On the Landing at Midnight
With quiet stealthy tread on the heavy carpet I attained a position
half-way up the flight of stairs. Not a sound had I made. Not a board
had creaked. No movement or noise was anywhere in all the quiet house.
Then with a quick catch in my breath I halted, suddenly motionless, my
fears redoubled.
There just above me, stuck up above the switch and shining white in
the light from the landing, was a square piece of paper similar to the
one I had found in the same position only the night before when I came
up-stairs to bed.
I fancy, that, somehow or other, my own stealthy movements had
engendered in me a condition, keyed up and ready tuned to vibrate in
response to any sudden nervous shock, for, uncontrolled, my heart went
pounding and a sickening chill went shuddering down my back. To steady
myself again I had to grasp the hand-rail.
Last night just such another piece of paper to which I had made my
unfortunate and imbecile addition—but Stella dead when the morning
came. No possible connection between the two? How could there be when,
innocent, I myself had committed the more pertinent part of the folly?
And now again to-night another piece of paper standing out clear and
white against the landing wall. What did it all mean? What could it
mean? Was some fresh disaster lying hidden undiscovered just ahead? Or
was it nothing but another stupid joke? But, in God’s name, I asked
myself, who, either sane or sober, would perpetrate such a joke, or
any joke, so soon after Stella’s death and the day’s events. And if
not a joke, then——?
Full of apprehension, I mounted the remaining stairs.
It was a plain post-card, I found, with the address, “Dalehouse,
Merchester,” printed neatly in the top right-hand corner. I had
observed similar cards standing in a case on the top of the doctor’s
desk. Across the middle of it had been pasted the words:
dark DEEDS are Done in Dalehouse at Night.
Just for a brief moment I did not quite grasp the reason for the
irregular appearance of the message, but I soon tumbled to it, that
the sentence had been built up by cutting out odd words and letters
from a newspaper, and then pasting them on to the card. A faint pencil
line had been ruled to keep the wording level. A neat and careful hand
had been at work.
I suppose that in even the most sheltered and uneventful lives there
are some little scenes that, for one reason or another, stand out with
illogical precision from among the million of tiny impressions that
are daily transferred from retina to brain. Childish memories,
perhaps, that stand out clear and unfaded by the passage of time,
while the settings of life’s more important crises become fogged and
indeterminate. For me, however, there will always remain an unfaded
mental picture of that quiet dimly lighted landing, the tracery of the
pattern on the carpet, the shadow of the hand-rail on the stairs, the
high lights and shadows on the metal of the double switch, and the
plain white card with its ominous little message. I have but to close
my eyes to recall each minute detail at will, and see myself standing
hesitant at the center of the picture, miserable, and incapable of
action.
Since breakfast time, a century ago it seemed, each long hot hour had
been fraught with some fresh horror or distress, and now, fagged out,
my brain refused to work—my faculties failed to function. I gazed at
the card in stupid amazement. I felt my eyes grow round and goggle.
What should I do? What ought I to do? Should I obey my first impulse
and arouse the decisive doctor, in spite of the fact that a space of
minutes only had passed since I had labeled him the logical answer to
our riddle in the dark? Should I knock up Kenneth and Ralph and
precipitate yet another repetition of the earlier angry scenes? Should
I ring up the police? Or should I allow myself to drift, come to no
decision at all, go to bed, and lock my door? Each alternative in turn
I pondered twenty times and then rejected. To go calmly to bed,
leaving the others ignorant and unwarned of such an open threat
against their safety was unthinkable indeed, yet try as I might, make
up my mind I could not, to any other course of action. There I stood,
yes, and might have stood till dawn of day, turning the wretched card
ever over and over in my hands, hot with self-shame and fuming at my
incapacity. Then I heard a gentle muffled sound of movement on the
landing up above, which brought me back to life once more and
quickened me to action.
I pushed up the switch as gently as I might and stood in the dark,
alert at last and listening. Yes, some one moving cautiously
above—faint but unmistakable. Testing each board as I trod it against
a sudden creak, step by step, soft and slow, I crept along the stairs
that led to the upper landing and poor murdered Stella’s bedroom.
