Dead or Alive (26 page)

Something in Meg revolted and said, “No, no,
no!
” The Cannock—Della Delorne? Impossible! But it wasn't like that. It wasn't a case of the Cannock being Della Delorne. It was this woman who could play the Cannock, or Uncle Henry, or Della Delorne at will. Or any other part. Close to her now when she believed she was alone, Meg found herself convinced that what this woman willed to do she would do without fear or mercy.

She watched with a kind of terrified eagerness, because the woman was taking off her dress. No, not
her
dress—the Cannock's dress. She had dropped the scarf a while ago. Now, with the dress and the wig, she had shed the Cannock altogether. She had been doing something to her face as she stood at the glass, and when she turned round a shudder of surprise ran over Meg. She looked with all her eyes for the woman she had known, and couldn't find her. This was someone she had never seen before in her life. Instead of greying hair with an old-fashioned knot behind and a fuzzy fringe in front there was a smooth cropped head of a colour between fair and brown, and instead of Miss Cannock's sallow skin and crooked lip there was a stranger's face and a stranger's features, and they were covered with a glistening coat of grease!

The woman took a towel from the wash-stand now and began to wipe the grease away. It left the skin smooth and pale, a clear even colour. Meg stared in astonishment. The cheeks were a different shape from Miss Cannock's cheeks. The lip that had been crooked was straight and well shaped. The skin was different. Everything was different. The eyes which had been hidden behind tinted glasses now dominated the face with their cold look of efficiency and power, and the bare neck and arms were the neck and arms of a young woman, smooth and round and white. Meg had seen them before, for they belonged to Della Delorne.

As the woman stood there rubbing off the last of the grease, Meg wondered with a beating heart what part she was getting ready to play. What was the next item in her programme? Meg's evasion didn't seem to be troubling her in the least. With a calm certainty that escape from the bounds of Ledstow Place was impossible she was continuing her preparations as if nothing had happened.

When she had finished with her face, she pulled a trunk out from under the bed and threw it open. It was empty. She bent over it, and, amazingly, the bottom moved, coming away like a lifted tray and leaving behind it a space about three inches deep. Into this the woman who was no longer Miss Cannock began to pack a variety of small tubes and bottles, some odd looking objects made of rubber, a cardboard box or two, the wig which belonged to Della Delorne, and another wig which she fetched from the wardrobe. This wig had dark hair arranged in loose waves with a most attractive double row of curls across the back. Meg wondered what rôle it belonged to, what new personality it would help to substantiate. She had left Uncle Henry's wig on the dressing-table. That meant she was going to wear it now—presently, when Meg had been caught and “put in the water.” It was Henry Postlethwaite who would drive up to town with the poor drowned thing to be disposed of in the river. Perhaps there would be two drowned things—perhaps the real Henry Postlethwaite was to be the other. And then mis woman who would be playing the part of Henry Postlethwaite would just go quietly over to Paris and there change parts again. Henry Postlethwaite would disappear and forever. Della Delorne would disappear. The obscure Miss Cannock would vanish into her own native obscurity. And an attractive young woman in that very attractive dark wig would embark on another part in another play.

Meg looked at the woman as she went to and fro at her packing. She tried to imagine a dark pencilled line of eyebrow, and black lashes to shade those cold pale eyes, and a warm ivory complexion and scarlet lips. Who would recognize her? The indeterminate features would lend themselves to this or any other avatar. Meg wondered as she looked how many people had seen her as she was seeing her now, stripped to her own natural self.

It came to Meg that after this she would never be allowed to live. To know what she now knew
must
be fatal, because it had become a choice between this woman's death and hers. And how without a single weapon could she meet an antagonist versed in every art, every trick of her criminal game, and rendered implacable by the knowledge that her life was at stake?

