Dead or Alive (23 page)

“Oh
dear!
” said Miss Cannock. She pulled at her scarf and coughed in an embarrassed, deprecating fashion. “Oh dear, Mrs O'Hara—I'm sure I don't know what to say. Of course I see your point, but Mr Postlethwaite's orders are so stringent—so exceedingly stringent—”

Meg picked up her cup and strolled across the room to the window. She put back one of the curtains and stood there as if she were looking out, with the cup in her other hand. If the window had been open, she could have poured the tea away, but it was shut, and it was a heavy sash window, not an easily opened casement. She said aloud “I must see him,” and she lifted the cup to her lips, but she did not drink from it. There was no strange smell. The tea smelled good, and she would have been very glad of a hot drink. Her mouth was parched and dry. Her throat was dry all the way down. There must be some way of getting rid of the tea. If there had been a plant in the room it would have been quite easy, but there wasn't any plant.

There was a book-case on the same side as the door. She went over to it and stood there as if she were looking at the books. She was behind Miss Cannock's back now, and from this position she spoke.

“All my old books are here. It's funny to see them.” She lifted the cup to her lips again. “I don't like this tea very much. Do you? Perhaps some sugar would improve it. Shall I try a lump?”

She had gone over to the book-case with the idea of taking out some of the books as if she were going to look at them, and then pouring the tea away into the gap. The books would hide it. It would trickle down at the back of the shelves and dry up before it could do much harm. But as she stood there, a much better plan came to her. The Cannock was always pressing her to take sugar in her tea. Well, that was the way out—a really beautiful natural way, and nothing messy about it. She had hated the idea of wetting the books, and Uncle Henry would have had a fit if he had ever found out. No, this was going to be a much, much better way.

She went back to the table, dropped two lumps of sugar into her cup, stirred them well, and tasted the tea, or made believe to taste it. The warmth and the wetness just touched her lips, and at the touch she felt a shuddering revulsion. What was in it, and what would happen to her if she were to open her closed lips and drink from the cup which had been prepared for her—the cup with the crack in it?

With the shudder still in her mind, she said in a laughing, natural voice.

“Oh! It's made it worse—
much
worse! I can't think how anyone can take sugar in their tea really! It's completely repellent! There—I've wasted a perfectly good cup of tea, and I shall be in Miller's black books! Can't we pour it out of the window?”

“Oh dear!” said Miss Cannock. She dropped a bit of bun on the carpet and stooped to pick it up again. “Oh dear—what a pity! I don't like putting people out, and Miller—he seems a little upset. I suppose you couldn't—”

Meg's temper got the better of her. It set a little flare in either cheek and took her to the hearth with a whisk of her skirts.

“My dear Miss Cannock, I'm not going to drink a perfectly foul cup of tea to please Miller,” she said. And then she laughed and emptied the cup into the fire. “There—he needn't know. And now we'll wash the sugar out, and perhaps the next cup will be better.”

It was extraordinary how gay and confident she felt. She had outwitted the Millers, and she had thought of a really good reason for washing out the cup. She would have her tea, and then she would go straight to Uncle Henry if she had to take Miss Cannock there by main force or pick her pocket of the key to that idiotic bridge. Once they got down to brass tacks, she would be able to coerce the Cannock all right. In her present mood she felt abundantly sure of that.

“Oh dear!” said Miss Cannock again. She fussed with her scarf and watched in timid dismay while Meg washed out the cup. “There is plenty of tea left,” she said. “Oh, I hope you haven't put the fire out. But of course you shall have another cup, and no sugar this time, though I prefer it myself. Now I wonder if I had better fill the teapot up the least little bit.”

She did so, and managed to send her plate slipping over the table edge on to the floor. The crumbs and the currants scattered, and Meg bent down to rescue the plate. When she stood up again Miss Cannock was pouring out her tea to an accompaniment of apology and explanation.