The door of the fatal room was standing wide, and as my eyes reached
the level of the topmost step they met a beam of white electric light.
Low and level it made a track of light that cut the darkened room in
two, and crouching down against it, there was somebody kneeling.
It was The Tundish. I recognized him at once in spite of the dim
light. The big white tassels at the end of his dressing-gown cord and
those thin but steady hands of his gave him away.
I negotiated the remaining steps and gained the head of the flight
without a sound, unless my thudding heart was really audible. Then I
stood absorbed. To his right on the floor there lay a small electric
torch. That was the light I had seen as I mounted the stairs. In the
narrow path that it slashed across the shadows the doctor’s sensitive
hands were moving methodically over the carpet. He was stroking the
pile this way and that, his white taper fingers ever probing and
searching. Then he pushed the light a pace farther on and repeated the
process. I watched as he moved his position half a dozen times or so,
then from the landing below there came the unmistakable distinctive
click of a closing door.
The Tundish heard it too. I saw him jerk up his head to listen. His
hands ceased their restless searching and lay quiet and still in the
band of light. What would he do, I wondered, if he thought that there
was some one awake and moving about on the landing beneath? What would
he do if he knew that I stood there in the dark just behind him
watching him at work?
He switched off the electric torch. I flattened myself against the
wall.
“What is it, Jeffcock?” he whispered. “Did you hear a door shut down
below?”
I jumped like a frightened horse, so sudden and unexpected came the
whispered question from out of the quiet, darkened room. Not once had
he turned his head or glanced in my direction. The landing was inky
black. I could have sworn that I had not made a vestige of noise as I
crept up the stairs to find him. Yet, not only did he know that he was
being watched, but he knew that it was I.
Had we both been seated comfortably at the breakfast table, he might
have questioned me as to a second helping of bacon in just such a
casual tone of voice. Astonishing and imperturbable, could nothing
shake him? Did he see nothing incongruous or bizarre in my standing
there on the darkened landing at dead of night while he made his
secret search on the floor by Stella’s bed?
“What on earth are you doing and how did you know I was there?” I
asked in a shaking voice that I failed to control.
“Hush! Speak more quietly, man! Did you think you heard a door shut?
Come along in and close the door.”
Since, I have often thought, and I must confess with not a little
shame, that there could have been no better illustration of a strong
man’s personality dominating that of a man less strong. There was I
with my suspicions all aroused—suspicion backed by evidence and based
on solid reasoning—suspicions, which in spite of my instinctive liking
for the doctor, would not lie dormant and disregarded—yet he only had
to whisper, “Come along in and close the door,” and I go to him in a
darkened room without thought of harm or danger. One minute I write
him down a murderer, the next, unhesitating, I place my life in his
hands. I find him creeping furtively about the house at night with an
electric torch, and it is he who quietly asks me what I am doing and
what it is that I want.
In the dark we stood with straining ears for a little time and then he
opened the door and listened again at the top of the stairs. I
remained alone in the room, still troubled as to what line of action I
ought to take. Should I show him what I had found and tax him with
having put it where I found it, or let matters run their course and
see what happened next? I could just make out the outline of Stella’s
bed. _Dark deeds are done in Dalehouse at night._ I still held the
card in my hand.
He came back to me, shutting the door carefully behind him. He
switched on his flashlight again, taking care to keep the beam
directed away from the window, in which the blind was undrawn. “What
is it, Jeffcock? Is anything the matter? What made you come up here?”
he whispered quickly.
“I heard you moving about. What were you looking for?”
He hesitated.
“Look here, Jeffcock, I really am most awfully sorry, but I can’t tell
you. I was merely following up a little idea of my own—doing a little
private detective work.”
I believed him implicitly and at once. So much for my labors in the
drawing-room! I showed him the revised edition of the notice. So much
for my voluminous notes and my absurd little table of final reckoning!
“What do you think of that?” I asked, watching his face as closely as
I could in the light of the electric torch.
“Where did you find it?”
