The Longer Bodies (6 page)

Suddenly the candle gave up the unequal contest and went out. At the same moment, in the enveloping darkness immediately behind Priscilla, someone coughed.

Priscilla shut the window with trembling hands and swung round.

‘Who—who's there?' she called. Her own high-pitched voice surprised her.

There was no answer or sound of any kind.

Priscilla suddenly realized that she was looking straight at the luminous dial of an alarm clock which stood on top of a small cupboard on the landing opposite her bedroom door.

The door was open, then. Somebody had come in!

Priscilla gave a wild glance round the darkened room. A feeling of panic came over her. With shaking hand she relighted the candle and by its light gathered up the things she required for the night. Go to the window she would not. Stay by herself she could not.

‘I'm sorry to be a nuisance to you,' she observed, walking into Celia's bedroom, armed with nightdress, dressing gown, and brush and comb, ‘but I'm not going to sleep alone.'

Celia looked round in surprise. She finished dabbing night-cream on to her face and then smiled happily.

‘Three cheers for the company,' she announced.

‘Before we go to bed I propose we lock the door,' said Priscilla. ‘I'd feel ever so much safer. I don't want to frighten you, but someone came into my room just now in a sort of queer way—I can't explain it quite—and I
know
I saw Great-aunt's bathchair careering round the sports field at twenty miles an hour.'

Celia giggled, unimpressed, and, bending down and groping under the large four-poster bed, she produced the leg of a chair. It was made of solid mahogany, was beautifully turned and polished, and made a weighty, well-balanced weapon. She grasped it in both hands and wagged it playfully at Priscilla.

‘Anybody who comes in here will wish he hadn't,' she observed with spirit. ‘I vote we fix a notice on the door: Visitors Enter at Their Own Risk. What about it?'

Priscilla laughed.

‘I know you think I'm an idiot,' she said, ‘but I don't care. And I've brought a box of chocolates, so you needn't say you don't want me, because I've made up my mind to stay.'

Half an hour later Celia was still awake. A vision came to her of Great-aunt Puddequet taking the air in the bathchair round the cinder track, and she began to chuckle softly. An insane desire to go and see whether she was still at it took hold of her. She slid out of bed.

The moon was full now. The sky was clear. Every object in the room was clearly to be seen.

‘Lovely night for a record-breaking run,' thought the sister of a champion cyclist, giggling to herself.

She crept to the door and turned the key. Priscilla stirred in her sleep, responsive to the slight sound of the moving lock, but she did not wake. Celia took her dressing gown off a chair, and slipped out of the room. The thick carpets everywhere gave grateful warmth to her bare feet. She passed up the long passage to Priscilla's room and peeped in at the open door.

A figure was bending over the bed.

Celia Brown-Jenkins drew in her breath sharply. Then she said, very distinctly:

‘Hands up!'

The figure swung round to face the sound of her voice.

‘Shut up, you little idiot,' he hissed.

‘Oh, Clive, it's you!' said Celia helplessly. ‘Whatever are you doing?'

Clive stepped to the door and laid his hand on her arm.

‘Get back to bed,' he said quietly. ‘There's something funny going on, and I'm out to know what it is. Whose room is this?'

‘It's Priscilla's. But she's in my room now,' said Celia. ‘Clive, go to bed.'

Clive drew her on to the landing and softly closed the door of Priscilla's room.

‘I can't get back to my hut tonight,' he whispered. ‘Door's locked between the sunk garden and the sports field. And the kitchen regions are all locked up too. I should make an awful row getting out. I shall go down to the dining room and sleep on the settee.'

‘I'll give you an eiderdown,' whispered Celia. ‘Come with me.'

She led the way to her room, went in, and immediately returned with the eiderdown, which she thrust into his arms.

‘Good night,' she whispered. ‘I wish I knew what you mean. What's queer about the house tonight?'

‘It's all right,' muttered Clive. ‘Tell you more in the morning. Good night. Keep your door locked.'

He turned and walked away. Celia stood at her bedroom door listening intently. Suddenly she heard a cry and a crash.

‘Silly ass,' she thought, running towards the head of the stairs. ‘He's tripped on the corner of the eiderdown and fallen downstairs.'

