Accident or——?
I undressed and pulled aside the curtains to admit the moon’s pale,
haunting light. My bed had been moved close up to the window and again
there was little fall from the daytime temperature—the condition of
heat and drought seemed stable and set forever. I propped myself up
with the pillows and lighted a cigarette. Outside I could just see the
top of the garden wall at the front of the house—a ridge of steel blue
where the moonlight caught the tiles aslant—a barrier of black
beneath. Moonlight!—sunlight speeding through the years, flung wide of
the earth, and caught by a dead world and killed. Sunlight with the
life sucked out of it. Flowers and bees, sparkling waves, ruddy
basking babies, hot desert sands, and the light and the glow of the
sun! Graveyards, tombstones, rotten creaking doors, deserted, derelict
old houses, and sad lovers’ sighs in the pale cold light of the moon.
How it has always disturbed me—this shadow light—even its beauty
filling my heart with an ache and a pain. It came slanting in
obliquely through the window, picking out the crockery on the
washstand in ghostly white, making long distorted shadows on the floor
and up the walls. Only two nights ago just such another band of light
had pierced the dark of Stella’s room, to find her dead, and kiss her
kinky coppery hair. And to-night Mrs. Kenley perhaps was listening for
the gentle turning of the handle to her door, and for some one moving
stealthily outside it. I hated to think of her alone in the night,
perhaps depending for her safety on a single bolt. I hated to think of
her, a woman, little more than a girl, alone in this dreadful house,
her wits pitted against those of one callous enough to murder and face
it out and threaten dark doings again. I wished she had taken me
further into her confidence; who and what did she fear? Last night, in
spite of the doctor’s injunction to lock my door, I had felt little
sense of reality, little sense of any immediate danger. But to-night
it came upon me, that somewhere in this old house, death might still
be lurking; that some one who had stolen soft-footed into Stella’s
room and out again, the cowardly deed accomplished, was still at large
and perhaps even now hatching further deviltry.
That there was real concrete danger I had no doubt, or why had Allport
brought her a bolt to fix to her door? She had told me that he was
married, but how closely, almost intimately, they had sat together on
the bench behind the garage—partly to enable them to whisper, no
doubt, but was it only that, or was there something more? I thought of
her clear gray eyes and brave straight carriage, and there welled up
in my feelings, half pity, half jealousy, that should have told me
plainly enough whither I was heading. Oh, yes, I was greatly
interested in Mrs. Kenley—Janet Player! Gray-eyed, fearless Janet;
planted in the middle of this tragedy by that ugly little gargoyle of
a man to do his dirty work. Janet, alone and fighting against Stella’s
murderer, perhaps the placid doctor. And if it were he after all, then
God, how I hated him! A hundred little scenes and gestures flashed
across my vision, scenes of cold deceit and gestures of hypocrisy,
scenes and gestures void of truth, killed and sucked dry of sincerity
by his placid impassivity, like those ghost beams of reflected
sunlight that had been rifled of color and warmth by the equally
placid moon. The Tundish in the dining-room begging us to bury our
suspicions, at Allport’s inquiry, flicking the ash from the end of his
cigarette, Allport’s insinuations having as little effect as water on
a greasy slope, baiting Kenneth, talking of the murderous activities
of the anti-vaccinationists with a cool effrontery before us all,
making love to Ethel—The Tundish, impassive and callous and cruel,
with his mask of a face and twinkling unbetraying eyes, these and
other little pictures rose before my sleepless eyes. And if it were
he, what chance had a girl against him!
I recalled the rustling in the hedge as Janet and I came from our
secret talk behind the garage—had some one overheard us then? Was some
other member of our household aware of her true identity and purpose?
Stella poisoned one night, “Dark deeds are done in Dalehouse at
night,” stuck up against the landing wall the next, a cool hand and a
callous must have been the one that cut those words from the daily
paper. Which of us besides the doctor would have the nerve for the
venture? Fool, fool I was; of course it was he. No wonder Janet was
afraid, for I saw a look of fear, when she heard the rustle in the
hedge and realized that we might have been overheard. And now she was
all alone in her room, protected, perhaps, by nothing but a flimsy
bolt.
