A Close Call
And now I come to the one part of my story that it gives me real
pleasure to write, and that is the full admission of my precipitate
and headlong falling in love with Janet, and how in a single day my
liking for her broadened out and deepened into adoration. She had
arrived at Dalehouse on Thursday morning and by midday on Friday I
knew that if I failed to hold and keep her I should have missed the
one important sign-post on the highway of my life.
True, I had already passed by this lane end and that, and, carelessly
forgetting to examine the signs, I may have wandered down one here and
there for an aimless mile or so, until, puzzled and disappointed, I
retraced my steps. And other crossroads and branch roads doubtless lay
ahead, some of them broad and safe and running in my direction. But
this great road ahead of me here to the right, how clear it ran
straight to the hilltops and the rising sun. What a road to tread with
a friend at your side! What a clean straight climb to make with Janet!
What was it that Margaret had said? That a pretty face, a shapely
figure, and love, were one and the same to men? A lie! What a damnable
lie! Was that really then an accepted valuation? I thought of some of
the married couples I knew. Could they ever have been in love? Could
this bright clear light so soon die down to a guttering smoky flame?
Or had they missed their way and turned down some by-road before their
proper time?
And that other reason for marriage written down so inappropriately in
the prayer-book service—an attribute of married love perhaps—but
surely nothing to do with spiritual love and the plighting of troth in
the church before God? What had such animal stuff to do with this
hallowed uplifting ecstasy that filled my soul when Janet’s wide gray
eyes met mine?
A sentimental fool do you call me for writing thus? Then if already
married, you, my friend, have married a friend, or a mistress, or
perhaps fortune has smiled on you and the mistress you have married is
also your friend, but friend, or mistress, or both, you know nothing
whatever of love.
Love at first sight then? Yes, of course it was, but doesn’t all true
love come quick and sharp like that? Perhaps to friends whose
friendship has stood stolid and unromantic through the years, there
comes this sudden uplift, and the gray old tree has bloomed at last.
Or perhaps the warm sun of a single day has rushed the growth through
bud to flower.
However it may have been, whether I had somehow skipped a stage, or
whether the peculiarly harrowing circumstances in which we had met had
quickened my perceptions—I knew with an exhilarating certainty that I
was in love with Janet.
Time stood still when I looked at Janet. The sunny garden became a
drab uninteresting desert when Janet was away. Cut the rose from the
tree and what an ungainly plant is left! Raze the great cathedral to
the ground and what a mean little town of twisted narrow streets! Yes,
I was in love with Janet. She was my rose and my shining tower.
Five o’clock came floating down as I sat there dreaming. She must have
been gone for far more than the five minutes she had mentioned, for
nearly half an hour. I would go and try to find her. Or was she coming
to me now? Would she look at me, could I hold her eyes with mine
again? My pulses quickened at the thought. But it was only Margaret
who came hurrying toward me across the lawn.
“Mrs. Kenley wants you,” she said. “Oh, Mr. Jeffcock, please do come
at once. We’ve found out something—something absolutely thrilling—it’s
the end!”
“Where? How do you mean?” I asked her.
“I can’t tell you now, but Mrs. Kenley wants you up in the box-room
where I found the paper this afternoon. She told me to come and find
you. She said that you were to help her and would come.”
So Janet had taken her into our partnership. I don’t know what line of
argument I took, or why I arrived at such a conclusion, but I
remembered having an instinctive feeling that the curtain had been
rung up for the final scene. What, I wondered, would be the setting
and who the villain of the piece? Ralph? Kenneth? Ethel? Or The
Tundish? I visualized my table and the numbers I had set down against
each. Margaret at any rate seemed to have been correctly assessed or
Janet would never have given away the fact that she and Allport were
working together. No single thought of suspicion disturbed my dull and
stupid brain.
As we made our way back to the house, she told me that I was to join
her on the upper landing in a minute. If I met any of the others I was
to pretend that I was going to my room. She was breathing quickly,
and, looking at her sidewise, I could see how wildly excited and hot
she was. She mopped her face as we walked along, and I could feel my
own excitement welling up in sympathy with hers.
There was no one about when we reached the house and I succeeded in
joining her on the upper landing a minute later without having
attracted attention to my movements. I was aglow with the thought that
I was to help and work with my Janet. Margaret was waiting for me at
the foot of the little stairway that leads to the disused attics. She
was smiling and held her fingers to her lips enjoining silence. Yet
again I was impressed with her utter lack of feeling and her
unconquerable desire to attract. Even at such a time she was looking
arch, enjoying the situation.
