The Spiral Staircase (3 page)

She was on the point of entering her room, when she noticed that a light was shining through the glass transom of the bachelor’s room. It drew her, as a magnet, to his door.

“Are you inside, Mr. Rice?” she called.

“Come and see for yourself,” invited the pupil.

“I only wanted to know if the light was being wasted.”

“Well, it’s not. Come in.”,

Helen obeyed the invitation. She was used to two kinds of behavior from men; they either overlooked her altogether, or paid her stressed attentions, in private.

Of the alternatives, she preferred to be insulted; she could always give back as good as she got, while she was braced by any kind of personal experience.

She liked Stephen Rice, because he treated her exactly as he treated other girls-with a casual frankness. He was smoking, as he pitched clothing into an open suitcase, and he made no apology for his state of undress, as his underwear satisfied his own standard of decency. Although he did not appeal to Helen, who liked a man’s face to betray some trace. of intellect, or spirit; he was generally accepted as unusually handsome, on the evidence of heavy regular features, and thick waving hair, which grew rather too low on his brow.

“Like dogs?” he asked, shaking out a confusion of ties.

“Let me,” remarked Helen, taking them from him, with kind firmness. “Of course I like dogs. I’ve looked after them.”

“Then that’s a bad mark to you. I loathe women who boss dogs. You set them showing off in Parks. Like the blasted centurion, who said come and he cometh. I always want to bite them, since the dogs are too gentlemanly to do their own job.”

“Yes, I know,“_ndded Helen, who agreed, on principle, when it was possible. “But my dogs used to boss me. They had a secret understanding to all pull at once, in different directions. The wonder is I didn’t develop into a starfish.”

Stephen shouted with laughter.

“Good for them… . Like to see something special in the way of dogs? I bought him, today, from a farmer.”

Helen looked around the untidy room..

“Where is he?” she asked. “Under the bed?”

“Is that where you sleep? Inside the bed, you cuckoo.”

“Oo. Suppose he has fleas?”

“Suppose he hasn’t? … Come, Otto.”

Stephen raised a corner of the eiderdown, and an Alsatian peeped out.

“Bit shy,” explained Stephen. “I say, what price old Miss Warren when she sees him? She won’t allow a dog inside the house.”

“Why?” asked Helen.

“Afraid of them.”

Oh, no, she can’t be. It’s the other way round. People are afraid of her, because she’s so formidable.”.

“That’s only her make-up. She’s a hollow funk. Put her in a jam, and she’d smash.” She’s got the wind up now, over this gorilla gent. By the way, are you afraid of him?”

“Of course not.’ Helen laughed. “Perhaps, I might be a bit if I was alone. But no one could feel nervous in a house full of people.”

“I don’t agree. It all depends on the people. You’ll always find a weak link. Miss Warren is one. She’d let. you down.

“But there’s safety in numbers,” persisted Helen. “He wouldn’t dare to come here… . D’you want any sewing done?” “No, thank you, my dear. The godly Mrs. Oates has kept. me sewn up. In more sense than one, by the way.… . Now, there’s a character, if you like. You can bank on her—if there’s not a. bottle about.”

“Why—does she drink?”

Stephen only laughed in reply.

“Look here, you’d better clear out,” he advised, “before Miss Warren raises hell. This is the bachelor’s room.”

“But I’m not a lady. I’m Staff,” explained Helen indig nantly. “And they’re waiting tea for you.”

“You mean, Simone is waiting. Old Newton is wolfing down the tea-cake.” Stephen pulled on his coat. “I’ll take the pup down with me. Introduce him to the family, and make us two to one, in the muffin handicap.”

“Surely you don’t call that large thing a pup,” cried Helen, as the Alsatian followed his master into the bathroom.

“He’s quite young, really.” Stephen’s voice was positively tender. “I love dogs-and hate women. Reason. Remind me to tell you the story of my life.”

Helen felt slightly forlorn when his whistle died away in the distance. She knew she would miss the pupil. But a second glance around the untidy room reminded her that his absence would mean less work, so she resolved to leave all regret to Simone.

Her tea was calling her downstairs to the kitchen. Not stopping to clear away any litter, she hurried to her own room, and took off her coat, and shoes. As the order for closed shutters only included the basement, ground-floor and first-floor, her own casement banged open to the wind.

