Weekend with Death (8 page)

Her plaintive “Are you awake?” brought Sarah to the door with the least possible delay. The Victorian chair pushed aside, she threw it open and revealed Miss Cattermole in a reassuringly solid camel-coloured dressing-gown, with her hair screwed up tight to her head in aluminium curlers. Her eyes looked large, and vague, and frightened. She clutched at Sarah and said,

“Oh, my dear—forgive me—I do hope you were not asleep. Oh, no, I see you have your shoes and stockings on. But, my dear, I had such a terrible dream. That is the worst of being so psychic—it makes one too receptive. And when I woke up I had such a palpitation, and I thought perhaps if you would come down to my room and stay there a little, I shouldn't feel so nervous—only I am really very sorry to disturb you.”

As she spoke she came a little way into the room, peering to right and left with an odd, startled glance. It slid over the chair which had guarded the door and slid away.

Sarah said quickly, “Of course I'll come. Why, how cold you are! Would you like some tea, or a hot water bottle?”

Joanna was trembling. She looked very small and shrunken without her wild halo of hair.

“No—no—oh, no, I don't want anything. If you would just come down with me and stay a little—”

Sarah went down with her and got her into bed. There was a gas fire in the room, burning brightly and throwing out a good heat. Joanna, in the large double bed which had belonged to her parents, looked smaller than ever. She sat up against three immense pillows in frilled linen pillow-cases and told Sarah all about her dream. Now that it was over and she had company, she was able to derive a good deal of gloomy pleasure from it.

“I don't quite know where I was, but it was an empty house and I couldn't get out. There were a great many doors and windows, but they were all locked and I couldn't get out. I have always been very much afraid of being shut in anywhere. I could never understand how people could go down into the catacombs and places like that—I am sure I should faint—and in my dream this place was much worse, because there was the
sense of an evil presence
—” Joanna's voice dropped to a rustling whisper.

“But it was only a dream. Would you like a little more light?”

Sarah could have done with more herself. A heavily shaded lamp by the bedside did very little to relieve a pervading gloom. The room was dark—L-shaped like the drawing-room. Round the corner it ran away into a black cave. The gas fire struck a cheerful modern note. Sarah found herself with an affection for it.

Miss Joanna said in a creeping voice, “And what made it so much worse was that I was quite sure something dreadful was going to happen. It was coming nearer every moment, and the dreadful thing was that it was always just behind me—just out of sight.”

“Don't you think we had better talk about something else?”

“No—I think it does me good. I learned a piece of poetry about something of the same sort when I was a child. I don't think it was a very suitable piece for a child really, and I know it kept me awake for hours at a time after I got it by heart. I don't remember it all now, but it was something about a man who was walking across a moor and was afraid to turn his head—‘As one who fears a frightful ghost doth close behind him tread.' I used to know it all off by heart, but that is the only bit I can remember now. And I am not sure whether it is Coleridge's
Ancient Mariner
or
The Dream of Eugene Aram
. I think it was one of them, but I can't be sure, because we had a governess who was very fond of poetry and always made us learn a great deal of it.”

It was a relief to have got Joanna away from her dream, but Sarah began to wonder if she was feverish. There was a flickering colour in the hollow cheeks, a fixed brightness in the sunken eyes, and the voice was like the voice on a gramophone record—it went on, and on, and on.

She said, “Would you like me to read to you a little?”

Rather to her surprise, Joanna said, “Yes.”

“What would you like?”

The bright eyes dwelt on her, but not at all as if they saw Sarah Marlowe.

“Oh, anything—it doesn't matter at all.”