I told him. He whistled softly. He held the light up close to the
printed words. Black shadows and a small bright circle of light. A
strong white hand holding a small white card. As I looked I felt my
suspicions revive again.
But directly he spoke I was reassured. “I don’t like it,” he said
after a pause. “I don’t like the look of it at all. It means the devil
of a disturbance and a fuss, but we must wake the others up and make
sure that all of them are safe. This little message can not be
ignored. We will leave Annie and cook until the last—come along
down-stairs.”
Side by side we made our way down-stairs together, and only just
behind us there came the quiet pad, pad, pad, of another pair of feet.
I put my hand on the doctor’s arm to stay him and we stood together
holding our breath and straining to hear.
Our follower also stopped immediately; he or she must be standing a
little way above us on the darkened stairs. The Tundish flashed on his
torch and sent its white beam searching up and down. Not a soul was to
be seen. All was empty and quiet and still.
To say that I was badly scared would be an understatement. The
unhealthy heat of the interminable day—the shock of the morning’s
discovery; the ordeal of little Allport’s inquisition; Kenneth’s
violent outburst—these and all the other events that had followed one
another with such sinister regularity—each in turn had sapped my
strength until now I stood a bundle of tortured nerves. I could have
turned and fled.
“Well, that beats the band,” The Tundish whispered. “You did hear a
step?”
“Yes, I could have sworn to it.”
He sent his light flashing to every corner again, then keeping it
alight, we continued our interrupted descent. It came again at once,
the gentle following tread of slippered feet. My hair fairly bristled.
Then to my astonishment I heard the doctor chuckle.
He twisted round and pointed his light at the steps immediately above
him. “There’s the ghost,” he said, pointing to the tassels at the end
of his dressing-gown cord, which was undone and dragging down the
stairs behind him. He shook with silent mirth. “What a priceless pair
of fools we are,” he gasped, but I had been too much upset to enjoy
the humor of the situation.
Arrived on the bottom landing again, he switched on the light. It was
an old lamp retired from one of the rooms to do more humble service
and it gave but a dim and feeble light. It was very quiet. “Well,
here’s for it,” he said, “you go and rout out Kenneth and I’ll attend
to Ralph.”
I turned the handle of Kenneth’s door and was not surprised to find it
locked. Soon, we both of us were knocking loudly with our fists. There
was no longer need to be quiet, and the noise that we made went
echoing, like a challenge, through the silent house.
Dark-deeds-are-done-in-Dalehouse-at-night. I thumped it out on
Kenneth’s door.
He was very sound asleep and I heard the doctor talking to Ralph
before I could wake him up. When at length he did unlock his door, I
told him to slip on his dressing-gown, and soon the four of us were
gathered in a group under the landing light. The two boys were full of
questions, but The Tundish asked them to wait with what patience they
could while he roused the girls and made sure that they both were
safe.
Ethel’s door swung slowly open on its hinges even as he moved toward
it, and, clad in a pretty smoke blue dressing-gown, she stood in the
doorway before us, swaying slightly, only half awake, a hand against
each post to give herself support. She had switched on her bedroom
light and its brighter glow shone through her ruffled curly hair.
Senses quickening gradually, seeing us grouped together, her sleepy
long-lashed eyes grew wide and her poor bruised face and swollen lips
blanched and twitched, as her wakening fears increased. She tried to
speak and failed.
The Tundish hurried toward her.
“What it is? Oh, what is it, Tundish dear?” she whispered.
He reassured her with a quiet, “There’s nothing to fear.” He held
himself well in check, but I could see how he longed to take her in
his strong safe arms and kiss her fears away. It was pitiful to see
them standing there together, their love for each other so evident to
us all. To Kenneth it must have been wormwood and gall. Ralph fetched
her a chair from his room and we showed her what I had found.
