The Spiral Staircase (13 page)

Presently she heard the footsteps again, ascending the back-stairs. This time, her nature reasserted itself in a surge of frantic curiosity. Leaping up, she was just in time to see the tail of Miss Warren’s mushroom-lace gown whisking round the bend of the landing.

Mrs. Oates did not look exactly pleasant when she opened the kitchen door in answer to Helen’s knock.

“You?” she said. “I expected to see Marlene Dietrich. What’s the idea of getting me up, just when I was off my feet?”

“I only wanted to know what Miss Warren was doing down here?” asked Helen.

“And you got me up-just for that? As if the mistress wasn’t free to go through her own kitchen without leave from you.”

“But it’s the very first time I’ve seen her down here,” insisted Helen..

“And, please, how long have you been here? Since anny-domminy?” demanded Mrs. Oates, as she slammed the door.

In a chastened mood, Helen returned to her own room and lit her spirit-lamp, in order to re-boil the coffee. She was watching the brown bubbles foam up in the saucepan, when she heard the front-door bell. Turning out the flame, she rushed upstairs, hoping to be first to let in the doctor She had a frantic fight to force the door open, for the wind seemed whirling in all directions; before she could throw it wide, Dr. Parry slipped through the aperture, and slammed it behind him. Without a word, he fastened all the bolts, and put up the chain.

There was an urgency in his manner, and also in his silence; which excited her to a pitch of fearful expectation.

“Well?” she asked breathlessly. “Why don’t you say something?”

“It’s a dirty night,” he said, taking off his dripping coat, while he looked at her with stern eyes.

“No, no,” she insisted. “Tell me—have you found out the cause of that poor girl’s death?”

“Yes,” was the grim reply. “She was murdered.”

MURDER

The news stunned Helen with such a shock of horror that she felt herself rock, while the house seemed to sway with her, in the wind. When she was stationary again, she realized that the entire family had gathered in the hall, andwas listening, with strained attention, to Dr. Parry.

“She was strangled,” he said.

“When?” asked the Professor.

“Impossible to tell within an hour or so. But I should say, roughly, about five or six o’clock.”

“Strangled,” repeated Miss Warren. “Is it-the same kind of murder as the others?”

“Definitely,” replied the doctor. “Only more ferocious. Ceridwen was a strong girl, and she put up a fight, which enraged him.” “Then”—Miss Warren’s face wavered painfully—“if she was murdered in Captain Bean’s garden, the maniac was quite close to us.”

“Closer than that,” said the doctor. “The murder was actually committed in the plantation.”

A gasp of horror sobbed from Miss Warren’s lips, while

Simone grasped Stephen’s arm. Even in the midst of her own terrible excitement, Helen noticed that Mrs. Newton was alive to the amatory possibilities of the situation, while her husband watched her with contracted eyes.

She felt herself slipping away on a back-wash of recent memories. While she stood, defenceless and stranded, staring at the stronghold of the Summit, across a bowl of empty country, she was even then in the company of Murder. All the time it was creeping nearer—unseen, unheard. She might even have passed close to It, while It hid in the undergrowth of the gulley.

But It had smelt her out-marked her down. It knew that she would have to come, and It waited for her, in the plantation, in evil mimicry of a tree.

“What a wonderful escape,” she thought.

Now that the danger was over, she could almost exult in the adventure, were it not for the reminder that the tree had not been cheated of its ultimate prey. The thought of poor Ceridwen, going light-heartedly to a horrible fate, made her feel faint.

When the mist had cleared from her eyes, it was a relief to notice that the Professor’s face showed no sign of emo tion. As he spoke in his habitual pedantic tones, she felt removed from a dark quivering landscape—split to reveal lightning glimpses of hell—and back in the comfortable interior of an English home.

“How do you establish your fact that this murder was committed in the plantation?” he asked.

“Because there were pine-needles in her clenched hands, and her clothing showed signs of having been dragged through a hedge… . Of course, it is useless to try to follow the impulses of a distressed brain; but it seems rum to have taken such an unnecessary precaution. The body could easily have lain, undiscovered, in the plantation, for many hours.”

“And it might not,” remarked the Professor. “You can depend on it, there was some basic idea behind the seeming absurdity.”

