Speedy Death (14 page)

‘Good night,’ she said, when Eleanor had taken it. ‘Close your eyes, and you will be asleep in no
time. I’ll send somebody along to see how you are in a minute.’

‘No, no! Don’t send anybody,’ said Eleanor faintly. ‘I only want to be left alone. Please go now. Please go.’

Mrs Bradley returned to the landing to find the crowd beginning to disperse. Standing under the electric light where she had left them were Dorothy and Garde, earnestly talking.

‘But I must see what has happened,’ Dorothy cried, as Mrs Bradley approached them. ‘Don’t be aggravating, Garde! It’s my bedroom, and I shall go into it if I choose.’

‘Let her go if she wants to, young man,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘In fact, we’ll all three go. I don’t see why we shouldn’t share the fun, and find out what has happened.’

She led the way into Dorothy’s room. Alastair Bing and Carstairs were standing at the foot of the bed, talking in low tones.

Bing turned as they entered.

‘Ah, there you are,’ he said to Mrs Bradley. ‘Just look at this! I think we must be harbouring a maniac.’

On the bed lay Dorothy’s dummy figure, as she had placed it some hour or two before. There was only one difference. The masked head was staved in as though from a terrific blow, and, just as it had been allowed to fall from some destructive hand, a heavy poker lay across the dainty coverlet.

‘BUT—BUT SUPPOSING
I had been lying there instead of—instead of—of that!’

Dorothy’s grey eyes were black with terror as she stared wildly at Mrs Bradley.

Garde took advantage of the situation to place a comforting arm round her.

‘Well, you weren’t, so it’s all right,’ he observed, with admirable philosophy.

‘But I should have been, if it had not been for Mrs Bradley,’ faltered Dorothy.

‘Eh? What’s that?’

Alastair Bing barked out the question, his white imperial bristling fiercely.

‘It’s true,’ said Dorothy, glancing fearfully behind her. ‘I should have been sleeping here tonight if Mrs Bradley had not—had not——’

‘But had you any reason—any inkling of—any—what shall I say?’ demanded Alastair, turning fiercely on Mrs Bradley.

The lady grinned horribly.

‘Just an intuition,’ she said airily. ‘Just an idea that came into my head.’

‘Oh, rubbish! Rubbish!’ snarled Alastair.

‘Very well,’ said Mrs Bradley placidly.

‘At any rate, Father,’ said Garde, with pardonable asperity, ‘it seems to me that Dorothy and I owe Mrs Bradley something more than ill-tempered abuse. By the way—where’s Sis?’

‘Eleanor is in bed,’ replied Mrs Bradley. ‘I have given her a sleeping-draught, so I do hope that no one will have occasion to disturb her. Poor girl! I expect she has had a shock.’

‘I have no doubt of that,’ said Alastair Bing. ‘According to what she told us before you came on the scene, Mrs Bradley, she went to the bed to awaken Dorothy, and after shaking that—that hideous effigy and receiving, of course, no answer, she turned on the lights, and that’—he pointed dramatically to the bed—‘was what she saw.’

‘Poker and all?’ inquired Mrs Bradley unsympathetically.

Alastair Bing snorted.

‘At any rate,’ said Garde pithily, ‘I consider Mrs Bradley has saved you from having another murder to report to the police.’

‘To whom are you talking?’ yelled Alastair, turning on his son.

‘You,’ said the god-like young man, unintimidated. ‘Of course, you’re rattled. So am I. But there’s no need to be rude to Mrs Bradley. And I bet poor old Sis was rattled too,’ he added grimly, ‘when she
came in and saw that lovely sight. My hat! what a blacksmith blow.’ He closely inspected the head with morbid appreciation.

‘Oh, these mask things dent very easily,’ said Carstairs, joining in the conversation in his admirably modulated voice.

‘Well, I’d like to know who bent it, anyway,’ said Garde. ‘And what they thought they were up to. I mean, say what you like, it was no practical joker who handed out that slosh, was it? What do
you
say, Mr Carstairs?’

Carstairs looked benignly at the wreckage on the bed, and gingerly prodded the unrecognisable mask with a sensitive forefinger.

‘Upon consideration, I am inclined to agree with you,’ he said. ‘I think we are now looking upon one of the most ghastly attempts at murder I ever knew about. Oh—I am sorry I said that! How foolish of me!’