Margaret was the last to be roused, and we had to knock on her door
repeatedly before we could wake her up and then she was some minutes
again before she joined us. Her eyes too, seemed heavy with sleep, but
in contrast to Ethel she looked alert and awake. A pink dressing-gown,
open wide at her full white throat, showed the creamy texture of her
curving breast. She put up a hand to the pretty gap as with a giggle
she said, “What a sight I must look.” However unsuitable the occasion,
I thought, she must always have her femininity on parade. We none of
us made the sought-for reply and she went and knelt by Ethel’s chair,
holding and patting her hands.
While we were waiting for Margaret, the doctor had gone up-stairs
again to find out about Annie and cook. Annie evidently was already
wakened by the noise we had made and I soon heard him talking to her.
Cook, however, he could not rouse, though we heard him pounding and
banging away on her door. There was something altogether ghastly in
the noise he made while we waited whispering below. Thud, thud, thud,
and then a pause, and before the echoes had died away, a fierce thud,
thud again. Thud-thud—thud—death—for surely the dead and only the dead
could sleep through such a thudding!
He rejoined us, placid and unconcerned.
“I can’t wake her, but I am sure that I can hear her breathing,” he
told us. “If she has been drinking though, it might take more than
mere noise to rouse her. She has locked her door and left the key in
it turned so that I can’t push it out.” He was the only one of us, I
noticed, to speak above a whisper and in his usual voice.
“But what on earth is it all about?” Kenneth asked. “You were pretty
sarcastic, I remember, this afternoon, when I suggested waking Ethel.”
He overpitched his voice in an attempt to copy the doctor’s
equanimity. Poor Kenneth!
“Yes, yes, but then you see I knew that she was safe, and this little
Satan’s love note had not been found.”
“I don’t understand it. What were you both doing about the house at
this time of night?” Kenneth asked, turning to me. “If you found it,
why did you wake up the doctor, of all people, before the rest of us?”
I looked at The Tundish. Not a word had I said as to where I had found
him, and I wondered what he would tell them, but he never hesitated
for a fraction of a second. “Oh, I imagined that Jeffcock would have
told you all there is to tell while I have been up-stairs,” he
replied. And then he proceeded to tell them everything. How I had sat
up late, and going into the garden for a stroll, had seen a light
shine from the landing window. How I had found the notice behind the
switch and him, with his flash-light, searching the floor of Stella’s
room. The only thing he omitted to mention was the door we both heard
shut with a click on the landing below. When he had finished he turned
to me to corroborate his statement.
I could not understand him. Why should he confess so readily to being
abroad at night, in circumstances so suspicious, and then ignore the
one salient point that stood out so clearly in his favor? I nodded my
assent. It was his business after all, and I would not interfere.
His explanation was received in silence—a silence tense with
incredulity and disbelief.
Ralph asked him what he was doing in Stella’s room and he gave the
same explanation that he had given to me a little time before. His
voice held not a trace of emotion or concern. We were all of us
looking at him, Ethel with friendly trust and approval, the two boys
and Margaret with suspicions they either could not, or did not bother
to conceal. For myself, I hardly knew what to think. He faced us all
unmoved. He smiled reassuringly at Ethel.
“Either of you two then, could have put this up behind the switch?”
Kenneth asked.
“You could have put it there quite as easily yourself,” I answered him
angrily.
He shrugged his shoulders. “It just happens that I didn’t,” he said
very stiffly. The man was insufferable—a fool.
“We might any of us say that,” Ethel rejoined, up in arms at once
directly The Tundish was attacked. “Besides,” she added, “if either
Francis or The Tundish had done it, wouldn’t they have printed this
one like they did the last?”
“No, of course they wouldn’t. It would have given them away at once.
I, or any of the rest of us might have tried to copy the doctor’s
printing—just as you did last night, Jeffcock—but either of you two
would obviously have to adopt, well, something like this,” he finished
rather lamely, pointing to the card.
The Tundish looked amused. “All very pretty up to a point, Kenneth,
but don’t you see that what you say applies quite equally to all of
us? It was an easy matter for Jeffcock to copy my printing in the
first place, and he did it well enough for the purpose, but you don’t
really suppose for one moment that his attempt would have hoodwinked
an expert? If this means anything at all, the author would never dare
to write it out by hand. No, you may be certain of this, that whoever
put this card where Jeffcock says he found it, put the poison into
Stella’s glass and killed her, and in my opinion, once again, the
opportunity has been equally open to us all.”
