The Trouble-Makers (19 page)

“Curfew—curse you!” he commented slowly: and surely no comedian, ever, anywhere, has had so feeble a pun greeted with such riotous applause. Relief, surprise, excitement, a new sense of rare, unaccustomed unity were all released in the shrieks and screams of laughter which now filled the kitchen. Tears of laughter ran down the girls’ faces: Clare’s elbow went into her tea-cup unnoticed, and Stephen looked round in understandable bewilderment at the success of his inane remark. Bewilderment, but evidently not displeasure; for as soon as the noise abated enough for him to be heard, he said it again.

K
ATHARINE KNEW THAT
she was happy because she was polishing the little oak table in the sitting-room for the first time in weeks. The outcome of the Curfew affair this morning had been so great a surprise—even a shock—that at first neither triumph nor happiness had registered on her mind at all: only total astonishment. Astonishment less, she now realised, at Stephen’s favourable response to the unprecedented
situation
, than at her own dare-devil courage in initiating it. I didn’t know I had it in me! she thought with awe, and with trepidation. And—yes—with happiness.

Because you didn’t polish little oak tables first thing in the morning unless you were happy. Nor did you go out into the damp, wintry garden straight after breakfast to pick the last ragged chrysanthemums, your heart beating in anticipation of seeing their dim colours reflected on the newly shining wood. No. When you were anything less than happy, you did the absolutely essential tasks first: the washing up, the bed-making, the emptying of rubbish. “I’ll do the polishing and fill the vases when I’ve finished everything else,” you said: and of course you never had finished everything else. Nobody had, ever. The beautiful, the inessential, must be given priority if it was to exist at all.

Katharine gave a final stiff rubbing to the little table, set the vase in the centre of it, and stepped back. She gazed with pride, with wonder, and with a sort of trepidation at the massed, heavy-headed flowers, their muted colours touched into radiance by the still, wintry sunshine. The mauves, the pinks, the fading purples were caught by the newly polished wood and reflected back like jewels; and Katharine was suddenly reminded of Esmé’s loving, laughed-at canvas of purple pansies.

But already the shifting winter sunshine was moving on;
soon it would leave the flowers in shadow. Katharine was aware of a vast, precarious poignancy in which she seemed to be sharing for the very first time—right now, as she stood here with the polishing rag still in her hand, and the open, half-used tin of polish balanced injudiciously on the arm of the sofa behind her.

And now, before she could pin down or analyse the fleeting mood, the telephone began to ring. She left the shining newly cherished corner of the sitting-room, and went out into the still unswept hall.

“Katharine,” came Mary’s voice, small and tinkling, as if she was speaking from very far away. “Could you—do you think you could—well—come in for a minute? As quickly as you can?”

“Well, all right,” said Katharine, recognising instantly, and with compunction, the grudging quality of her response. She was aware that it mirrored a shockingly self-centred and unreasonable annoyance that Mary should still be unhappy early in the morning, just when Katharine was busy. One’s friends should only be in trouble in the evenings, or sometimes at week-ends.

“What is it, Mary?” she amended, trying to sound kinder, more interested: trying to force herself back, by an effort of will, into the state of total involvement in Mary’s troubles, of real, desperate anxiety on Mary’s behalf, in which she had been immersed last night. Katharine could recall clearly how frightened she had felt then; yet now, in the busy morning light, the whole thing seemed trivial as a dream. She glanced at the clock as if for support: and the clock, ticking vigorously onwards towards five past nine, seemed to be entirely on her side. How could anyone be frightened of anything at five minutes past nine in the morning? Beds still unmade, the washing-up still to do, the gas man expected any minute to see to the Ascot—surely these things should be insulating Mary, too, from fear?

“What is it, Mary?” she repeated patiently. “What’s the matter? What’s happened?”

Mary’s voice had grown even fainter now, so thin and shrill it sounded down the wire, like a bird chirrupping.

“He’s coming!” came the weak, whistling words out of the earpiece. “The dark man in the raincoat. He’s just phoned to say he’s coming! Oh, Katharine, come quickly! Quickly, before he gets here!”

It is true that Katharine delayed long enough to turn out the saucepan of boiling stock, and to pin a note on the door for the gas man: but wouldn’t any other housewife have done the same? And the delay couldn’t have been more than a minute, she was to assure herself afterwards. Less than a minute in fact. Why, it was pratically no time at all before she was running down the Prescotts’ side passage, and pushing at their back door that always jammed.

