Weekend with Death (27 page)

They were crossing the stable yard diagonally. The lantern still burned on the coach-house shelf. Its pale golden light came a little way across the snow and lighted them.

They turned the corner of the haunted wing. Sarah said,

“No—I didn't know. She gave it to me. I didn't know what it was.”

“Didn't she tell you?”

She shook her head.

“No. She put it in my bag. I didn't find it till afterwards.”

“Then why did you hide it?”

Sarah spoke the exact truth.

“Because of the police. I was afraid of losing my job.”

The beam of the torch ran ahead of them and showed the gate standing as she had left it, open to the courtyard. She could see it now, a solid wooden gate with a heavy bolt top and bottom. It seemed a strange thing that there should be bolts like that on the outside. Mr. Brown flicked the beam from one to the other.

“Wondering why they're outside?” he enquired. “Everyone does. The last owner had his wife here—mad for a dozen years before she died. He had the bolts put on. They used to let her out for a bit of air and exercise—quite safe, you know, because nobody could get away when those bolts were shot.”

As he spoke he pushed her through the opening. There was just room for her to pass. To follow her he gave the gate a great shove with his shoulder. It creaked, moved a little wider against the snow which hampered it, and let him through. It creaked again as he banged it behind him. He had let go of Sarah now. Like the mad woman, she could not get away once the gate was shut. The two wings of the house and the block which connected them shut them in. The place was as secure as a prison yard.

Mr. Brown called out in his big voice,

“Hi, Grimsby, shoot those two bolts! You can come in by the front door—it isn't locked.”

Sarah stood just clear of the gate. She wondered vaguely what would happen next. She thought they would kill her, and she wondered how. She wondered whether it would hurt. She thought it was a pity that she had not been killed when the car ran into the ditch.

There was a grating sound as the bolts went home. Mr. Brown turned round from the gate and took her briskly across the courtyard with his hand on her arm again.

The side door was unlocked. She remembered how she had come out, full of fear, and haste, and anger against John Wickham. All these things were gone. There was neither fear, nor haste, nor anger left. Everything had happened. She had only to die.

They went along the passage to the open kitchen door. Light and heat streamed to meet them. Mr. Brown said affably,

“You don't know how cold you are till you come in by a fire—do you?” And then he laughed, and Sarah felt again the touch of a horror which had no name or reason.

The kitchen was bright and very hot. There was a bracket-lamp with a tin reflector above the chimney-piece, and a standing lamp with a glass globe on the dresser. A big fire roared in the range. Mrs. Grimsby was pouring boiling water out of a kettle into a brown teapot with a bright blue band. She was vast and shapeless in a flowered overall and an old beige knitted coat. Her grizzled hair straggled untidily from an ugly bunched-up bun half way up her head. She had her back to them, and she went on making tea.

Another woman had been sitting at the kitchen table. She got up as they came in. As soon as Sarah saw her she knew who had played the part of Emily Case in the haunted room. There must have been a door in that corner by the fireplace, hidden by the panelling, and she had come through it to stand there and play the ghost. The battered hat and the black coat with the grey fur collar lay across one of the kitchen chairs. She wondered who the woman was. She was not really like Emily Case, but she had been chosen to play her part by someone who knew what Emily Case looked like. She was the right height, and the clothes were right—of course there must have been photographs in the papers. She had held a handkerchief up to her face.

Mr. Brown brought Sarah into the room with a genial air of triumph. He said, “Well, here she is!” as if he were announcing an expected guest.

The woman by the table looked at them. She had light eyes in a pale face. There was a sharp malice in them, and something else—was it expectancy?

“Delightfully warm in here, isn't it?” said Mr. Brown.

Mrs. Grimsby turned round with the teapot in her hand. She came over to the table and set it down. There was milk in a white jug with a broken lip, and an odd flowered bowl with sugar. There were two willow-pattern cups. In a detached way Sarah found herself feeling sorry for Mrs. Grimsby. She had the look of a woman who has forgotten how to smile. Her heavy face had no colour and no expression. All her movements were slow and burdened. She said without looking at anyone, “Two more cups, Annie,” and began to pour tea into the two that were already there.

