The Haunted Lady

by Rinehart, Mary Roberts;

  “You need the air,” she said, “and I’ll be just outside.”

  She drew a sheet over the thin old body, feeling a sense of pity for it, that age had brought it neither serenity nor beauty, nor even love.

  “Sleep well,” she said gently, and going out closed the door behind her.

  It was a quarter after eleven when the doorbell rang, and Jan answered it. Immediately there were voices below, Jan’s and another, high-pitched and hysterical. It was a moment before Hilda realized that it was Eileen’s.

  “So I came here, Jan. I didn’t know where else to go. I can leave tomorrow,” she added feverishly. “I can go back home. But tonight—”

  Hilda started down the stairs. Eileen, white-faced and trembling, was in the front hall, a suitcase beside her on the floor. Jan was staring at her.

  “I can’t believe it,” she said slowly. “Why would he leave you, Eileen?”

  “He was furious because I came here the other day. He’s hardly spoken to me since.”

  “But even then—”

  “He’s gone, I tell you. He packed a bag and left. He didn’t even say good-by.”

  Jan looked bewildered. Eileen sat down on a hall chair and took off her gloves. Her hysteria was gone now. She looked stubbornly determined.

  “I can’t go to a hotel,” she said. “I have no money. Anyhow, your grandmother told me to let her know if I was in trouble. She said that the other day. You heard her, Jan.”

  Hilda inspected her. She looked sick. Her color was high, and she was breathing fast. And that was the moment when Carlton and Susie arrived. They stopped and stared at the scene before them. Susie spoke first.

  “What’s wrong, Eileen? Frank left you for another woman?”

  And then Eileen threw her bombshell.

  “If you care to know,” she said, “I think he’s somewhere with Marian.”

  Jan looked suddenly young and rather sick.

  “You know that’s a lie, Eileen,” she said, and turning went stiffly up the stairs.

  After that what? Hilda tried to sort it out in her mind. Carlton went up to consult his mother, and there were loud voices from the old lady’s room. Eileen leaned back in her chair, her eyes closed. Susie smoked, casually dropping her ashes into a vase on the hall table, and young Brooke came out of the library, felt Eileen’s pulse, and suggested that she be put to bed as soon as possible.

  “You can make other plans tomorrow, but what you need now is rest.”

  Her eyes opened.

  “That’s kind of you, whoever you are,” she said faintly. “If I could have my old room for tonight—”

  Unexpectedly Susie laughed.

  “Not tonight, darling,” she said. “Carlton sleeps there now, and Carlton sleeps alone.”

  After that Carlton came down the stairs. He looked irritated, but he was civil enough.

  “Mother thinks you’d better stay here tonight,” he said. “She suggests that you take Marian’s room. It’s ready. She doesn’t want the servants disturbed at this hour.”

  Susie had giggled, but no one else smiled.

  Then what? There had been the procession up the stairs, the doctor supporting Eileen, Carlton carrying her suitcase, Susie following with an amused smile on her face. Nothing unusual had happened then, certainly, unless one remembered Jan. She was waiting outside her mother’s room, silent but resentful. She had switched on the lights, but that was all. The bed was not turned down.

  Eileen stopped and looked at her.

  “I’m sorry, Jan,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said what I did. I was excited.”

  “That’s all right,” Jan said awkwardly, and turning abruptly went back along the hall to her room and closed the door.

  What else happened? Hilda tried to remember. Eileen unlocked her suitcase herself and got out a nightgown, but when Hilda offered to unpack for her she refused curtly.

  “I’m leaving in the morning,” she said. “Anyhow I hate anyone pawing over my things.”

  It was all over pretty quickly. Eileen settled, the doctor went back to speak to Jan. Susie went to bed, still smiling her cool smile. And going into Mrs. Fairbanks’s room Hilda found her sitting up in bed, her eyes bright with excitement.

  “So he’s left her at last!”

  “So she says.”

  “I hope it’s true. But it wouldn’t be like Frank to leave her. Now especially. Tell her I want to talk to her. I’ve got to get to the bottom of this.”