I jumped out of bed and opened my door. The landing was quiet, no
sound reached my ears. I crept along to her room and listened outside
the door. Should I knock and make sure that she was safe? And if the
others heard me and were roused, cut away any ultimate chance I might
have of being of service to her? As I hesitated, I saw another picture
of the doctor, the doctor this time, not the man. Could that be
hypocrisy too? God! what a vacillating doddering fool I
was—doddering—doddering grass fluttering here and there in the fickle
wind of my own imagination’s making. I went miserably back to my room
and tried to compose myself for such sleep as my whirling thoughts
might allow me. I endeavored to think of ordinary homely things—of my
every-day work—of Brenda, but Brenda’s brown eyes turned to gray,
those clear gray eyes of Janet’s that had held me with their look and
set my heart a-flutter.
No doubt both my brain and nervous system were over-strained, for
hardly once in a twelvemonth is my sleep disturbed by dreams, but
again, as on the two previous nights, my subconscious mental
activities were pronounced enough to be registered among my waking
thoughts. This time I was down on the Romney flats that lie between
Rye and the sea. I had once spent a holiday there. I was on a bicycle,
an antiquated, heavy piece of ironmongery, pushing wearily along a
winding road, making every yard with effort though neither wind nor
hill barred progress. I was both urgent and belated. Rye must be
reached before dark, and already swirling wreaths of mist like slim
transparent shrouds were rising from the marshes to meet the falling
dusk. But Rye must be reached before dark and my pedals clanked, Rye
must be reached before dark, as they turned the rusty chain. Now when
I looked down at the road, I only saw it dimly through the thickening
mist—now I saw it not at all—nothing but undulating fleecy sheets of
opaque cloud. Their legs completely hidden, the cattle on the marsh
lands appeared to float on the top of the mist like huge grotesquely
shaped ducks that floated on a pond. Now they loomed suddenly large,
now they disappeared, as I pushed my way along the road. Rye must be
reached ere the clock struck again in the church on the hill. And
always the mist was rising. Now it was up to my chin, now I was
completely engulfed, now my head was clear once more. I missed the
road and dithered frightfully on the edge of the ditch. I regained my
balance with a thrill of exquisite relief, but I could hear the
preliminary whirring of wheels, the clock was about to strike. Too
late, too late. I had failed. I ran full tilt into a gate across the
road, there was a crash, and I woke with a start.
The moon had moved round and shone full on my bedroom door. Too late,
too late, too late, went throbbing through my head like a dirge. I
gazed stupidly at the door, still half asleep and wondering why the
mist had so quickly lifted. But God, how I loathed the moonlight. Too
late, too late—— Janet, brave lonely Janet, was she safe? Too late,
what could these unaided repetitions portend?
I sprang to the door. The landing was black, and the moonlight through
my open doorway lit it like a spotlight playing on a darkened stage. I
sniffed the air, a sweet sickly smell greeted my nostrils. Half
familiar, then I recognized it for what it was—the unhealthy
enervating smell of escaping gas. Cook in her fuddled drunken state
must have made some blunder when she turned it off down below stairs.
There was no gas in the house above the basement, so it must be coming
from there. I slipped on my dressing-gown and hurried down. When I
opened the door that tops the basement stairs it met me in a pungent
wave. I closed the door with a bang; no one could go down there in
safety, that was obvious.
There were movements on the stairs above, and I switched on the light
in the hall.
It was Janet. God bless her, how dainty she looked. The Tundish was
following close at her heels, and I nearly cried out my alarm when I
saw him just above her. How strange, I thought, that just those two in
all the house should have been wakeful enough to hear.
“Hello, Jeffcock, we seem to take it in turn to prowl the house at
night, and get caught in the act. What’s amiss?”
“Gas. Can’t you smell it? The basement’s full. We shall have to open a
window from the outside before we can turn it off.”
The doctor ran toward the dispensary, and I unbolted the front door
and ran out into the night, followed by Janet. We descended the area
steps, and peered in through the kitchen window. We could see nothing.
It was impossible to see.
“Here goes,” I said, kicking in a pane of glass. Slipping in my hand,
I unlatched the window and threw it wide open. The reek poured out
into our faces and we had to step back to let it disperse. The Tundish
ran down the area steps, a bundle of wet towels in his arms.
“Smash in the other window,” he said; “cook may be still in there for
all we know.”
I hastened to obey. By this time a policeman had entered the gate and
stood behind us. “Anything wrong here?” he queried. “I heard a window
smash, I thought. Oh, gas, is it? Anybody in there?”
“We don’t know yet!”