“No one will admit having done it? We all, including the doctor, deny
having had anything to do with it, I suppose?” Kenneth queried.
The Tundish thanked him for the special mention, and we each denied it
in turn.
Ethel sat limp in her chair, Margaret kneeling beside her. We four men
stood round them, the dim light overhead casting our distorted shadows
across the floor and up the landing wall. The Tundish, unruffled and
pleasant, his hands in his dressing-gown pockets, rocking himself
gently backward and forward on heel and toe; the two boys glum and
dour; myself nearly dead with fatigue. A long silence closed down on
us again. Liar! Murderer! Poisoner! went whispering through the
silence. Six denials and one of them a lie. Who of the six was lying?
The doctor, as ever, broke the pause. “Well, we can do no more now,
and in the morning we must tell the police of this new development.
You two girls hop back to bed while we make sure about cook.”
“Hush it up as long as we can? All go to bed good friends! I’ll take
damned good care that the police know all about it in the morning, but
before I go to bed I should like to know where the paper is from which
the words have been cut? You won’t object to our searching your room?”
It was Kenneth, of course, who spoke, and Ralph nodded his agreement.
“We ought to search all the rooms,” he said.
Almost beyond hearing any more, I burst out with, “For God’s sake do
let us go to bed and leave Allport to do his own dirty work!” I spoke
querulously and with more feeling than I really intended. My voice was
out of control. I felt the others looking at me in surprise.
The Tundish hesitated. “Well, it’s just a chance, but I don’t think we
gain very much if the paper is found. I know that if I were guilty it
wouldn’t be in my room that any one would find it.”
They were persistent, however, and while Ethel was too tired to take
any interest, Margaret seemed inclined to agree with the boys. The
doctor assented good-naturedly, and I gave way with the best grace I
could.
We dealt first with the rooms belonging to the girls, so that they
could complete their broken rest. Kenneth proposed that they might be
allowed to deal with each other’s, but the doctor would have none of
it; moreover, he insisted on our all keeping together as the rooms
were searched in turn. “One of us is a liar and worse than a liar and
not to be trusted alone.”
We unmade the beds. We pulled up all the carpets and turned out all
the drawers, scattering the clothing on the floor. Nothing was
neglected, saving modesty, and nothing incriminating found. Ethel went
back to bed. We heard the key turn in the door of her room, and then
we moved across the landing into mine.
I stood in the doorway watching the others at work, with Margaret, who
said she was sure she would never get to sleep again, at my side.
“Isn’t it all too fearfully thrilling?” she whispered confidentially
clutching her dressing-gown together with exaggerated modesty. I could
cheerfully have slain her on the spot.
Before a bare couple of minutes had passed, Kenneth, who was emptying
my few belongings out of the chest of drawers, held up a news sheet
above his head in triumph. “I knew we should find it. I knew I was
right,” he cried triumphantly. “What have all of you got to say to
that?” He might have spotted a Derby winner.
We crowded round him. He held the paper up to the light and we could
see at once where here and there odd words and letters had been cut
away. That this was the paper that had been used there could be no
shadow of a doubt.
They turned to me with questioning glances. Margaret whispered an
audible, “Oh! You!”
I had nothing to say, no explanation to give, and stood stupidly
tongue-tied before them all. I was too astounded to speak or protest,
but I remembered that the doctor had been awake and abroad in the
quiet house while I was down-stairs and the rest were locked in their
rooms and asleep. His and mine were the only two unoccupied. To make
up the notice—place it over the switch and then step into my room and
deposit the paper where it had been found—what, I thought, could have
been easier for him to do than that? Had he not just stated that if he
were guilty that was what he would do? But afterward? Would he have
gone up-stairs to Stella’s room and have allowed me to find him there?