Candles and electric torches soon lighted up the scene. They issued from every bedroom door except that of Great-aunt Puddequet. Priscilla, awakened by the noise and finding Celia gone, came running out to the head of the stairs.

Clive lay at the foot of them. He was completely entangled in a thick and handsome eiderdown quilt of a rich shade of orange. It had broken his fall. Save for a bump on the head and a bruised shin, he was none the worse. He had a strange tale to tell. As he had trodden on the first stair to descend to the hall, someone had given him a hearty push in the small of the back. Burdened with the eiderdown quilt, he had been unable to offer any resistance to the unexpected pressure from behind, and had rolled from top to bottom of the staircase.

‘It's all very well for you fellows to look like that,' he concluded, when he had told the tale to the other athletes in the gymnasium before breakfast next morning, ‘but some very funny things went on in the house last night. To begin with, somebody frightened Priscilla out of her room. I stayed in the library reading until after half-past twelve last night. I'd forgotten that the gate between the sunk garden and the sports ground is locked at half-past eleven, so that I couldn't get back to my hut without a lot of trouble, so I let myself out by the front door (which of course I had to unbolt first) and shut it behind me. It was not until I had walked down the steps that I remembered about the gate. Still, it struck me I could probably climb over, but, just as I got to the bottom of the steps and was making my way to the gate, I was just in time to see a jolly queer bit of business. Somebody came out of the front door. Couldn't see me because of the darkness of the sunk garden under the shadow of the wall, but I could spot him because he showed up like Indian ink in the moonlight against the white wall of the house. He walked along the terrace and began coming down the steps. All at once, just as I was going to hail him, for of course I recognized his walk, something struck me as being rather queer. For a second I couldn't quite work out what was wrong. Then I knew. The chap was coming down those stone steps without a sound.

‘He stopped when he was about halfway down and turned round. In the bedroom immediately above the steps a candle was burning. I saw his arm go up and I heard the crack of a stone hitting a window. No sooner had he flung the stone than he bolted up the steps again as fast as ever he could go. At the same instant the window opened and a girl's voice called out:

‘“Who's there?”

‘At the same minute, or pretty nearly so, the candle went out. Too much draught, I suppose. Well, I thought it was a funny thing to do, to go heaving bricks at girls' bedroom windows at about one o'clock in the morning and scaring them to death, but, still, I didn't see what I could do except chase the fellow and point out what a poor sort of fool I thought he was. So I was just going to hop it up the steps when I'm blowed if there wasn't a sound of wheels on the cinder track just outside the garden door where I was standing, and, do you know, it sounded for all the world like the old lady's bathchair doing a record sprint round the ground. Couldn't have been, I suppose, but it gave me quite a jar.

‘Anyway, I took to the steps and mounted into the house. Opened the door with my latchkey, of course. Luckily the other fellow hadn't shot the bolts. Couldn't find him, though. Tried all the downstairs rooms. Searched quietly but well for about half an hour. Quite a sporting way of getting through a dull night. By rotten luck my torch gave out then, but, as it did so, I passed an open bedroom door. Thinking my bird might possibly have gone to ground in a spare bedroom, I toddled in. The moonlight was lovely. I soon found that the room was empty. I stepped to the window, and was rather surprised to find that this was the very room the lout must have aimed the brick at. The girl occupant, however, had obviously tazzed off. I stepped up to the bed to take a cautious squint and find out whether this really was so, when my young sister at the door nearly frightened me to death by suddenly yelling, “Hands up!” Though I say it, that kid's got sand. It isn't every girl who'd have yelled “Hands up!” at a fellow she had every reason to believe was a burglar or something. It seems the other girl was Priscilla, and she had legged it into Celia's room for the rest of the night. Then Celia gave me an eiderdown so that I could camp out on the dining-room settee, and, as I say, I'm blowed if someone didn't jolly well shove me down the stairs. I suppose it was the stone-throwing effort who did it, but I can't think where he was in hiding.'

‘But who was the chap?' asked Malpas Yeomond. ‘You said you recognized him.'

‘Yes, so I did. It was that blighter Kost, of course. I'd know that walk of his anywhere.'