Meg saw this with a clarity and a calmness that surprised herself. Instead of despair she felt an obstinate rising courage. Then all at once hope positively soared, because the woman took off the fine gold chain which the Cannock had so appropriately worn about her neck and laid it down on the dressing-table. And on the end of it, swinging and dangling from her hand as she crossed to lay it down, there was a key, and Meg guessed with a jumping heart that it was the key of the bridge.

If she could get it—if she could only get it. If the woman would only go out of the room for a moment. Meg felt as if she could dare anything, take any chance, to get the key, because it meant Uncle Henry's life. The bridge had a door at either end. If she could open those doors and leave them locked behind her, surely she and Uncle Henry together could put up some sort of a show.

But the woman gave no sign of leaving the room.

XXVII

It must be getting on for nine o'clock. She hadn't heard the clock strike since she came upstairs. If you have lived with a clock for a great many years, it is extraordinary how often you miss the strike, especially if you are thinking of something else.

Meg was getting stiff, but she didn't dare to move. The woman had replaced the false bottom, and was filling the upper part of the trunk with books and Uncle Henry's clothes. When it was full she shut down the lid and came over to the dressing-table. Meg could see her reflected in the glass. She sat down and began to rub stuff into her face from a little round china pot. It gave the skin a puckered, faded look. Then she put on a pair of grey bushy eyebrows and the beard which was such a good disguise for mouth and chin. Now she was doing things to her nose, raising the bridge with stuff that looked rather like plasticine, and then carefully, very carefully, going over it with something out of another pot until it was impossible to detect any join. When at least she pulled the wig on over her hair, Meg was so startled that she caught her breath in an almost audible gasp. Even though she knew what she knew, the likeness astounded her. Given the concomitants of dusk and a total lack of suspicion, this copy of Henry Postlethwaite would have deceived anyone as it had deceived her and Bill—for she didn't believe now that Bill had seen Uncle Henry either.

The woman passed out of sight on the other side of the wardrobe behind Meg. After some moments she came back again. She had on a man's drawers and under vest. She came to the wardrobe and stood there. Meg couldn't see her, but she knew very well that she was taking down clothes and putting them on—Uncle Henry's clothes. When she came into sight again she was fully dressed—dark trousers, waistcoat, and coat, with a white shirt showing above the waistcoat, and an old-fashioned wing collar. She had a black tie in her hand and she stood before the looking glass to tie it. That was the strangest moment of all, because over her shoulder Meg could see Henry Postlethwaite's face looking back at her out of the glass—looking back, but not seeing her—seeing only the room, the furniture, the safe solitude in which one character could be put off and another put on. And close on that there came the horrible stabbing doubt—was this false presentment all that was left of Uncle Henry? Was he dead? Had he been dead a long time? Was there anything real left at all? The thought struck her with such a sense of grief and loss that her courage drained away. Robin gone—Uncle Henry gone. Then why shouldn't Meg go too? Her whole body relaxed. She leaned her forehead against the hard, cold wood of the canopy and let the waves of loneliness and misery go over her.

And then, sharp and clear, it came to her that if she gave up now she would never see Bill again. And that mattered terribly. Even if he had stopped caring for her, even if he had written her a horrid icy letter, it mattered. She had got to fight her way through because she had got to see Bill again. Queer how the minute she began to think about Bill strength and courage came pouring back. Of course Uncle Henry was alive. He was a prisoner on the island—he must be—he was, and somehow she had got to get to him.

The false Henry Postlethwaite had finished with his tie and was putting on a pair of black laced shoes. They had, as Meg had suspected, thickened soles and rather higher heels than men usually wear. They must be padded inside, for the woman had small and pretty feet. Her hands too could never pass for Uncle Henry's hands—she would have to wear gloves. She took a pair out of the left-hand top drawer of the chest of drawers and tossed it carelessly on to the pillow of the bed. Then she took out of the wardrobe Henry Pbstlethwaite's ulster and Henry Pbstlethwaite's broad-brimmed hat.

Then she went out of the room, leaving the door open behind her and snapping off the light.

