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Short Stories Page 79

by Agatha Christie


  "She spoke in a very quiet tone, but Annette rushed suddenly away and hid behind me.

  "'Save me, Raoul! I am afraid of Felicie. It was only a joke, Felicie. Only a joke.'

  "'I do not like these jokes,' said Felicie. 'You understand? I hate you. I hate you all.'

  "She suddenly burst out crying and rushed away.

  "Annette was, I think, scared by the result of her experiment, and did not try to repeat it. But from that day on her ascendancy over Felicie seemed to grow stronger.

  "Felicie, I now believe, always hated her, but nevertheless she could not keep away from her. She used to follow Annette around like a dog.

  "Soon after that, Messieurs, employment was found for me, and I only came to the Home for occasional holidays. Annette's desire to become a dancer was not taken seriously, but she developed a very pretty singing voice as she grew older and Miss Slater consented to her being trained as a singer.

  "She was not lazy, Annette. She worked feverishly, without rest. Miss Slater was obliged to prevent her doing too much. She spoke to me once about her.

  "'You have always been fond of Annette,' she said. 'Persuade her not to work too hard. She has a little cough lately that I do not like.'

  "My work took me far afield soon afterwards. I received one or two letters from Annette at first, but then came silence. For five years after that I was abroad.

  "Quite by chance, when I returned to Paris, my attention was caught by a poster advertising Annette Ravelli with a picture of the lady. I recognized her at once. That night I went to the theatre in question.

  Annette sang in French and Italian. On the stage she was wonderful.

  Afterwards I went to her dressing room. She received me at once.

  "'Why, Raoul,' she cried, stretching out her whitened hands to me. 'This is splendid! Where have you been all these years?'

  "I would have told her, but she did not really want to listen.

  "'You see, I have very nearly arrived!'

  "She waved a triumphant hand round the room filled with bouquets.

  "'The good Miss Slater must be proud of your success.'

  "'That old one? No, indeed. She designed me, you know, for the Conservatoire. Decorous concert singing. But me, I am an artist. It is here, on the variety stage, that I can express myself.'

  "Just then a handsome middle-aged man came in. He was very distinguished. By his manner I soon saw that he was Annette's protector. He looked sideways at me, and Annette explained.

  "'A friend of my infancy. He passes through Paris, sees my picture on a poster, et voilà!'

  "The man was then very affable and courteous. In my presence he produced a ruby and diamond bracelet and clasped it on Annette's wrist. As I rose to go, she threw me a glance of triumph and a whisper.

  "'I arrive, do I not? You see? All the world is before me.'

  "But as I left the room, I heard her cough, a sharp dry cough. I knew what it meant, that cough. It was the legacy of her consumptive mother.

  "I saw her next two years later. She had gone for refuge to Miss Slater.

  Her career had broken down. She was in a state of advanced consumption for which the doctors said nothing could be done.

  "Ah! I shall never forget her as I saw her then! She was lying in a kind of shelter in the garden. She was kept outdoors night and day. Her cheeks were hollow and flushed, her eyes bright and feverish.

  "She greeted me with a kind of desperation that startled me.

  "'It is good to see you, Raoul. You know what they say - that I may not get well? They say it behind my back, you understand. To me they are soothing and consolatory. But it is not true, Raoul, it is not true! I shall not permit myself to die. Die? With beautiful life stretching in front of me? It is the will to live that matters. All the great doctors say that nowadays. I am not one of the feeble ones who let go. Already I feel myself infinitely better - infinitely better, do you hear?'

  "She raised herself on her elbow to drive her words home, then fell back, attacked by a fit of coughing that racked her thin body.

  "'The cough - it is nothing,' she gasped. 'And hemorrhages do not frighten me. I shall surprise the doctors. It is the will that counts.

  Remember, Raoul, I am going to live.'

  "It was pitiful, you understand, pitiful.

  "Just then, Felicie Bault came out with a tray. A glass of hot milk. She gave it to Annette and watched her drink it with an expression that I could not fathom. There was a kind of smug satisfaction in it.

  "Annette, too, caught the look. She flung the glass down angrily, so that it smashed to bits.