In spite of her haste, she could not resist the luxury of lingering there, looking out over the valley, just to enjoy the sense of contrast. She could see only a spongy blackness. It seemed to stir and creep before the breath of the breeze. Not a gleam shone from any window of the sparsely sprinkled cottages.

“I wonder where I stood, looking across at the Summit,” she wondered. “It seemed such a. long way off, then. And now, I’m inside, safe.”.

She was visited by no prescience to warn her that—since her return—there had been certain trivial incidents which were the first cracks in the walls of her fortress. Once they were started, nothing could stop the process’ of disintegration; and each future development would act as a wedge, to force the fissures into ever-widening breaches, letting in the night.

A FIRESIDE STORY

Helen went down to the kitchen, by the back way-a spiral of steep steps, broken up into flights at each floor, by a small landing, where a door connected it with the main staircase. It was covered with the original linoleum–brown-and-biscuit, and small—patterned-like an old-fashioned tile, but still in excellent condition.

To Helen, this dingy back way down represented the essence of romance. It was a delicate filament connecting her with the glamor of the past, and revived memories of spacious and leisured days.

She had been brought up in a tiny mansion-flat, with no room to keep a maid, a hat-box, or a cat. The perambulator was housed in the bathroom, and the larder was thoughtfully built in the only spare recess, which happened to be next to the stove.

When Helen reached the basement-hall, she could hear the welcome rattle of china and see the glow of the kitchen fire through the frosted glass panels of the door. Mrs. Oates was drinking tea from her saucer as she made herself another piece of toast.”

She was a tall, strapping woman, broad-shouldered and muscular, with an ugly, underhung face. She did not wear uniform, and her afternoon skirt was protected by an apron of red and black Welsh flannel.

“I heard you running down all them steep steps,” she said. “You’re free to use the front.”

“Yes I know” replied Helen. “But back-stairs remind me of my granny’s house. The servants and the children were never allowed to go up the front way, because of wearing out the carpet.”.

“Go on,” remarked Mrs. Oates politely.

“Yes, indeed, and it was the same with the jam. Pots and pots of it, but the strawberry and raspberry were only for the elders. All the children had to eat was rhubarb, or ginger-and-marrow… . How cruel we grown-ups were then.”

“Not you. You should say ‘them grown-ups.’”

“‘Them grown-ups,’” repeated Helen meekly, accepting the correction. “I’ve come to invite myself to tea, as your husband is away.”

“And you’re welcome.” Mrs. Oates rose to get down fresh china from the Welsh dresser. “I see as how you know the tricks of the trade. You want a brown pot to draw the flavor from the leaves. I’ll get out the drawingroom cake for you.”

“Shop-cake? Not on your life. I want kitchen doughcake… . You don’t know how all this appeals to me, Mrs. Oates. I was thinking of this, about an hour ago, in very different circumstances.”

She looked around her with appreciative eyes. The kitchen was a huge room, with an uneven floor, and corners where shadows collected. There was no white enamel, no glass-fronted cabinet, no refrigerator; yet the shabby hearth-rug and broken basket-chairs looked homely and comfortable in the glow from the range.

“What an enormous cavern,” said Helen. “It must make a lot of work for you and your husband.”

“Oh, it don’t worry Oates.” Mrs. Oates’ voice was bitter.

“All the more places for him to muck up, and me to cleanup after him.”’

“It looks fine. All the same, Miss Warren would have a fit if she saw there were no shutters.”

As she spoke, Helen glanced at the small windows, sethigh up in the walls. They were on a level with the garden, and through the mud-speckled glass, she could see a faint stir of darkness, as the bushes moved in the wind.

“It’s only just turned dark,” said Mrs. Oates. “They can wait till I’ve finished my tea.” “But don’t you feel nervous, down here all by yourself?”

“D’you mean him?” Mrs. Oates’ voice was scornful.

“No, miss I’ve seen too many work-shy men to be scared of anything in trousers. If he tried any of his funny business on me, I’d soon sock him in the jaw.”

“But there is a murderer,” Helen reminded her.

“He’s not likely to trouble us. It’s like the Irish Sweep; someone wins it, but it’s never you and never me.”

