Weekend with Death (16 page)

She looked out upon the strangest sight. The rain had been no dream. It must have come from some high place of warmer air and frozen as it fell. She looked over the sill and saw the ivy on the side of the house frozen where it clung, each leaf in a mould of ice which followed every vein and was perfectly transparent. There had been no snow—only wherever she looked clear glassy ice, covering the ground below, the five-barred gate at its farther side, a jutting slant of the roof. The bare boughs of an oak thrown up against a lowering sky, its interlacing branches, its tracery of twigs, were all seen through a sheathing of ice. The dark hedgerow looked for all the world as if each shoot, each spray, were enclosed in glass. A few late berries still clinging to a thorn were like fruits in jelly. The rough grass at the hedge foot stood up in frozen spears. Ice everywhere, and the breath of it on the air.

She drew back with a shudder and shut the window. Her heart was like lead. If this queer rain had been anything but a local shower, the roads must be impassable. And if the roads were impassable, how was Henry going to get down? She began to realize how much she had been counting on him.

As soon as she was dressed and had made her bed she went in to Joanna and found her nervous and fretful. Such luxuries as early morning tea did not apparently exist at Maltings, and Miss Cattermole did like her cup of tea in bed. Of course it ought to be her own special health tea, and it was entirely owing to the inconsiderate way in which she had been hustled that this had been forgotten.

“I have never known Wilson so inconsiderate. And where was the hurry after all? We didn't get here any sooner. And as far as I can see, we need never have come here at all. In fact we never should have come. If I had not been so hurried, if I had been given the slightest time for reflection, I should have said quite firmly, ‘No, Wilson—I must really beg to be excused. You can of course do exactly as you like, and if you want to go to Land's End, or John o' Groat's, or the Malay Archipelago in this very unsuitable weather, you can of course do so, and I should not dream of trying to prevent you, but Sarah and I will stay
here
.”

“I'm afraid that is just what we shall have to do,” said Sarah.

Miss Cattermole managed to look exactly like an exasperated ant.

“And when I say
here
, of course I don't mean here at all—I think you really might know that. I ought to have told Wilson at once that I would not come down here. If I had had time to read the paper before I came away I should have known better than to give way to him. Morgan took all the papers when he went, which isn't like him at all, because he knows I always begin the day by looking at what ‘Janitor' has to say in his ‘
Advice from the Stars
', and if I had had the opportunity of reading it before we started I should never, never have come. Nothing could be more unfortunate. Just listen to this!” She produced from under the eiderdown a dishevelled sheet of newspaper and read in a trembling and indignant voice, “‘Any journey undertaken today is not likely to add to your health and happiness. There are dark clouds ahead. It would be better not to undertake any new enterprise. Purple will be your most fortunate colour for the next few days.'” She pushed the paper away so vehemently that it fell on the floor. “
Purple
—and I have brought nothing but blue! I shall tell Wilson that I must insist on returning today!”

Sarah picked up the paper. It bore yesterday's date.

“How did you get hold of it?”

“The bricks,” said Joanna—“very nice and comforting. I don't know what I should have done without them, but of course they did not stay hot, so when I lit my candle—at about six I think it was, and I had been awake for some time—I turned them out. And when I found they were all wrapped up in yesterday's
Daily Flash
I took it off to look for the Advice column, and I've been feeling most upset ever since. I shall insist on going back to town immediately after breakfast.”

Sarah discovered that she had some curiously mixed feelings. It might have been self-control that enabled her to say in quite a cheerful voice,

“There's about an inch of ice all over everything this morning. I shouldn't think we'd be able to move a yard.”

CHAPTER XXI

Sarah collected all the pieces of newspaper and carried them away to her own room. She left the bricks neatly piled on the hearth, and she thought she could stuff the
Daily Flash
carelessly into the grate when she had finished reading what it had got to say about the murder of Emily Case. She could not really disguise from herself the suspicion that the reason why Mr. Morgan Cattermole had walked out of the house before breakfast yesterday, taking all the papers with him, had something to do with a desire that Sarah Marlowe should not learn that the police were anxious to interview her. So much had happened in the last twenty-four hours that now for the first time she really allowed this suspicion to take definite shape in her mind. It had been there all the time of course, as moisture is in the air before it condenses into rain.

