She Died a Lady (15 page)

‘
That
didn’t upset the customers, I trust?’

‘No, but it upset my missus,’ confided Harry, lowering his voice. ‘And there’s other ladies ’oo don’t feel too ’appy about it neither. Somebody told the parson down at St Mark’s, and ’
e
come a-charging up here; ah, and seemed a bit disappointed ’e got ‘ere too late to give ‘er a piece of ‘is mind. Then, on top of that, there’s Willie Johnson and this bloke Nero.’

‘This bloke who?’

‘The Emperor Nero, what fiddled while Rome was burning.’

‘What about him?’

Harry shook his head despondently.

‘Coo, you never ‘eard anybody carry on like Willie done! Somebody gave ’im ten bob yesterday …’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘And down ’e goes to the pictures at Lynton. ’E comes back, first to the “Crown” and then to me and starts mopping it up. ’E can’t talk about nothing but this bloke Nero. Willie says this Nero is the meanest, ugliest, wickedest brute ’e ever did see even in a film. Willie says ‘e’s awful. Throw fifty or a ‘undred Christians to the lions while ’e was polishing off a pint of bitter, Willie says.’

‘Yes; but –’

‘’E went on about it so much I wouldn’t serve ’im any longer, ’aving some respect for me licence. But down ’e goes to the “Black Cat”, and Joe Williams is fool enough to let ’im ’ave a bottle of whisky on tick.’ Again Harry shook his head despondently. ‘’E’ll be just warming up on whisky this morning, I reckon.’

‘I shouldn’t worry too much about him, if I were you. He’ll be all right.’

‘I ’ope so, Doctor. I ’ope so.’

‘As for the young lady at my house –’

‘Ah?’

I saw the quick, glutinous interest of the eye, and I didn’t like it.

‘You can go back and tell Mrs Pierce and the other ladies that the girl they saw was Mrs Barry Sullivan. She’s lost her husband; she’s very much upset; and she doesn’t much like to be spied on. Will you tell them that?’

Harry hesitated.

‘All right, Doctor. If you say so. But you can’t blame ’em for ’ardly liking it. What with the war and all, it does seem like there’s a curse on us, as you might say. Some of us are just wondering wot in the name of sense is a-going to ’appen
next
.’

Privately, this last was a view I shared. It was early, only a little past two, when I got into my car and drove out towards Alec’s.

The sky was what they call a robin’s egg blue; the countryside, with a sparkle on it, had never been more beautiful; but the bungalow at Lovers’ Leap seemed to have aged, like its owner, and intensified the seediness I had noticed four nights ago. The bright beach-chairs on the lawn were still there. Barry Sullivan, I remembered, had stayed behind when it started to rain on Saturday night, and said he was going to get those chairs in. But they remained.

I stopped my car in the drive. Martha, the old maid, admitted me to the house and directed me upstairs. You could hear your footsteps loudly on the hardwood in this place.

Alec and Rita had shared a big bedroom at the back of the house, overlooking the sea, when they first came to live here. As a matter of fact, Rita had been occupying a separate room for some time; she stayed in the rear room, while Alec moved to the front. But I had not remembered this when I carried him upstairs on Saturday night. It was to Rita’s room I took him, and to Rita’s room I went now.

Mrs Grover, the day nurse, was on duty now. She answered my tap at the door.

‘How is he, nurse?’

‘No better and no worse, as far as I can see.’

‘Restless?’

‘Not very. He calls for her, sometimes.’

‘You haven’t let him have any visitors?’

‘No, Doctor. Miss Payne and I have been here day and night; and, anyway, there’s been nobody to see him.’

I went in and closed the door. White linen blinds were drawn down on the two big windows facing the sea; the windows were open, and the blinds trembled in the draught from the door. The black-out material had been pushed back out of sight under heavy valances and curtains of flowered chintz.

Alec, asleep and breathing in thin gasps, lay in a big mahogany double-bed against the right-hand wall. The curious smell of sick flesh, so familiar and yet always so disturbing, pervaded this room. It was Alec’s own fault; no system, at his age, could withstand shock on top of so many years’ softening with whisky; but it is no good preaching after the fact. I took his pulse and glanced at the chart at the foot of the bed. In the dim whitish dusk of the blinds I could see that Alec was holding something in the hand he held clasped on his chest outside the covers.

