Weekend with Death (20 page)

She was still some way from the door, when she heard the sound of voices. This surprised her a good deal, because the doors and walls at Maltings were all so heavy and thick. And then in a minute she discovered why she could hear so plainly. The door was not quite shut, and she remembered that the catch had sprung last night.

Well, there it was now, not really ajar but free of the catch—free to be pushed ajar if anyone wanted to listen to what was going on in the room.

All at once Sarah knew that this was what she was going to do. It was an opportunity with a capital O, and if she threw it away it would never come back again. Opportunity never knocks twice at any man's door. Where had she heard that? This was Opportunity's door, and she wasn't going to knock on it, she was going to give it the most attenuated ghost of a push—not enough to let a draught in or the lamplight out, but enough to allow Sarah Marlowe's very sharp ears to catch what was being said between host and guest.

Not a very nice thing to do, but then kidnapping and stabbing and murdering are not nice things. Tinkler would be shocked. Would she? Sarah wasn't really very sure. Her own conscience was entirely quiescent as she put the tip of her forefinger upon the panel above the latch and just moved the door. There was now a crack about a quarter of an inch wide between it and the jamb. She heard Mr. Brown say in his deep, booming voice,

“She's got them, and she's got them with her. Where else could they be?”

And hard on that John Wickham, very cool:

“You say she lunched with Templar. Suppose she gave him the papers then?”

There was a laugh Sarah knew, loud, hearty, and vulgar—Morgan Cattermole's laugh.

“Because we shouldn't be sitting here if she had—that's why. The police would have been on to her before you could say knife if she'd really spilled the beans. No, she's got the papers on her—that's what I say. They're not in her room in town or anywhere else in the house, and they're not in her room down here, so if she hasn't got 'em on her, where are they?”

Sarah felt quite dizzy with the shock. Morgan here—and closeted with Wickham who only an hour or two ago had professed entire ignorance of his existence!

“Dope in the coffee,” said the Reverend Peter Brown cheerfully. “If you'd let me do it last night, she'd have been searched by now and none the wiser. Do it tonight, and we'll know where we are.”

Wickham's voice again—such a quiet, pleasant voice:

“And what then? Suppose you get the papers—you don't know how much she's read or understood. I gather they're fairly compromising.”

She heard Mr. Brown take a sucking pull at his pipe. He said,

“Not necessarily. She wouldn't make much of them.”

“She'd connect them with Emily Case,” said Morgan Cattermole. “That's the snag. It isn't the lists that matter, but what the Case woman may have said to her, and the fact that she's bound to link them up with the murder. No, I wouldn't dope her tonight. There's time enough for that. What we've got to do is to find out what she knows—make her talk. Scare her stiff, and she'll talk all right. That's the plan—rattle her, get her on the run, and then in comes Wickham to say his piece—‘Let me take you away from this horrible place, my darling. Trust your John, and he will save you.' I tell you it's a cinch! Good as a play—what?” He broke into his uncontrolled laugh again.

All the blood in Sarah's body seemed to have gone cold and heavy in her veins. She did not think that she could move. But she must move. She must get away.

She heard the Reverend Peter say in a meditative tone,

“Yes—it might do the trick. What about it, young man—feel like taking it on? Can you do your stuff?”

John Wickham said, “Oh, easily.”

She could tell from his voice that he was smiling. Of the three he was the nearest to the door. He was so near that there was not much more than the thickness of the panel between them. The thought sickened her to the very core of her heart. Her inability to move became an inability to stay. She turned from the door and groped her way along the wall to the drawing-room. She was so sick and faint that she felt as if she must fall. She mustn't fall.

She reached the drawing-room. She reached the sofa corner and sat down there.

A pale, prim room in the lamplight. A wood fire burning cheerfully. In the next room three men talking about a woman they had murdered and a girl they were going to betray.

The girl was Sarah Marlowe.

The handkerchief was still in her hand. She pushed it up her sleeve and out of sight.