Mr. Brown laughed. Not loudly as he was used to do, but with a soft chuckling sound.

“Like a cup of tea, Miss Marlowe?” he said.

All at once Sarah felt a starved longing for the hot drink. She wanted it more than she had ever wanted food or drink in all her life before. She had begun to feel her body again, and it was shaking with cold. She longed to drink the hot tea and to get away into the dark where she could lie down, and be alone, and weep the numbness from her heart. She said,

“Oh, yes, please.”

But Mr. Brown was laughing again, and the woman whom Mrs. Grimsby called Annie was joining in. They both laughed, and Mr. Brown said,

“I'm afraid—oh, yes, I'm very much afraid, that you won't get one. I'm afraid Mrs. Grimsby made a mistake. Just one cup, Annie. Miss Marlowe is not joining our tea-party—she has another engagement.” He turned on Sarah suddenly with all his mock politeness gone. “You've been spying and playing tricks. I suppose you thought you could get away with it. Well, you can't. Do you know what I'm going to do with you? I'm going to have you stripped and put out in the yard—and that will be the end of Miss Sarah Marlowe. No one's going to lay a finger on you, except that I'm going to ask Annie and Mrs. Grimsby to take off that fur coat and the woollen suit you're wearing. If you make the very slightest resistance, I shall call Grimsby in to help them. I don't mind being quite frank—I don't want you to resist, because I don't want you to get marked. You see, there will probably be an inquest, and I don't want any awkward questions about things like that. It's got to be death from natural causes. I think a night in the yard in your underclothes ought to do the trick—don't you? And when you're too far gone for it to make any difference we'll put you to bed and have a doctor out to see you. He will find you surrounded by the kindest attentions. Miss Cattermole shall weep at your bedside. She has no head and a very kind heart. I am sure that she will weep most convincingly, and only a lunatic could imagine her being mixed up with anything shady.”

Something went through Sarah like the stab of a knife. She said quickly,

“Does she know?”

Mr. Brown chuckled enjoyably.

“What a question! And you've lived with her for—what is it—the best part of five months! Does she ever know what's going on, even if it's right under her nose? Come, come—I gave you credit for more sense. If she knew anything she would certainly give it away—a born babbler. No, no, she will believe every word that dear Wilson says, and that I say. But she will weep over your death-bed and tell the doctor how fond she was of you, and how dreadful it is that you should be so ill but of course young people are terribly heedless.”

A little warmth came up in Sarah. Even now, with everything gone and death only one step away, she could be glad that she had not to change her thought about Joanna.

CHAPTER XXXVI

She made no resistance. The numbness closed down on her again. There was no one to whom she could cry for help. She could not struggle with Grimsby and Mr. Brown and have them put their hands on her. She stood without sound or movement whilst Mrs. Grimsby took her fur coat and Annie stripped her of her warm brown suit.

Annie fell back with the dress in her hand and laughed maliciously.

“You look nice like that—don't you? Fancy yourself, I shouldn't wonder—pink crêpe-de-chine, and a good eight-and-eleven a yard! Nice and warm it'll keep you out there too!” She leaned back against the table and shook. But there was no mirth in her eyes. They were hard and envious. “What about shoes and stockings?” she said, breaking off suddenly from her laughing.

Mr. Brown said, “Leave them—she mustn't cut her feet. Some of that ice has an edge on it like a razor blade. Now, Miss Marlowe, out you go!”

Annie laughed again.

“And she can keep her hat, just to trim her up a bit! Dinky, isn't it? All the very latest style, moddam, and suits moddam a treat! I don't suppose it ever came into your head when you bought it that you'd be wearing it with nothing but your step-ins to a January picnic in the snow.”

“That'll do,” said Mr. Brown. His hand fell on Sarah's bare shoulder. “This way, Miss Marlowe. And if you waste your time and get my temper up doing anything silly like trying to climb the wall and barking yourself, I'll send Grimsby out to keep you quiet—and you won't like that, you know—you won't like it at all.”

