Weekend with Death (2 page)

Sarah thought, “She doesn't say what station. I'm not going to ask her. She's mad, or she's making it up.”

“It was most fortunate,” said Miss Emily Case.

“What was?” said Sarah. She hadn't meant to ask any questions, but it was beyond her to let a remark like this go by.

Miss Case maintained her pale, unwinking stare.

“I was not delayed at all,” she said. “It was most fortunate. I got a porter almost at once, and there was no delay at all.”

Sarah's resolution gave way a second time.

“What happened to the young man?” she enquired.

“I really have no idea,” said Miss Case. “I hope the wound was not a fatal one, but he looked like death. I was so anxious not to be involved that I avoided passing his compartment. It was possible to alight at the other end of the carriage and I did so. At the time, I am afraid, I only thought of getting away without becoming involved in any unpleasantness. It was not until afterwards that I began to be uneasy about the packet.”

A little doubt crept into Sarah's horrified mind. It was quite small and vague, and it said in a small, vague voice, “Perhaps she isn't mad—perhaps it really happened.”

She shooed it out and shut the door in its face. Things like that
didn't
happen.

Miss Case went on talking in her tired, flat voice.

“He didn't tell me what to do with it. That makes it so very, very awkward—you do see that, don't you?”

Sarah said, “It would,” in the earnest tone of the puzzled but polite.

“Because of course I don't want to get mixed up with the police. If my name once got into the papers, I should find it so very difficult to get another post. If it were not for that, I should take it to the police. My sister tells me that they have a new superintendent at Ledlington—a most charming man. But that would never do. One cannot be too careful when one has one's living to earn.”

How more than true. And Sarah Marlowe had her living to earn. Even if she didn't earn it in as dull and exiguous a fashion as poor Miss Case (companion—could anything be gloomier?) she still had it to earn. Bread and butter, board and lodging, a warm fur coat and the rest, a little money to play with, and the rent of Tinkler's cottage. More especially the rent of Tinkler's cottage. At a pinch the other things could go short, but Tinkler had got to be housed. Old ladies with fifty years of hard work behind them can't be turned out on to the highway because you have played the fool and lost your job. Therefore Sarah studied to approve herself the perfect secretary to Mr. Wilson Cattermole, and therefore it behoved her not to get entangled with stray lunatics babbling of murdered men and mysterious packages. “A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Odd how bits of Shakespeare came into your mind. Henry called him the universal William. Anyhow, and to come back to bedrock fact, Tinkler was her job, and not Miss Emily Case.

Sarah had reached this point, and Miss Case was murmuring things like “I'm sure I hope I did what was right—but it is so difficult to know—” when the door was flung open and the fog came billowing in. A large young porter loomed between the jambs.

“Your train, miss.” He was addressing himself to Sarah. “She'll be in in two minutes. Number four platform. Here on the left.”

He caught up her suitcase and retreated, leaving the door open. The ineffectual voice of Miss Case pursued him.

“Porter—oh, porter! What about my train—the Ledlington train?”

Sarah had got up. She was settling the brown pillbox in front of what she decided must be the most unflattering mirror in the world. The porter's voice came back along the stream of icy air from the station.

“Ledlington train—number five—on the right. She's signalled. About five minutes. I'll be back.”

The rumble of the London train came up out of the foggy distance.

Sarah Marlowe turned from the glass with relief, picked up the brown handbag which she had left on the waiting-room table, and stopped for a moment to bid her fellow traveller farewell.

“Goodbye. I'm so glad your train is coming in too. And—and I shouldn't worry—I'm sure it will be quite all right.”

Miss Case sat primly upright on the shiny wooden bench. Her hat was a little on one side again—a companion's hat, limp and discouraged, in black felt. Her black gloved hands were clasped together over her shabby black bag, but she had a kind of perked-up look. You couldn't exactly say that there was colour in her cheeks, but they did not look quite so pale. She met Sarah's smile with an unwavering light stare and said quite brightly,

“Oh, yes, it will be quite all right now. Good evening.”