There were books in a trough by the head of the bed. Sarah stood up and picked one out. Then she kneeled down under the light, found a page at random, and began to read:

“Art thou not void of guile—

A lovely soul formed to be blessed and bless—

A well of sealed and sacred happiness,

Whose waters like blithe light and music are,

Vanquishing dissonance and gloom—a star

Which moves not in the moving heavens, alone—

A smile amid dark frowns—a gentle tone

Amid rude voices—a beloved light—

A solitude, a refuge, a delight—

A lute which those whom love has taught to play

Make music on to soothe the roughest day,

And lull fond Grief asleep—a buried treasure—

A cradle of young thoughts of wingless pleasure—

A violet-shaded grave of woe?—I measure

The world of fancies seeking one like thee,

And find—alas! mine own infirmity.”

Sarah paused slightly and went on, her voice soft and grave:

“She met me, Stranger, upon life's rough way,

And lured me towards sweet death—”

There was a small choking sound. Sarah leaned out of her circle of light and saw that the tears were running down Joanna's face. Such a poor wizened little creature, with her face all puckered up like a baby's.

Sarah's soft heart smote her.

“Is anything the matter? I'm so sorry—I'm afraid it's rather melancholy, but I just began where the book opened, and I liked the singing sound it made. Did it upset you?”

Joanna's thin fingers fastened upon Sarah's wrist. They were very cold. She said in a weak, stifled voice,

“No—no—it is very beautiful. I have always been fond of poetry. I once had some verses printed in the parish magazine. That was Shelley, wasn't it? A friend gave me the book—a long time ago—”

“Would you like me to go on?”

Joanna shook her head.

“No—it brings things back. He used to read—very beautifully. Just put the book away and stay a little longer, and then I think I shall be able to go to sleep.”

As Sarah turned with the book in her hand, something fluttered out from between the pages and lay on the table under the light—the small unmounted photograph of rather an arty young man with longish hair and a small pointed beard. The features were without character, the photograph a faded snapshot. Sarah put it back and replaced the book.

After a few minutes Joanna began to talk about other things—a book she had read, a book she wanted to read, a letter she meant to write, and would Sarah please remind her about it. All very gentle and trivial. There were no more tears. Presently she yawned once or twice, and at last sent Sarah to bed.

“You are sure you are all right now? Shall I leave the fire on or not? You won't be too hot like that?”

“No—I am always cold. But I shall sleep now.”

“I can stay a little longer if you like.”

“No, no—it won't be necessary—I shall sleep. Good-night.”

Sarah said, “Good-night.”

It was cold on the landing, and black dark. She felt for the newel-post and the bottom step of the stair. Half way up she had the horrid thought of how very unpleasant it would be to bump into Morgan coming down. It was not only an unpleasant thought, it was a crazy one, because it was ten thousand a year to a halfpenny that Morgan was asleep in the back room over the study, and self-evident that he could have no possible business on the attic floor. All the same, she kept a hand well out in front of her till she came to the top of the stair and the sight of her own lighted room.

A yard from the door she stopped. So that was why the stair had been so dark. The door was not shut. But she thought she had left it wider open than this. She tried to remember exactly how she had left it. She couldn't be sure—Joanna was clutching her. She couldn't remember stopping to close the door, and yet here it was with only a chink of light showing against the jamb. She opened it now, and left it wide whilst she looked inside the wardrobe and under the bed. Then she barricaded it again with the stout Victorian chair. It was as heavy as lead, with a solid curly frame and faded damask upholstery. It would at any rate give fair warning if anyone tried the door. But she didn't think anyone would—not now—
not again
. She was as sure as she could be sure of anything that someone had been, and gone.

She was laughing a little as she opened her middle drawer. And then she stopped laughing. Her hand went down into the drawer and came back again. Sarah stared at it in amazement. Because she had expected her hand to come back empty, and it wasn't empty—it was holding the oiled-silk packet.

