So Bad a Death (36 page)

I had left the door ajar ready for a quick getaway if the need arose. Now it was shut. I tried the handle. It slipped under my wet hand. With the handkerchief I had used at the switchboard I covered the palm of my hand and tried again. It was locked.

I had left it ajar. I knew I had. I remembered that clearly because I had deemed it advisable. You must get out, said a steady voice over and over in my brain. I pushed the voice away, in order to think. How could I get out? Why wasn't there someone in the house? Someone other than the person who had played this horrid trick of locking the door where I had planned my exit?

There was only one thing to do. The last remaining reasonable corner of my mind told me what it was. I must retrace my footsteps and go down that length of gloomy hall. I could let myself out the front door.

There is no point in making a mad dash. The journey must be undertaken calmly and quietly. There is nothing to be gained by panic.

That reasonable corner of my brain told me these things, but it seemed to be growing smaller and fainter in sound. I had to hang on to it in order to follow its directions. My skin felt wet all over now.

I reached the foot of the stairs again. I dared not look up into the gloom that swallowed them from sight. My eyes were fixed on the dull-coloured glow from the leadlights on either side of the front door. They were such a long way ahead. I crept by each door. Those doors which I had passed that first day when James Holland sent me to find Mrs Mulqueen. At every one I expected it to widen and some evil thing to come leaping out. I could scarcely believe it when I reached the front door. It did not seem possible that I could get out of the house with my experiment a proven success without some opposition.

The relief was almost ludicrous as I stepped out onto the terrace, pulling the heavy door to behind me with a carefree bang. I felt the same sense of embarrassed relief as one does coming out of a theatre after seeing a “horror” film. After all, it was only the imagination at work. There was nothing really concrete to be scared about. Only the overwhelming importance of the news I could give John had caused me to think these things. I had worked myself up into a state all for nothing.

Nothing? What about the locked door of the conservatory?

I dismissed it with a reckless shrug. I got out. That was all that mattered. Maybe the conservatory door had an automatic lock and a draught blew it shut. So I deceived myself, while all the time I knew that there was no breeze in that autumn mist to send the door to, and that the door itself had an ordinary old-fashioned lock.

I was persuading myself out of sheer bravado, for I still had the trip down the drive to do. The scene of another uncomfortable experience. I needed all the courage I could muster.

It could be said that night had fallen, although the time was that of twilight. The mist was growing thicker and the close growing poplars made the hour seem later. However, it was still light enough for me to distinguish a woman's figure coming up the drive to meet me.

I kept on steadily, well in the centre of the interlacing poplars. The figure's approach was not a stealthy menacing one, in spite of
my sudden alertness for danger. Indeed the woman's eyes were on the ground and were only raised when I was a few feet away. It was Elizabeth Mulqueen.

She gave an exclamation. I believe I almost frightened her, when I was the one ready to be intimidated.

“I've been to get something for Yvonne,” I said, not caring about the contradiction of my empty hands. Mrs Mulqueen did not notice it. She was not interested in the explanation of what I was doing at the Hall. Her eyes were over my head, staring in puzzled surprise at something beyond me.

“How is dear Yvonne?” The question was conventional and mechanical.

“Quite well. Jimmy seems to find the change to his liking.” I sidled round so as to face the same way.

For a moment we stood side by side in silence. Suddenly Mrs Mulqueen grabbed my arm. The light in the tower flashed on and off.

“I thought I wasn't mistaken,” she remarked in a complacently triumphant voice which was quite different from my own emotions.

That the tower light should signal at that particular moment seemed unbelievable.

I let her clutch my arm, although I disliked it intensely. I wanted to make myself realize Elizabeth Mulqueen was standing in the drive and not in the tower sending amorous messages by the medium of the light. I had considered that problem solved. One mystery seemed to develop into another. Was my red-hot idea about the switchboard to merge into a similar position? I was almost desperate. I could not let my solution fall through.

The light in the tower continued to go on and off.

III

I made a quick decision. I broke away from Mrs Mulqueen and hurried back to the Hall. I had to know who was in the tower. The need for satisfaction was so urgent that I ignored the probable resurgence
of fear I had thought to leave behind me forever. Someone other than Elizabeth Mulqueen was in the tower and I had to know who it was.

I had no exact idea of the approach to the tower, but made for the top floor. I climbed the stairs breathlessly, pulling myself up by the banisters. Speed was important. It was my intention to cut off the signaller's retreat if possible. The tower was situated towards the front of the building. In order to save time I tried to reason ahead the most likely room. I got it right the second door.

The light pressed on under my hand as I fumbled around the jamb to find the switch. Steep steps arose straight from the centre of the room. I glanced up to the trapdoor in the roof. It was wide open, a black square against the white ceiling. Very cautiously I began to ascend the stairs, gripping the railing either side with my hands. I thought I knew what to expect if someone was up there in the darkness above my head, and listened for sounds to betray the exact position. I was prepared for swift action if the need arose, and felt quite calm when so near to grips with an enemy.

I pulled myself head and shoulders into the darkness of the tower room, resting my elbows either side on the floor.

“Who is there?” I asked clearly. The room was perfectly still. I listened again for some faint noise, even breathing. The silence was as heavy as the mist that pressed against the windows. The tower room was empty.

“Mrs Matheson!” said a voice from below. I withdrew my head and glanced down. Ursula Mulqueen stood at the foot of the steps. She looked bewildered and just a little frightened.

“Mother sent me to find you. I heard someone running along the passage. It was you?”