His son, who shared his dislike of their eccentric neighbor, gave a chuckle. “Bean must have had a startling homecoming,” he said. “A corpse propped up on his doorstep, to let him in.”

“He was a bit upset.” Dr. Parry spoke coldly. “It was a nasty shock for a man of his .age. Sudden death is not really amusing—least of all, to the victim.”

His dark eyes flashed angrily over the stolid faces of the young men, and Simone’s vermilion lips-parted eagerly as though to sip sensation.

“I don’t want to alarm you people,” he said. “No, that’s a lie. I do want to alarm you. Thoroughly. I want you all to realize that there is a criminal lunatic at large, who has tasted blood, and will probably lust for more. And he’s somewhere near quite close to you.”

“Will-will he try to break in here?” quavered Miss Warren.

“Don’t give him a chance. I take it for granted that the Professor will insist on everyone remaining in the house. It goes without saying that you will lock every door and window. Don’t underdo your precautions-however ridiculous they may appear.”

“I have seen to all that. Ever since the—the governess,” Miss Warren told him.

“Good. It takes a clever woman to realize danger, and her responsibilities towards her juniors. You’ll be all right. Oates, alone, could account for the chap, with one hand, if he should happen along.”

Again Helen was assailed by that odd pang of desolation as she listened to the Professor’s explanation of Oates’ absence. She felt strangely depressed, too, by the thought that Dr. Parry would soon be gone.

His practical, cheerful personality seemed to reduce even murder to its proper proportions. It was an unnatural evil, which could be guarded against by natural means—which would prevail, since the defense was so much more powerful than the attack.

He presented an uncouth figure in contrast with the other men, who were all in immaculate evening-dress, but when he caught her eye and smiled at her, she knew, instinctively, that he could inspire both affection and trust.

Some bright elusive vision quivered before her eyes, filling her with happiness and hope. She felt she was on the verge of some discovery. But before she could collect her thoughts the doctor had turned to go.

“I must push off,” he said cheerfully. “Professor. I know you understand the importance of all the men staying in tonight to protect these two girls.”

His glance included Simone, who responded with an alluring smile.

“Peter,” she said, leaning her chin on the Professor’s shoulder, “you’re not going to let the doctor go without offering him a drink.”

Before the doctor could refuse the unspoken invitation,

Helen stepped into the breach. “I’ve some coffee, downstairs,” she said. “Shall I bring some up?”

“The very thing,” remarked the doctor. “But may I comedown and dry off a bit while I mop it up?”

Helen could not resist a feeling of triumph over Simone, as Dr. Parry clattered after her, down the kitchen stairs. While Simone’s man strained at his chain, she had hers coasting in her wake.

Her sitting-room looked even more cheerful and restful when Dr. Parry sat opposite to her, gulping coffee from a huge breakfast cup.

“What are you beaming about?” he asked abruptly.

“I ought not to,” she said apologetically. “This is all so terrible. But—it is living. And I’ve done so very little of that.”

“What have you done?” he asked.

“Housework. Sometimes, with children thrown-in.”

“Yet you keep your tail up?”

“Of course. You never know what’s just round the corner.”

Dr. Parry frowned.

“Have you never heard that ‘Curiosity killed the cat’?” he asked. “I suppose, if you saw a smoking bomb, you’d feel bound to examine its fuse?”

“Not if I knew it was a bomb,” explained Helen. “But I wouldn’t know if it was, until I’d found out.”

“And must you find out?” “Yes, you must-if you’re me.”

“I give you up.” Dr. Parry groaned. “Haven’t you enough wit to realize that their’s a human tiger waiting to turn you into—what’s left of Ceridwen. If you’d seen what I’ve just seen—”

“Oh, don’t,” wailed Helen, her face suddenly pinched.

“But I want to frighten you. This sort of lunatic is usually normal in between his fits…of mania. He might be living in this house with you, and you’d accept him, just as you accept-young Rice or the Professor.”

Helen shuddered.

“Might it be a woman?” she asked.

“No, unless she was abnormally strong.”

“In any case, I should be bound to know.”

“No, that is the paralyzing part of it,” insisted the doctor. “Just imagine the horror of seeing a friendly face-like my own—suddenly change into an unfamiliar mask—with murder glaring out of its eyes?”

