by Unknown
“You must find it pretty lonely,” I said.
“I do,” he answered. “Lately I have been wishing that I could find it still lonelier.”
“Look here,” I said, “do you mind telling me plainly what on earth is the matter?”
“You shall see for yourself,” he said.
The farmhouse had begun by being a couple of cottages and two or three considerable additions had been made to it at different times; consequently, the internal architecture was somewhat puzzling. The hall and two of the living rooms were fairly large, but the rooms upstairs were small and detestably arranged. Often one room opened into another and sometimes into two or three others. The floor was of different heights, and one was always going up or down a step or two. Three staircases in different parts of the house led from the ground floor to the upper storey. The old moss-grown tiles of the roof were pleasing, and the whole place was rather a picturesque jumble. But we only stopped in the house for the time of a whisky-and-soda. Lorrimer took me round the garden almost immediately. It was a walled garden and good as only an old garden can be. Lorrimer was fond of it. His spirits seemed to improve, and at the moment I could find nothing abnormal in him. The farm cart, with my luggage, lumbered slowly up, and presently a gong inside the house rang loudly.
“Ah!” said Lorrimer, pulling out his watch, “time to dress. I’ll show you your room if you like.”
My room consisted really of two rooms, opening into one another. They seemed comfortable enough, and there were beautiful views from the windows of both of them. Lorrimer left me, and I began, in a leisurely way, to dress for dinner. As I was dressing I heard a queer little laugh coming apparently from one of the upper rooms, in the passage. I took little notice of it at first; I supposed it was due to one of the neat and rosy-cheeked maids who were busy about the house. Then I heard it again, and this time it puzzled me. I knew that laugh, knew it perfectly well, but could not place it. Then, suddenly, it came to me. It was exactly like the laugh of my sister-in-law who had died in this house. It struck me as a queer coincidence.
Naturally enough, I blundered on coming downstairs and first opened the door of the dining-room. I noticed that the table was laid for three people, and supposed that Lorrimer had asked some neighbour to meet me, possibly a man over whose land I was to shoot. One of the maids directed me to the drawing-room, and I went in. At one end of the room a log fire flickered and hissed, and the smell of the wood was pleasant. The room was lit by two large ground-glass lamps, relics of my dead sister-in-law’s execrable taste. I had at once the feeling that I was not alone in the room, and almost instantly a girl who had been kneeling on the rug in front of the fire got up and came towards me with hands outstretched.
Her age seemed to be about sixteen or seventeen. She had red hair, perhaps the most perfect red that I have ever seen. Her face was beautiful. Her eyes were large and grey, but there was something queer about those eyes. I noticed it immediately. She was dressed in the simplest manner in white. As she came towards me she gave that little laugh which I had heard upstairs. And then I knew what was strange in her eyes. They also at moments did not look quite human.
“You look surprised,” she said. “Did not Mr Estcourt tell you that I should be here? I am Linda, you know.” Linda was the name of my dead sister-in-law. The name, the laugh, the eyes—all suggested that this was the daughter of Linda Estcourt. But this was a girl of sixteen or seventeen, and my brother’s marriage had taken place only nine years before. Besides, she spoke of him as “Mr Estcourt.” I was making some amiable and some more or less confused reply when Lorrimer entered.
“Ah!” he said. “I see you have already made Miss Marston’s acquaintance. I had hoped to be in time to introduce you.”
We began to chat about my journey down, the beauty of the country, all sorts of commonplace things. I was struck greatly by her air, at once mysterious and contemptuous. It irritated, and yet it fascinated me. At dinner she said laughingly that it would really be rather confusing now; there would be two Mr Estcourts—Mr Lorrimer Estcourt and Mr Hubert Estcourt. She would have to think of some way of making a distinction.
“I think,” she said, turning to my brother, “I shall go on calling you Mr Estcourt, and I shall call your brother Hubert.”
I said that I should be greatly flattered, and her grey eyes showed me that I had no need to be. From this time onward she called me Hubert, as though she had known me and despised me all my life. I noticed that two or three times at dinner she seemed to fall into fits of abstraction, in which she was hardly conscious that one had spoken to her; and I noticed, moreover, that these fits of abstraction irritated my brother immensely. She rose at the end of dinner, and said she would see if the billiard-room was lit up. We could come and smoke in there as soon as we liked. I gave a sigh of relief as I closed the door behind her.
“At last!” I said. “Now, then, Lorrimer, perhaps you will tell me who this Miss Marston is?”
“Tell me who you think she is—no, don’t. She is my dead wife’s younger sister, younger by many years. Her father took the name of Marston shortly before his death. I am her guardian. My wife’s dying words were occupied entirely with this sister, about whom she told me much that would seem to you strange beyond belief; and at the time she gave me injunctions, wrested promises from me which, under certain conditions, I shall have to carry out. The conditions may arise; I think they will. I don’t mind saying that I’m afraid they will.”
“Why does she bear her sister’s name? Why does she address you as ‘Mr Estcourt’? And why do you address her as ‘Miss Marston,’ when she introduces herself to me simply as ‘Linda’?”