CHAPTER XXV

Sarah had come to the end of being able to think. It was too much effort. It hurt too much, and it wasn't worth while. It was as if everything she knew and lived by had sustained so severe a wrench that the planes had been broken up and all the channels along which thought had been wont to run were twisted and turned out of course. There was a picture in her mind of the wreckage of a house after a bomb explosion. It was something she had seen in a film, and it came back now, black and distinct—roof fallen in and walls at a crazy slant, a tangle of wires and pipes like torn muscles and broken bones, one whole floor wrenched from its place and sent driving down to batter the foundations. And over it all a film of smoke, and tongues of fire licking the ruins of what had been a home.

A horrible picture. It stayed there in her mind.

Joanna Cattermole came in trailing her black velvet, wrapped in her blue and silver scarf. Her light hair was floating wildly and there was colour in her cheeks. She shivered as she took the sofa corner by the fire, but the hand she laid on Sarah's was burning hot and dry.

“Just now,” she said, “after you went upstairs—he came through. Such a lovely message! Mr. Brown came and sat down beside me. I am afraid he is rather a sceptic about planchette, but he was most kind, and as soon as he put his fingers on the board it began to move. It is like that sometimes, you know—a fresh person coming in. I believe one may be too intent too anxious to get results, instead of being merely the
vehicle
. Now Mr. Brown has of course no
personal
interest, and we got such a lovely message, and written so plainly that there couldn't be any mistake about it at all—not like some of the times when one has really just had to guess. Look—I have kept the paper to show you!”

She laid the sheet on Sarah's knee. In a bold legible scrawl were the words, “I only think of you—you are my guiding star.” Joanna gazed at them in an ecstasy.

“So then I said, ‘Who is it? Are you Nathaniel?' And look—there's the answer, ‘Nat to you'! So then I thought I would ask him about the colours—whether it mattered my not having brought anything purple with me. I asked Mr. Brown if he thought I could, and he said, ‘Why not—why not?'—really in the very kindest voice. So then I did. And look what he wrote!”

At the bottom of the sheet the same scrawl proclaimed, “Green's forsaken, yellow's forsworn, blue is the luckiest colour that's worn—all poppycock about purple.”

“Such a
relief
,” said Miss Joanna—“and so very, very kind of him to set my mind at rest. My dear, is anything wrong? You look pale. Or is it the light?”

Sarah said, “The light—it's a ghastly light.”

She put up a hand and rubbed her cheeks until they burned. Then she remembered that she was to look pale, and have a headache and go to bed. But not now—oh, no, not now. Because that would all be part of the plot. It was part of the plot that she should be frightened, and that Wickham should pretend to save her. She heard Morgan's odious voice again, “Trust your John!” and Morgan's odious laugh. She heard John Wickham say, “Oh, easily,” and she burned through and through with shame. She had come so very near to trusting him. The black picture of wreckage stood out—all black, all spoiled, all twisted.

The Reverend Peter Brown came in, large, shapeless, and untidy in the baggy old clothes which were his only wear. Wilson Cattermole followed him, hair brushed to a halo, hands newly washed and smelling of lavender soap. A black velvet smoking-jacket replaced the coat he had worn all day. Sarah watched to see Morgan follow him, but no one came.

The gong sounded, and they crossed the hall to the dining-room. But as soon as she sat down Joanna discovered the loss of her handkerchief.

“If you would be so kind, Sarah—I think just on the sofa where I was sitting—”

It was an accustomed errand. Joanna hardly ever managed to move from one room to another without leaving something behind her. Sarah, nearest the door, turned back almost before the request had been made. She was glad of the respite. She went back into the drawing-room, picked up the handkerchief from where it had fallen, and turned with it in her hand.

John Wickham stood just inside the door. His hand went out behind him and pushed it to. His eyes went from the handkerchief to her face. They smiled into hers. He said,

“You're coming—”

Sarah said nothing then. She crossed the room as if she had not seen him, her eyes wide and fixed, the colour burning in her cheeks, her lips dumb and stiff. He thought she looked as if she were walking in some remote and tragic dream. Not his dream—he had no part in it.

And then she stopped. He was between her and the door. She wouldn't touch him. Her hand just stirred and fell again to her side. The stiff lips moved and said from a long way off,

“Let me pass.”

