The Dower House Mystery (18 page)

Whilst Agatha waited, a woman was looking at her. To do this she had to kneel at the far side of the glass door and look through the broken pane. At Agatha's impatient movement the woman got up, went to the window, and turned the pages of a small note-book until she found a very accurate description of Mrs. Moreland. She read it through, slipped the book into her pocket, dusted the front of her dress, and went through the glass door into the front room. Agatha got up as she came in.

“I'm afraid I can't wait after all,” she said rather crossly. “Are you Mrs. Thompson?”

She saw a small woman in a loose black dress. The woman had fair, damp hair with streaks of grey in it. Pale, prominent eyes looked indifferently at Agatha out of a pasty face.

“How do you do?” She put out a limp hand and said, “Yes, I am Mrs. Thompson.” Her voice sounded very tired.

Agatha shook hands, though she had not meant to do so.

“A friend of mine told me about you,” she began.

“Yes?” said Mrs. Thompson. “Please do not tell me her name. People come to me because they are sent. It is not any human agency that sends them. I do not wish to know your friend's name.” She sighed, and added, “Do you wish me to look in the crystal?”

“I don't know,” said Agatha. “I wanted some information—to be sure about something—and my friend told me that you—”

Mrs. Thompson put out a hand in a gesture that invited silence.

“Do not tell me anything,” she said. “If there is a message for you, you shall have it. Please do not tell me anything.” She spoke with just the trace of cockney accent which first strikes the ear and then eludes it; one could not say that any word was mispronounced, but there was an indefinable something. All the same, Agatha was aware that she was being impressed, that the desire to go was melting into a desire to stay.

“Do you want to know my name?” said Agatha. Insensibly she had dropped her voice a little.

“No,” said Mrs. Thompson. “No, I do not want to know anything—from you. If there is a message, I will give it to you. Will you have the trance or the crystal?”

Agatha felt quite sure that if this little woman went into a trance, here in this shoddy, ordinary room, and began to speak with strange voices, that she, Agatha, would dislike it very much indeed. She said hurriedly, “Oh, the crystal”; and Mrs. Thompson nodded.

Then she walked to the window, pulled down a dark blind, and drew heavy curtains across the tiny bay. They were made of crimson chenille and finished with a woollen ball fringe. The room was now quite dark. Agatha put her hand on the black velvet of the table-cover, and stood there, waiting. Mrs. Thompson touched a switch and turned on the light in the long pendant, which hung down over the table. The green cardboard shade kept the upper half of the room in darkness. The light fell on the crystal globe.

“Sit down,” said Mrs. Thompson. “There is a chair behind you.”

Agatha sat down. She saw Mrs. Thompson draw a chair to the other side of the table and pull down the pendant light until it was only about a foot above the globe. Then she seated herself, drew the crystal a little nearer to her, and, bending forward, began to stare into it with those pale, tired eyes. Agatha watched her, fascinated.

With the disappearance of the ugly room the impression made upon her by Mrs. Thompson had deepened. There was nothing attractive about her, but she impressed. Everything about her seemed to be ordinary and rather unpleasant—the flabby skin, the damp hair, the awkward, high-busted figure; but behind all these things there was something that was not ordinary.

Agatha looked at the crystal, and then looked away because it dazzled her. She stared instead at Mrs. Thompson's hands, spread out on the black velvet with the light shining down on them—such ugly hands, not large, but square and fleshy, with all the nails cut straight across.

Quite suddenly Mrs. Thompson began to speak in a very low voice. She said,

“You have been very troubled and anxious. I can see the clouds of suspicion, jealousy, and mistrust. They have been making you very unhappy and poisoning your life. The trouble has all been about one person. It is a man. His name begins with a C. Shall I describe him to you?”

“Yes,” said Agatha, with a gasp.

Mrs. Thompson proceeded to describe Cyril Moreland.

“I see him in the crystal,” she said. “And I can see his thoughts. He is thinking of you. You fill his thought. There is no one else there.”

“You're sure?” said Agatha breathlessly.

Mrs. Thompson made no protestations.