“Now we must be very quiet. You mustn’t speak a word. At first you
won’t be able to understand what has happened, but Mrs. Kenley will
explain it when she comes. Remember that it’s her instructions which
you’re obeying.”
We went up the creaking disused stairs to the narrow attic passage
under the roof, and I followed her as quietly as I could. The passage
runs the length of the house, and rises sheer to the tiles at their
apex. It is lighted by an odd glass tile or two. Mortar droppings
covered the floor and the hot unventilated atmosphere was heavy with
the dry musty smell of accumulated dust. The attics themselves open
out of the passage to left and right, but the doors were shut and we
passed them all. I was following close behind her and she turned her
head and giggled at me as we made our way along.
“Francis, you’ll be simply thrilled,” she whispered. She had never
called me Francis before, and she lingered on the word, somehow
drawing it out and caressing it as she spoke. Fr-an-cis, she said, and
it made me feel uncomfortable.
There is a low door at the end of the passage, and she stopped in
front of it, her hand on the knob.
“This is the box-room,” she whispered. “It’s pitch dark inside and
you’ll have to let me guide you. Mrs. Kenley will join us in a minute.
You mustn’t say a word though, for if you do, you’ll spoil the whole
of the scheme she has made.”
She was a-quiver with excitement and I could feel her trembling like a
leaf as she put her hand in mine when we got inside the stuffy
darkened room. What fresh mystery was lurking here, I wondered. God,
had I only known in time! She closed and shut the door behind us.
“You’ll have to stoop,” she whispered again, “for the roof slopes down
in places, but you must follow me for Mrs. Kenley’s, for clever Mrs.
Kenley’s sake.” I could feel her hot breath on my face, so close to me
she stood. Not understanding what was afoot, but full of a vague
uneasiness, I followed where she led. What else, I ask, was there that
I could have done?
She still held me by the hand and we moved slowly across the room.
First we went straight forward for a little way, and then we seemed to
turn, but the blackness was so dense, and I so busy with conjecture,
that soon I had lost my bearings. She told me when to stoop, and
finally we drew up against what felt like a wooden partition. There
she turned me round and told me to wait.
I heard her go back across the room again, and to my amazement she was
laughing gently to herself—a low contralto throaty laugh, a laugh that
so long as I live I shall never forget—a laugh that somehow filled me
with dismay and foreboding as it came gurgling to my ears across the
darkened air.
Suddenly she switched on an electric torch and I could see her dim
outline some fifteen paces or so away from where I stood. What I had
thought was a wooden partition was a chest of drawers, and I found
myself wedged in a corner between it and a pile of trunks and the
sloping roof. As my eyes became accustomed to the light I could make
out a broken-down old bedstead on the floor between us. The bottom end
was missing and it sloped from head to foot, the top end canting
forward at an angle to the floor. A dirty dust-sheet covered it and on
an upturned box at the side of it away from where I stood I saw a
large glass beaker. Margaret was playing her light on it. It was three
parts full of liquid.
“Now, Francis, remember that you’re not to stir and soon you’ll
understand how clever Mrs. Kenley trapped the wicked doctor.” She
began to laugh again—cruel and low—and then she continued in a
singsong sort of drone, “You can see the beaker, Francis?”
“Yes, of course I can.”
“Francis, do you know what’s in it? Can you guess?”
“No, of course I can’t. But where is Mrs. Kenley, and what’s it all
about?” I felt a growing anger. Every time she spoke my name she
fondled it. I can’t explain it, but it seemed almost that she knew how
I longed to hear Janet call me so, and that she was jeering at me for
it. It angered me and hurt.
“Vitriol, Francis! Beautiful, burning, biting vitriol. I wonder if you
know exactly how it blinds and corrodes?”
“In God’s name,” I cried, thoroughly disturbed at last, “what is all
this foolery about?”
“Hush! Not so loud. And remember that you’re not to move any nearer.
See what a nice lot of it there is. If I threw it: all over any one
wouldn’t it blind them quickly! I emptied it out of the bottle into
the glass so that I could throw it quickly all at once. Wasn’t that
thoughtful of me, Francis? And, Francis, if you call out or move a
single step, I will, Francis. Over your Janet, Francis. Just look at
her, isn’t she a picture? You and your woman detective, you blundering
fool!”
She stooped and jerked the dust-sheet from the iron bed.
“Don’t stir,” she laughed, “or I’ll spill it right away over her
bloody face.”