  "'You see her? That is how she always looks at me. She is glad I am going to die! Yes, she gloats over it. She who is well and strong. Look at her - never a day's illness, that one! And all for nothing. What good is that great carcass of hers to her? What can she make of it?'

  "Felicie stooped and picked up the broken fragments of glass.

  "'I do not mind what she says,' she observed in a singsong voice. 'What does it matter? I am a respectable girl, I am. As for her. She will be knowing the fires of Purgatory before very long. I am a Christian. I say nothing.'

  "'You hate me!' cried Annette. 'You have always hated me. Ah! but I can charm you, all the same. I can make you do what I want. See now, if I asked you to, you would go down on your knees before me now on the grass.'

  "'You are absurd,' said Felicie uneasily.

  "'But, yes, you will do it. You will. To please me. Down on your knees. I ask it of you, I, Annette. Down on your knees, Felicie.'

  "Whether it was the wonderful pleading in the voice, or some deeper motive, Felicie obeyed. She sank slowly on to her knees, her arms spread wide, her face vacant and stupid.

  "Annette flung back her head and laughed - peal upon peal of laughter.

  "'Look at her, with her stupid face! How ridiculous she looks. You can get up now, Felicie, thank you! It is of no use to scowl at me. I am your mistress. You have to do what I say.'

  "She lay back on her pillows exhausted. Felicie picked up the tray and moved slowly away. Once she looked back over her shoulder, and the smoldering resentment in her eyes startled me.

  "I was not there when Annette died. But it was terrible, it seems. She clung to life. She fought against death like a madwoman. Again and again she gasped out: 'I will not die - do you hear me? I will not die. I will live - live -'

  "Miss Slater told me all this when I came to see her six months later.

  "'My poor Raoul,' she said kindly. 'You loved her, did you not?'"

  "'Always - always. But of what use could I be to her? Let us not talk of it.

  She is dead - she so brilliant, so full of burning life...'

  "Miss Slater was a sympathetic woman. She went on to talk of other things. She was very worried about Felicie, so she told me. The girl had had a queer sort of nervous breakdown and ever since she had been very strange in manner.

  "'You know,' said Miss Slater, after a momentary hesitation, 'that she is learning the piano?'

  "I did not know it and was very much surprised to hear it. Felicie learning the piano! I would have declared the girl would not know one note from another.

  "'She has talent, they say,' continued Miss Slater. 'I can't understand it.

  I have always put her down as - well, Raoul, you know yourself, she was always a stupid girl.'

  "I nodded.

  "'She is so strange in her manner I don't know what to make of it.'

  "A few minutes later I entered the Salle de Lecture. Felicie was playing the piano. She was playing the air that I had heard Annette sing in Paris.

  You understand, Messieurs, it gave me quite a turn. And then, hearing me, she broke off suddenly and looked round at me, her eyes full of mockery and intelligence. For a moment I thought - Well, I will not tell you what I thought.

  "'Tiens!' she said. 'So it is you - Monsieur Raoul.'

  "I cannot describe the way she said it. To Annette I had never ceased to be Raoul. But
Felicie, since we had met as grown-ups, always addressed me as Monsieur Raoul. But the way she said it now was different - as though the Monsieur, slightly stressed, was somehow amusing.

  "'Why, Felicie,' I stammered, 'you look quite different today.'

  "'Do I?' she said reflectively. 'It is odd, that. But do not be so solemn, Raoul - decidedly I shall call you Raoul - did we not play together as children? - Life was made for laughter. Let us talk of the poor Annette she who is dead and buried. Is she in Purgatory, I wonder, or where?'

  "And she hummed a snatch of song - untunefully enough, but the words caught my attention.

  "'Felicie!' I cried. 'You speak Italian?'

  "'Why not, Raoul? I am not as stupid as I pretend to be, perhaps.' She laughed at my mystification.

  "'I don't understand -' I began.

  "'But I will tell you. I am a very fine actress, though no one suspects it. I can play many parts - and play them very well.'

  "She laughed again and ran quickly out of the room before I could stop her.

  "I saw her again before I left. She was asleep in an armchair. She was snoring heavily. I stood and watched her, fascinated, yet repelled.