  Eileen did come, although not with any great rapidity. She sat on the side of her bed and thrust her feet into slippers, yawning widely. Then she put on a dressing-gown of Marian’s from the closet and surveyed herself in the mirror.

  “You needn’t tell her I wore this,” she said. “She’d burn it if she knew.”

  The idea seemed to amuse her. She tucked the gown around her—it was too long for her—and went into Mrs. Fairbanks’s room. The old lady’s voice was shrill.

  “Come in and shut the door,” she said. “Now what’s all this nonsense?”

  Eileen stayed for half an hour. Hilda could hear their voices, Eileen’s soft, Mrs. Fairbanks’s high and annoyed. And there was a brief silence, during which she heard the closet door creak. When Eileen came out she looked indignant. She closed the door and stood leaning against it.

  “The old devil,” she said, in a low voice. “She tried to buy me off! Look, may I have a little of that coffee? I need it.”

  “It will keep you awake.”

  “I don’t expect to sleep anyhow. Not in that room.”

  Mrs. Fairbanks was excited when Hilda went in again, but she was certainly alive. She demanded to know why Eileen had told that cock-and-bull story about Frank being with Marian, and that she had told her she must leave in the morning. Hilda got her settled with difficulty. She was not sleepy, and she turned on the radio as the light was switched off.

  “Get that woman out of the house in the morning,” she said. “Get her out, or somebody will murder her.”

  That was at midnight. Eileen was quiet, the light out in her room. Courtney Brooke was still with Jan. Susie was reading in bed, her door open, and Carlton had gone back to the library, where he was presumably settling his nerves with the usual highballs.

  At a quarter after twelve Mrs. Fairbanks turned off the radio, and soon after young Brooke, looking concerned, left Jan’s room and came cautiously forward along the hall.

  “She’s taking this very hard,” he said. “She says her father would never have left his wife, especially since she’s going to have a child. She’s afraid something has happened to him. I think I’ll stay awhile. Where is Mr. Fairbanks?”

  “He hasn’t come up yet. In the library probably.”

  He did not go at once. He looked about him, at her tray, at the screen which shielded her from the draft, her easy chair. He thrust his hands in his pockets and took a turn or two across the hall and back.

  “What about Jan’s father?” he said abruptly. “Of course I know who he is. Who doesn’t? Designed the courthouse, didn’t he? But what sort is he? Jan’s so damned loyal.”

  “I’ve only seen him for a minute or two.”

  “Still in love with his first wife?”

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” Hilda said primly.

  “Sort of fellow who’d get in a jam and jump out of a window? Or put a bullet through his head?”

  She considered that carefully.

  “I don’t think so. He had a good war record, I believe. I wouldn’t think he lacked courage.”

  “Oh, rats!” he said roughly. “It takes the hell of a nerve to kill yourself.”

  He went downstairs after that, his hands still in his pockets, his head bent in thought; a tall lanky worried young man, his hair on end as though he had been pushing his fingers through it. The picture, Hilda thought, of every intern she had ever known, but somehow likable. He reminded her of one in the hospital when she was a probationer. He had found her once in a linen closet an
d kissed her. It hadn’t meant anything, of course. It had been spring, and the windows had been open. She had slapped him.

  She drew a long breath and began to fill up her records.

  The house was quiet after that. Below she could hear the two men’s voices, faint and faraway. The radio was still at last. She looked at her watch. It was well after midnight. And then something happened which surprised and startled her.

  The hall had a chandelier which was seldom used. It was an old-fashioned affair of brass and glass pendants, and now the pendants were tinkling. She looked up at them. They were moving, striking together like small bells, and she got cautiously to her feet Someone was up there, moving stealthily about, and a moment later she had a considerable shock.