Her laughter held her again as she stood holding the beaker over
Janet. It was so big that she could barely span it, and her hand shook
as she herself was shaken by her demoniac mirth. I stood helplessly
looking at her from my dark corner, in an agony of apprehension.
And Janet! She was unconscious and lay gagged and strapped and bound
to the bed. Her arms had been pulled back cruelly, her wrists tied
behind her to the iron top. Her legs had been bound to the sides. A
strap from one of the trunks passed over her waist and under the bed,
and even in the dim light of the torch, I could see from where I stood
how cruelly tight it had been pulled. Rags which had been stuffed into
her mouth were held in position by a piece of cord, wound round her
head and cutting across her mouth, pulling down her lower jaw.
“Do you know what she said, Francis, when I chloroformed her? Would
you like to know? She said, ‘Fran-cis, where’s Fran-cis?’ And here you
are to see her. Isn’t it shameless of her to let you look at her lying
there like that?”
“You she-devil, take it away,” I cried, tortured beyond discretion.
“Ah! You would, would you? Fool, see what you’ve made me do. I’ve
spilt some of it and missed her by a hair. Talk like that or move
again and——”
Then she laughed and blasphemed in turns, while I stood horrified,
peering out of my dark corner over the chest of drawers, perspiration
gathering in beads on my forehead and streaming down my face. How
short was the time since I had sat in the garden, breathing God’s free
air, at the foot of God’s great church, the pleasant garden noises
striking my listless ears as I dreamed and pondered of my love! And
now I stood, trapped and tortured in this dark little chamber of hell,
free yet afraid to move, while the dear one I loved lay helpless
before me on the brink of blindness and death. On the sloping roof
just over my head I could hear the sparrows chirping in the sun, while
the dark stagnant attic air was filled with the jeers and obscenities
of Satan—Heaven and Hell with a layer of tiles between them.
She tortured me. My God, how she tortured me!
She tilted the beaker till the liquid quivered on the lip.
I don’t know what I could have done. I thought of pushing over the
chest of drawers and making a dash for it round the end of the bed,
but nothing could prevent her if she really intended to carry out her
fiendish threat.
I tried remonstrance and persuasion, but my efforts were met with
nothing but laughter and jeers.
“That’s better, Francis, darling, now you begin to understand how
clever stupid Margaret is. Why not try to enjoy the fun with me! Just
think how it will burn her, death and decay all at once! With her face
turned up like that, little pools of it will gather in the corners of
her eyes. When the lids burn away how weird and funny they’ll look.
And, Francis, think of the rags in her mouth! But the really priceless
part of it all is, Francis, darling, that you haven’t yet seen the
point of the joke!”
My one hope was for delay, and I thought that if only I could keep her
in conversation, we might perhaps be missed and discovered by the
others. Little Allport was to have arrived at four, and he would be
sure to inquire for Janet.
“Yes, of course it’s only a joke, Margaret. Now do stop joking and
tell me what it’s all about!”
“You poor silly fool,” she jeered. “They’ll think it was you; that’s
the joke. I’ve arranged it all beautifully. What a joy it will be when
I see you being handcuffed and taken away. Now it’s time we stopped
this pleasant chatter. Janet wouldn’t like you being alone in the dark
with me like this, you know. So here goes. One to be ready. Two to be
ste——”
I could bear no more. Whether I did the right thing or not I have
never been able to decide, but I had a heavy bunch of keys in my
pocket, and before she could pour, I hurled them as hard as I could at
her face.
And I missed my aim, may God forgive me, and how like me it was, but I
missed her by an inch.
She gave a little chuckle, tipped the vitriol—a full quart of it or
more there must have been—over Janet’s face and breasts, and was out
of the room almost before I had time to stir.
I gave one agonized cry, and dashed round the end of the chest of
drawers, only to collide full tilt with one of the beams in the roof.
It caught me straight across the forehead and I fell like a log with a
crash to the floor.
How long I lay there I don’t know—perhaps for only a matter of
seconds—but when I did come round I was dazed and confused. Neither
door nor bed could I find. I crawled dazed and helpless about the
floor, colliding first with the sloping tiles and then with a pile of
boxes. Almost as though it were some other person in distress I could
hear myself whimpering and muttering a mixture of imprecation and
prayer. How damnably dark it was. Christ, if I could but see!
After what seemed like an eternity of futile searching, I found the
door at last, and it was locked. I banged on it weakly and tried to
shout, but my head was singing so that I could hardly stand or raise
my voice above a whisper. Then I crawled to the broken bed on which my
poor tortured darling lay. With hands that shook I found the sheet and
mopped her poor disfigured face and body. She was covered with a kind
of filthy slime. Death and decay. Death—and decay.