The constable produced an electric torch, and turned its beams into
the dark kitchen, sweeping it from side to side.
“There!” we gasped together. By the table was seated a motionless
figure, arms extended on the table, and head fallen forward on them.
Already the doctor was wrapping a wet towel over his nose and mouth,
and the constable and I hastened to follow his example.
“Two of us will be enough,” he said. “You stay here, Jeffcock, to give
us a hand when we get her to the window.”
The policeman turned on his torch again, and we watched them run
across the kitchen to the still figure in the armchair. The Tundish
darted first to the gas-stove, then back to the woman; he and the
policeman picked her up between them and staggered to the window. They
set her down for a minute on the broad sill while they drew long
breaths; then we lifted her out and laid her on the ground.
The constable played the light on her face. Her head and shoulders,
set in the bright circle of light, made a ghastly black-framed
picture—white face, blue lips, eyes half open showing glints of yellow
whites. She looked like some giant jellyfish, washed ashore and
fouling the beach, a mass of boneless flabbiness.
The doctor knelt beside her, loosening her dress and placing his hand
on her heart. “There’s another flashlight on my dressing-table; would
one of you mind fetching it?” he said looking up quickly, his question
a command. “And some ammonia from the dispensary too.”
Janet and I sprang to obey; I ran to the dispensary, she up-stairs for
the torch. We were both back in a few minutes. She held the light with
a steady hand.
“Just alive,” the doctor said, looking up. “But a few minutes more——”
“A few minutes more,” the policeman echoed, “and there’d ’a’ been
another inquest.”
“There may be yet,” said The Tundish in his pleasant conversational
tones. He had unfastened her clothes and was slapping her bare chest
with the wet towels, but there was no change in the livid upturned
face. He poured ammonia on one of the towels and held it under her
nose; there was no response to the treatment.
“We’ll have to try artificial respiration,” he said at length, “and,
Mrs. Kenley, can you get me a hot bottle? The bottles are in the
cupboard in the bathroom, and you’ll find a spirit lamp standing on
the sideboard in the dining-room. Better not light the gas down here
just yet!”
Janet handed her torch to me and ran indoors.
“I can take turns with you, sir,” the policeman offered helpfully.
“I’ve had this job before.” He cast off his tunic and helmet as he
spoke and rolled up his sleeves.
So the grim struggle went on in the moonlight. I watched and held the
torch while they fought in turns for the drunken creature’s life. The
half-hour struck and still they worked on. Was she going to slip away,
I wondered, and take with her into the great unknown whatever it was
that she knew of Stella’s death?
But at last I heard a gasping breath. The doctor stopped and wiped his
brow. “Close call; now what about that hot bottle?”
Even as he spoke, Janet ran down the steps, her arms filled with
blankets. We wrapped up the ungainly figure warmly; she was breathing
now but still unconscious. The doctor still knelt by her side, holding
her wrist.
“Better ring up the hospital, Constable, and ask for the ambulance.
She’ll want more care than we can give her here. Drunkenness has not
improved her chance of pulling through. The sooner she’s there the
better.”
The policeman hurried indoors and soon I heard him at the telephone. I
was surprised that none of the rest of our party had been roused by
the banging of the basement door, the smashing of glass, the voices
outside and the general running to and fro. But they were all of them
young and healthy, I reflected, and the previous night had been a
broken one.
The ambulance drew up at the gate, and two attendants came in with a
stretcher. They lifted her gently and bore her away. We all drew a
breath of relief as the car slid smoothly down the road.
The constable resumed his tunic. “Drunken old beast,” he said, “she’ll
pull through, you see if she don’t and if she’d bin a good woman with
a loving ’usband and three or four nice little kids, she’d ’a’ conked
out. That’s the way it is, ’er sort takes a lot o’ killing. Well, sir,
I’d better take a look round, then I must write up my report and be
off.”
Janet ran down the steps as he spoke. “Come in and have some tea
before you go, I’ve just made some in the dining-room.”