Meg shivered with excitement and strained her ears to listen. Where had she gone to, and how long would she be? She listened with all her might. Could she hear a footstep on the stairs with the width of the hall between them? Those thickened shoes would not tread so very lightly. They were a man's shoes, and heavier by the thickening than the ordinary shoe of that type. She thought that she would hear them on the stairs.

She listened, straining, because unless she did hear them she would not dare to move. And then, making all her straining needless, she heard them, carelessly loud, going down into the hall and across it to the front door. She didn't wait for anything more. Here was her chance, and she had only to take it. The key lay on the dressing-table for the taking, and she had only to put out her hand to it.

Getting down was easier than getting up had been. She was on the floor, she had the key cold in her palm, and she was out of the door almost before the impulse which brought her there had shaped itself into a conscious plan. Thought and action were so co-ordinated as to seem one.

But out in the gallery she had to stop, to listen, and to think again. She did not know this side of the house. On the opposite side a passage turned out of the gallery and ran past the bathroom and an empty bedroom to a back stair. On this side a similar passage turned off on her left. Was there a back stair over here? If there was, she had a safe path before her, because it was bound to come out quite close to the door which entered the bridge. If there wasn't a stair, she was losing time which she simply couldn't afford to lose, and she would have to take the frightful risk of going down the main stair and crossing the hall. Her recoil from this sent her running down the dark passage, and thankful for the darkness.

Yet the darkness nearly betrayed her. There
was
a stair, but on this side it had no door at the stair head, and her foot was over the edge and her balance lost before she could save herself. A desperate snatch at the banisters served to break her fall and prevent it from being headlong, but she went sliding and bumping down until she reached the half-landing, where she picked herself up shaken, breathless, and empty-handed.

The key was gone. It must have dropped when she caught at the banisters. She had to search for it in the dark, her heart banging and her spine creeping, whilst every sense strained to catch some sound or sign of danger. She found it after what felt like a moment so endlessly prolonged as to have escaped out of time altogether into some horrible eternity. It was lying on the very edge of the landing, and when she had picked it up she had still to reach the bottom of the stair and find the door of the bridge.

The stair came into a passage, and the passage ran to left and right. The left-hand way led back into the hall, and a faint light made it visible, the walls and floor all dark and shadowy like things seen under water. To the right the twilight deepened into a black gloom. There was no window and no point of light. She felt her way along it to the end, and found three doors, one to the right, one to the left, and one straight in front of her. It would be the left-hand door that led to the bridge.

She felt for the handle and turned it, but the door wouldn't move. It was locked, and that meant that it was the bridge door for certain. She fitted the key into the lock, and then hesitated. There was an illusion of safety about this dark place, and she didn't know what might be waiting for her on the other side of the locked door. There wasn't any safety anywhere, but in this dead end she could believe for a moment that she was safe. Safe—when someone might come along the passage from the hall at any moment. She turned her head over her shoulder at the thought, and saw it take shape before her horrified eyes. Someone was coming along the passage from the hall.

She didn't wait to see who it was. The key turned, the door opened, and she was over the threshold, dragging the key from the lock, shutting the door with a desperate haste and locking it again with shaking fingers. She felt for a bolt, up as high as she could reach and down again, sliding her fingers over the smoothly painted wood. There were two bolts, one at the top and one at the bottom. She slid them home and went on shaking, but with triumph now, because she had done it—she had got away. And now she had only to find Uncle Henry.

She turned her back on the door and set out across the bridge. There were six or seven steps leading to a higher level, and then a straight way over to the island. On this higher level it was not quite dark. The bridge had glazed sides, and something which was not light and yet served to mitigate the darkness came through the glass. It is never really quite dark out of doors, and the darkness of the bridge was more like out-of-door darkness than the pitchy black of an unlighted room.

Meg went on steadily but not too fast, because there would probably be more steps at the other end. She was about half way, when she heard the door behind her tried and shaken. She wished them joy of breaking it down. It was strong, and the bolts were heavy, and long before they gave she would have the second door behind her.