet and discovered that the envelope inside contained nothing more exciting than some strips of newspaper. He took the trouble to sew the oiled silk up again, and to use the linen thread which he had noticed in Miss Marlowe's dressing-table drawer, although according to his information it was extremely unlikely that she would ever see the packet again.

At the end of two hours he had satisfied himself that the lists were not in the house. Under the disapproving gaze of Thompson he had gone rapidly through her room and that of Mrs. Perkins, after which he retired to the study and rang up Hedgeley 673.

The ring produced the hall-porter of the George, and the hall-porter produced Mr. Cattermole.

“That you?… Green speaking. Well, I've been right through everything, and they're not here.… Sure? Of course I'm sure! It's my job, isn't it? You don't ask your cook whether she can fry a rasher. They're not here, and you may take it that's final.”

He rang off, put on his black overcoat and his bowler hat, picked up his brown attaché case and his umbrella, and walked out of the house.

At the sound of the closing door Thompson looked up gloomily from her knitting.

“Mr. Nosey Parker Green!” she said, and dropped a stitch.

CHAPTER XV

Sarah's first impression of Maltings was also to be her most lasting one. Solitude, darkness, and cold. A gloom in which all detail was lost obscured the approach, but so narrow and rough a track could only exist in a lonely and unfrequented locality.

The house, when they reached it, was no more than a spreading blur. They came into a sparsely lighted hall which even after the bitter outside cold struck dank and chill. It was of some size, with stone flags under foot and a gaping black hearth rising to a great chimney. At the far end the stair ran up to the bedroom floor. The place was plainly old, and as plainly ill kept and in need of repair, the air stale with a mingled smell of mould, tobacco smoke, and a suggestion of spilled oil. What light there was came from an old-fashioned paraffin lamp fastened to the wall.

The Reverend Peter Brown came bustling to meet them—a large, untidy man, all hair and beard and spectacles, in baggy clerical clothes and carpet slippers. He shook hands, exclaiming at the cold, at his pleasure in their arrival, and ushered them past a closed door on either side into what he termed “my den”.

Sarah was wishing that she had not taken off her glove. The clasp of Mr. Brown's hand affected her unpleasantly. She wasn't quite sure what there was about it, but she did not like the contact—something smooth and damp. Smooth—that was odd, because he had such a lot of hair everywhere else. But there was no hair on his hands.

The den was as untidy as Mr. Brown himself. There was a very dirty carpet on the floor, frowsy curtains, a littered writing-table, a bottle of whisky, and a thick tumbler like a tooth-glass. But at least the room was warm. A hot fire burned in the dirty grate.

Here, under the light of a lamp with a ground-glass globe, Mr. Brown looked larger and shaggier than ever. His grizzled hair came down to his bushy eyebrows, and the eyebrows straggled into his spectacles in what Sarah felt must be a most uncomfortable manner. As for his beard—and she had always hated men with beards—it started somewhere on a level with his ears, and after covering the greater part of his cheeks and the whole of his upper lip and chin came well down over the middle of his waistcoat. Like the hair of his head it was grizzled and curly. From its depths glimpses of strong, white teeth could be seen when he smiled. He smiled a good deal.

“Well now”—the Reverend Peter beamed upon them—“this is really very delightful indeed! But perhaps the ladies would like to see their rooms. I am afraid, Miss Cattermole, that you will find us very primitive after London. A most interesting old house, but no modern conveniences—we have to pump our water, and hot water has to be carried up in cans. However, as I always say, the men who made England what she is today were born and bred in just such surroundings as these, and if we cannot put up with them for once in a while—well, I maintain we prove that we are degenerate, and not that the conditions are insupportable.” He had a rich, resonant voice and rolled out his sentences as if he were addressing a congregation.

Joanna put up her hand to her floating hair.

“Oh, if I might, Mr. Brown! It has been such a long, cold journey.”