“So stupid of me, Mrs O'Hara—and so kind of you to trouble! I think my scarf must have caught as I leaned forward, and the plate may have been just a little too near the edge. I do hope it isn't broken. I should be so distressed if I had broken any of Mr Postlethwaite's china. I am usually most careful.” She put in the milk, and paused with her hand on the sugar-tongs. “Oh dear, dear—I really can't think what is the matter with me this afternoon! I was just going to give you a lump of sugar. I am afraid I must be getting absent-minded, and that would be a most serious handicap in my profession.”

She looked so exactly as if she were going to cry that Meg subdued her impatience and said all the reassuring things that she could think of. The Cannock in floods of tears would be the absolute limit at this juncture.

She took her tea and drank about half of it, standing up by the table. And then and there as she was still swallowing it and it was grateful to her parched tongue and throat, she knew that there was something in the cup. She hadn't outwitted the Millers after all. There was something in the tea, and she had drunk about half of it.

But—

But she had washed the cup—

But that meant—

She kept her face still and looked at Miss Cannock. She was nibbling at her bun. She had a faintly reassured and timidly deprecating smile on her foolish sallow face. It wasn't possible—but there was no one else. There was no one else who could have put—something—into the cup which she had washed. The Cannock could, whilst Meg stooped down to pick up the plate.

At that moment when she knew herself to be standing on the very edge of disaster, standing there and overbalancing, the fear went out of her. She came upon something which she did not know that she possessed—a hard, stubborn vein of courage which meant to go on, and to fight, and to go down fighting if it came to going down. There was no anger about it. It was cool, and tough, and strong.

She turned quite naturally from the table and knelt down before the fire. There was a black woolly hearth-rug there, and it had come to her in a flash what she could do.

“Oh, Miss Cannock,” she said, “we're wasting the muffins! Won't you have one?”

“I don't think so.”

Was it her imagination, or was there a veil of smoke, a veil of strange white mist, between her and the fire? Miss Cannock's voice sounded a long way off.…

Half
—she had only had half of the tea—and she must get rid of the other half—they must think she had drunk it—she mustn't faint—or go to sleep—it would sink into the woolly hearth-rug, and no one would guess she hadn't drunk it—it might make a difference—it
might
—

She bit her lip hard on the inside. Then she lifted the cup to her lips. Her hand felt heavy. She said,

“This is a good cup of tea—”

Her voice sounded strange in her own ears. She wondered how it sounded to the woman behind her—she wondered about the woman behind her. The Cannock was behind her. Could she see what she was doing? Yes, she could see Meg's arm lifted and the cup at her lips—but she wouldn't be able to see it when it got below the level of her waist.…

She took the cup from her lips without drinking and lowered it. The mist was thick between her and the fire. She wanted to shut her eyes and go to sleep. She bit her lip again, but this time she could only just feel it. With a most punishing effort, and with the very last of her conscious control, she brought the cup down until it touched the rug. Then she tilted it sideways.

The tea spilled, trickling between the black woolly curls, leaving no stain. Meg remained on her knees for a moment, but she no longer knew where she was or what was happening. Fear, anxiety, and effort had all floated away from her into the mist. She did not hear Miss Cannock speak her name. She did not hear her repeat it in a loud, insistent tone. The mist blinded her eyes and stopped her ears. After a wavering moment she sank down sideways across the tilted cup.

Miss Cannock got to her feet, looked down at her with composure, and then crossed the room without hurry and rang the bell.

XXIV

Meg did not know how long she was unconscious. If she had drunk that cup of tea to the dregs as she had been meant to do, she would probably never have waked again, for unconsciousness would have held her helpless until such further steps had been taken as would have insured the deepest sleep of all. But her flash of courage and that last effort had saved her. The drug in the first cup of tea had been dissolved in water and thoroughly stirred before she came into the room. If she had drunk that cup, there would have been no awakening. But she had not drunk it. Her trick with the lumps of sugar had given her the opportunity of pouring it away and washing out the cup. And the drug in the second cup of tea was in tabloid form. There was no time to dissolve it first, and no opportunity of stirring it. Thus, since Meg did not take sugar, the liquid had never been stirred at all. She drank about half of it, standing up by the table, and she drank quickly because she was very parched and thirsty, but what she drank contained comparatively little of the drug, which was concentrated in the bottom of the cup. She had seemed to be drinking it as she knelt before the fire, but she had managed to tip it out upon the black woolly hearth-rug.

