Weekend with Death (15 page)

It was the most blessed relief to be clear of the cupboard. She closed the door behind her lightly, pulling a fold of the nearest garment between it and the jamb, so that she could be sure of getting back again if it should turn out that there was no better way. Then she looked about her with an uneasy sense of adventure. It was not quite dark. She could see the walls of a room, and a window facing her, the tracery of its latticed panes very black against the faint diffused light which was coming from the sky. It was not strong enough for moonlight, but it was the kind of light which filters through the clouds when the moon is veiled. By this light she could see that the room was a small one, and that it was perfectly empty—naked floor, bare walls, window uncurtained to the night, with a great smashed hole high up in the right-hand corner. It looked as if a stone as big as a cannon-ball had been hurled through it. Even at that moment Sarah wondered who could have thrown anything large enough to make that hole. The night air poured through it, bitterly cold.

There was a door in the right-hand wall. When she came to it Sarah found it ajar. It opened upon a passage, and all at once it came to her that this was a prolongation of the passage down which she had come to find Wickham's room—there had been a wall across it with a locked and bolted door. The empty room through which she had just come backed on to Wickham's room. She was now in the passage beyond the locked and bolted door. She was, to put it exactly, in the haunted wing. She experienced a decided reluctance to remain there. She did not believe in ghosts, but it is a great deal easier not to believe in them when you are not alone at midnight in a haunted house.

She felt her way to the wall and made sure of the heavy door. Yes, there it was, just as she had felt it from the other side, only here the bolt was drawn back.

It was quite dark in the passage except for a faint greyness where she had left the door of the empty room half open behind her. It was stuffy too, with a smell of mildew and unstirred dust. She had a sudden longing to be back in her own room with a fire burning and a warm bed waiting for her full of comforting hot bricks done up in kitchen paper. Only an insensate lunatic would have come prowling about this horrible house without so much as a sixpenny torch just in case a bank-robber who had never spoken a civil sentence to her in his life might want bandaging. And heaven knew why. It was a hundred to one that he had been up to his old games, because after all, you didn't get stabbed for nothing. Or shot.

Sarah's conscience, or her heart, experienced a sharp prick of remorse. “However he got shot or stabbed, he was getting on all right until he carried coals and bricks for you. And only an inhuman monster would have stayed in a warm room and gone to sleep without finding out just how badly he had hurt himself—” It is a hard choice between an insensate lunatic and an inhuman monster, but perhaps better to be demented than depraved.

The immediate question was how long would she have to remain here freezing and mouldering. Mr. Brown might stay talking to Wickham for hours. It seemed odd that he should have wanted to talk to him at all. If they were strangers.… It came to Sarah with the extreme of certainty that they were not strangers. There had been a most familiar and accustomed accent about the Reverend Peter's “I wanted a word with you.” If Wilson Cattermole had really never met Mr. Brown in the flesh until last night, that familiarity raised a host of questions.

Sarah put these questions out of her mind with vigour. Everything was quite bad enough without looking for trouble, and anyhow Henry would be here tomorrow. The only question she really had to deal with at the moment was how to get back to her room. The way she had come was blocked by the Reverend Peter. The passage was blocked by a bolted door. If there was a third way, she had better set about finding it.

Slowly and without enthusiasm she began to move forward, feeling her way along the right-hand wall.

CHAPTER XIX

She had not gone more than a dozen steps, when the passage turned right-handed. She had the feeling that it was narrower, and the ceiling lower down overhead. There was not the very faintest glimmer of light, and presently she found out why. Her hand groping, touched a window jamb and, moving on, came upon boards where there should have been glass.

She stood there leaning aginst the sill and tried to get her bearings. If there were boarded-up windows all along this passage, then there would be no way back to her room from here. Because windows on this side meant that the haunted wing ran parallel with the rest of the house but separated from it. The passage with the bolted door linked the two wings. But it must be their only link. These windows must look into some court or yard. It was no use going on.

And yet before she went back she would like to know just a little more about this place. If there were windows on this side of the passage, there might be doors on the other. She crossed over, and found one facing her under the shape of an arch so low that her hand, feeling before her, actually touched the keystone. The door itself had no handle, but an iron latch rough with rust. She had the impulse to lift it, and a reluctance which pulled her back. In the end the impulse won. The door moved, creaked, and swung in. She had to stoop to look into the room. It was small and not quite dark, because one of the boards at the pointed window had slipped and let in a narrow panel of that grey, filtered light. It was very cold. There was a weight on the air. It was very still.

And then all at once there was a sound—like a faint rustling—like a silk dress moving over the rough boards a long way off at the end of the passage. Such a small, harmless sound to turn your hands to ice and set your heart thumping.

It took her all she knew to shut the door. She must shut it, or they would know that someone had been here. It creaked again as she pulled it to, and from the end of the passage there came again the sound of the rustle of silk. Sarah told herself that she mustn't run. If she ran, blind panic would overtake her. She must get back, but she mustn't run. The cupboard loomed up as a haven of refuge. She turned the corner, and as she did so, like Lot's wife she looked back.

There was something there.

She did not wait. A cold drop went trickling down her spine, and she ran as she told herself she must not run, with a blind panic driving her. It was so blind that she struck against the bolted door and bruised herself. It was touch and go whether she screamed and beat upon it in a frenzy. With the last shreds of her courage she choked back the scream and leaned for a moment against the oak. Then with a very great effort she turned.

There was someone, quite close to her, quite silent. In the vague dimness which came through the door which she had left open she could just see a shadow in the darkness—quite near, quite horribly near. She made a sound too faint to be a cry.

John Wickham's voice said, “Sarah!”