The skin of the hand was cracked and shiny, with congested veins. It rose and fell with the movements of Alec’s chest. The object in his hand – at least, to judge by the top of it – was the chromium-headed key engraved with the word ‘Margarita’ and the true-love knot. Alec set great store by that key.

‘Nurse!’

‘Yes, Doctor?’

‘You see that key in his hand. Do you happen to know why he’s so attached to it, or what it’s the key to?’

Mrs Grover seemed of two minds about answering. A nurse is not supposed to investigate her patient’s private affairs; but, quite obviously, she
had
investigated this. Evidently deciding my question had no trap in it, she went to a dressing-table surrounded on three sides with mirrors, and pulled open the drawer.

‘I should think, Doctor, it’s the key to that.’ She pointed. ‘But of course I don’t know.’

Inside, amid an untidy jumble of Rita’s effects, was a biggish box of some material that resembled ivory. The word ‘Margarita’ was engraved in gold letters over the lock, and there was a true-love knot in blue just underneath.

‘The pattern’s the same, you see,’ Mrs Grover pointed out.

I lifted the box, and it was very heavy. I shook it, without hearing anything. Its removal disturbed spilled powder, which made a scented dust from the drawer and was redolent of a dead woman who might have been standing at my elbow.

Rita’s effects – those things which are so pathetic afterwards – were characteristic of her. There was one thin kid glove. There was an expensive wrist-watch without crystal or hands. There were gossamer coloured handkerchiefs. There were hairpins, curling-pins, empty jars, and tubes of cold-cream, a bundle of ration-books, and a passport. All powder-dusted and drained of life.

I picked up the passport, whose photograph showed Rita and Alec at a much earlier date. Alec looked healthy and confident, with a smile on his lips even when he faced the passport photographer. Rita’s was a wistful and naïve countenance in a bell-shaped hat.
‘The bearer is accompanied by his wife, Margarita Dulane Wainright, born November 20th
, 1897,
at Montreal, Dominion of Canada …’

So Rita had been forty-three instead of the thirty-eight she claimed. Not that it mattered. I put back the passport. I lowered the ivory box into its place again, and closed the drawer.

Mrs Grover cleared her throat. ‘Doctor. I said there’d been nobody here. But there was a person who came to the house a while ago, and made a terrible row until Martha drove him away.’

‘Who?’

‘That horrible Willie Johnson, drunk as a lord.’

(By this time, the mention of Mr Johnson was beginning to exasperate me a good deal.)

‘He claims Professor Wainright stole something from him,’ said Mrs Grover. ‘He carried on at a great rate, and wouldn’t go away. Then he went out to the gardening shed at the other side of the garage; and I think he’s still there, swearing and carrying on and I don’t know what. We didn’t like to ring the police, over a thing like that. Couldn’t you do something about it?’

‘Leave him to me, nurse. I’ll settle him.’

I went downstairs in something of a temper. I walked through the sitting-room, where Rita’s portrait greeted me with its half-smile. I went through the dining-room into the kitchen, and down the steps to the back yard.

It had not rained since Saturday night. Past the sparse grass which formed what might be called a back lawn, the great expanse of damp, soft, reddish soil stretched out to Lovers’ Leap. There were the geometrical designs in tiny white pebbles. There were the pebbles which outlined the form of the path to Lovers’ Leap. There were the two sets of footprints, still sharply marked, of the lovers who had not come back.

You could see along and out over the mighty curve of the cliffs. Distantly, a grey trawler idled against dark-blue water stung with light-points under sunshine. A mild breeze blew inshore. And a voice shouted:

‘’Ere!’

Round the left-hand side of the house, from the direction of the gardening-shed near the tennis-court, came Mr Willie Johnson.

He walked not rapidly, but with exaggerated care. You might even have said he was stalking something. His broad-brimmed hat was pulled down almost to his eyebrows; beneath it, bloodshot eyes made an effort to focus by concentrating along the line of the nose. From the pocket of his coat projected the neck of a bottle considerably depleted. While still some distance away, he stopped, swayed, pointed his finger at me with great concentration, and spoke huskily.

‘I’ve ’ad,’ said Mr Johnson, ‘’orrible dreams.’

‘Have you?’

‘’
Orrible
dreams,’ emphasized Mr Johnson, sighting along the line of his extended finger. ‘I’ve ’ad ’em all night. Somebody is a-going to pay for them dreams.’