For Dorothy, with a little sigh, had lurched fainting towards the floor. Garde’s arm, however, prevented her from falling, and, as the eiderdown fell from about her, he lifted her slim form in his arms and held her like a child against his breast.

‘Your room, Mrs Bradley?’ he asked, and, receiving a bird-like nod of assent, he bore his light burden along the landing.

‘Which bed?’ he asked, halting in the middle of the handsomely appointed bedroom.

‘In here,’ replied Mrs Bradley, drawing the bedclothes aside from one of the twin beds.

Dorothy opened her eyes, and smiled faintly as he laid her gently down.

‘I’m awfully sorry,’ she said.

‘Darling!’ said Mrs Bradley warmly.

‘Think she’s all right now?’ asked Garde anxiously, as he ostensibly felt her pulse. Dorothy’s soft fingers closed round his hand.

Mrs Bradley’s left eyelid fluttered.

‘You can stay a minute or two and see,’ she said. ‘I shan’t go to bed any more tonight.’

She drew the folds of her hideous dressing-gown more closely about her, waddled over to the electric fire, switched it on, and seated herself in a roomy basket chair with a book of modern poetry upon her knees.

Garde sat down on the edge of Dorothy’s bed and lovingly held her hand. They smiled at one another.

Mrs Bradley, covertly regarding them, sighed softly and sentimentally, abandoned the volume of modern poetry and the social conventions to their separate fates, and closed her eyes.…

When she opened them again, it was morning. Garde was seated on the floor, with his head against Dorothy’s pillow. Her hand lay lightly upon his shoulder, for she had fallen asleep fondling his hair.

‘A little lower than the angels,’ quoted Mrs Bradley, under her breath. Then she tiptoed out of the room to prevent the admirable but gossiping Celestine from coming to call her, and so discovering the lovers.

This done, for she met the maid on the stairs, she repaired to the bathroom for her morning ablutions.

The bathroom door was locked. Mrs Bradley twisted the handle and pushed, but the door was fast.

‘Eleanor, of course,’ she said aloud.

‘I beg your pardon!’ said Carstairs, coming down from the landing above.

‘I wanted the bathroom, but it is occupied, so I assume Eleanor Bing is inside. That is all,’ replied Mrs Bradley. ‘How did you sleep?’ she continued. ‘After the little contretemps last night, I mean.’

‘I didn’t sleep very much, I am afraid,’ Carstairs admitted. ‘That was a very queer business.’

‘Very queer,’ Mrs Bradley echoed, with a characteristic grimace.

‘How did you come to—er—remove our young friend from the scene of the operations?’ asked Carstairs. ‘Dorothy Clark, I mean.’

‘I had a hunch,’ Mrs Bradley replied, ‘and what had been merely a suspicion developed into an absolute certainty last night while we were dancing.’

‘Did it?’ asked Carstairs, interested. ‘What gave you the idea?’

‘The idea itself I had had for some time,’ Mrs Bradley admitted. ‘But it was the clock which clinched matters.’

‘The clock?’ Carstairs knitted his brows in a perplexed frown. ‘The clock?’ he repeated slowly.

‘Yes, the clock,’ said Mrs Bradley, thoroughly enjoying herself. ‘There is an instance, but not as beautifully complete an instance, in the diary of Marie Bashkirtseff.’

She left a completely bewildered Carstairs shaking his head and returned to her bedroom chuckling ghoulishly.

At her entrance, Dorothy woke.

Mrs Bradley’s quizzical glance at the still sleeping Garde caused a lovely blush to mantle the girl’s cheek and brow.

‘Darling child,’ observed Mrs Bradley. ‘How I wish I looked like that when I felt abashed! And how sweet that boy looks, doesn’t he?’

Dorothy gave Garde’s shoulder a rough shake. He woke, stared, then stretched cramped limbs, and at last stood up.

‘Glory hallelujah!’ he observed, taking in his surroundings. ‘Did I go to sleep?’

‘You did,’ replied Mrs Bradley. ‘Go away now. And don’t let anybody see you going.’

Garde grinned at her, bent and kissed Dorothy before she could ward him off, and took his departure.

‘I’ll go too, and see if I can get into the bathroom now,’ said Mrs Bradley, marching out in his wake.