She laid out the sheets of newspaper, and found what she was looking for on what had been the middle page. It was quite a short paragraph. It said,

The police are anxious to interview a young woman who spent about three quarters of an hour in the first-class ladies' waiting-room at Cray Bridge between 5.15 and 6 p.m. on the evening of Thursday, January 26th.

There followed an alarmingly accurate description of Miss Sarah Marlowe. No one who knew that she had been travelling up from Craylea on Thursday evening could possibly have failed to identify her with the young woman whom the police desired to interview, and no one who read the rest of the paper could fail to link this desire with the murder of Emily Case.

The paper seemed quite full of the murder of Emily Case. There were photographs of her, mostly quite unrecognizable, of the sister with whom she had been going to stay, of the sister's cottage, of the railway station at Ledlington, of the compartment in which the murder had taken place, and of Mr. Snagg, the porter who had discovered the body.

With every line that Sarah read the shadow of Emily Case, whom she had seen once and with whom she had exchanged a few brief sentences, seemed to grow longer and darker.

She sat there, and acknowledged tardily that Henry had been right—she ought to have gone straight to the police and given them the oiled-silk packet. She had a tolerably clear idea that if she had taken this course she would not at this moment be marooned in a disagreeably isolated house, cut off from the world, the police, and Henry Templar by impassable and ice-bound roads.

If the roads were impassable it was no good expecting Henry to arrive and rescue her, and if Henry didn't arrive, what was she going to do? She had not the very slightest idea. Of course she was probably frightening herself about nothing at all. Morgan Cattermole was almost certainly a bad lot. Even his brother and sister barely disguised the fact that he was a black sheep. That being so, it was not difficult to guess who had opened the oiled-silk packet while she was out of her room last night. But to open it he would have had to look for it, and to look for it would mean that he had known it to be in her possession. And how could anyone know that?

Sarah thought about the footsteps on the foggy platform. Anyone walking up and down there might have looked through the chink where the blind had slipped and seen Emily Case and Sarah Marlowe. She remembered how Emily's head had turned and her eyes had watched that crack whilst the footsteps receded in the dark. The man who had followed Emily Case and murdered her for the packet which she had put in Sarah's bag might have guessed at its being worth his while to trace the girl who had been closeted for nearly an hour with his victim.

But it couldn't have been Morgan Cattermole. A voice said softly and coldly, “And why not?” She had no answer to this. Only if he had traced her he was much cleverer than the police, who had not managed to do so. There was certainly something very suspicious about his sudden arrival and the tampering with the oiled-silk packet.

But, Morgan gone, why should Wilson Cattermole transport them all to this inaccessible place? It might be the merest coincidence, or it might not. She could look back over the four months she had worked for him and find as many instances of a sudden whim translated into action. No, she really could not find it in her heart to suspect Wilson. The Reverend Peter Brown was another matter. Since Wilson and he had never met before, how and when had he known John Wickham? The longer she thought about it, the more the tone of that casual “I wanted a word with you” declared not only a previous but an intimate acquaintance.

If it was Wickham who had followed her.… The thought struck a spark from her mind, and went out as a spark goes out in the dark. Bundling the sheets of newspaper together, she went back into Miss Cattermole's room and stuffed them down into the grate upon the still warm ashes. If they were to burn, so much the better, but whether they burned or not, they would not be fit to use again, She might therefore hope for fresh wrappings on the bricks tonight.

Joanna, in a robe-like garment of peacock blue, was putting on her string of lapis lazuli beads and mourning because they were not purple and she could so easily have brought her Aunt Phoebe's amethysts.

“It all comes of being in a hurry—one always does the wrong thing.”

