by June Wright
The light in the tower continued to go on and off.
III
I made a quick decision. I broke away from Mrs Mulqueen and hurried back to the Hall. I had to know who was in the tower. The need for satisfaction was so urgent that I ignored the probable resurgence of fear I had thought to leave behind me forever. Someone other than Elizabeth Mulqueen was in the tower and I had to know who it was.
I had no exact idea of the approach to the tower, but made for the top floor. I climbed the stairs breathlessly, pulling myself up by the banisters. Speed was important. It was my intention to cut off the signaller’s retreat if possible. The tower was situated towards the front of the building. In order to save time I tried to reason ahead the most likely room. I got it right the second door.
The light pressed on under my hand as I fumbled around the jamb to find the switch. Steep steps arose straight from the centre of the room. I glanced up to the trapdoor in the roof. It was wide open, a black square against the white ceiling. Very cautiously I began to ascend the stairs, gripping the railing either side with my hands. I thought I knew what to expect if someone was up there in the darkness above my head, and listened for sounds to betray the exact position. I was prepared for swift action if the need arose, and felt quite calm when so near to grips with an enemy.
I pulled myself head and shoulders into the darkness of the tower room, resting my elbows either side on the floor.
“Who is there?” I asked clearly. The room was perfectly still. I listened again for some faint noise, even breathing. The silence was as heavy as the mist that pressed against the windows. The tower room was empty.
“Mrs Matheson!” said a voice from below. I withdrew my head and glanced down. Ursula Mulqueen stood at the foot of the steps. She looked bewildered and just a little frightened.
“Mother sent me to find you. I heard someone running along the passage. It was you?”
I stayed on my perch. “Did you see anyone? Where have you been all this time?” I asked.
“In my room, reading. I haven’t been out of it all day. I only knew you were here when Mother told me. What are you looking for?”
“The light in the tower room. Where is it?”
Under Ursula’s directions I climbed in and found it. I moved eagerly about the room now bathed in a powerful light. It was barely eight feet square, empty except for an old telescope in one corner. I had hoped to find some small forgotten mark, betraying the identity of the signaller. But there was nothing—no conveniently dropped handkerchief and no cigarette and no lingering perfume.
I switched off the tower-room light and descended the steps. Ursula stood in the doorway. She seemed undecided what to do or say. She was puzzled about something and I guessed what it was.
“Your mother and I,” I told her gently, “met in the drive. We saw the tower-room light flashing as though someone was signalling. I thought it was worth an inspection.”
Ursula’s mouth fell open. “Then it wasn’t—couldn’t have been—”
“No, it wasn’t and perhaps never was.” I don’t know why I said that. Perhaps I wanted to destroy that disillusioned cynical look Ursula always wore when speaking of her mother.
We went down to the ground floor together. The Hall seemed alive with light and people now, a striking contrast to the lonely gloom I had crept through not an hour previously. Mrs Mulqueen was talking to Ames in the passage.
She glanced towards me. “Did you see anyone?” she asked.
I shook my head.
Ames said: “Inspector Matheson just rang for you, Mrs Matheson. I did not know you were here. He insisted that you were.”
“What did he want?” I asked, at once agog. Yvonne must have told John of my experiment,
“His dinner,” said Ames without a change of expression. “If you go back to the Dower through the wood he will meet you on the path.”
How very prosaic of John! I was indignant that he should treat my investigations so lightly. There was no mysterious significance to be read in his message at all. Merely that the man was hungry and that it was my place to go home and feed him.
Elizabeth Mulqueen saw me to the conservatory door. I frowned when I saw it was ajar; almost as I had left it. Had I given way to panic so much that my own senses had been deceived? But that did not matter now. Soon I would meet John and present him with some facts that more than compensated for those horrible moments.
What a fool I was just then! I can never work out how I happened to become so gullible. If only I had stopped one moment to think and to analyse the position. But I was still rebellious at having to go home and get a dinner instead of continuing uninterrupted on an exciting pitch to the conclusion of the case.
I entered the wood carefully, for there was but little light left to see the path. The trees were likely to make it practically indistinguishable further on. My progress was slow. Now and then I gave the whistle which was John’s own signal to me.
“I only hope the man has the sense to bring a torch,” I said aloud, stumbling over a root and pausing to steady myself.
It was during that pause that something John had said flashed into my head. “Promise me, Maggie, you will never go through the wood alone.”
My breath caught in my throat. But this meeting had been John’s own idea! It was rather inconsistent of him certainly, but Ames had said—I whistled again and again. But no answering notes came to my ears. That same fear I had felt in the gloom at the Hall was somewhere inside me. I checked it, but it was there.
I was deep into the wood now. Where was John? I peered ahead through the darkness imagining I saw a flashlight and heard a faint call. There was not the faintest gleam of a light. Just the wood smothered into a deeper silence and darkness by the mist. I clung to a tree, breathing heavily and trying again to quell the rising panic. It was stronger now. For out of the depths of that deadly quiet someone was stalking me.