  From the foot of the stairs she saw a vague figure. It disappeared almost instantly and without a sound, and when she reached the upper hall it was empty. She fumbled for a light, but she could not find it. The doors into the guest rooms were closed as usual. The long hall to the servants’ quarters was a black tunnel, and at last she went down again, to find everything as she had left it. To her surprise she found that her knees were shaking. She sat down and poured herself a cup of coffee from the tray. One of the servants, she thought, curious about what was going on. Or maybe the house was haunted, after all. She remembered the opening and closing of the closet door, and found herself shaking again. Of all the absurd things! Maybe she needed glasses. But what about the chandelier?

  Afterward she was to time that absence of hers; to do it with the police holding a stop watch on her. Three minutes, almost to the dot. Time to drive a knife into an old woman’s thin chest, but hardly time to reach the room, commit the crime, and escape. And who could know that she would go upstairs at all? Eileen drowsy or asleep, her door closed and her light out. Susie and Jan far back along the hall, and the two men in the library below.

  Yet then or later—

  It was half past twelve when Eileen opened her door. She looked panicky.

  “I’ve got a pain,” she said. “Do you think any-thing’s wrong?”

  “What sort of pain?”

  Eileen described it, and Hilda got up.

  “The doctor’s still here,” she said. “I’ll get him.”

  Eileen, however, was not listening. She was doubled over, holding herself, and Hilda put her back to bed. She lay there, softly moaning, while Hilda went downstairs. The two men were still in the library. Carlton, a highball in his hand, was looking strained, Courtney Brooke was at the telephone. He put it down when she told him about Eileen, and got briskly to his feet.

  “I’d better look at her,” he said. “We don’t want her to abort. Not here, anyhow.”

  “No. For God’s sake, get her out of the house before that happens. Or before Marian comes back.” Carlton looked alarmed.

  Eileen was watching the door as they came in. She was a pathetic figure as she lay there in her worn nightgown, her face contorted with pain.

  “I’m sorry to be such a bother,” she said. “I suppose it’s the excitement. And my suitcase is heavy. I carried it to the bus.”

  He examined her briefly and straightened.

  “You’ll be all right. I’ll give you a hypo,” he said. “Do you mind boiling some water, Miss Adams?”

  He followed her out into the hall. Carlton had come up the stairs. He asked briefly about Eileen and then went into his room. Hilda hesitated.

  “I don’t usually leave Mrs. Fairbanks alone,” she said. “If I do I lock the door. But if you’ll watch her—”

  He grinned at her.

  “Old Cerberus will have nothing on me,” he said. “Do you think I want anything to happen to my best patient?”

  “Something did happen. Once.”

  She left him with that, his bag open on the table, his hands fumbling in it for his hypodermic case and the tube of morphia sulphate. But his lightness had gone. He looked thoughtful, even grave.

  Downstairs the house was dark, and the huge dingy kitchen eerie even when she had turned on the lights. It was a quarter to one, she saw by the kitchen clock. She was there for some time. The fire in the range was low, and it was perhaps fifteen minutes before she succeeded in boiling the water in a small aluminum pot and carried it up the stairs.

  Courtney Brooke was where she had left him. He had poured himself a cup of coffee from her Thermos jug, and was holding it But he was not drinking it. Some of the coffee had spilled into the saucer, and he was staring up at the landing on the third floor. He said nothing, however. He fixed the hypodermic and gave it to Eileen, still moaning in her bed.

  “I don’t think you’ll lose your baby,” he told her. “After all, it’s only a month or so, isn’t it? You’re pretty safe. Just get some sleep. You’ll be all right in a day or two.”

  “I can’t stay here, doctor.”

  “You’ll stay until you’re able to leave.”

  He did not leave at once. He stood in the hall, looking uncertain and uneasy, but he merely finished his coffee. He was putting down the cup when without warning Mrs. Fairbanks’s radio began to play. He started and almost dropped the cup.

  “Does she do that often, at this hour?”

  “She turns it on when she can’t sleep. I suppose she’s excited tonight.”

  “No good suggesting that it bothers the rest of the household, I suppose?”

  “None whatsoever,” she told him wryly.