Cold
—it was the cold that dominated everything. The bare boards of the upper landing seemed to give it off. Once they might have shone with beeswax, but now, dull and dented, they echoed as drearily as if the house around them were quite uninhabited.

Four doors opened upon the landing. The dark mouth of a passage showed on the right.

Mr. Brown did the honours with effusion. He carried a lamp, and allowed its yellow light to mitigate the darkness of each room in turn.

“Miss Cattermole, I have put you here. I do hope you will find the arrangements adequate. There are a pair of candles on the dressing-table—oh, thank you, Miss Marlowe, that is so very kind. Well now, here we are. And you are just a little further along. I think you have the matches—if you will be so good. Ah—that is quite an illumination! And the room beyond is the best we can do towards providing a bathroom—I do hope that you will find it adequate. Now, Mr. Cattermole, you and I are across the landing. And there is a room for your chauffeur just down that passage. I hope you have no objection. Mr. and Mrs. Grimsby, my married couple, occupy a room next the kitchen, the only one available down there, and I hardly liked to put him in the old part of the house—the manifestations can be very alarming.”

“The old part?” said Joanna fretfully. “All this looks old enough.”

Mr. Brown shook his head.

“This part is only seventeenth-century. It has always been called the new wing. The really interesting part is a good deal older. It has not been occupied for at least a hundred years, and portions of it are not very safe, so we always keep the connecting doors locked. There is one on the ground floor, and one up here at the end of that passage. But your man need not be nervous—there are never any manifestations on this side.”

When she was alone with Sarah, Joanna sat down and burst into tears.

“I would never have come if I had known what it was going to be like—and I ought to have known, because I was warned. I woke up this morning with the most distinct impression of someone saying ‘No'. And it was a warning. When Wilson came bursting in with this ridiculous plan and said we were all going down to Maltings I ought to have remembered about the voice and said no, because it was a message and a warning. I shall probably get pneumonia.”

“Dear Miss Cattermole!”

The hectic colour brightened in Joanna's cheeks.

“Sarah, can you look me in the face and say you honestly believe that these beds have ever been aired since the house was built? And we came off in such a hurry that I didn't bring my scales or any of the health foods.”

“Hot bricks,” said Sarah in a firm, soothing voice. “I'll get hold of Wickham.”

“Hot bricks?”

“Wrapped in flannel and put into the bed. Much better than hot water bottles, and you can have dozens.”

They descended to a kind of tea-supper in an awful room with chocolate lincrusta on the walls and an oleograph of Mr. Gladstone over the mantelpiece.

The food was surprisingly good. Whatever Mrs. Grimsby's other shortcomings were, she could cook. There was tea, and there was whisky, and there was beer. There were scones of heavenly lightness. There was the kind of omelette you do not expect to find in the English country. There were sausage-rolls which melted in the mouth. There was angel-cake, and homemade macaroons, and a queer dark red jelly which Sarah thought was quince. And they were all very, very good. Sarah felt very much better when she had eaten them. The idea of having to confront ghosts on a cold and empty stomach had been getting her down, but Mrs. Grimsby's high tea had a fortifying effect. She could have wished Joanna the same support, but milk and water and about a teaspoonful of omelette was as far as Miss Cattermole would venture. Wilson, with the air of a man who braves the worst, actually partook of sausage-roll and angel-cake and washed them down with copious draughts of weak tea.

Mr. Brown showed himself to have a hearty appetite. He also displayed a remarkable capacity for talking and eating at the same time. Sarah thought her employer piqued by their host's monopoly of the conversation, his efforts to enter it and, having entered, to maintain his position being rendered ineffectual by the superior resonance of the Reverend Peter's voice—a robust organ, and with great reserves of power. He had only to boom a little louder, and Wilson's feeble twitterings were swallowed up.

On the whole this was an agreeable change. She had plenty of Wilson at home, and the Reverend Peter, though profuse, was not uninteresting. In spite of his uncouth appearance, he spoke like a man of culture and breeding. He had evidently travelled widely, and was engaged upon a monumental work dealing with folk lore in its connection with psychic phenomena.