“I tell you what I see in the crystal,” she said in her even voice. “His thoughts are all of you. They are thoughts of truth and devotion. But he is a little sad, I think, because of the clouds that have come between you. If you do not banish them, they will separate you, and you will have a great sorrow.”

“You're sure that he only cares for me?” said Agatha. Her hands held one another tightly.

“His thoughts are full of you. They are thoughts of devotion and truth,” said Mrs. Thompson.

There was a pause. Agatha got out her handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. She felt absurdly happy, absurdly young. She thought Mrs. Thompson the most wonderful woman in the world. The tears rose again to her eyes. She leaned back in her chair with the feeling of an intolerable weight removed. Mrs. Thompson was speaking again:

“Your anxieties have all been about C,” she said. “But there is another person in the crystal. It is a woman. Her name begins with an A.”

“Yes?” said Agatha. “What about her?”

“You have been with her lately. She has been much in your life. There is some tie between you—something that links you together. Your anxiety should be for her, not for C.”

Agatha sat up.

“For her? Why?”

“Some danger threatens her,” said Mrs. Thompson. “I do not understand what. Perhaps you can help me here. I see her in the crystal very plainly. She is in a room—a bedroom. On the right there is a window with chintz curtains. On the left the bed, and by the foot of the bed a door. One side of the room is quite filled with a big, dark cupboard. The woman I have described is standing in the middle of the room in her nightdress. She looks towards the door at the foot of the bed. The door begins to open slowly of itself. She looks at it, and she is very much afraid. Oh, she is quite terrified. She opens her mouth to scream, and she sways as if she would fall down. I can see the open door, but I cannot see what is beyond it. There is a thick mist. I have seen this three times in the crystal—the picture breaks up and forms again. Can you help me here? Do you know such a woman and such a room?”

Agatha had begun to feel very much agitated.

“Yes, I do,” she said. “Can't you tell me anything more?”

“Some great danger is threatening her. I cannot tell you what it is. She should be warned of her danger. If she is in a house with a room such as I have described, she should leave it without delay. The danger is there.”

“Can't you tell me what it is?” said Agatha.

Mrs. Thompson sighed.

“The pictures are getting fainter,” she said. “I can see her coming up a steep stair. The house seems to be an old one. The post at the top of the stair has a round, carved fruit on it. The woman is coming up the stairs. The danger is there, behind her. Oh!” said Mrs. Thompson. It was not a word, but a sharp sound of terror. Her hands moved convulsively in the circle of light; her head fell forward between them.

Agatha felt as if she were choking—as if the darkness were choking her. She pushed back her chair and stumbled to the window. With shaking hands she wrenched back the curtains and released the spring of the blind. Then she took Mrs. Thompson by the shoulder and shook her.

The daylight showed the aspidistra, the bamboo table, and the photographic enlargements. They were the most comforting objects Mrs. Moreland had ever beheld.

Mrs. Thompson came to herself with a gasp. She leaned back in her chair, put one hand to her forehead in a vague sort of way, and said,

“What happened?”

“You saw something in the crystal, and you fainted,” said Agatha. “What did you see?”

“I don't know,” said Mrs. Thompson in a low, trembling voice. “I don't know what I saw.”

“You described my sister coming up the stairs of a house she has taken,” said Agatha, “You said, ‘There is danger there'—and then you screamed and fainted. What did you see? You must tell me what you saw.”

Mrs. Thompson's pale eyes stared at her.

“I don't know what I saw. It's all gone,” she said. “That's the way with the crystal. I tell what I see—and then it is all gone, and I don't remember it.” She put her elbows on the table and leaned her head on her hands. “I can't tell you any more. Your sister had better leave the house at once. I've never fainted before. I must have seen something very bad to make me faint. She ought to leave the house at once. Will you go now, please. The fee? Oh, anything you like—it doesn't matter.”