  He went back into Eileen’s room before he left. She was still awake, but she said the pain was better. She thought she could sleep now. Hilda opened a window for her, the one over the porte-cochere, and tucked the bedclothes around her; Marian’s monogrammed sheets, Marian’s soft, luxurious blankets. Eileen’s hand when she touched it was icy cold.

  “I’ll leave tomorrow,” she said. “Tell them not to worry. I’ll not bother them long.”

  Outside in the hall the radio could still be heard. Courtney Brooke picked up his bag and prepared to go. He looked young and tired.

  “Tell Jan not to worry,” he said. “I’ll be on the job. But I’d give my neck to get her out of this madhouse.”

  Chapter 11

  Hilda was quite clear as to what followed. The doctor had hardly let himself out of the house when Carlton’s door banged open. He came into the hall, tying his dressing-gown around him, his hair rumpled and his face scowling.

  “Good God!” he said. “Why don’t you turn that thing off?”

  “Your mother likes it, when she can’t sleep.”

  “Well, she might let the rest of us have a chance,” he said, and pushed savagely past her.

  With the door open the noise in the hall was appalling, and he closed it all but an inch or so. He said, “Mother,” but Hilda heard no reply. The radio ceased abruptly, so that the silence was almost startling. But Carlton did not come out immediately. Later she was to be queried about that.

  “How long did he stay? A minute? Two minutes?”

  “Not more than two, at the most.”

  “But more than long enough to go around the bed and shut off the radio?”

  She was miserably uncomfortable.

  “I don’t know. I heard something creak, and I thought he had opened the door to one of the closets. His mother’s safe was in it. The door always creaked.”

  They timed her on that, too. One of the men walked into the room, turned the radio switch and came back.

  “Longer than that?”

  “Yes. I’m afraid—I think it was. I know I had time to uncork the Thermos jug and pour some coffee, and I had taken a sip or two before he came out.”

  “How did he look?”

  “I didn’t really look at him. He closed the door and said his mother was asleep. He must have gone to sleep himself soon after. I could hear him snoring.”

  It had commenced to rain after Carlton went back to his room, a summer storm, with rolling thunder and sharp lightning. The rain was heavy. It poured down in solid sheets, and with it came gusts of wind whi
ch set the trees outside into violent motion. Somewhere, too, something was banging. Not a door. The sound was too light for that. Hilda decided to look for it and then abandoned the idea.

  She ate her supper mechanically. The radio was still silent, and her watch said two o’clock when, having finished, she carried her tray to the back stairs landing to be picked up in the morning.

  The sound was still going on when she went back to her post. It would stop just long enough for her to hope that it was over. Then with a fresh gust of wind it would start again.

  She was listening for it when there was a crash from the back stairs, followed by a startled “Damnation” in what was unmistakably a feminine voice. When she reached the landing she opened the door to find Susie standing there, a Susie with soaking hair and in a wet raincoat over a bedraggled nightdress. She was standing on one foot and anxiously examining the other.

  “Why the hell did you leave that thing there?” she demanded furiously. “I’ve damned near cut a toe off.”

  In the light from the front hall Hilda grimly surveyed her, from her sodden blond hair to her slippers, one of which she held in her hands. One of her toes was bleeding, and a cup lay shattered on the tray.

  “Better let me put some iodine on that,” Hilda said. “Where on earth have you been?”

  “I went out to the garage. I’d left my cigarettes in the car.”

  “It seems to be a family habit,” Hilda observed dryly. “Mr. Fairbanks did that a night or two ago. When you locked him out.”

  Susie fixed a pair of sharp blue eyes on her.

  “Oh,” she said. “So Carl said that, did he?” Suddenly she giggled. “Not very original, are we?”

  She limped forward, and Hilda put her in a chair and dressed her foot, with its pink-painted toenails. But she did not go to bed at once. Nor did she produce any cigarettes. Later Hilda was to know that Susie had done a superb piece of acting that night; that she had been frightened almost out of her senses when she came racing up the stairs. Now, however, she was herself again.

  She glanced at Eileen’s door and laughed.

  “Good heavens,” she said, “when I think what would happen if Marian found her there, in her bed!”