“It is an aspect which has been largely overlooked. The vampire stories have of course attracted an undue amount of attention, but that, I think, can be put down more to the spectacular success of Mr. Bram Stoker's blood-curdling romance
Dracula
than to any spirit of scientific enquiry.”

“Very true—very true indeed. These works of fiction—”

“Completely obscure the realities of the situation,” continued Mr. Brown. “That is what I was just about to observe.”

Joanna turned bright apprehensive eyes upon him.

“Oh, Mr. Brown—
not
vampires! If you don't mind—so disturbing! I really don't think—I remember reading
Dracula
when I was a girl, and I woke up in the middle of the night clutching my throat. I had screamed so loud that I had waked up everyone in the house, and my dear father took the book away and put it on the kitchen fire.”

Mr. Brown laughed heartily.

“Then we will certainly not talk about vampires, for I am most anxious that you should sleep well after your very trying journey.”

Sarah wondered whether this would be a good moment to mention bricks. The beds were sure to be damp, and even if they were not, Joanna was so firmly convinced they were that she was all set to worry herself into having a chill. But before she could speak Mr. Brown had started again about folk-lore.

“More widely spread but far less widely known are the stories in which some man or woman forms an association or a marriage with a non-human partner. There is usually a condition attached to the continuance of the association. In one story the woman disappears when her husband has broken a vow never to speak roughly to her in company. In perhaps the most famous of the tales Melusine, who married the Comte Guy de Lusignan, exacted from him the promise that once a year when a certain day came round he would most strictly respect her privacy and make no attempt to enter her chamber. They lived together happily for a considerable time, and she bore him several children—this, by the way, is a common feature of these stories—but at length his curiosity got the better of his good faith. He gave out that he was going hunting, but actually he returned in secret and through the keyhole or some other small aperture looked into his wife's room. There he saw the beautiful Melusine bathing herself. But she was only a woman as far as the waist. The rest of her shape was that of a brightly coloured serpent. The Count in his horror uttered some cry or oath, whereupon he saw his wife's face change horribly and become convulsed with rage. After which she spread dragon's wings and sailed out of the window, never to be seen again. That also is a common feature of these legends—the person disappears—and is never seen again.”

Mr. Brown's fine voice invested this climax with a thrill of genuine horror.

Sarah murmured to herself, “
Grimm's Fairy Tales
—” But that “never seen again” had sent a shiver down her spine. She brought her mind back firmly to the question of hot bricks for Joanna's bed, and managed to keep it there while Mr. Brown discoursed about Tobit and the Angel, the Hound of the Pandava brothers, and Hans Andersen's Travelling Companion, which he declared had its counterpart in nearly every European country.

As he spoke, Sarah pursued her own thoughts. A question which had preoccupied her at intervals recurred strongly. Where, all this time, was the male half of the Reverend Peter's married couple? He had spoken of the Grimsbys, and whilst Mrs. Grimsby was represented by her omelette, her quince jelly, her angel-cake, and sausage-rolls, Grimsby had so far not been in evidence at all. And it was probably to Grimsby that she should address a demand for hot bricks.

One part of her mind continued to concern itself with this problem, whilst the rest gave a surface attention to Mr. Brown's further remarks about disappearing partners. He had brought them down to the present day with the rather intriguing story of a girl whose husband disappeared with a loud clang in an octagon turret room at midnight on Hallowe'en before a move was made to the other room.

Joanna shivered as they crossed the hall.

“I think perhaps if you would be so good, Sarah—just my blue chiffon scarf. I have left a candle burning.”

As Sarah came out of the bedroom with the scarf in her hand she saw Wickham at the entrance to the passage on the other side of the landing. It startled her to see him standing there. He was in his chauffeur's uniform, but bare-headed. His shoulder leaned against the wall.