They were consoling words and made Helen feel safe and comfortable as she crunched her toast. The grandfather clock ticked pleasantly and the ginger cat purred on the best patch of rug.

Suddenly she felt in the mood for a thrill.

“I wish you would tell me about the murders,” she said. Mrs. Oates stared at her in surprise.

“Why, they was in all the newspapers,” she said. “Can’t you read?”

“I naturally keep up with all the important things,” Helen explained. “But I’ve never been interested in crime. Only; when it’s a local murder, it seems slack to know nothing about it.”

“That’s right,” agreed Mrs. Oates, as she relaxed to gossip. “Well, the first girl was murdered in town. She did a dancing-turn, with no clothes on, at one of the Halls, but she was out of a job. She was in a public, and had one over the eight. They seen her go out of the bar, just before time. When the rest come out, she was lying in the gutter, dead. Her face was as black as that bit of coal.”

Helen shuddered. “The second murder was committed in the town, too, wasn’t it?” she asked. “Yes. She was a housemaid, poor thing. It was her evening out, and when her master came out into the garden, to give the dog its run, he found her all doubled up, on the drive, choked, like the other. And no one heard a whisper, though it was quite close to the drawingroom windows. So she must have been took by surprise.”

“I know,” nodded Helen. “There were shrubs on the lawn, that looked like people. And suddenly, a shrub leaped on her.” Mrs Oates stared at her, and then began to count on her fingers.

“Where was I? Let me see. One, two, three. Yes, the third was in a public-house, and it put everyone in a proper scare, because he’d come out into the country. The young lady in the bar had just popped into the kitchen, to swill a few glasses under the tap, and they found her there, two minutes after, choked with her own tea-cloth. There was people in the bar. But no one heard a sound. He must have crept in through the back-door, and jumped on her form behind.”

Helen listed with a sense of unreality. She told herself that these things had never really happened. And yet they toned in too well with the dam darkness of the valley, where trees crept up to windows, until it was possible to imagine confused faces peering down into the kitchen. Suddenly she felt sated with secondary horrors.

“Don’t tell my any more,” she implored.

But Mrs Oates was wound up to a finish.

“The last,” she said, “was five miles from here, as the crow flies. A pure young girl, about your own age. She was a nursery governess in some big family, but she was home for her holiday and she was going to a dance. She was up in her bedroom, and drawing her beautiful party-frock over head, when he fined the job for her. Twisted the lovely satin frock all round her neck, as it ate right into her throat, and wrapped it all over her face, so that she never saw another mortal thing on earth. Looking at herself in the glass, she was, and that was her last sight, which shows these beauty competitions don’t get you far.”

Helen did her best to resist the surge of her imagination, by picking on the weak spots in the tale.

“If she was looking at herself in the glass, she’d see him too, and be warned. And if her dress was over her head how could she see herself? Besides her arms would protect her throat.”

All the same, she could not help making a mental picture of the scene. Because her own possession were so few, perhaps, she had a keen sense of property, and always exercised a proprietary right over her room, even if someone else paid the rent.

She imagined that the murdered governess occupied a bedroom much like her own at the Summit-brightly-lit and well-furnished. It was cluttered with girlish treasures, symbolic of the cross-roads—childish relics and womanhood’s trophies, of restaurant souvenirs. Hockeysticks jostled with futuristic, long-bodied dolls; photographs of school-groups stood beside the latest boy. Powder, vanishing-cream-and the distorted satin shape on the carpet.

“How did he get in?” Helen asked, desperately anxious to prove that this, horror could not be true.

“Quite easy,” Mrs Oates told her. “He climbed up the front porch, just under her bedroom window.”

“But how could he tell she would be there alone?”

“Ah, but he’s a luny, and they know everything. He’s after girls. Believe me, or believe me not, if there was a girl anywhere about, he’d smell her out.”

Helen glanced apprehensively at the window. She could barely distinguish glistening twigs tossing amidst dim undergrowth.

“Have you locked the, back door?” she asked.

“I locked it hours ago. I always do when Oates is away.”

“Isn’t he rather late getting back?”

“Nothing to make a song about.” Mrs. Oates glanced at the clock, which told her its customary lie. “The rain will turn them steep lanes to glue, and the car’s that old, Oates says he has to get out and carry it up the hills.”