‘You’ll pay for them yourself, if you don’t keep off the booze.’

Mr Johnson was not interested in this.

‘I dreamed,’ he said, ‘that the Emperor Nero was a-sitting in judgement on me. ’E was smoking a ’alf-crown cigar and ’aving people coated with pitch so’s ’e could burn ’em up. Such a ugly ’orrible face you never saw on any ’uman being; and be’ind ’im was all his gladiators with swords and pitchforks. ’E leans over like this, and ’e says to me –’

Here Mr Johnson paused to clear a husky throat. There was, it seemed, another remedy for this. Drawing the bottle from his pocket, he carefully wiped its mouth on his sleeve, measured its contents with one eye by holding it up to the light, and elevated it to his lips.

And then something happened.

F
OR
several seconds, it is true. I had been conscious of a faint steady noise of
pop-pop-pop
, suggesting a light motor vehicle in motion. I did not need to look, because I knew what it was. It inspired in me, I must confess, much the same sense of impending disaster as was inspired in Captain Hook by the approach of the crocodile with the clock inside it.

But I never guessed how much disaster.

This vehicle, unseen, popped steadily nearer round the opposite side of the house. The
pop-pop-pop
grew in volume as it approached, round the angle of the house behind my back. Something, describing a broad and skittish curve, appeared and bore down steadily in our direction. And Mr Willie Johnson, with the bottle still tilted at his lips, lowered one eye to look.

I have never, I think, seen on any human face such an expression of living horror as froze then on the countenance of Mr Johnson. I did not see his hair actually rise, since he was wearing a hat; but in his case I am prepared to admit the phenomenon. It utterly paralysed him. It would have moved a man of stone to pity. It was, in fact, so terrible that I whirled round to look.

The approaching wheel-chair contained a figure which was at once familiar and unfamiliar. On its bald head the figure wore what was later described to me as a laurel-wreath. The laurel-wreath was set there firmly, with some suggestion of a bowler hat on a bookmaker, and its two little ends stuck up like horns.

Round and round the barrel-figure was wound in many folds, like a badly-tied bandage, a voluminous garment of pure white wool with a deep purple border. It left only the right arm bare, and this arm was decorated – so to speak – by brass ornaments which glittered in the sun. On its feet, propped up against the footboard of the chair, it wore sandals. The big toe of the right foot was bandaged. On its broad face, with the spectacles pulled down on the nose, it wore an expression of terrifying malignancy; and it was smoking a cigar.

Ensuing events were a little chaotic.

The unearthly yell which burst from Willie Johnson could have been heard, I think, as far as the trawler in the bay. Only for a second did he remain completely paralysed. The bottle left his lips. He lowered his arm, screamed again, and flung the bottle straight at the apparition which was bearing steadily towards him at a speed of about twenty miles an hour.

Afterwards, merely to say that Johnson ran would be a powerful understatement. He moved with such speed as almost to baffle the eyesight – he collected a bicycle. So far as I recall, he did not stop to mount the bicycle. Man and bicycle, so to speak, seemed to melt together and become man-on-bicycle without a second’s interruption of progress.

But my attention was on other matters.

To have a half-filled whisky-bottle fired at your head is enough to destroy the composure of even the noblest Roman.

The bottle whizzed past the head of Sir Henry Merrivale, and fell between Superintendent Craft and Paul Ferrars as they came pelting round the side of the house. Ferrars, who was carrying a suit of clothes across his arm, stumbled over it.

As it flew, H.M. put his hands up instinctively to shield his face. The steering-handle, left to its own devices, brought the chair round in a broad curve; and the motor, as though inspired by a diabolical life of its own, put on the burst of speed which made him travel as steadily as an express-train straight towards the brink of the cliff.

‘Turn it!’ Ferrars was screaming. ‘Turn it! Mind the cliff! For God’s sake mind the –’

What saved H.M.’s life, undoubtedly, was the softness of the soil and his own weight. Two deep grooves followed his jolting and bouncing passage across the earth. The crutch flew out of his hand. The motor coughed and died. The chair lurched, sank deeper, put on a last burst of speed; and then came to rest, deliberately, on the very edge of the cliff. His sandalled feet, in fact, stuck out over nothingness.

Then there was silence, under the warm sunlight.