I was alone, but for an unseen enemy. I did not imagine the stealthy footsteps coming along the path, nor the brushing of the leaves and branches. Those steps were too real. They kept time with the thud of my heart, as I waited still clinging to the tree. There was no use now in whistling or peering ahead for John’s light. I knew now. John would not come. He had not sent that message.
Some wild and desperate hope made me think of Constable Cornell. Perhaps the footsteps were his. What was it he had said? “Never lost a body yet. Don’t intend to begin.” Odd the way he called his charges bodies. It had a sinister ring. The same hope braced me for a moment. The footsteps had paused.
“Cornell?” I asked sharply, trying to distinguish a figure through the darkness.
I will never forget the answer to my query. It was a deep and malicious chuckle. The sound seemed to continue for seconds while my fingers scraped the bark of the tree as I fought for the last remaining threads of control. If only the person would say something so that I could recognize the voice. It was ignorance of what I had to face that was so unnerving.
I strove to speak through the choking fear, to sound as normal as I could. “You mustn’t show how frightened you are,” said that small reasonable part of my brain with me still.
But my enemy spoke before I could test my strength. The voice was as malicious and evil as that low laugh. “I frightened you, Mrs Matheson? I apologize.”
It was a slightly familiar voice, a woman’s voice, but still I did not recognize it. “Who are you?” I asked. “Who are you? And what do you want?”
I forced myself to advance in the direction of the voice. It was better to measure the woman up face to face than to remain clinging in terror to a tree which would be of no assistance at all.
A whiff of human breath came to my sharpened senses.
“Nurse Stone?”
“Yes, Nurse Stone, Mrs Matheson. I followed you. I hoped we might have a little talk together.” I was standing only a few steps away from the woman now.
“What is it?” I repeated. “I am on my way h
ome. My husband is expecting me.”
The woman laughed again, but I had a check on that panic. “Is he, now? And Yvonne? Is she expecting you too?”
I guessed at the woman’s emotions. She was in a fit of drunken jealousy. Jimmy was at the root of the trouble: I had taken him away from her charge.
“Yvonne is well,” I answered in a conciliatory manner. “Jimmy seems better. Why don’t you come and see him tomorrow? You are very fond of him, Nurse Stone?”
My guess had been accurate. She started to weep in a maudlin fashion. It was disgusting and rather alarming, alone with the foolish woman in the middle of the wood, but it was better than the panic I had felt before. I had the upper hand now. I was no longer on the defensive.
“I don’t believe you,” she whined. “He was all right. I looked after him well. He is mine. You have stolen him away. I have always looked after him.”
I felt sorry for her. “But he wasn’t well,” I said gently. “Surely you knew that. He needs a special diet and care.”
This angered her. “What do you know about it? You modern women who call yourselves mothers! All books and fancy foods. I had charge of Jimmy’s father and I know how to care for his son. Give him back to me.”
There was nothing to be gained in pursuing an argument with a tipsy jealous woman.
I said: “Come to the Dower tomorrow. We’ll talk things over then when you feel better.”
It was a tactless remark and only served to inflame Nurse Stone further. She came up very close, thrusting her face into mine. The smell of her breath sickened me.
“I know what you’re thinking. You think I’m tight. Well, I’m not. I’m as sober as you are, you busybody. How dare you suggest I drink!”
I moved back a step or two and turned away. “I really must go, Nurse Stone. My husband will be waiting. Come and see me tomorrow.”
I started to move along the path. There was a mad rush behind me. I could not see where the blow was coming, but I swerved sharply. Something, I think it was only the enraged woman’s clenched fist, caught me on the shoulder. I was sent reeling against a bush. I tried to regain my balance but stumbled against a root, and for the next minute lay sprawling on the ground. Nurse Stone came towards me.
The woman’s gait was none too steady. As she blundered forward I put out a foot and tripped her, dragging myself upward. Down the path I could see the faint thread of a light passing over the track.
“John,” I yelled, hurrying along. “Here I am.”
Nurse Stone must have seen the light too. I heard her grunting as she got to her feet. She made off in the opposite direction at once. I was thankful that there was to be no ugly scene. The woman was not responsible, and I was in no mood for further brawling.
“Whose idea was this?” I asked, when the light was flashed into my face. “I thought you forbade me to go through the wood? You won’t need an extracted promise to keep me away in future. I’ve been grappling with a drunken woman.”
The encounter with Nurse Stone had left me shaken even more so than the fall. I was dazed, so much so that it did not occur to me at first that John was very quiet. The light played on my face unswervingly.
“Turn that damned thing off me,” I said irritably, “and let’s get home.”
Very slowly the torch was swept round in a semi-circle. It lighted up the trees and the path which faded away into a dark hole beyond its strength. Then it was held steadily on the face of its owner.
IV
The breath drew back sharply in my throat. In that face exposed in the blinding light was something that I recognized before the woman herself. You can see people day after day, and unconsciously think you will know them anywhere. Then the time comes when you catch them from an untried angle and observe a subtle unfamiliarity.
On this occasion the face of Harriet Ames was presented in a different aspect. It still had the contours of the woman I knew, the red stain across one cheek. But now the primary feature was the familiar look of another person. I recognized in Harriet Ames another woman’s expression I had learned by heart from a portrait. A likeness which was verified by the long lobe of her ear.