I believe that I must have fainted. There was a crash and the room
seemed to fill with a crowd of angry men. The Tundish, angry and
fierce, was shaking me to and fro.
“You! Jeffcock, you! You infernal lying Judas!” he cried, and hurled
me from him right across the floor. I fell against the wall and lay
there weakly repeating again and again, “It was Margaret. Vitriol.
She’s mad and threw vitriol. It was Margaret.”
At last I attracted their attention, and Ralph came and stood beside
me. He stooped to hear what it was that I said. Then Kenneth and
Margaret stood above me too.
“She did it. She chloroformed her and then threw vitriol over her,” I
gasped, half sitting up on the floor.
“Oh, you liar—you wicked liar—how can you say such a wicked thing.
Why, you were caught in here with the door locked!”
Even to me she sounded quite convincing. Then she bent down over me
suddenly and putting her hand into the side pocket of my coat she
pulled out a key.
“Why, here’s the key of the door in his pocket! Now what have you to
say for yourself?” she cried.
Ralph stooped and picked something up from the floor. “And this, I
think, is your knife, Mr. Jeffcock,” he said very coldly.
Margaret shrugged her shoulders and turned away toward the doctor, who
was kneeling by the bed.
Numb with my grief, I sat propped against the wall, my head athrob, my
soul sick with the horror of what I had felt and heard. Through the
broken door the light from the passage showed up the dusty floor, with
its scattered papers and boxes and its derelict household lumber. Our
movements had filled the air with dust, which the pallid passage light
turned to a ghostly beam, and through it like some distorted figure in
a dream, the doctor loomed gigantic as he knelt by Janet’s side.
This then was to be the final scene to the drama of this devil’s week,
with myself the villain, bludgeoned and broken, a murderer and a
Judas, spurned by my friends and accepted by all as the hell fiend who
had defiled beauty and truth in the person of my darling. This was the
hilltop to which my broad straight road of love and life had led me.
In this dismal attic was I to part from the woman I loved with my love
barely born and wholly unconfessed.
The doctor looked up at last, and, without hope, I waited for the
verdict—there were death and decay in the dust-laden air.
“What’s all this nonsense about vitriol?” he cried with amazement on
his face. His words came cool and clear like a breeze from the
northern snows.
Margaret answered him, “Mr. Jeffcock said that I threw vitriol; of
course that’s absurd, and so I thought that it must have been vitriol
and that he’d thrown it himself. The door was locked and we’ve just
found the key in his pocket. Oh, it’s all too dreadful!”
“Well, we shall hear what Mrs. Kenley has to say about it in a minute
when she comes round.”
“Comes round? Why, she can’t recover, can she—after all that—she must
be burned to death?” There was a catch in her voice and from where I
sat I could see her clasping and unclasping her hands nervously behind
her back.
The doctor got up from his knees. He said not a word, but stood
towering above her, looking sternly down.
“It wasn’t vitriol,” he said at length, in a slow measured voice. “As
far as I can tell, it was medicinal paraffin, or something of the
kind, and has done her no harm whatever.”
I dropped forward on my knees gazing at the doctor. A Judas he had
called me, but I could have blessed him where he stood. Like some
diver who has dived too deep and fills his bursting lungs with painful
breath, my relief was almost more than I could bear.
There was a little time of silence, and then like some echo from the
lost, came Margaret’s gentle laugh. Low at first, it grew in volume to
an uncontrolled and piercing shriek that went reverberating through
the empty attics, through the roof, and into the sunlit air. “I tell
you it was vitriol,” she cried between her shouts of laughter. Then
quite suddenly she ceased, while the doctor and the others stood
looking at her aghast.
“Or else that harlot Hilda Summerson has tricked me, after all,” she
burst out again, and before the doctor and the two boys could recover
from their surprise, she darted through the door and went racing down
the narrow passage, her arms waving wildly as she shouted and
shrieked, “Hilda, you harlot, you harlot, I’m coming for you now.”
She ran like one demented, and in her madness overlooked the stair top
when she reached it. But the stairs would not be ignored. We saw her
disappear—there was a louder shriek and then a crash—a moan and then
silence.
The Tundish, with Kenneth and Ralph close behind, hurried after her.
I dragged myself to where Janet lay. The Tundish had released her
bonds and had covered her once more with the sheet. She turned and
opened her dear gray eyes to find me kneeling by her side.
My hour of torture was over, but as I knelt, that other great doubt
that, only lovers unconfessed can know, came surging round me.