So we went in and sat at the big table. Janet had made the tea with
Ethel’s spirit-lamp and had hunted up a tin of biscuits. Never was a
midnight snack more welcome. But what a strangely assorted little
group it was. The policeman, solid and comfortable in appearance, but
amusingly ill at ease, fingering a note-book which he had extracted
from the inner recesses of his tunic—what were the thoughts, I
wondered, slowly penetrating the brain behind his good-tempered face,
as he thanked Janet awkwardly for his biscuits and his tea! Janet, ah,
Janet, how piquant and dainty you looked and what a contrast to that
other horrible figure on which my gaze had been concentrated for the
last half-hour or more; Janet might have been a lifelong inmate of the
house and our tea an afternoon affair of gossip, maid-attended and
cake-stand beflanked, so easily and pleasantly she chatted. But what
were your thoughts, Janet, as you asked the doctor with a smile if his
tea was as he liked it? The Tundish! If his thoughts could have been
read, how eagerly I should have scanned the page, expecting to read of
devil-driven treachery or heroic unselfish optimism, I know not which.
And myself, distrusting the doctor and liking him at once, tolerant of
the blue-coated limb of the law, wishing them both in Hades, Dalehouse
and its recurrent gruesome happenings a thing of the past, and Janet
and I alone together in some sheltered peat-scented nook on the moors
where I might hope to stir in her an answering thrill to my own!
The constable set down his cup and rose.
“Thank you, miss,” he said, “that’s done me a power o’ good. And now I
must have a look round and get back to my beat.”
We went down to the basement with him. Janet had set all the doors
wide open while we had been working over cook, and the atmosphere was
breathable once more.
“Was the kitchen door shut, miss?”
“Yes, and the door into the scullery too.”
We entered the kitchen. There was a kettle on the gas-stove, on the
table an empty glass, and beside it an overturned whisky bottle. It
was empty, except for a few drops, and the table-cloth was stained and
wet where whisky had been upset.
“That was the tap that was turned on,” said the doctor, pointing out
the one leading to the ring under the kettle.
“Good thing you’d electric light down here,” the policeman remarked.
“If she’d ’a’ had a gas light there’d ’a’ bin a fine old bust up.”
He wrote up his notes laboriously, took my name and Janet’s, and went
to the open window where he paused, his hand on the sill, to say, “No
need to bother about all these windows and doors bein’ open—the place
can do with a bit more air—me an’ my mate will see as it’s all right.
I hope you won’t be ’avin’ no more disturbances, sir. Good night.”
The policeman having departed to complete his night’s vigil, the
doctor picked up the wet towels, whisky bottle and glass, and we went
up-stairs to the hall. There we paused to look at one another.
“Well, Mrs. Kenley,” The Tundish said quietly, “what do you think of
the household you have come to? Pretty lot, aren’t we? Seriously,
though, I am very sorry that you have been let in for this; it was bad
enough before.”
Janet smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, never mind me. I’m used
to a stirring life.” She glanced at her wrist watch. “Not half-past
three yet, there’s time for sleep still, and look, it’s getting light
already.”
We went to the open door, another day was spreading fast, already the
east was growing pale and putting out the last pale stars. A little
breeze blew in ruffling our hair, and the birds were sleepily tuning
the first shy notes of their morning song. Whatever this new-born day
might have in store for us, the black hours of another night had
passed, and for the moment, at least, it was good to enjoy the
pregnant morning stillness with its promise of brighter things to
come.
“Well,” said The Tundish at last, “we had better turn in and get what
sleep we can. I’ll just scribble a note for Annie explaining matters,
or else, poor girl, she will get a shock in the morning.”
He went back to the consulting-room, taking the towels and the bottle
and glass along with him. For a few brief moments Janet and I were
alone.
“Are you all right?” I asked anxiously.
“Quite. Why shouldn’t I be?” She smiled at my look of concern.
“Oh, I don’t know, but I felt worried about you before I went off to
sleep last night. I didn’t like to think of you alone. I wish my room
were next to yours.”
“It’s just as well that I had a bolt, Mr. Jeffcock, for when I went to
lock the door, I found that the key had disappeared! I am quite
certain it was there this afternoon.”
“Look here, I shan’t go to bed. I’ll pretend to, and then come back
and lie down in the drawing-room with the door open.”
“No, please, Mr. Jeffcock, I don’t want you to do anything that might
call for comment. I shall be perfectly safe. No one will very easily
get past that bolt, and I have a revolver with me as well. Here’s Dr.
Wallace coming back. Please don’t fuss.”
The doctor came back holding a note addressed to Annie which he placed
on the hall-table. “Now for bed,” he said.
We went up-stairs side by side. The doctor disappeared into his room,
Janet into hers. I lingered outside my door until I heard her bolt
shot home, then I turned the key in my own door, undressed and tumbled
into bed.