When Mrs. Moreland had left the room, Mrs. Thompson did not move until she heard the front door shut. Then she got up, took the notes which Agatha had put down beside the crystal, counted them, turned out the electric light, and went back into the room beyond the glass door. There was a telephone fixed to the wall by the fireplace. She sat down in an easy chair, leaned back, and closed her eyes. Some little time later the telephone bell rang. A man's voice answered her “Hullo.” She said, “Who is it speaking?” in a sharp matter of fact voice, and waited for the answer. When it came she said,

“It's all right, she's been. Didn't lose much time about it, did she?” She laughed—Mrs. Thompson had not at all a pleasant laugh.

“Well, what happened?” said the man on the line.

“Oh, it all went off A
I
—couldn't have been better. She lapped it all up about her precious Cyril. I told her he never thought of anyone but her.” Mrs. Thompson laughed again. “All right, don't be so impatient. I'm coming to the rest of it. I described the sister and the house, like you told me to, and said I saw the most horrible danger threatening her, and she'd better look sharp and clear out. And when I couldn't think of anything more to say I threw a faint, and scared my lady stiff. One of the best jobs I've ever done—and I'd like my money all in ten shilling notes by to-morrow morning, first post. Pay on the nail's my motto, and no credit.”

She hung up the receiver, and locked away Agatha's notes in an old black tin cash-box.

Chapter XXIII

Julian Forsham came up to the Dower House in the morning, and went in to see Mrs. Brown. The idea that Annie might be somewhere in the neighbourhood kept recurring to his mind, and when it recurred he could not help remembering the queer, fleeting likeness which had startled him at the Bronsons—Nita King, Anita King, and Annie. Preposterous—she was Edward Berkeley's cousin. But, even as he dismissed the thought, he could hear Lady Susan saying, “She
says
she's a cousin of Edward's.” He thought he would have another talk with Brownie. He found her a little troubled.

“Jenny, she spoke hasty to Mrs. Grey last night, and I'm hoping that she didn't take it amiss. Jenny's a good girl, but there's times when she's hasty. And if you could speak a word for her to Mrs. Grey, I'm sure I'd be grateful, Master Julian.”

“All right, Brownie, don't upset yourself. If Jenny said anything she oughtn't to have, she must just tell Mrs. Grey she's sorry. There's nothing for you to worry about.”

Mrs. Brown had her Bible out on the coverlet. Julian picked it up and turned the pages.

“May I have another look at that photograph?” And when he had found it, he turned it to the light and looked at it for a long time. “How tall was Annie?” he asked suddenly “I seem to remember her and Jenny just the same height.”

“Not later on, they weren't,” said Mrs Brown. “Inch for inch they grew till they come to their teens; and then Jenny, she went on and left Annie a matter of two inches behind.”

Anita King was small. The thought would come. He frowned, and asked abruptly,

“When did I see Annie last? I don't seem to remember her any older than this,”—he touched the photograph—“but I was at Forsham again a couple of years later.”

“And Annie was away visiting her grandmother. No, my dear, you never saw her after she was twelve, and the last time you saw her at all was the day Miss Georgina give a treat to the Sunday school and took 'em all a picnic up in Forsham High Woods. You and Mr. George was here, and Mr. George wouldn't go—proud, you know, Master Julian, like he always was—wouldn't go and play with a peck of children; and fine and vexed his poor aunts were. But you went, my dear; and a fine time the children had till the storm come up.”

“Of course!” said Julian. “I remember quite well. It
was
a storm, too.”

Mrs. Brown nodded.

“And poor Annie so frightened of storms. Jenny never minded them at all, but the least mite of a storm, and Annie would be like a wild thing. Just crazy she was that day—and never forgot how good you was to her. She fair worshipped you after that.”

Julian remembered it all very well—the picnic; the romping children; the fire they had built; and even the squirrel which had sat in the tree above and chattered furiously at them. Miss Georgina, benevolent and pleased; Brownie terribly busy over the teacups. Then, after tea, hide-and-seek in the woods, and the storm coming up from the other side of the hill and catching them unawares. It was rather a bad storm too—soon over, but violent while it lasted.

So that was when he had last seen Annie Brown. He could look back and see her now, quite white, with staring eyes; and he could feel how she had trembled and clung to him when he put his arm about her.

“Always like that in a thunder-storm, Annie was,” said Mrs. Brown. “Just out of herself with fright.”