As she followed her downstairs Sarah wondered whether she had done the wrong thing about the papers from the oiled-silk packet. If it came to that, she wondered if any of the people through whose hands the papers had passed had done the right thing. They had all been in a hurry because they had had to be in a hurry. The young man in the train had been in a hurry when he gave them to Emily Case—and perhaps he was dead, and perhaps he wasn't. Emily Case had been in a hurry when she put them into Sarah's bag—and she was certainly dead. Sarah Marlowe had been in a hurry when she had ripped open the packet and taken out the folded envelope with all those names and addresses in it. She had been in a hurry when she took them out and when she put the envelope back again with some nice plain foolscap inside it. And very appropriate too. It had given her a good deal of pleasure ever since to imagine Morgan Cattermole's feelings when he opened the envelope. And the best part of the joke was that he wouldn't be certain, and nobody else could be certain, that she had changed the papers. The young man in the train might have changed them—or Emily Case—or Sarah Marlowe. But nobody could be sure that it was Sarah Marlowe, and nobody—
nobody
except Sarah knew where those names and addresses were now. The oiled-silk packet was under her pyjamas in the middle drawer in London, and what was inside it now was Morgan Cattermole's affair. He had thought he was fooling her, but she had fooled him first, and by now he must know that he had been fooled.

Sarah thought, “If he turns up here, I shall have to look out for squalls.” And with that they were in the dining-room, and everyone was saying good-morning and beginning to talk about the weather. “No getting out today, I'm afraid.” … “Oh, yes, dreadfully cold”… “I remember in '94” … “Grimsby says there's an inch of ice on the roads”… “Not a chance of the Sunday papers, I'm afraid.”…

Sarah realized with a shock that it was Sunday. She had been thinking of Henry going to his office and not being able to get away until the evening, and all the time it was Sunday and he could have got away as early as he liked if it hadn't been for the ice on the roads.

“Grimsby says it's very bad indeed,” said Mr. Brown. “He tried to get across the yard to the coal-shed, but he couldn't keep his feet. He is putting down ashes now, I believe.”

In the light of what Wickham had said, Sarah wondered whether it was fair to blame the ice for the fact that Grimsby found it difficult to keep his feet this morning. She felt rather curious about the Grimsbys, and anxious to see them.

As she was crossing the hall after breakfast she had at least part of her wish. Grimsby came out of a green baize door behind the dining-room and went across to the Reverend Peter's den with a scuttle of coals. It was a very large scuttle, well piled up, and he carried it as if it had been a basket of eggs. He wasn't very tall, but he looked as strong as a bull, with an immense chest and long arms, a dark empurpled face, and black hair growing low on his forehead. His looks were not improved by a nose with a badly broken bridge and small, bloodshot eyes. Sarah thought, “He's dangerous. I wonder what he's like when he's drunk.”

He looked at her sideways as he went past. It was the look of a vicious animal—sullen, with a spark of violence. If he had been a dog, there would have been a growl in his throat and his hackles would have been up. Sarah felt she would have been happier if he had been on a chain in the yard.

She went on up the stairs, and saw Wickham in the open doorway of Miss Cattermole's room. He had a pile of bricks on his arm, and when he saw her he went back a step.

“I'm just taking these away. Will you be wanting them again tonight?”

Sarah said, “Yes please,” and then, “But you oughtn't to carry them. Make Grimsby do it. After all, it's his job.”

He actually laughed.

“Have you seen him? I think I make a better chambermaid.”

“You oughtn't to carry them.”

“This arm's all right.”

“Are you all right this morning—really?”

He nodded.

Quite suddenly, without the slightest intention and to her own surprise, Sarah said,

“Is it true—you were in prison?”

He balanced the bricks thoughtfully. His colour was much better today. She noticed that, because she was looking to see whether it changed. It didn't, nor did his voice. He said,

“Oh, yes. Mr. Cattermole told you yesterday in the car, didn't he? He has made up his mind that you can't hear through the glass, but of course you can. I heard him telling you.”