The London train came clanking in on the left.

CHAPTER II

In the middle of what felt like a crowded compartment Sarah Marlowe pursued her way to town. She had her back to the engine. Outside the cloudy window the fog flowed away on either side in an unending stream. The windows themselves were fastened, and covered by dark blinds. It was only with the eyes of her mind that she could see the river of fog go streaming by. With her ordinary, everyday bodily eyes she could at first see practically nothing, but as they became accustomed to deep dusk inside the carriage, she was able to identify the man over whose outstretched boot she had tripped and the girl who had said “Damn!” when she hacked her on the shin. The boot was so large that she wondered how she had ever got past it. The shin belonged to something in uniform—an A.T. or W.A.A.F. Beyond them other shapes, one of considerable bulk. These were between her and the door by which she had entered. On the other side a young man nudged and a girl giggled. In the opposite corner a fat voice soothed a yapping Peke.

Sarah sighed. There was of course no hope of getting a compartment to oneself on this train, but it wasn't always as crowded as this. She leaned back, wedged between the giggling girl and the man whose outsize in boots was matched by the width of his shoulders.

She thought about Tinkler—
darling
Tink—“I shan't see her again for a fortnight. Heavenly to have a little flat and find her waiting for me when I got home instead of retiring to my ghastly attic or sitting out the evening with the Cattermoles. But it's no use—she'd never transplant, and the money wouldn't run to it either. It's the board and lodging and everything found that saves our financial lives.”

She thought about the Cattermoles. Wilson Cattermole. Joanna Cattermole. Mr. Wilson Cattermole. Miss Joanna Cattermole. Brother and sister—elderly, cranky, stuffy, but undeniably kind. One wouldn't perhaps cling to a Cattermole if one didn't have to, but there were worse ways of earning a living—Emily Case's way, for instance. It was better to be the secretary of the president of the New Psychical Society than to wait on an old lady's whims.

There were moments when the Society amused Sarah quite a lot. There was the time when they had investigated the case of a flat which was haunted by a canary—some very bright moments there—and the time the car broke down and they had to spend the night in the local inn and Joanna swore to an interview with a genuine eighteenth-century smuggler—“Such a very, very, very handsome man, my dear.” Poor old Joanna!

It was a little later that Sarah felt convinced she had a smut on her nose. She declared afterwards that she had distinctly felt it settle. The large man on her right had gone to sleep practically on her shoulder. She had to slide sideways and lean well forward before she could open her bag. A smut on the nose is frightfully undermining to one's self-respect. She slipped off her glove, managed to get the bag open, and groped in it for compact and handkerchief.

The handkerchief should have been right on the top, but it wasn't. Instead her fingers touched something quite unfamiliar—something smooth, cold, and glithery. She touched it, and instantly recoiled. It was rather like touching a snake. As the thought rushed through her mind, Sarah pringled all over. She shut the bag in a hurry and sat there. It couldn't be a snake. It felt like one. “How do you know what a snake feels like? You've never touched one, thank
goodness
! You don't need to touch a snake to tell what it feels like—smooth, and cold, and glithery. How could there possibly be a snake inside my bag? Well, there's something there that doesn't belong.” And all in a blinding flash she thought of Miss Emily Case.

Miss Case saying, “He pushed it into my hand.”

Miss Case saying, “I don't know what to do about it.”

Miss Case all perked up and saying, “It will be all right now.”

All right now, because whatever the smooth, cold, glithery thing was, Miss Case had put it in Sarah's bag. She had got rid of it by planting it in Sarah's bag when Sarah was putting her hat straight in front of that revolting glass. “That was the only single moment I ever turned my back on her. And she must have been as quick as lightning. Who would have thought she had it in her? It only shows you can't go by what people look like.”

And now what?

Sarah kept firm hold of the clasp of her bag. Smut or no smut, she wasn't going to open it again until she was alone and could see what she was doing. She sat on the edge of the seat because the large man was now slumbering over most of her share of the back of it and thought bitterly of Miss Emily Case.