“Her mother had three daughters. The eldest was called Linda. When she died, the second, who was my wife, took that name. When my wife died the name descended to the third of them. There has always been a Linda in the family. The rest is simply Miss Marston’s own whim. She has several.”
“Who chaperons her here?” I asked.
He smiled. “That question is typical of you. She is little more than a child, and she has an almost excessively respectable governess living here to look after her. Only I can’t be bothered with the governess at dinner quite every night. Does that satisfy you?”
“No; well, perhaps yes. I suppose so.”
“It may make your rigid mind a little easier if I tell you—and it is the truth—that if I had my own way I would turn Miss Marston out of this house to-morrow, and that I would never set eyes on her again; that I have a horror of her, and she has a contempt of me.”
“And of most other people, I fancy. Well, anyhow, what’s the trouble?”
“I haven’t the time to tell you a long story now; she will be waiting for us. Besides, you would merely laugh at me. You have not yet seen for yourself. What would you say if I told you of a compact made years and years ago with some power of evil, and that this girl was concerned in the fulfilment of it?”
“What should I say? Very little. I should get a couple of doctors to sign you up at once.”
“Naturally. You would think me mad. Well, wait here for a few weeks, and see what you make of things. In the meantime, come along to the billiard-room.”
The billiard-room was an addition that Lorrimer himself had made to the house. We found Linda crouched on the rug in front of the blazing fire; I soon found that this was a favourite attitude with her. Her coffee cup was balanced on her knees. Her eyes stared into the flames. She did not seem to notice our entrance.
“Miss Marston,” said my brother. There was a shade of annoyance in his voice. She looked up at him with a disdainful smile. “Do you care to give Hubert a game?” he asked.
“Not yet. I want to watch a game first. You two play, and I’ll mark.”
“What am I to give you, Lorrimer?” I asked. “Thirty?�
�� He was not even a moderate player. I had always been able to give him at least that.
“You had better play even,” said Linda. “And I think you will be beaten, Hubert.”
I looked at Lorrimer in astonishment. “Very well, Miss Marston,” he said, as he took down his cue. I could only suppose that during the last few years his play had improved considerably. And even then I did not see why Linda had interfered. How on earth could she know what my game was like?
“This is your evening,” I said to Lorrimer after his first outrageous fluke.
“It would seem so,” he answered, and fluked again. And this went on. His game had not improved; he did the wrong things and did them badly, and they turned out all right. Now and again I heard Linda’s brief laugh, and looked up at her. Her eyes seemed to have power to coax a lagging ball into a pocket; one had a curious feeling that she was controlling the game. I did my best with all the luck dead against me. It was a close finish, but I was beaten, as Linda said I should be.
Linda would not play. She said she was tired, and suddenly she looked tired. The light went out of her eyes. She lit a cigarette, and went back to her place on the rug before the fire. Lorrimer talked about his farm with me. The quiet of the place seemed almost ghastly to a man who was used to London. Presently Linda got up to go to bed. “Good-night, Mr Estcourt,” she said, as she shook hands with my brother. Then she turned to me: “Good-night, Hubert. You shouldn’t quarrel with ticket-collectors about nothing. It’s silly, isn’t it?” She kissed me on the cheek, and ran off laughing. She left me astounded by her words and insulted by her kiss.
Lorrimer turned out the lights over the billiard-table, and we sat down again by the fire.
“What did you think of that game?” he asked.
“It was remarkable.”
“Nothing more?”
“I never saw a game like it before. But there was nothing impossible about it.”
“Very well. And did you have a row with that ticket-collector?”
“Not a row exactly. He annoyed me, and I may have called him a fool. I suppose you overheard and told her about it.”
“I could not have overheard. I was outside the station buildings and you were on the further platform.”
“Yes, that’s true. It’s a queer coincidence.”
“I tried that, too, at first—the belief that things were remarkable, but not impossible, and that queer coincidences happen. Personally I can’t keep it up any more.”
“Look here,” I said. “We may as well go to the point at once. Why do you want me here? Why did you send for me?”
“Suppose I said that I wanted you to marry Miss Marston?”
“I thought that at the time of my engagement with Adela I wrote and gave you the news.”
“You did. The artistic temperament does sometimes do a brilliant business thing for itself. Lady Adela Marys——”
“We won’t discuss her.”
“Then suppose we discuss you. You are half in love with Linda already.”
“Very well,” I said, “let us carry the supposition a little further. Suppose that I or anybody else was entirely in love with her, what on earth would be the use? The one thing that one can feel absolutely certain about in her is that she has an amused contempt for the rest of her species, male and female. It’s not affected, it’s perfectly genuine. Even if I wished to marry her, she would not look at me.”
“Really?” said Lorrimer, with a sneer. “She seemed fond enough of you when she said goodnight.”
“That,” I said meditatively, “was the cleverest kiss that ever was kissed. It finished what the interchange of Christian names began. It settled the situation exactly that—I was the fool of a brother, and she the good-natured, though contemptuous sister.”
“You needn’t look at it like that. It is important, exceedingly important that she should be married.”