But this time it was more than jammed. Katharine felt the resistance of the bolts at top and bottom, and now, for the first time since she woke up this morning, she began once more to feel the reality of last night’s alarm. Trivial as a dream, she had thought it, not more than five minutes ago. But a dream is only trivial after one has woken up; and as she struggled with the resistant door, Katharine felt stealing upon her the conviction that in this locked, silent house there had been no awakening. Here the dream was still going on … perhaps even now sliding into nightmare…. Wildly, as though trying to rouse the house itself from coma, Katharine beat upon the door with her fists, her feet, and finally with a milk bottle snatched from the sill beside her.

At that there was a slight stir within—a swift, pattering run—the grinding bolts scraped back, and Mary, wide-eyed and trembling, stood before her.

“
Katharine
!”
she hissed in fury, clutching her friend by the arm. “How
could
you make such a noise? He’ll hear you—he may be here already! Don’t you understand? He may be
here
!”
She dragged Katharine into the little, stone-floored scullery, and swiftly closed and rebolted the door behind her.

“You’re so
stupid,
Katharine!” she chided; but there was a note of relief now in her harsh whisper as she pushed the last
bolt home. “Don’t you realise he might have been just near you, hiding, ready to rush in when I opened the door? He’s prowling about somewhere … somewhere near. I know he is.”

“Then why don’t you ring the police?” asked Katharine, a little hesitantly: because surely the whole thing must really be Mary’s imagination. “I mean, if you really think——”

But Mary interrupted, clutching her arm.

“Listen, Katharine,” she said—no longer in a whisper, but low and firm, and her face suddenly looked strangely composed “I know you’re going to think it’s all nonsense—and there’s not time to try and convince you—but will you, all the same, do something to help me? Will you, Katharine? Just one thing? It won’t take more than a few minutes.”

“Well, of course I will,” said Katharine heartily—and in her relief at Mary’s new decisiveness of manner she gave no thought to what sort of thing it might be that she was promising to undertake.

And in fact it turned out to be the simplest thing in the world.

“Just stand here,” Mary instructed her, leading Katharine into the narrow hall. “Stand here for a few minutes, where you can see all the doors, and make sure that no one—absolutely
no
one
—goes in or out of Alan’s study in the next five minutes. Will you do that? Just while I go out and look round the garden, and in the shed, just to make sure? …”

“Well, all right,” agreed Katharine. “But you don’t really expect, do you, that …?” But Mary had already dragged a coat at random from the pegs—Stephen’s old coat, Katharine noticed—flung it round her shoulders, and was off into the scullery once more, where Katharine could hear her drawing back the bolts. For a moment a draught of wild damp air swirled round Katharine’s feet; then the outer door must have been closed again, for the draught ceased, and Katharine was alone.

It was rather dark in the hall, lit only by a square of frosted glass above the front door, and by the dregs of light from an
upstairs window beyond the turn of the stairs. It was quiet, too, with a strange enveloping quietness of extraordinary power; so powerful indeed, that it seemed able to keep at bay the bustle of the morning; to drown by its own strength the tapping of busy footsteps on the pavement outside, the
grinding
diminuendo of the cars as they slowed at the corner.

Five minutes, Mary had said, and five minutes is a very long time to stand still, doing absolutely nothing. Absorbed now into the waiting silence of the house, Katharine did not care to walk about, or yawn, or lean with a rustle and scrape of her nylon overall against the bannisters. So she stood, silent and self-conscious, in a state of nebulous expectancy which grew and grew until she found herself alert, and trembling, and watching each closed door with straining eyes.

And within the five minutes Mary returned. So white and shaken did she look that for a moment Katharine stared in total credulity. The intruder must be here at last.

“No—no. I haven’t found him,” Mary whispered in answer to Katharine’s urgent query. “And I’ve locked the door again. But—Katharine—I think it’s too late. I think he’s somewhere in the house already!”

“But he can’t be. I’ve been standing here watching the whole time,” objected Katharine; but Mary gestured her to silence.

“No—I mean
before
,”
she whispered. “Before you ever got here. Oh, Katharine, why didn’t you come immediately when I phoned? Then he could never have got in. But come with me now, anyway. Let’s look in every room….”

How it took Katharine back to that other time when she had crept round this house, looking into every room. It had been evening then, and dark, whereas now it was morning, with the white winter light falling clear and still across a rumpled blanket here, a stretch of dusty linoleum there. Then, she had had Stella for company—tactless, and full of ghoulish but somehow reassuring curiosity. Now it was Mary who moved at her side, ghostlike—so white, so silent, and—
somehow
—so devoid of curiosity. Almost as if she already knew.