The bathroom door was still locked.

‘Bother!’ said Mrs Bradley loudly, upon her return. ‘How I hate washing in a bedroom!’

‘So do I!’ said Dorothy frankly. ‘And, as nothing on earth will persuade me to go to my own awful
bedroom and wash there, I suppose I shall sit here until you have finished.’

‘Quite so,’ said Mrs Bradley, grimacing.

Upon descending to breakfast, they found the men already assembled, and during the meal the topic of conversation which naturally excluded all others was the night’s adventure.

‘I thought the end of the world was come, and that we were listening to the last shriek of the damned,’ said Bertie Philipson, spreading marmalade on toast with a sparing hand.

‘So did I. Or that the Bolshies were really in our midst at last,’ said Garde, following his example, but using about three times as much marmalade.

‘Eleanor is apparently washing off the shock,’ chuckled Mrs Bradley, nibbling dry toast and sipping hot water with apparent relish. She was more reptilian to look at than ever, in the clear light of morning.

‘We ought to time her,’ said Bertie, ‘but, as we don’t know at what time she usually comes down to breakfast, we can’t do it. Poor Eleanor. Fancy expecting to find Dorothy, and seeing that damaged atrocity instead!’

‘By the way, where were
you
while the fun was going on? I didn’t spot you among the gathering of the clans,’ said Garde to Bertie.

‘Well, I did begin to get up, but when I saw the mobs of people on the landing below mine, I thought I might as well go back to bed. I took it for granted that somebody would rescue me if the
house were on fire, or protect my possessions if burglars had broken in!’

He simpered idiotically at Dorothy as he spoke, but she elevated her chin and said nothing.

Unabashed, Bertie passed his cup for more coffee.

‘You know what happened, though?’ said Garde.

‘You mean the damaged goods in Dorothy’s bedroom, I suppose?’ answered Bertie, in a fatuous voice which caused Dorothy to look more contemptuous still. ‘Yes, I went in there this morning at the pressing invitation of Mr Carstairs, and had a good squizz at it. I’m rather surprised, I must say, that a big girl like Dorothy should still care for dolls. But there’s no accounting for taste, of course. A cousin of my own, twice removed——’

‘Oh, do shut up, you fool,’ grinned Garde, ‘and pass the marmalade.’

‘Greedy youth,’ said Bertie. ‘Mrs Bradley, let us go and walk in the rose-garden. Dorothy can pour out his fifth cup of coffee. After all, she’ll have to get used to doing it when they are married.’

‘I don’t want any more. I’ve finished,’ observed Garde, folding a marmalade-smothered piece of bread and butter into halves, and depositing the whole amount in his mouth at once. ‘Come on, Dorothy. Let’s go and help them look at the dandelions.’

‘Nobody is to leave the house and grounds!’ said Alastair Bing, looking up from
The Times
and
speaking in his dictatorial voice. ‘The police will be here soon, and will want to question us.’

‘The police!’ Dorothy turned pale.

‘Certainly,’ said Alastair. ‘If an attempt was made to kill you as you lay in bed—and Carstairs is determined to persuade me that such was the case—the sooner the police come and find the madman who seems to be living in our midst, the better. That is all I can say.’

‘And very nicely said,’ remarked Mrs Bradley dreamily.

Alastair glanced at her with the swift suspicion of one who imagines that his leg is being pulled, but her expression did not vary, and she appeared to be admiring the view from the window.

Alastair snorted with distrust and returned to
The Times
.

The others severally rose and made their way out into the beautiful garden, now a little past the height of its summer loveliness.

‘You know,’ said Garde to Bertie, ‘it’s all very well to jape about it, but I’m jolly glad Dorothy
was
sleeping with the old woman last night. I knew she was going to, of course.’

‘Yes, so did I,’ said Bertie rather surprisingly.

‘Did you? Dorothy told me I was the only person who knew, apart from herself and Mrs Bradley.’

‘I overheard the first bit of your conversation, and shamelessly listened to the rest,’ Bertie confessed, grinning.

‘The devil!’ Garde grinned appreciatively. ‘So you knew where she was all the time?’

‘Yes,’ answered Bertie. Then his face grew grave. ‘But it’s a beastly business,’ he added soberly. ‘I wonder what the explanation is?’