Weekend with Death (24 page)

The words froze her where she stood. The papers—oh, yes, the papers—that was what he had come for. That was the plan. They were to frighten her, and he was to come in and pretend to help her. Why, she had heard him boast of how easily he could take her in. Her mouth still felt his kisses. There was a pain that went through her like a sword. She stood quiet under his hands. She said quietly,

“I must go to my room.”

“You can't—it's not safe, unless—are the papers there?”

It wouldn't matter how unsafe it was if the papers were there. He meant to have them. Well, there were two people playing this game. She said, still in that quiet voice,

“Yes, they are there. I'll get them.”

For a moment he stayed like that, still holding her, and then he let go.

“All right, we'll chance it. Come along!”

And with that he had her by the arm and was hurrying her out under the arched doorway into the passage—and on.…

They were in his room with the door ajar, listening. Her mind was in confusion. How much of this was according to plan? That was the worst of only hearing a part of it. “An actor in his time plays many parts.” Was he playing one now, when he listened for sounds from the house, or now, when they had crept to the end of the passage and seen the landing empty before them? She didn't know. She only knew that she couldn't and wouldn't stay another hour in this house, and that at the very worst, with a choice of being murdered by Grimsby and Mr. Brown or by John Wickham, she would rather Wickham did it. And anyhow she didn't much care. Only she meant to save the papers if she could, because if she did she might come to feel that she had got back whatever it is you lose when you kiss someone whom you despise.

She got across the landing to her room and lighted a candle there. She must leave her suit-case—it didn't matter. She stood in front of the glass and put on the little pillbox hat with its stiffened veil. Her face was as white as paper and her eyes were burning bright. She put up a hand to her lips and felt them tremble. She thought, “I kissed him because I was frightened.” Something laughed scornfully inside her and said, “What a liar you are! You kissed him because you wanted to. You have wanted to for a long time, and now you'll go on wanting.”

She stamped her foot and said, “I won't!” and ran out of the room and across the landing without caring whether anyone saw her. She had blown out the candle and picked up her handbag. She came running down the passage to the door of Wickham's room.

He pulled her in and said quick and sharp.

“Clever girl—have you got them?”

Sarah said, “Yes.”

CHAPTER XXXI

There was a light in the room, a candle set on the mantelshelf. They looked at each other. Sarah said,

“And now what?”

“Down the back stairs and out into the yard—if we can make it.”

“Why shouldn't we make it?”

“We have to pass the kitchen door. It's always open.”

She shook her head impatiently.

“Some other way then.”

“Do you fancy the front stairs? I don't.”

“Isn't there a way down through there—where we've just come from? There must be.”

Wickham laughed.

“There is. The door at the bottom is locked and Grimsby keeps the key. It's the back stairs or nothing. Don't worry—I'll get you out.”

The words came and went between them quick and low. And hard on that the sound they had heard in this same room the night before—a heavy step in the passage. At the first sound of it Sarah ran past him to the window. The idea of being shut in the cupboard filled her with horror. To be bundled in there with all those stuffy dresses, caught there perhaps, and dragged out if Wickham gave her away—no, and no, and
no
!

She ran to the window and got behind the curtains. They were old and heavy—serge lined with something smooth and cold to the touch. They were the colour of badly cooked spinach. She stood behind them and thanked heaven the window was shut. Even so, the cold from the glass beat against her back. She could feel it right through her fur coat, and the smell of the serge, a really horrible smell of dust and dye, came up in her throat and nose and made her want to sneeze. If she did, it wouldn't need Wickham to give her away. She pinched her nose hard.

And then she stopped wanting to sneeze. Mr. Brown was in the room, and at the sound of his voice she forgot everything except that she must hear what he was going to say.

He came in, and he shut the door, and he said in the voice that would sound hearty however he kept it down or whatever abominable thing he was saying,

“Where the devil have you been?”

Wickham said, “I didn't know you'd be wanting me.”

The Reverend Peter went on.

“Well, I'm wanting you now. The girl's in there, locked up in the haunted room, and if she isn't screaming her head off, it'll be because she's passed out. So there's your chance. I'll show you the way and clear off, then you cut in and play the rescuing hero. If you don't get her arms round your neck, I'm a Dutchman. The whole thing went with a bang, and there won't be much stuffing left in her. Promise to get her away and she'll eat out of your hand. Come along with you!”

Anger rushed through Sarah with so much heat that she quite stopped feeling the draught at her back. And the fiercest glow came from the shaming fact that she had done exactly what that revolting parson had expected her to do—and worse. She had not only thrown her arms round John Wickham's neck, but she had clung to him and kissed him. It was one of those incredible things which make you feel you are in some horrible dream, and that presently you will wake up and find that it has never happened.

She heard Wickham laugh, and she heard them go out of the room together and shut the door. There was no time to be angry—she had got to do something. He would be back in a minute. What was she going to do? If she could get down the back stairs to the car, would she be able to get it out and away? It was a very slender chance, but it was the only one, and she must take it now—at once. But when she opened the door a cautious inch the door into the haunted wing was standing wide and she could hear their voices—Wickham's and Mr. Brown's. However dimly the landing on her right was lit, they could not fail to see her cross the passage if they were looking this way. She would be a black shadow against the glow from the landing.

She stood there listening. Mr. Brown would not stay. He was bound to leave Wickham and come back by himself, because the very essence of the plot was that Wickham should appear to be acting on his own. You can't make any plausible show of rescuing a distressed damsel if the villains of the piece are all queued up outside putting their eyes on sticks to see how you get on. No—Mr. Brown would have to come back and keep well out of sight, and Wickham would have to give him time to do it. So there was Sarah Marlowe's slender chance. She would have just so much time as John Wickham's prudence should dictate to get down the stairs and out to the garage. The back door might be locked or the garage door, and the keys in Wickham's pocket for all she knew. She did not even know where the garage was, but take it or leave it, there was her chance.