It was at this moment that Miss Case, alone in a third-class carriage about seven miles from Ledlington, heard the sound of the wheels on the track become suddenly louder. They were louder because the left-hand door was opening. Even in the semi-darkness she could see that it was swinging in. And not of itself. Someone was climbing into the compartment. She saw a black shape rise, and she opened her mouth to scream.

Nobody heard her.

CHAPTER III

The cattermoles lived in chelsea. A tall, narrow house, so near the embankment that Sarah could just see the river from her attic if she craned dangerously far out from the left-hand window.

The fog, capricious as fogs can be, was actually less thick in London than it had been in the country.

Sarah let herself in with her latchkey, felt her way across the hall—Mr. Cattermole had personally removed the electric light bulb on the day that war was declared—and ascended to the next floor, where a very faint blue light was permitted.

The drawing-room door opened as she went by. Joanna Cattermole in black velvet, her pale hair frizzing wildly out all round her small head, stood there beckoning. A thin, dry hand caught at her wrist.

“Marvellous results whilst you've been away—really marvellous! My smuggler, you know—quite a long message. He has been
longing
to come through.”

Sarah spoke soothingly.

“I'll be down in a minute. It's not frightfully early, so I'd better change, hadn't I?”

She escaped, ran up two more flights in a hurry, and arrived at her attic. She had called it ghastly, but that was merely the irritation of feeling how nice it might have been if the Cattermoles hadn't spoiled it. She liked being at the top of the house with a bathroom next door, and she liked the feeling that she could see the river if she didn't mind risking her neck. The trouble was that the Cattermoles had put all the furniture they didn't want into this large attic room, and there was so much of it that there was not a great deal of room for Sarah Marlowe.

She came in now, switched on the light, and crossed over to the dressing-table, a massive Victorian structure with a two-tiered mahogany mirror planted squarely upon it. There were three chests of drawers, two of them full of hoarded rubbish—Cattermole rubbish—two wardrobes, one mahogany and the other yellow maple, a swing-mirror, and a big brass bedstead. There were black velveteen curtains at the two windows, a black velveteen bedspread exactly like a pall, and three armchairs upholstered in faded crimson damask. The walls were covered with one of those papers on which an elaborate pattern contends with the smoke and grime of years. A lovely bonfire of all the furniture and a pot of whitewash were visions with which Sarah sometimes cheered herself.

At this moment however she wasn't thinking about the ghastliness of the attic. She wasn't even noticing it. She flung off her hat and coat, ran back to the door, and locked it. Then she sat down on the edge of the bed and opened her handbag. Her heart beat a little faster. Of course she had had to open her bag to get out her purse and her latchkey, but they were on one side; whatever it was that Miss Case had wished on her was on the other. Between the two lay a centre compartment for handkerchief and compact. She opened the bag as wide as it would go and saw what it was that she had touched in the train, a small package about four inches by three, very neatly sewn up in dark green oiled silk.

Oiled silk.… Of course—that was what her fingers had touched in the dark, slipping from the clasp to its cold glitheriness. No wonder she had thought about snakes. Nothing except a snake could feel so like one as oiled silk. She picked the little parcel up. It weighed lightly. If there had been thoughts in her mind about jewels, they were gone before she had time to consider them. Paper was more like it. She felt the thing gingerly. Yes, paper—or should one say papers. Sheets torn out of a notebook, sewn up in oiled silk, and passed from a dying man to Emily Case, and from Emily Case to Sarah Marlowe.

Fantastic, ridiculous, incredible story. And the vagueness of it! “If I'd known she was going to plant it on me, there are simply heaps of things I could have asked about. The young man who was stabbed on the train.—Well, Emily was coming from Italy, but she didn't say where it happened, or what station they ran into. And she didn't say if the young man was English. She only said that was what he had said to her—‘You're English'.”

Life with the Cattermoles had developed in Sarah a strong resistance to what she termed boloney. You either had to become a credulous fanatic or develop a healthy scepticism. With all the healthy scepticism at her command Sarah Marlowe now stigmatized Miss Case's story as boloney.