Knew what? Katharine could not begin to guess: and yet,
when they came to Alan’s study, it was exactly as it had been three weeks before, when she and Stella had come to the end of their search in this same room. Once again Katharine had the calm, unsurprised feeling that these smears of blood were just what she had been expecting. And this time, there, in the midst of them, lay Alan, face downward on the floor. She stood there, perfectly unmoved, unable to think or feel anything at all.

But not so Mary. With a wild, despairing shriek, she flung herself across the room towards her husband’s motionless body.

“He’s killed him!” she screamed. “I knew it! I knew it! We’re too late!” Oh, Katharine, why were you so slow? I begged you—I besought you—to come at once, and you didn’t! It was too late!” She fell to frantic sobbing, which forced Katharine to rouse herself from her stunned emptiness of spirit.

“I’ll ring a doctor——” she began helplessly, and Mary, in the midst of her sobbing, turned to her thankfully.

“Yes, yes, Katharine,” she cried. “Do that. And the police. Ring them too, won’t you, Katharine?
Quickly
!
” and
Katharine
rushed out into the hall to obey.

“They’ll be here in ten minutes,” she turned to call to Mary as she laid the receiver down; but Mary was no longer in the study, but right beside her.

“Quick, Katharine,” she whispered hoarsely. “Up to my room—we can lock ourselves in there. He’s heard you phoning and he’s coming!”

She turned and raced headlong up the stairs, Katharine following in a daze of confusion and fear. They darted into Mary’s bedroom, and Mary swiftly turned the key in the lock, pocketed it, and turned round panting.

“There! We’re all right now,” she gasped; and then leaned towards the door, head on one side, listening.

“He’s coming!” she whispered very softly. “Can’t you hear him, Katharine? Can’t you …?” her voice quivered to a stop; the listening look became more intent.

“But he can’t get in; we’re all right,” pointed out Katharine, reiterating Mary’s own words. “Besides, the police will be here in a very few minutes now….”

“So they will,” rejoined Mary stiffly, her lips scarcely moving. “It’ll be all right, won’t it, Katharine? They’ll be here before he can get in, won’t they? …
Won’t
they Katharine?
Oh
! Listen! Katharine listen! Can’t you hear his footsteps …?”

Katharine bent to the door crack, but could hear no sound but Mary’s quick breath and the thudding of her heart.

“He’s after you, Katharine,” Mary whispered again, straightening up. “He’s after you because he heard you phoning. He’s trying to get you before the police arrive … but he won’t! He won’t! Look, I’ve foiled him!”

With a gay laugh of triumph, Mary whipped from the pocket of the raincoat, which she was still wearing, a long, sharp-bladed carving knife, and brandished it in triumph.

“Look I’ve taken it! He won’t be able to find it now, he’ll waste all his time looking for it, and by that time the police will be here. Won’t they, Katharine?
Won’t
they?”

The last words were spoken in desperate urgency: and as Katharine stood there, watching Mary with the raincoat clutched about her, and with the terror growing in her big, bright eyes, she knew suddenly that everything she had guessed last night was true. She, Katharine, with the help of Mrs Forsyth, of Stella, even of Auntie Pen herself—yes, all of them together had caused the Dark Man in the Raincoat to come alive: and now, today, he had come into his twisted
inheritance
.

Behind the great, frightened eyes staring into hers,
Katharine
saw a strange purpose growing: and it was as if a light had been switched on, blazing into Mary’s soul, into the shadows where all this time the Dark Man had been maturing—with Katharine’s eager co-operation, and with that of all the neighbours. It was Katharine who had forced Mary at first to accept this alien growth, and then all of them together had helped her to rear it. Yes, like a dedicated team of midwives,
welfare workers, teachers, they had helped Mary to raise this monstrous thing, to bring it to maturity. Katharine could see now, in this moment, that as the Dark Man grew in strength, so did Mary’s fear of her husband. Her initial fear of what Alan might do to her had merged imperceptibly into a fear of what she might do to him; this it was that had made her afraid to embark with him on that lonely walk from the station when she knew she had a pair of sharp scissors in her bag; this that made her rush round to Stella’s in the small hours rather than spend a night alone in the house with him. And now, this morning, she had not dared to stay alone with him at all, after Auntie Pen and Angela had gone. “The dark man in the raincoat has phoned,” she had said; and even as she spoke it had become true: he had.