She stood there with her ear to the crack of the door and listened to the reverberations of the Reverend Peter's voice. She heard him say,

“No hurry, my boy—no hurry. Let her cool her heels—she'll be all the better pleased to see you.” His laugh came booming down the passage. “But don't forget it, it's the packet you're out for, not kisses. We've got to get those papers.”

Sarah drew back. Could one play the same trick twice? She had fobbed Morgan Cattermole off with a spoof packet—well, why shouldn't the same trick serve again? There was no harm in trying.

She turned and threw a hurried glance about the room. There was no sign of any writing materials. You don't, after all, supply your chauffeur with a davenport. The one solitary object which suggested paper was one of the
Penguin
books thrown down on the chair by the side of the bed. It sprawled face downwards, and the light of the candle above it picked out the black and white and green of the paper cover. If there wasn't anything better, that would have to do.

Almost before this thought had taken shape she was tearing out a handful of the pages and racking her brains for something to put them in.

It was as she turned that she saw the chest of drawers and remembered that the drawers would probably be lined with paper. She had the top left-hand drawer out in a flash and had snatched the lining from under John Wickham's handkerchiefs and collars. Then back to the door again, and the distant murmur of John Wickham's voice answering Mr. Brown. They were still there then, and she had time—

She folded the pages to the size of the sheets which she had taken from Emily Case's packet. She doubled the lining-paper and wrapped them in it. Pinched flat along the edges and tied up in a handkerchief, it would look not so much unlike the packet they wanted. She had a coloured silk handkerchief about her neck, a gay affair of bronze, and green, and coral-red. It was large enough to take the packet and, knotted firmly, it really had a quite authentic look.

She pushed the whole contraption down inside her jumper, where it gave her a bulging Victorian bust and was most uncomfortable. However, since this was the immemorial way of concealing a secret document, she felt the discomfort to be well worth while.

Up to this moment she had been so busy thinking, planning, and acting that she had not had time to feel. Now, when the acting and planning were for the moment over and she had perforce to stand by the door and listen for the pause which would tell her that Mr. Brown had torn himself from his audience and would be coming back, the tide of feeling flowed in again.

There would be a pause, and then his footsteps coming this way and passing on. As soon as he had reached the landing she must slip across to the stair—

They were still talking—no, not they, just Mr. Brown. Wickham wouldn't want to talk. He would want to get rid of the Reverend Peter and come back. But just why had he not given her away? He had only to say, “Oh, but she isn't in the haunted room—she's here behind the curtain.” Why hadn't he done that? The painful tide of feeling rose. She thought she knew that answer. If he had given her away then and there he could never hope to take her in again. But now, in a minute or two, he would come back and pretend again—pretend to be her friend, pretend to be her lover, cheat her into giving him the papers.

She could hear his voice now. Perhaps that was what they were talking about—settling between them just how she was to be tricked. It hurt so much that she turned physically giddy and found herself clinging to the jamb, her forehead bent against it, her hands bruising themselves in an agonized grip.

And right on that the footsteps she was waiting for. They came without warning, because she had missed the pause which should have warned her. They were on the threshold of the door between the two wings, no more than a yard from where she stood against the jamb of Wickham's door. And the door was ajar—three inches—four—with Sarah Marlowe so close to the gap that anyone who passed might see her hands, her cheek, the dark line of her fur coat, between him and the candle-light beyond.

There was no time to think. Her right hand loosed the jamb and went out to bring the door to. Now there was no gap. But had she been quick enough? If she had not, if he had seen the door move, she would only have made discovery certain instead of leaving it to chance. Her heart beat hard against her side. She lifted her head to meet whatever might come. And heard the steps go past.

She made herself count ten before she slid the door open again and looked out. To the left the black and empty passage of the haunted wing. To the right Mr. Brown in silhouette against the landing light. She watched him turn the corner and pass out of sight.

Then she ran down the passage towards the light and opened the door at the head of the back stairs.

CHAPTER XXXII

Sarah drew the door noiselessly to behind her. The cold draught which had met her failed, but the stuffy smell which it had brought remained—a smell of dirt, and mouldering wood, and cabbage-water, and burned fat. Mrs. Grimsby might be a first-class cook, but on the strength of that smell Sarah was prepared to bet her last shoe-button that she kept her kitchen like a pigsty.

And the kitchen door was always open—John Wickham had said so. “Well, get on with it, Sarah, or he'll catch you up. Open or shut, you've got to get past that door. Get on with it!”

She got on with it. There were about twelve steps, rather steep. They went straight down without a break and came into a flagged passage, very uneven under foot. The kitchen door stood wide a yard or so to the left, and a little farther on there was the end of the passage, and the door which would give her her chance.

No use stopping to think. Light came from the kitchen door—light and the sound of voices. A man—that would be Grimsby. And a woman—no, two women—Mrs. Grimsby and—who? “What does it matter who any of them are? Get on with it!”

She went down the passage quick and light. She wouldn't let herself run. The warmth of the kitchen came out and struck her as she went past, and just for a moment she knew how cold she was, and felt a starved longing for the fire. And then she was at the door, and no room left in her mind for anything except “Don't, don't,
don't
let it be locked!”

It wasn't locked. The handle turned easily and the door swung in without a sound. When she had shut it behind her, her heart lifted. For the first time she began to think that the chance she had had to take was a chance that was going to come off.

She moved away from the door and discovered that she would have to move very carefully if she was to keep her feet, The place was just a glither of ice. But another step or two took her into snow. It came up over her shoes and worked down inside them, wetting and chilling her, but she could keep her feet, and it was not deep enough to be hampering.