  Suddenly she woke with a start. Her eyes, dull and lifeless, met mine.

  "'Monsieur Raoul,' she muttered mechanically.

  "'Yes, Felicie. I am going now. Will you play for me again before I go?'

  "'I? Play? You are laughing at me, Monsieur Raoul.'

  "'Don't you remember playing for me this morning?'

  "She shook her head.

  "'I play? How can a poor girl like me play?'

  "She paused for a minute as though in thought, then beckoned me nearer.

  "'Monsieur Raoul, there are things going on in this house! They play tricks upon you. They alter the clocks. Yes, yes, I know what I am saying. And it is all her doing.'

  "'Whose doing?' I asked, startled.

  "'That Annette's. That wicked one's. When she was alive she always tormented me. Now that she is dead, she comes back from the dead to torment me.'

  "I stared at Felicie. I could see now that she was in an extremity of terror, her eyes starting from her head.

  "'She is bad, that one. She is bad, I tell you. She would take the bread from your mouth, the clothes from your back, the soul from your body...'

  "She clutched me suddenly.

  "'I am afraid, I tell you - afraid. I hear her voice - not in my ear - no, not in my ear. Here, in my head -' She tapped her forehead. 'She will drive me away - drive me away altogether, and then what shall I do, what will become of me?'

  "Her voice rose almost to a shriek. She had in her eyes the look of the terrified beast at bay...

  "Suddenly she smiled, a pleasant smile, full of cunning, with something in it that made me shiver.

  "'If it should come to it, Monsieur Raoul, I am very strong with my hands - very strong with my hands.'

  "I had never noticed her hands particularly before. I looked at them now and shuddered in spite of myself. Squat brutal fingers, and as Felicie had said, terribly strong... I cannot explain to you the nausea that swept over me. With hands such as these her father must have strangled her mother...

  "That was the last time I ever saw Felicie Bault. Immediately afterwards I went abroad - to South America. I returned from there two years after her death. Something I had read in the newspapers of her life and sudden death. I have heard fuller details tonight - from you. Felicie 3 and Felicie 4 - I wonder? She was a good actress, you know!"

  The train suddenly slackened speed. The man in the corner sat erect and buttoned his overcoat more closely.

  "What is your theory?" asked the lawyer, leaning forward.

  "I can hardly believe -" began Canon Parfitt, and stopped.

  The doctor said nothing. He was gazing steadily at Raoul Letardeau.

  "The clothes from your back, the soul from your body," quoted the Frenchman lightly. He stood up. "I say to you, Messieurs, that the history of Felicie Bault is the history of Annette Ravel. You did not know her, gentlemen. I did. She was very fond of life..."

  His hand on the door, ready to spring out, he turned suddenly and bending down tapped Canon Parfitt on the chest. "M. le docteur over there, he said just now that all this -" his hand smote the Canon's stomach, and the Canon winced - "was only a residence. Tell me, if you find a burglar in your house what do you do? Shoot him, do you not?" "No," cried the Canon. "No, indeed - I mean - not in this country." But he spoke the last words to empty air. The carriage door banged. The clergyman, the lawyer, and the doctor were alone. The fourth corner was vacant.

  S.O.S. "Ah!" said Mr Dinsmead appreciatively. He stepped back and surveyed the round table with approval. The firelight gleamed on the coarse white tablecloth, the knives and forks, and the other table appointments. "Is - is everything ready?" asked Mrs Dinsmead hesitatingly. She was a little faded woman, with a colorless face, meager hair scraped back from her forehead, and a perpetually nervous manner. "Everything's ready," said her husband with a kind of ferocious geniality.

  He was a big man, with stooping shoulders and a broad red face. He had little pig's eyes that twinkled under his bushy brows, and a big jowl devoid of hair.

  "Lemonade?" suggested Mrs Dinsmead, almost in a whisper.

  Her husband shook his head.

  "Tea. Much better in every way. Look at the weather, streaming and blowing. A nice cup of hot tea is what's needed for supper on an evening like this."

  He winked facetiously, then fell to surveying the table again.