“Sarah—what's happened? You're coming?”

“No.”

“But the handkerchief—”

“It is Miss Cattermole's. I'm not coming.” The words had a slow distinctness which was not like natural speech.

There leapt into his mind the possibility that she had been drugged. He put a hand on her arm and felt her shudder and stiffen against his touch.

“Sarah—what is it? What's happened? Look here, I've got to get us both out of here tonight. I've run it as fine as I dare. There's a man coming down here tomorrow who'll know me—he's the fellow who stabbed me in the train. If he sees me, the game's up. And there's nothing to stay for if you've got the papers. Bring them down here as soon as they get going with their séance, and I'll get you away. You'll come?”

She said, “No,” snatched at the handle, and got the door open. There was a moment when he kept his hold of her arm. Then his hand dropped and he stood aside.

Sarah ran from him across the hall.

CHAPTER XXVI

It was a dreadful meal. Fortunately, the others talked so much that no one would notice that Sarah Marlowe had nothing to say. Wilson Cattermole had begun the story of his quarrel with the Psychical Research Society, but he had to contend against his sister who was anxious to go over all the messages she had received from her smuggler, and against Mr. Brown who was quite determined to talk about were-wolves. As the Reverend Peter had very much the advantage in the matter of voice, he was able to boom the Cattermoles out of the conversation and reduce it to a monologue.

Sarah had never heard anyone talk about werewolves before. She still had that picture of a wrecked and blackened house before her eyes. As Mr. Brown talked, she began to see shadows moving in the fire-shot dusk—wolfish shadows, going soft-foot about some dreadful business. What was a were-wolf but a man with a wolf's savage treachery in his heart? She sat there and listened to the tale of men turned beast. But it wasn't your body turning into a beast's body which was the truth behind the tale. It was much more horrible, and quite true, that a man could go on looking like a man and yet have a wolf's savage, treacherous heart.

She took some food on her plate and ate a little of it. She refused coffee, because Mr. Brown might, after all, have taken his own way and drugged her cup. She would eat nothing except from the common dish and drink nothing except from the common jug. But if they wanted to drug her they would find a way of doing it. She was one against them all, and she had no chance.

By degrees the effect of the shock she had received began to wear off. She became less numb, less stiff Painfully the power to think returned, and with the pain courage. She was one against all of them except perhaps Joanna, but she could still put up a fight. What she had overheard gave her an advantage, because she knew their plan. She was to be frightened into letting Wickham rescue her. They would count on her giving him the papers. She could hear his voice now, low and earnest, telling her to bring the papers with her. “Bring the papers, and I'll get you away.” That had been his burden all along. And she would have brought them and gone with him if the Reverend Peter's door had had a stronger catch. She had been ready to go with him, as she had been—almost—to trust him with the papers. A little more, and the almost would have been quite. A bitter laughter came up in her, and she remembered that he had told her not to be a fool. Could anyone be more of a fool than Sarah Marlowe who had trusted John Wickham? Why, he hadn't even taken the trouble to pretend that he was honest. He had come to her a self-confessed thief without shame or remorse. Wolf in wolf's clothing—and she had trusted him. Why?

She looked back, and knew that she would have done it again. She had not known that it was possible to feel so much ashamed.

“Curious how the silver bullet motif crops up in these stories,” said Mr. Brown. “None of the were-beasts can be killed by an ordinary bullet—that is common to all the stories in every country in the world. Sometimes holy water comes into it of course, but the silver bullet is a great favourite. It keeps on cropping up. Sometimes it is a button off a man's coat or a link off a woman's chain, and sometimes it is just a silver coin. Silver being white and bright may have something to do with it—the symbolism of good overcoming evil. Or because it was precious and different, and the sorcerer was not provided with a spell against it. Or because the silver coin was often marked with a cross or some other sacred emblem. And starting from this there may have arisen a confusion between the emblem and the silver, resulting in the idea that any silver bullet possessed the efficacy originally attributed to the bullet made from silver bearing the mark of the cross. There is a wide field for speculation in these borderlands of science and superstition, and I have found a peculiar fascination in wandering there.”