He marched her down the passage, opened the door, and put her out on the step, all in a businesslike manner and without violence. But the violence was there. It would be used against her if she roused it. The hand lifted from her shoulder. The door was banged and locked. She heard the key grate, and the sound of Mr. Brown's footsteps going away. Going back to the kitchen.

At first she felt nothing but relief. To be alone and to be in the dark—this was what she had wanted. She moved to get farther from the house, and came within an ace of falling. The ground in front of the door was masked with ice. The overhang of the roof had kept the snow from covering it. She remembered that the rest of the yard was under snow and felt her way forward until her feet were firm upon it. Moving like that she came out into the wind. There was no force in it, only a light, deadly breath of utter cold. And she had no protection against it.

She found herself with the idea of taking shelter in the angle between the wall and the house. The wind came from that quarter. She turned and began to make her way along the side of the house. There were two windows letting out a very faint glow, and a streak or two of light where the curtains did not fit. They would be the windows of the kitchen. She had not noticed what the curtains were like at the time, but it came back to her now that they were of some red figured stuff. The light that came through them was red. It looked warm. She remembered piercingly how warm it had been in the kitchen. The light, deadly breath of the wind passed over her and left her shuddering.

Half consciously, she must have lingered near the lighted window. When she remembered to move on again there was a sense of time gone by. Time lost—the last time.… Time shall be no longer—that was in the Bible. She didn't know what it meant. No, she knew quite well. It meant that there was no more time for her. A time for sowing and a time for reaping, a time to laugh and a time to weep—that was in the Bible too. No more sowing or reaping for Sarah Marlowe. No more laughing or weeping. No more anything at all.

She stood there in the snow and felt her will to reach the end of the house weaken. What was the good of struggling? It wasn't any good. All the same she took a step forward, and another step, and another. The glowing windows were left behind. The snow was under her feet, dimly white. The house on her right was like a cliff, black and silent.

And then suddenly the silence broke. A small, familiar sound came through it—the sound of a window-sash being raised. It slid easily—a dark window opening in the dark wall. She stood still and turned towards the sound, but she could not see anything. Then there was the spirt of a match, bright against the blackness.

Sarah stood there, looking. She saw the little bright flame and part of a woman's hand—a heavy hand with thick, work-roughened fingers. The hand moved the match downwards until it met the wick of a candle. The wick flared up.

Mrs. Grimsby was standing there, close up to the window. The candle was on the sill in a flat blue china candlestick. It showed Mrs. Grimsby's heavy looming face and figure. She leaned on the sill and looked out. As soon as she saw Sarah she reached behind her and put down one of the blue willow-pattern cups beside the candlestick. Then she said in a flat, whispering voice,

“Here's your tea.”

It was like a miracle, the black house opening to help her. The sill was quite low—four feet from the ground at the most. Sarah came and leaned on it, and drank the tea. It was so scalding hot that she hardly knew how to swallow it. She had to take it in small sips. Between the sips she could hear Mrs. Grimsby talking with a soft country accent.

“It's nobody's business if I bring my cup of tea through into my room. Many's the time I've done it just to get away from them—they won't think nothing of that. But I can't let you in. Cruel hard—and they'd do it some other way—you can't get from it.”

The words flowed vaguely past. Sarah hardly noticed what they were. Mrs. Grimsby was kind. The tea was hot. She drank it sip by scalding sip. The two things thawed her a little—the kindness and the hot tea. Odd to put them together like that, but there it was. Even if your heart was broken and you were going to die, there was help in things like this.

She drank the last drop of the tea and set the cup back on the window-sill beside the guttering candle. She said,

“Thank you very much.”

The candle-light shone on her face. “Looks like a child,” said Mrs. Grimsby to herself. “Got that look in her eyes same as puppies and kittens and all that lot of young things. No sense in them—just looking at you—not even sense enough to be afraid. Oh my dear soul—what can I do?”