  "A good dish of eggs, cold corned beef, and bread and cheese. That's my order for supper. So come along and get it ready, Mother.

  Charlotte's in the kitchen waiting to give you a hand."

  Mrs Dinsmead rose, carefully winding up the ball of her knitting.

  "She's grown a very good-looking girl," she murmured.

  "Ah!" said Mr Dinsmead. "The mortal image of her ma! So go along with you, and don't let's waste any more time."

  He strolled about the room humming to himself for a minute or two.

  Once he approached the window and looked out.

  "Wild weather," he murmured to himself. "Not much likelihood of our having visitors tonight."

  Then he too left the room.

  About ten minutes later Mrs Dinsmead entered bearing a dish of fried eggs. Her two daughters followed, bringing the rest of the provisions.

  Mr Dinsmead and his son Johnnie brought up the rear. The former seated himself at the head of the table.

  "And for what we are to receive, et cetera," he remarked humorously.

  "And blessings on the man who first thought of tinned foods. What would we do, I should like to know, miles from anywhere, if we hadn't a tin now and then to fall back upon when the butcher forgets his weekly call?"

  He proceeded to carve corned beef dexterously.

  "I wonder who ever thought of building a house like this, miles from anywhere," said his daughter Magdalen, pettishly. "We never see a soul."

  "No," said her father. "Never a soul."

  "I can't think what made you take it, Father," said Charlotte.

  "Can't you, my girl? Well, I had my reasons - I had my reasons."

  His eyes sought his wife's furtively, but she frowned.

  "And haunted, too," said Charlotte. "I wouldn't sleep alone here for anything."

  "Pack of nonsense," said her father. "Never seen anything, have you?"

  "Not seen anything perhaps, but -"

  "But what?"

  Charlotte did not reply, but she shivered a little. A great surge of rain came driving against the window-pane, and Mrs Dinsmead dropped a spoon with a tinkle on the tray.

  "Not nervous, are you, Mother?" said Mr Dinsmead. "It's a wild night, that's all. Don't you worry, we're safe here by our fireside, and not a soul from outside likely to disturb us. Why, it would be a miracle if anyone did. And miracles don't happen. No," he added as though to himself, with a kind of peculiar satisfaction, "miracle
s don't happen."

  As the words left his lips there came a sudden knocking at the door. Mr Dinsmead stayed as though petrified.

  "What's that?" he muttered. His jaw fell.

  Mrs Dinsmead gave a little whimpering cry and pulled her shawl up round her. The color came into Magdalen's face and she leaned forward and spoke to her father.

  "The miracle has happened," she said. "You'd better go and let whoever it is in."

  Twenty minutes earlier Mortimer Cleveland had stood in the driving rain and mist surveying his car. It was really cursed bad luck. Two punctures within ten minutes of each other, and here he was, stranded, miles from anywhere, in the midst of these bare Wiltshire downs with night coming on and no prospect of shelter. Serve him right for trying to take a short cut. If only he had stuck to the main road! Now he was lost on what seemed a mere cart-track on the hillside, with no possibility of getting the car farther, and with no idea if there were even a village anywhere near.

  He looked round him perplexedly, and his eye was caught by a gleam of light on the hillside above him. A second later the mist obscured it once more but, waiting patiently, he presently got a second glimpse of it.

  After a moment's cogitation, he left the car and struck up the side of the hill.

  Soon he was out of the mist, and he recognized the light as shining from the lighted window of a small cottage. Here, at any rate, was shelter.

  Mortimer Cleveland quickened his pace, bending his head to meet the furious onslaught of wind and rain trying its best to drive him back.

  Cleveland was, in his own way, something of a celebrity though doubtless the majority of folks would have displayed complete ignorance of his name and achievements. He was an authority on mental science and had written two excellent text books on the subconscious. He was also a member of the Psychical Research Society and a student of the occult in so far as it affected his own conclusions and line of research.

  He was by nature peculiarly susceptible to atmosphere, and by deliberate training he had increased his own natural gift. When he had at last reached the cottage and rapped at the door, he was conscious of an excitement, a quickening of interest, as though all his faculties had suddenly been sharpened.

 

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