I knew too that Mrs Ames was not illuminating her own face so deliberately without some purpose in mind. Nurse Stone was not the enemy I dreaded in the darkness of the wood. It was this silent, bitter woman who stood before me like an unscaleable wall. It was not Nurse Stone who had aroused the feeling of panic, but this young woman whom I had always dismissed because of her blank eyes and expressionless voice.
I did not speak either. There was nothing for me to say. I was up against my enemy at last, and the sudden shock of revelation stilled my tongue. I could not pretend when all the time I recognized Harriet Ames as such and she knew that I knew. There was no question of this being a surprise encounter. It had been planned deliberately, just as carefully as James Holland’s murder. I knew too much. There were many gaps in the story I could tell, but I still knew too much.
Mrs Ames turned the light aside at last. She spoke courteously as she always had. That was the frightening part. Her manner was normal even in the midst of the abnormality.
“I have a gun, Mrs Matheson. Please walk ahead of me.”
I passed her and walked just behind the torchlight she flashed in front of my feet. I walked quite steadily too. I was proud of the fact, even though some part of me said: “This is not you. This is just a dream. A nightmare where one always picks on the most inoffensive person to be the villain of the piece, and awakes to smile at the absurdity of it all.”
“One moment, Mrs Matheson. Stand still, please.” The courteous voice was as hard as steel. Odd how I had never noticed the possibility of such a quality before.
I stopped. Was she going to indulge in a little rhetoric and postpone the business ahead? Was there going to be the hope of time on my side? John would have arrived home by now. Surely Yvonne, even in spite of her promise of secrecy, would have become disturbed and told him where I was and what I had been doing.
“I am sorry about this, Mrs Matheson, believe me. But you have left us no alternative. We did warn you indirectly to stay out of our affairs.”
We? Us? Where was Ames? Did he leave his wife to do the dirty work alone?
She was continuing: “I could of course shoot you dead, but unfortunately such a death might arouse your husband’s suspicions.”
So they were going to have another attempt to make murder look like suicide. It would have to be ingenious to deceive John. I concentrated on that grain of comfort.
Suddenly my silence seemed to anger Mrs Ames. She wanted tears and pleadings in order to test out the temper of that steely quality in her. But I was too proud and beyond such trivial emotions to afford her satisfaction.
“You fool! You damned fool! What did you hope to gain from your prying?”
I found my tongue at last. “I don’t regret it,” I answered. “What information I have will help my husband make his conviction.”
She laughed softly. “You don’t deceive me. He knows nothing of your doings. Don’t think I haven’t been observing you all these weeks. Why else should he set that policeman to watch you? No, Mrs Matheson, you can’t get out of it like that.”
“Very well,” I said. My tone implied that I did not care whether she believed me or not. It was still true.
For a brief space I thought my bluff might succeed. She paused and I held my breath. Not that I realized for one moment that Mrs Ames was going to kill me. It just wasn’t possible. Even the dangerous game of prying and my insatiable curiosity over the last weeks did not seem enough justification to come up against the real thing. That was the trouble. I had made too much of a game of crime without realizing what deadly consequences would come about. I was still convinced that John would arrive to rescue me as he had once before. I had forgotten all about that other occasion in time. Time had softened the memory of those few grim minutes just as these would be forgotten. I was inviolate.
I was
strangely calm when I should have been terrified. I find myself more frightened now, when I remember that scene in the wood with Harriet Ames. At the time I was deceived by her matter-of-fact attitude. Something more like Nurse Stone’s attack might have jolted me out of the fictional state of mind.
My attempt at a bluff gave Mrs Ames time to think, but she still remained in deadly earnest. She spoke with the faintest hint of a sneer in her flat voice.
“If you are living in hopes of your husband or that attendant of yours turning up at the eleventh hour you are doomed to disappointment. Your husband phoned the Hall that he would be delayed at the office and we arranged for Cornell to be called into town on other urgent business. So you see we have the coast clear to deal with both you and Yvonne, not to mention that brat of hers.”
I said over my shoulder: “You can’t possibly hope to get away with it. If you are planning a wholesale slaughter of myself, Yvonne and the baby you haven’t got a chance.”
Harriet Ames was not a half-crazed unreasonable person like Nurse Stone. She spoke confidently. “Wait and see. But what a pity you won’t be here to see the success of our plans. Keep going, please, Mrs Matheson, and obey my instructions. If you do not I will shoot you now and then continue to the Dower and kill your son.”
A primitive fury shook me when she spoke of Tony. Once I had left him in her charge. He and that beautiful child of hers had played together with the utmost happiness. And now she was holding the price of Tony’s blood over my head. It was inconceivable that a woman with a beloved child of her own could make such a threat. I longed for a genuine passion of revenge that could make me wish ill for her child.
There was nothing to be gained by turning on her. I had enough sense to see that, even in my insane anger. Time was the only chance I had. Hope had been long since taken from me. But whatever happened, life for Tony was the greatest bequest I could leave to him.