She came back to the sound of voices in the room and, more gradually, to a sense of her own whereabouts. She wasn't on the floor any more. That came to her with a sense of surprise, because she remembered kneeling in front of the fire and thinking that she must, must manage to spill the tea. The tea—there was something to the tea.… She drifted again into a blank state which was not quite sleep and not quite swoon. The voices came and went, just out of reach.… And then all at once the blankness was gone. She felt muzzy and languid, but her head was getting clearer. She wasn't on the floor, but on the couch. She looked through her lashes, and was puzzled because the wall was so close on her right and the high back of the couch so close on her left, and there was a light in the room, but she couldn't see it.

She shut her eyes again, and heard Miller say,

“What next?”

He was quite close to her, not a yard away, quite near her head. Hearing him speak like that, so horribly near, did more to rouse her than anything else could have done. Why of course, the wall was so close because they had turned the couch round, and she was lying on it quite flat with the back of it between her and the room, and that was why she couldn't see the light.

When Miller said, “What next?” a plaintive cockney voice broke in.

“I tell you I don't like it. I said all along I didn't, and I don't see any call to do it neither.”

The odd thrilling voice answered her with the touch of scorn which Meg had heard in it before.

“Oh, you don't, don't you, Milly? Well then, of course there isn't any, what d'you call it,
call
to do anything. Let's all throw in our hands and stop bothering.”

Milly sniffed.

“I dunno know what you mean.”

“Don't you, Milly, my dear? Not very bright—are you? Perhaps you don't think it's going to matter to you personally, but don't you make any mistake, if we're for it, you're for it. If we get ours, then, my dear, you'll get yours, and I hope you'll like it.” There was a note or two of musical laughter. Then the voice hardened. “You'd better get this straight, Milly. Robin O'Hara had you marked down all right in that damned packet of his—Milly Miller, alias Gertie Stevens, alias Crooked Sue.”

“Ow—don't!”

The voice went on inexorably.

“I took you out of the gutter, didn't I? You'd better remember it, because that's where you'll finish up if you live to come out of prison.”

“Ow—you wouldn't.
You wouldn't!”

“Me? I shouldn't do anything. You'd do it yourself. Don't be a fool, Milly. They've got the proof of O'Hara's death, and the minute this girl knows about it we're done. You can't say I haven't fended her off, and I won't say it hasn't been quite an amusing game. I wish O'Hara could have seen me playing ghost. It would have tickled him.” She laughed a little. “It was a pity he had to go. I'd liked to have worked with him, but he wouldn't come across, and the very last thing he said when he knew the game was up and he was for it, was to tell me just where we should all find ourselves when his wife and the bank manager opened this precious packet of his.”

Meg lay in the shadow quite stiff, quite straight, quite flat.

Robin—the packet—Robin.… Robin was dead. These people had killed him. That woman who laughed had brought him to his death. Robin was dead, and the woman had tried to make her think he was alive. The marked newspaper—the letters set out on the hearth-rug—the leaf with the word pricked out on it—the card laid out at midnight in the dark flat—she could see the shining pasteboard now, and a dead man's name on it. The woman had done all these things to make her believe that Robin was alive and to prevent her opening the packet. But Robin was dead. He had died bravely, doing his duty. Yes, Robin was brave—he would do that. She could think about him, brave and doing his duty. That took all the bitterness away. She could think about him like that.

Then all at once the sound of the closing door roused her. She had been drifting, and she mustn't drift. The door had shut quite sharply, almost with a bang. She wondered who had gone out of the room. And then she didn't have to wonder any more, because the woman said,