For the second time that evening she came near to fainting. Afterwards she told herself that it was the sudden rush of a relief so great that it gave the measure of her fear. She might really have fainted if she had not remembered that if Wickham had to take her weight, it would be much worse than a scuttle of coals and his wound would almost certainly begin to bleed again.

She kept her feet, felt an arm about her waist, and was somewhat vaguely aware that she was being hurried along. A door shut, and once more the cold outside air was blowing in her face. She drew a long sobbing breath and heard Wickham say, “Hold up!” His arm was still at her waist. She said with as much indignation as she could muster,

“I am.”

“Not very noticeably—but you've got to. You'd no business to come here at all, and you've got to get back to your room.”

Anger is a brisk restorative. Sarah was surprised by her own rage, but it enabled her to dispense with any further support than that of the wall. She went back a step, leaned against it, took another good deep breath, and said with spirit,

“How could I help coming here? You didn't expect me to wait and meet Mr. Brown?”

“No. I think I indicated the cupboard as an alternative. It was a perfectly good cupboard. Why didn't you stay there?”

“And suppose Mr. Brown had opened the door?”

“He didn't.”

“He might have. And besides, there wasn't any air—only a sort of concentrated fog of moth and mould and camphor, and I thought I was going to faint, and if there'd been a heavy thud in the cupboard, Mr. Brown
would
have opened the door.”

He said in rather a curious voice,

“How did you find the spring?”

She was herself again now, and she thought, “How did
he
find it?” And then she remembered that she hadn't quite closed the secret door. She had pulled a fold of one of those horrible dresses out through it too, so as to be sure of finding her way back. But all the same she didn't think it was that. She thought that he had known about the spring, and she thought that he had not meant her to know that he knew. This went at racing speed. She said quickly,

“I caught at the pegs. They gave, and I found there was a door. I came in here because of the air.”

She had slipped into excusing herself. Her anger flared again. Why should she account to him for what she did?

“Then why didn't you stay here?”

“Why should I? I wanted to find a way back to my room. You mayn't have noticed it, but it's fairly cold.”

His voice changed. There had been something in it which made her feel that she was being laughed at. That something went. He said,

“Yes, you must get back at once. But before you go I want to know what you've been doing. You went down the passage—didn't you? How far did you go?”

The anger went out of her. She was cold again.

“Round the bend and a little way along—not very far really.”

“See anything?”

“I—don't—know.”

“And what do you mean by that?”

She repeated the words she had just used.

“I—don't—know. I looked back—there was something—I don't know what it was. There was a rustling—like silk—”

“You didn't see anyone?”

“No.”

“You may thank your lucky stars for that. Now look here, this place is dangerous. This part of the house—it's dangerous. You're not to come into it—do you hear me? You've found a way in, but you're not to use it again. It's not kept locked up for nothing, and you're to keep clear of it. If you had met what you might have met tonight, or seen what you might have seen—well, people can die of fright, you know, as well as from several other very unpleasant causes. You keep quiet and stick to Miss Cattermole! And now you had better go back to your room!”

The really frightening thing about this speech was that it didn't make Sarah angry. It ought to have, and it didn't. So far from firing up, she couldn't raise a spark. She went meekly back through the cupboard into Wickham's room.

The candle was on the mantelpiece now. After the dark passages and the dusk of the place from which she had come, the light from this one bending flame seemed searchingly bright. They could see one another, and what Sarah saw increased the weight upon her spirits. He had slipped his coat on. The bloodstained shirt was hidden. Over the dark collar his face had a pale and frowning look.

What he saw was a girl in a blue dressing-gown who had just run as big a risk as she was ever likely to encounter short of death. There was dust on her hands, and dust on the hem of her gown. There was a dusty smear on her cheek. Her hair hung loose upon her shoulders, and her eyes were wide and dark with something—he did not quite know what. He hoped with all his heart that it was fear, because if she was afraid she would keep quiet, and if she didn't keep quiet there was going to be plenty of reason why she should be afraid.

He went to the door, opened it, and went out. Sarah stood where he had left her.

Presently he came back.

“The coast's clear. Go quickly! I mustn't come with you.”

She took a step or two and turned back.

“What are you going to do about that wound? You'll want a fresh bandage.”

“I've got one.”

“Can you do it yourself?”

“I'm an expert.” Quite suddenly he laughed. “
Das ewig Weibliche!
”

“What do you mean?”

“No German? Pity. It won't translate. ‘The eternal feminine' is rotten—mere
ersatz
—an inferior substitute.”

Something happened between them—anger like the thrust of a knife to cut the mockery from his look and voice. And quick on that the feeling that the knife had slipped and only cut herself.

He held the door for her ceremoniously and watched her out of sight—first a dark shadow moving as soundlessly as a real shadow, then the blue of her dressing-gown in the lamp-light on the landing, and last of all the movement of a door on the other side of the well of the stairs. It opened, and it shut.

The curtain was down on the first act. John Wickham went back into his room, and wondered about the rest of the play.

CHAPTER XX

It was a long time before Sarah slept. Her thoughts were restless and driven, like the shadow dance of leaves when the wind is high. They seemed like that to her—shadow thoughts driven here and there by an unseen wind, and she could only guess at what had cast the shadows. There were many things to be guessed at, but as soon as she tried to hold a thought and follow it back to its source, it eluded her and was gone again. Her body was so tired and her brain so restless that she felt as if she would never sleep. Yet in the end she did sleep, and woke to hear rain beating on the window, and slept again.

When the morning came with its reluctant light, she thought she must have been mistaken about the rain. If it had been bitterly cold the night before, it was still colder now. It could not possibly have rained with the air as cold as this. She got up and went to shut the casement window, which she had set a handsbreadth open after putting out her candle and drawing the curtain back. To her surprise the casement would not move. It was frozen to the sill. She had to use all her strength to break the ice and free it.