‘Kost?' repeated Francis Yeomond in surprise.

‘Impossible,' said Richard Cowes firmly, biting the head off a young spring onion.

‘Shouldn't think it could be Kost,' said Malpas. ‘You see, he's never up at the house. Sleeps in his own hut. No reason for him to be up at the house. Besides, the idea of Kost playing foolish tricks like throwing stones at bedroom windows and shoving people down the stairs doesn't fit in with what we know of him. I don't care for the man, I must say, but he isn't that sort of fool.'

‘Well,' said Clive deliberately, ‘I may be wrong. It was night. I didn't see his face. He came out of the house, and went back into it. But it was Kost's walk and run to the life. I'd swear to it anywhere. Where's your young brother, by the way?'

‘Gone for a swim,' replied Malpas. ‘Too jolly cold for me. In fact, this whole place about does me in. I'm tired of making a fool of myself. Championship class! We shall never be anywhere near the championship class in these field events. Honestly, I'm wondering whether I won't tell Aunt that I'm sick of it, and push off home tomorrow. I mean, we've all given the thing a trial, haven't we? And we're none of us any good. Besides'—he waved his arm towards the southern end of the sports ground and at the horizon beyond—‘I ask you! Did you ever see such a hagridden hell of desolation in all your life? I never did. What do you say, Frank?'

‘Term begins in a week's time,' said Francis Yeomond, dancing up and down on his toes and tying his sweater more closely about his neck, for the morning air was golden, but inclined to be cold.

‘Personally,' said Richard Cowes, ‘I find myself longing for a real bed once more.'

‘And H., I know, is fed up with it here,' said Malpas. He looked expectantly at Clive Brown-Jenkins. ‘So how do we go?' he asked.

Clive Brown-Jenkins eyed him very deliberately.

‘I take it, you mean that because you chaps don't stand an earthly chance of getting a place in the next international athletics team, you want me to give up my chance of collecting the old lady's money to keep you company,' he said. ‘Well, you can take it that I've no intention of standing down. If you want to chuck up the sponge, do it. I'm staying here.'

He set his obstinate jaw.

Francis grinned.

‘The old girl ought to be in a home,' he said. ‘The whole thing's a lot of rot. Still, if Brown-Jenkins is going to stick it out, so am I. Although if that fellow Kost doesn't alter the tone of his remarks, the next jump I make is going to be on his fat face. The man's a swine. I mean to say, one has sat in a boat and endured a certain number of quietly insulting epithets, but the man Kost is offensive. Still, if we're here for the duration'—he made a gesture of resignation—‘we're here.'

Richard Cowes, who was now consuming a lengthy stick of rhubarb, waved the twelve inches of it which remained with a sweeping gesture.

‘For my own part,' he said, ‘I agree with Cousin Brown.' He turned to Francis Yeomond. ‘I confess, too, that at present, every time I attempt to put this weight I am told, unkindly, by the person surnamed Kost, that I am putting it at the wrong angle or with the wrong hand or on the wrong wormcast. However,' he bit a succulent two inches off the stick of rhubarb and chewed them defiantly, ‘the brave man faces scorn and calumny with a light heart and an undaunted demeanour. Besides, my sister's coming down here any day now, so I must stick it out until then.'

Malpas Yeomond looked at first one and then another of them thoughtfully. At last he said with bitter emphasis, ‘Any of you ever heard of a play called
Wurzel-Flummery
?'

‘Don't be harsh, Yeomond, my dear fellow,' said Richard Cowes soothingly. ‘What about a little breakfast? The laws of the S.P.P.I. demand that I shall be fed.'

‘
I TELL YOU
for the ninth time,' said Priscilla heatedly, ‘that a man walked into my room at about one o'clock this morning and distinctly coughed.'

Her brothers hooted her down.

‘And I tell you for the nineteenth time,' said Clive, helping himself liberally to the marmalade, ‘that just as I was coming downstairs at about one-thirty this morning, some blighter put both hands into the small of my back and shoved me a mighty good shove. I bounced off every stair separately. Stand by my yarn, Priscilla, and I stand by yours,' he concluded handsomely.