So Bad a Death (37 page)

My guess had been accurate. She started to weep in a maudlin fashion. It was disgusting and rather alarming, alone with the foolish woman in the middle of the wood, but it was better than the panic I had felt before. I had the upper hand now. I was no longer on the defensive.

“I don't believe you,” she whined. “He was all right. I looked after him well. He is mine. You have stolen him away. I have always looked after him.”

I felt sorry for her. “But he wasn't well,” I said gently. “Surely you knew that. He needs a special diet and care.”

This angered her. “What do you know about it? You modern women who call yourselves mothers! All books and fancy foods. I had charge of Jimmy's father and I know how to care for his son. Give him back to me.”

There was nothing to be gained in pursuing an argument with a tipsy jealous woman.

I said: “Come to the Dower tomorrow. We'll talk things over then when you feel better.”

It was a tactless remark and only served to inflame Nurse Stone further. She came up very close, thrusting her face into mine. The smell of her breath sickened me.

“I know what you're thinking. You think I'm tight. Well, I'm not. I'm as sober as you are, you busybody. How dare you suggest I drink!”

I moved back a step or two and turned away. “I really must go, Nurse Stone. My husband will be waiting. Come and see me tomorrow.”

I started to move along the path. There was a mad rush behind me. I could not see where the blow was coming, but I swerved sharply. Something, I think it was only the enraged woman's clenched fist, caught me on the shoulder. I was sent reeling against a bush. I tried to regain my balance but stumbled against a root, and for the next minute lay sprawling on the ground. Nurse Stone came towards me.

The woman's gait was none too steady. As she blundered forward I put out a foot and tripped her, dragging myself upward. Down the path I could see the faint thread of a light passing over the track.

“John,” I yelled, hurrying along. “Here I am.”

Nurse Stone must have seen the light too. I heard her grunting as she got to her feet. She made off in the opposite direction at once. I was thankful that there was to be no ugly scene. The woman was not responsible, and I was in no mood for further brawling.

“Whose idea was this?” I asked, when the light was flashed into my face. “I thought you forbade me to go through the wood? You won't need an extracted promise to keep me away in future. I've been grappling with a drunken woman.”

The encounter with Nurse Stone had left me shaken even more so than the fall. I was dazed, so much so that it did not occur to me at first that John was very quiet. The light played on my face unswervingly.

“Turn that damned thing off me,” I said irritably, “and let's get home.”

Very slowly the torch was swept round in a semi-circle. It lighted up the trees and the path which faded away into a dark hole beyond its strength. Then it was held steadily on the face of its owner.

IV

The breath drew back sharply in my throat. In that face exposed in the blinding light was something that I recognized before the woman herself. You can see people day after day, and unconsciously think you will know them anywhere. Then the time comes when you catch them from an untried angle and observe a subtle unfamiliarity.

On this occasion the face of Harriet Ames was presented in a different aspect. It still had the contours of the woman I knew, the red stain across one cheek. But now the primary feature was the familiar look of another person. I recognized in Harriet Ames another woman's expression I had learned by heart from a portrait. A likeness which was verified by the long lobe of her ear.

I knew too that Mrs Ames was not illuminating her own face so deliberately without some purpose in mind. Nurse Stone was not the enemy I dreaded in the darkness of the wood. It was this silent, bitter woman who stood before me like an unscaleable wall. It was not Nurse Stone who had aroused the feeling of panic, but this young woman whom I had always dismissed because of her blank eyes and expressionless voice.

I did not speak either. There was nothing for me to say. I was up against my enemy at last, and the sudden shock of revelation stilled my tongue. I could not pretend when all the time I recognized Harriet Ames as such and she knew that I knew. There was no question of this being a surprise encounter. It had been planned deliberately, just as carefully as James Holland's murder. I knew too much. There were many gaps in the story I could tell, but I still knew too much.

Mrs Ames turned the light aside at last. She spoke courteously as she always had. That was the frightening part. Her manner was normal even in the midst of the abnormality.

“I have a gun, Mrs Matheson. Please walk ahead of me.”

I passed her and walked just behind the torchlight she flashed in front of my feet. I walked quite steadily too. I was proud of the fact, even though some part of me said: “This is not you. This is just a dream. A nightmare where one always picks on the most inoffensive person to be the villain of the piece, and awakes to smile at the absurdity of it all.”

“One moment, Mrs Matheson. Stand still, please.” The courteous voice was as hard as steel. Odd how I had never noticed the possibility of such a quality before.

I stopped. Was she going to indulge in a little rhetoric and postpone the business ahead? Was there going to be the hope of time on my side? John would have arrived home by now. Surely Yvonne, even in spite of her promise of secrecy, would have become disturbed and told him where I was and what I had been doing.

“I am sorry about this, Mrs Matheson, believe me. But you have left us no alternative. We did warn you indirectly to stay out of our affairs.”

We? Us? Where was Ames? Did he leave his wife to do the dirty work alone?

She was continuing: “I could of course shoot you dead, but unfortunately such a death might arouse your husband's suspicions.”

So they were going to have another attempt to make murder look like suicide. It would have to be ingenious to deceive John. I concentrated on that grain of comfort.

Suddenly my silence seemed to anger Mrs Ames. She wanted tears and pleadings in order to test out the temper of that steely quality in her. But I was too proud and beyond such trivial emotions to afford her satisfaction.

“You fool! You damned fool! What did you hope to gain from your prying?”

I found my tongue at last. “I don't regret it,” I answered. “What information I have will help my husband make his conviction.”