She went on staring at it for quite a long time. And then all at once a bright colour came into her cheeks and her eyes began to sparkle. She held the packet close under the light and examined it. Not her thread—and not her stitches. Pretty good, but not good enough. The thread was ordinary cotton, not linen thread, and the stitches were not so neatly taken. Someone had opened the packet and sewn it up again. If they had removed what was inside it, they had put something in its place. She could feel the sharp edge of an envelope. There was nothing in the feeling to show that it was not the original envelope. That was clever. And it was very clever not to take the packet—it gave the thief quite a lot of margin. If it hadn't been for the difference between 30 cotton and linen thread, a difference which probably didn't exist to the male mind, Sarah would never have known that the packet had been tampered with, and by the time anyone did find out, the tampering might have taken place anywhere and been effected by anyone. By the stabbed young man, by Emily Case, or by Sarah Marlowe.

Sarah sat down on the bed with the packet in her lap and laughed till the tears ran down her face.

CHAPTER X

Sarah slept the sleep of the just. When she woke the burr of the telephone bell was in her ears. With an outspoken comment on people who ring up before eight o'clock in the morning, she emerged upon an icy landing, pulling on the blue dressing-gown as she went. It would be somewhere between half past seven and a quarter to eight, because that was when she always did wake. The thinning gloom at her open window bore out this conjecture.

The light was on upon the next floor, and when she was half way down the stairs Thompson came into sight, very clean and starched, in lilac print and a large white apron. She was coming out of Miss Cattermole's room, and she had a small round papier-maché tray in her hand with Sarah's own cup of tea upon it. Secretaries don't get early morning tea-sets, but the cup was a breakfast-cup and it was always scalding hot.

At the foot of the stair Thompson looked up.

“If it's the telephone, miss, it was for Mr. Morgan and he's gone down to it.”

Sarah went back to bed with relief, taking the tray with her.

As she drank her tea she made all her plans for the day. The very first thing as soon as she was dressed she would go down to the study and ring Henry up. She had laughed last night, because if you have a sense of humour you can't help laughing when something really funny happens, even if it is all very dangerous as well. She had laughed, but she knew very well that fundamentally this wasn't a laughing matter. It was a dangerous, murderous business, and she couldn't stand in it alone. Names and addresses which were worth doing murder for must mean something very serious in the way of crime, and she thought she could make a guess at what that something might be. If that guess was right, then her job, from being all-important, became just one of those things which have to go when the pinch comes. Henry would have to be imported into the affair. If the worst came to the worst, Henry would have to lend her the money to pay Tinkler's rent. She wouldn't have any scruple about it at all. After all, what was he for?

She dressed like lightning and ran blithely down to the telephone. The light was still on in the passage, but the study gloomed in a faint, reluctant daylight. It wasn't ever what you would call a bright room, but this morning, with a heavy leaden sky hanging low over the backs of the houses opposite, there was hardly light enough to see what you were doing.

The telephone was not in its accustomed place. It had been dragged across the writing-table and left rather precariously upon the left-hand edge. Morgan of course. It just went through her mind to wonder if he was left-handed. She lifted the receiver and listened for the dialling tone. Nothing happened. She put the receiver back, shook the telephone for luck, and tried again. Not a sound. She dialled Henry's number and depressed the rest. Nothing happened.

It was at this point that it first occurred to her that nothing was going to happen. When she had done everything all over again, and done it several times, suspicion crystallized into most unwelcome certainty. The telephone was dead.

Sarah put the thing back on its stand. It had been all bright and lively about three quarters of an hour ago. Less. It was about three quarters of an hour since the bell had waked her, and Morgan must have had quite a long conversation, because the bell outside her bedroom door had tinkled in sympathy with his ring-off after she had got out of bed and begun to dress. She lifted the receiver and tried all over again. It wasn't any good. The line was as dead as Canterbury lamb. Exit Henry.

She stood by the writing-table and made the necessary readjustments in her plans. There was nothing to get fussed about. It was all too easy. She would have breakfast, and then she would walk out of the house in hat and coat and take a bus to the Ministry of Economic Warfare. Of course Henry would be extra official if she had to see him in his office, but that was one of the things that just couldn't be helped. In any case she hadn't any very great hopes of being able to mould him.