Or was his search and his private detective work all a pretense and
was he really on some murderous errand which I had interrupted? “I
knows what I knows,” cook had said. Besotted, drunken cook, what did
she know, I wondered? Was she really up-stairs snoring, or had she
too, like Stella, made her last adventure and opened the door at the
end of the passage?
These were the thoughts that flashed across my mind as I stood
stupidly turning the paper this way and that. When I did look up I
found Margaret gazing at me with ill-concealed horror; The Tundish,
half amused and wholly sympathetic. Kenneth was making a further
search and he soon produced another card like the one that had been
completed, a tube of paste, and then a pair of scissors.
The paste came from the doctor’s desk, the scissors Margaret claimed
as hers. They were the ones she had missed when she cleared up her
work to go to bed, and she did not fail to remind me how we had looked
for them together.
“Well, it certainly smells a bit fishy.”
“And did you smell fish when the key was found under your own pillow,
Kenneth?” The Tundish asked him quietly.
“Yes, I did, and as you’ve asked me the question, I believe it was the
same piece of fish.”
“Meaning?”
“Why you, you damned liar, of course.”
The doctor laughed. “You’ll win yet, Kenneth, for you’ll certainly be
the death of me! Anyhow you take charge of the treasure trove.
Margaret, off to bed with you! We can do no more here and now.” He was
in command of the situation once more, and to me, at least, it seemed
quite natural that he should be.
Kenneth insisted, however, that we should go up-stairs and verify the
doctor’s statement that cook’s snores could be heard through the door,
and though I could hear her distinctly and could confirm his opinion,
Kenneth pretended that he was not sure and Ralph, of course, followed
Kenneth’s lead and was not certain either. The Tundish was willing to
convince them and fetched a stout screw-driver, with which, after some
little delay, the lock of the door was pried open.
She was lying fully dressed on the top of her bed, her head rolling
about grotesquely in time with her heavy breathing. The windows were
tight shut and the room reeked of spirits.
The doctor, steadying her head with one hand, raised an eyelid with
the other. She never stirred. “Dead drunk, but not dead,” he
pronounced. He opened the window and we filed away down-stairs.
The boys disappeared to their rooms. The Tundish and I were alone.
“It’s uncanny the way the evidence against me grows,” he said, putting
a hand on my shoulder.
“Against you! Surely I am the more implicated over this?”
He smiled broadly. “No, indeed. All the other doors except yours and
mine were locked. You would never have left such a clue at large and
unprotected. It would have been your first care and concern. On the
other hand, how exactly it fits with what I might have done myself.
You must believe me, though, when I assure you that I didn’t.”
I believed him. Ridiculous as it may sound, I believed him implicitly,
and I told him so. We stood alone on the dimly lighted landing. The
great cathedral clock was chiming two. We could hear Kenneth
barricading his door.
“And you believe in me?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Have you any suspicions at all? Why should any one go to such trouble
over such a mad joke?”
“Mad! Yes, but diabolically clever too. Don’t you realize how it has
emphasized last night’s notice and helped to link it all up with
Stella’s murder?”
“Yes, but mine was the vital part of that. It meant nothing, surely,
until I printed my asinine addition?”
“Surely it did. Think how I called attention to the fact that each of
us might have been alone up-stairs last night. Think how odd and out
of keeping the whole silly practical joke must appear to Allport. Why,
you thought so yourself, you know you did! And now this second notice,
me caught prowling about the house at night, and the newspaper found
in the only vacant bedroom. Whether any further crime was intended
to-night or not, nothing could have told more heavily against me.
Remember, too, how at Allport’s inquiry Kenneth stressed——”
His sentence trailed away to nothing, and he stood gazing into vacant
space, a puzzled frown on his clear-cut pleasant face. “Well, off you
go to bed,” he said, breaking through his reverie, “I may yet get my
call to that young citizen’s reveille.”
I staggered to my room and tumbled out of my clothes and into bed. My
brain refused to tackle further problems, but my last conscious
thoughts were of Kenneth. Could I imagine him guilty? Kenneth a
murderer—yes, just possibly—perhaps. But Kenneth diabolically clever?
No, most emphatically no!