She laughed softly. “You don't deceive me. He knows nothing of your doings. Don't think I haven't been observing you all these weeks. Why else should he set that policeman to watch you? No, Mrs Matheson, you can't get out of it like that.”

“Very well,” I said. My tone implied that I did not care whether she believed me or not. It was still true.

For a brief space I thought my bluff might succeed. She paused and I held my breath. Not that I realized for one moment that Mrs Ames was going to kill me. It just wasn't possible. Even the dangerous game of prying and my insatiable curiosity over the last weeks did not seem enough justification to come up against the real thing. That was the trouble. I had made too much of a game of crime without realizing what deadly consequences would come about. I was still convinced that John would arrive to rescue me as he had once before. I had forgotten all about that other occasion in time. Time had softened the memory of those few grim minutes just as these would be forgotten. I was inviolate.

I was strangely calm when I should have been terrified. I find myself more frightened now, when I remember that scene in the wood with Harriet Ames. At the time I was deceived by her matter-of-fact
attitude. Something more like Nurse Stone's attack might have jolted me out of the fictional state of mind.

My attempt at a bluff gave Mrs Ames time to think, but she still remained in deadly earnest. She spoke with the faintest hint of a sneer in her flat voice.

“If you are living in hopes of your husband or that attendant of yours turning up at the eleventh hour you are doomed to disappointment. Your husband phoned the Hall that he would be delayed at the office and we arranged for Cornell to be called into town on other urgent business. So you see we have the coast clear to deal with both you and Yvonne, not to mention that brat of hers.”

I said over my shoulder: “You can't possibly hope to get away with it. If you are planning a wholesale slaughter of myself, Yvonne and the baby you haven't got a chance.”

Harriet Ames was not a half-crazed unreasonable person like Nurse Stone. She spoke confidently. “Wait and see. But what a pity you won't be here to see the success of our plans. Keep going, please, Mrs Matheson, and obey my instructions. If you do not I will shoot you now and then continue to the Dower and kill your son.”

A primitive fury shook me when she spoke of Tony. Once I had left him in her charge. He and that beautiful child of hers had played together with the utmost happiness. And now she was holding the price of Tony's blood over my head. It was inconceivable that a woman with a beloved child of her own could make such a threat. I longed for a genuine passion of revenge that could make me wish ill for her child.

There was nothing to be gained by turning on her. I had enough sense to see that, even in my insane anger. Time was the only chance I had. Hope had been long since taken from me. But whatever happened, life for Tony was the greatest bequest I could leave to him.

Time! I did what I could to stretch out that horrible trip through the wood. I tried to work out the hour as we went, and to estimate the chances of John's return. Sometimes he would stay at headquarters until late at night and it could not be more than seven-thirty now. But Cornell! What about him? I was none too sanguine about
him recognizing a wild-goose chase quickly. He looked the type of man who was excellent in his own sphere but a blockhead out of it.

I dawdled as much as I dared and pretended to stumble once or twice. But my adversary was an intelligent, desperate woman, and I was forced on with a prod of her gun in my back. It was an unpleasant feeling, and while I still had life I fought instinctively against a repetition.

I shrank from the sight of the Dower House. It came all too soon, even after what seemed like a long trek through the wood. A single light shone from one of the windows. It winked evilly through the mist and seemed the epitome of disaster. Just as the lantern of a wrecker must have appeared to mariners of other times.

Mrs Ames guided me through a hole in the hedge and along the side of the house.

“Stop, please, Mrs Matheson.”

I halted right outside the nursery window.

“This is your son's room. If I stand here I can shoot through the screen exactly to where he is lying asleep. You will now go to the front door and get Yvonne to let you in. Then go through to the kitchen and open the back door and come back here. It should take you about two minutes. Any longer and I will fire straight at your son's cot. Do you follow me?”

My mouth was dry. I could only nod as Mrs Ames shone the torch for a brief moment in my face. I wanted to beseech her for more time, to make allowance for some possible delay in Yvonne answering my ring. I would do anything she wanted if she would only promise not to level the gun through the wire at Tony's cot.

I half-ran, half-stumbled around to the porch. My legs felt stiff and refused to do the bidding of my desperate brain. The climbing rose caught at my clothes. I wrenched myself free and heard the material tear. The flagged path which John had complained about so often caught the heel of one shoe and held it fast. I tried to wriggle my foot free.

Had one minute passed? Had Harriet Ames stepped up to Tony's window, gun in hand? I bent down to drag at my ankle, but the heel was firmly wedged. My fingers fumbled at the shoelace. It broke
under a suddenly acquired strength, born of desperation. I left my shoe there and fell on my knees on the porch step. I did not pause to get to my feet until I had crawled to the doorway. I rang on the bell as firmly as my cold and trembling hand would allow. It jumped under the pulse in my thumb and I brought my other hand onto the wrist to steady the pressure.

I called Yvonne by name, battering at the door with both fists and imploring her to open at once. Minutes seemed to pass before she came. My eyes strained anxiously. If Mrs Ames could only hear my earnest endeavour to obey her instructions surely she would not fire.

Hurry, Yvonne! My mind was so occupied with Tony that I did not consider what the opening of the door would mean to her and Jimmy. I was to pay the penalty too. But not Tony, whose only fault was being my son and taking a fancy to a dummy which was evidence against the killer.

Yvonne opened the door under my pounding fists and almost fell over the threshold. She put out both hands to catch me and I felt her slight body brace against my weight. Her eyes were wide open in her pale face, the usual timid look accentuated by an underlying expression of bewilderment. Her hands were on my wrists. In spite of her air of fragility they felt like iron bands to stop me passing. Had I suddenly grown so weak when I thought I had acquired an abnormal strength to help me face this crisis?