“Marry her yourself—it won’t be legal in this country, but it will in others, and I don’t know that it matters.”
“No, I don’t know that it matters. On the day I wrote to you I did ask her to be my wife. She replied that it was disagreeable to have to speak of such things, and that they need not be allowed to come to the surface again, but that, as a matter of fact, au fond we hated one another. It was true. I do hate her. What I do for her is for my dead wife’s sake, for the promises I made, and, perhaps, a little for common humanity. There are others who would marry her. The man whose pheasants you will be shooting next week would give his soul for her cheerfully, and it’s no use. Very likely it will be of no use in your case.”
“What was the story that you had not time to tell me after dinner?”
The door opened, and a servant brought in the decanters and soda-water and arranged them on the table by Lorrimer’s side. He did not speak until the servant had gone out of the room, and then he seemed to be talking almost more to himself than to me.
“At night, when one wakes up in the small hours, after a bad dream or hearing some sudden noise in the house, one believes things of which one is a little ashamed next morning.”
He paused, and then leant forward, addressing me directly. “Look here; I’ll say it in a few words. You won’t believe it, and that doesn’t matter a tinker’s curse to me. You’ll believe it a little later if you stop here. Generations ago, in the time of the witches, a woman who was to have been burned as a witch escaped miraculously from the hands of the officers. It was said that she had a compact with the devil; that at some future time he should take a living maiden of her line. Death and marriage are the two ways of safety for any woman of that family. The compact has not yet been carried out, and Linda is the last of the line. She bears the signs of which my wife told me. One by one I watch them coming out in her. Her power over inanimate objects, her mysterious knowledge of things which have happened elsewhere, the terror which all animals have of her. A year or two ago she was always about the farm on the best of terms with every dog and horse in the place. Now they will not let her come near them. Well, it is my business to save Linda. I have given my promise. I wish her to be married. If that is not possible, and the moment arrives, I must kill her.”
“Why talk like a fool?” I said. “Come and live in London for a week. It strikes me that both Linda and yourself might perhaps be benefited by being put into the hands of a specialist. In any case, don’t tell these fairy stories to a sane man like myself.”
“Very well,” he said, getting up. “I must be going to bed. I am out on the farm before six every morning, and I shall probably have breakfasted before you are up. Miss Marston and Mrs Dennison—that’s her old governess—breakfast at nine. You can join them if you like, or breakfast by yourself later.”
Long after my brother had gone to bed I sat in the billiard-room thinking the thing over, angry with myself, and, indeed, ashamed, that I could not disbelieve quite as certainly as I wished. At breakfast next morning I asked Linda to sit to me for her portrait, and she consented. We found a room with a good light. Mrs Dennison remained with us during the sitting.
This went on for days. The portrait was a failure. I have the best of the several attempts that I made still. The painting’s all right. But the likeness is not there; there is something missing in the eyes. I saw a great deal of Linda, and I came at last to this conclusion, that I had no explanation whatever of the powers which she undoubtedly possessed. I also learned that she herself was well acquainted with the story of her house. She alluded to the fact that neither of her sisters was buried in consecrated ground; no woman of her family would ever be.
“And you?” I asked.
“I am not sure that I shall be buried at all. To me strange things will happen.”
I had letters occasionally from Lady Adela. I was glad to
see that she was getting tired of the whole thing. My conduct had not been so calculating and ignoble as Lorrimer had supposed. She was a very beautiful woman. It was easy enough to suppose that one was in love with her—until one happened to fall in love. I determined to go to London to see Lady Adela, and to give her the chance, which I was sure she wanted, to throw me over. I promised Lorrimer that I would only be away for one night. Lady Adela missed her appointment with me at her mother’s house, and left a note of excuse. Something serious had happened, I believe, with regard to a dress that she was to wear that night. But, really, I do not remember what her excuse was. I went back to my rooms in Tite Street, and there I found a telegram from Mrs Dennison. It told me in plain language, and with due regard to the fact that each word cost a halfpenny, that my brother, in a fit of madness, had murdered Linda Marston and taken his own life. I got back to my brother’s farm late that night.
The evidence at the inquest was simple enough. Linda had three rooms, opening into one another, the one furthest from the passage being her bedroom. At the time of the murder Mrs Dennison was in the second room, reading, and Linda was playing the piano in the room which opened into the passage. Mrs Dennison heard the music stop suddenly. Linda was whimsical in her playing, as in everything else. There was a pause, during which the governess was absorbed in her book. Then she heard in the next room Lorrimer say distinctly: “It is all right, Linda. I have come to save you.” This was followed by three shots in succession. Mrs Dennison rushed in and found the two lying dead. She was greatly affected at the inquest, and as few questions as possible were put to her.
Some time afterwards Mrs Dennison told me a thing which she did not mention at the inquest. Shortly after the music had stopped, and before Lorrimer entered the room, she had heard another voice, as though someone were speaking with Linda. This third voice, and Linda’s own, were in low tones, and no words could be heard. I thought this over, and I remembered that Lorrimer fired three times, and that the third bullet was found in another part of the room.