“Are you trying to tell me someone in this house committed all the murders?” Helen asked. “Well, I’d take on anyone here, except Oates. He would be awful, if he turned inside out. A sort of King Kong.”

Dr. Parry lost his temper.

“You’re making a joke out of it,” he said. “But what about a girl who was frightened of a poor old woman?”

Helen shrivelled, instantly, at the memory.

“I want to thank you for that,” she said. “You were a real sport… . She’s different. There’s something unnatural about her… . But I think that everyone should do all the things they shouldn’t do—and then, they won’t.”

Dr. Parry laughed as he rose reluctantly from the old creaking basket-chair.’

“It takes a doctor to disentangle that,” he said. “But I imagine you refer to moral inoculation.” “Yes,” nodded Helen. “Like being vaccinated against small-pox.”

“And would you like to have an injection of your own vaccine?” he asked. “Get drunk? Sniff snow? Have a week-end in Brighton?”

“Oh no,” objected Helen. “Of course, I didn’t mean myself. I’m always out of things.”

As Dr. Parry looked at her, the meaning in his eyes underlined his words.

“I think, before long, you’ll find yourself very much in the picture. Perhaps Welshmen are more impetuous than Englishmen. In fact, I’m ready to bet that, within six months, you’ll be Mrs. Jones, or Hughes, or—Parry.”

Helen purposely reversed the order of the names, as she smiled back at him.

“Taken,” she told him. “If I’m not Mrs. Parry, or Jones, or the other, I’ll collect off you.”

“Done,” said the doctor. “You’ll lose. But now that I’ve got outside your coffee I must go.”

“No, wait,” said Helen, arrested by a sudden memory. “I want to tell you something first.”

In a few words she gave him a skeleton outline of her adventure with the tree. There was no need to color any details, to get her effect this time; Dr. Parry’s eyes were fierce and his lips set in a rigid line, in his attempt to hide his concern.

“I take back that bit about the bomb,” he said. “Thank Heaven, you’ve still got a scrap of precious sense of danger.”

“Then you don’t think me a fool for running away?”

“I think it was probably the wisest thing you’ve done in your life.”

Helen became thoughtful.

“It’s a pity I didn’t really see him,” she remarked. “I mean, when he turned to a man. Do you think it is a local person, as he was waiting in the plantation?”

Dr. Parry shook his head.

“No. This is obviously the fifth murder in a series of connected crimes. As the first two were committed in town, it is probable that the criminal lives there. What the Police should do is to get acquainted with the time-table of some respected citizen, and find out if a handful of fringe is torn from his white silk scarf.”

“Do you mean there’s a clue?” asked Helen.

“Yes. I found a hank of it inside Ceridwen’s mouth. She must have torn at it, with her teeth, when they were struggling. She didn’t make it easy for him—or he for her… . Come with me, to let me out, and see that every bolt is shot.”

Helen obeyed, although she hated to .see him go into the streaming darkness. The dripping laurels of the drive, and the clipped evergreens on the lawn, shook in the gale, as though straining at their roots.

She banged the door, hearing the click of the spring lock with a definite sense of security. The hall seemed calm as a millpond after the howls of the wind. There was serenity in the soft glow of its lighting-comfort and warmth in the thick pile of the peacock-blue carpet.

As the hall was empty, Helen ran downstairs to her own room, where Dr. Parry’s presence still seemed to linger. But she had barely seated herself. before the fire when Mrs. Oates’ head appeared around the door.

“I’m warning you,” she said, in a hoarse whisper. “There’s something queer about that new nurse.”

SAFETY FIRST

Helen stared at Mrs. Oates, with vague misgiving. There was something unfamiliar in the woman’s appearance which eluded her: Her face, still flushed from the heat of the fire, wore its usual expression of goodnatured surliness, so that Helen was puzzled to account for the change.

“The nurse?” she repeated. “She’s rather a brute—but what’s queer about her?”

“Things,” Mrs. Oates nodded mysteriously. “I’ve noticed them, but taken no notice. They come back after, and then I wonder what they were.”

“What things?” insisted Helen.

“Little things,” was the vague reply. “I’d like a word with Oates. He could tell me.”

As her voice thickened, Helen suddenly traced the difference in her to its source. Something had gone out of her face; her lips hung loosely, so that her jaw had lost its suggestion of a bulldog grip.