I stayed on my perch. “Did you see anyone? Where have you been all this time?” I asked.

“In my room, reading. I haven't been out of it all day. I only knew you were here when Mother told me. What are you looking for?”

“The light in the tower room. Where is it?”

Under Ursula's directions I climbed in and found it. I moved eagerly about the room now bathed in a powerful light. It was barely
eight feet square, empty except for an old telescope in one corner. I had hoped to find some small forgotten mark, betraying the identity of the signaller. But there was nothing—no conveniently dropped handkerchief and no cigarette and no lingering perfume.

I switched off the tower-room light and descended the steps. Ursula stood in the doorway. She seemed undecided what to do or say. She was puzzled about something and I guessed what it was.

“Your mother and I,” I told her gently, “met in the drive. We saw the tower-room light flashing as though someone was signalling. I thought it was worth an inspection.”

Ursula's mouth fell open. “Then it wasn't—couldn't have been—”

“No, it wasn't and perhaps never was.” I don't know why I said that. Perhaps I wanted to destroy that disillusioned cynical look Ursula always wore when speaking of her mother.

We went down to the ground floor together. The Hall seemed alive with light and people now, a striking contrast to the lonely gloom I had crept through not an hour previously. Mrs Mulqueen was talking to Ames in the passage.

She glanced towards me. “Did you see anyone?” she asked.

I shook my head.

Ames said: “Inspector Matheson just rang for you, Mrs Matheson. I did not know you were here. He insisted that you were.”

“What did he want?” I asked, at once agog. Yvonne must have told John of my experiment,

“His dinner,” said Ames without a change of expression. “If you go back to the Dower through the wood he will meet you on the path.”

How very prosaic of John! I was indignant that he should treat my investigations so lightly. There was no mysterious significance to be read in his message at all. Merely that the man was hungry and that it was my place to go home and feed him.

Elizabeth Mulqueen saw me to the conservatory door. I frowned when I saw it was ajar; almost as I had left it. Had I given way to panic so much that my own senses had been deceived? But that did not matter now. Soon I would meet John and present him with some facts that more than compensated for those horrible moments.

What a fool I was just then! I can never work out how I happened to become so gullible. If only I had stopped one moment to think and to analyse the position. But I was still rebellious at having to go home and get a dinner instead of continuing uninterrupted on an exciting pitch to the conclusion of the case.

I entered the wood carefully, for there was but little light left to see the path. The trees were likely to make it practically indistinguishable further on. My progress was slow. Now and then I gave the whistle which was John's own signal to me.

“I only hope the man has the sense to bring a torch,” I said aloud, stumbling over a root and pausing to steady myself.

It was during that pause that something John had said flashed into my head. “Promise me, Maggie, you will never go through the wood alone.”

My breath caught in my throat. But this meeting had been John's own idea! It was rather inconsistent of him certainly, but Ames had said—I whistled again and again. But no answering notes came to my ears. That same fear I had felt in the gloom at the Hall was somewhere inside me. I checked it, but it was there.

I was deep into the wood now. Where was John? I peered ahead through the darkness imagining I saw a flashlight and heard a faint call. There was not the faintest gleam of a light. Just the wood smothered into a deeper silence and darkness by the mist. I clung to a tree, breathing heavily and trying again to quell the rising panic. It was stronger now. For out of the depths of that deadly quiet someone was stalking me.

I was alone, but for an unseen enemy. I did not imagine the stealthy footsteps coming along the path, nor the brushing of the leaves and branches. Those steps were too real. They kept time with the thud of my heart, as I waited still clinging to the tree. There was no use now in whistling or peering ahead for John's light. I knew now. John would not come. He had not sent that message.

Some wild and desperate hope made me think of Constable Cornell. Perhaps the footsteps were his. What was it he had said? “Never lost a body yet. Don't intend to begin.” Odd the way he
called his charges bodies. It had a sinister ring. The same hope braced me for a moment. The footsteps had paused.

“Cornell?” I asked sharply, trying to distinguish a figure through the darkness.

I will never forget the answer to my query. It was a deep and malicious chuckle. The sound seemed to continue for seconds while my fingers scraped the bark of the tree as I fought for the last remaining threads of control. If only the person would say something so that I could recognize the voice. It was ignorance of what I had to face that was so unnerving.

I strove to speak through the choking fear, to sound as normal as I could. “You mustn't show how frightened you are,” said that small reasonable part of my brain with me still.

But my enemy spoke before I could test my strength. The voice was as malicious and evil as that low laugh. “I frightened you, Mrs Matheson? I apologize.”

It was a slightly familiar voice, a woman's voice, but still I did not recognize it. “Who are you?” I asked. “Who are you? And what do you want?”

I forced myself to advance in the direction of the voice. It was better to measure the woman up face to face than to remain clinging in terror to a tree which would be of no assistance at all.

A whiff of human breath came to my sharpened senses.

“Nurse Stone?”

“Yes, Nurse Stone, Mrs Matheson. I followed you. I hoped we might have a little talk together.” I was standing only a few steps away from the woman now.

“What is it?” I repeated. “I am on my way home. My husband is expecting me.”

The woman laughed again, but I had a check on that panic. “Is he, now? And Yvonne? Is she expecting you too?”

I guessed at the woman's emotions. She was in a fit of drunken jealousy. Jimmy was at the root of the trouble: I had taken him away from her charge.

“Yvonne is well,” I answered in a conciliatory manner. “Jimmy seems better. Why don't you come and see him tomorrow? You are very fond of him, Nurse Stone?”