'Stop, stop!' called Alicia.
She turned to Sybil.
'That child mustn't take the doll. She mustn't! That doll is dangerous it's evil. We've got to stop her.'
It was not they who stopped her. It was the traffic. At that moment three taxis came down one way and two tradesmen's vans in the other direction. The child was marooned on an island in the middle of the road. Sybil rushed down the stairs, Alicia Coombe following her.
Dodging between a tradesman's van and a private car, Sybil, with Alicia Coombe directly behind her, arrived on the island before the child could get through the traffic on the opposite side.
'You can't take that doll,' said Alicia Coombe. 'Give her back to me.'
The child looked at her. She was a skinny little girl about eight years old, with a slight squint. Her face was defiant.
'Why should I give 'er to you?' she said. 'Pitched her out of the window, you did - I saw you. If you pushed her out of the window you don't want her, so now she's mine.'
'I'll buy you another doll,' said Alicia frantically. 'We'll go to a toy shop - anywhere you like - and I'll buy you the best doll we can find. But give me back this one.'
'Shan't,' said the child.
Her arms went protectingly round the velvet doll.
'You must give her back,' said Sybil. 'She isn't yours.'
She stretched out to take the doll from the child and at that moment the child stamped her foot, turned, and screamed at them.
'Shan't! Shan't! Shan't! She's my very own. I love her. You don't love her. You hate her. If you didn't hate her you wouldn't have pushed her out of the window. I love her, I tell you, and that's what she wants. She wants to be loved.'
And then like an eel, sliding through the vehicles, the child ran across the street, down an alleyway, and out of sight before the two older women could decide to dodge the cars and follow.
'She's gone,' said Alicia.
'She said the doll wanted to be loved,' said Sybil.
'Perhaps,' said Alicia, 'perhaps that's what she wanted all along... to be loved...'
In the middle of the London traffic the two frightened women stared at each other.
IN A GLASS DARKLY
'I've no explanation for this story. I've no theories about the why and wherefore of it. It's just a thing that - happened.
All the same, I sometimes wonder how things would have gone if I'd noticed at the time just that one essential detail that I never appreciated until so many years afterwards. If I had noticed it - well, I suppose the course of three lives would have been entirely altered.
Somehow - that's a very frightening thought.
For the beginning of it all, I've got to go back to the summer of 1914 just before the war - when I went down to Badgeworthy with Neil Carslake. Neil was, I suppose, about my best friend. I'd known his brother Alan too, but not so well. Sylvia, their sister, I'd never met.
She was two years younger than Alan and three years younger than Neil. Twice, while we were at school together, I'd been going to spend part of the holidays with Neil at Badgeworthy and twice something had intervened. So it came about that I was twenty-three when I first saw Neil and Alan's home.
We were to be quite a big party there. Neil's sister Sylvia had just got engaged to a fellow called Charles Crawley. He was, so Neil said, a good deal older than she was, but a thoroughly decent chap and quite reasonably well-off.
We arrived, I remember, about seven o'clock in the evening.
Everyone had gone to his room to dress for dinner. Neil took me to mine. Badgeworthy was an attractive, rambling old house. It had been added to freely in the last three centuries and was full of little steps up and down, and unexpected staircases. It was the sort of house in which it's not easy to find your way about. I remember Neil promised to come and fetch me on his way down to dinner. I was feeling a little shy at the prospect of meeting his people for the first time. I remember saying with a laugh that it was the kind of house one expected to meet ghosts in the passages, and he said carelessly that he believed the place was said to be haunted but that none of them had ever seen anything, and he didn't even know what form the ghost was supposed to take.
Then he hurried away and I set to work to dive into my suitcases for my evening clothes. The Carslakes weren't well-off; they clung on to their old home, but there were no menservants to unpack for you or valet you.
Well, I'd just got to the stage of tying my tie. I was standing in front of the glass. I could see my own face and shoulders and behind them the wall of the room - a plain stretch of wall just broken in the middle by a door - and just as I finally settled my tie I noticed that the door was opening.
I don't know why I didn't turn around - I think that would have been the natural thing to do; anyway, I didn't. I just watched the door swing slowly open - and as it swung I saw into the room beyond.
It was a bedroom - a larger room than mine - with two bedsteads in it, and suddenly I caught my breath.
For at the foot of one of those beds was a girl and round her neck were a pair of man's hands and the man was slowly forcing her backwards and squeezing her throat as he did so, so that the girl was being slowly suffocated.
There wasn't the least possibility of a mistake. What I saw was perfectly clear. What was being done was murder.
I could see the girl's face clearly, her vivid golden hair, the agonised terror of her beautiful face, slowly suffusing with blood. Of the man I could see his back, his hands, and a scar that ran down the left side of his face towards his neck.
It's taken some time to tell, but in reality only a moment or two passed while I stared dumbfounded. Then I reeled round to the rescue ...
And on the wall behind me, the wall reflected in the glass, there was only a Victorian mahogany wardrobe. No door open - no scene of violence. I swung back to the mirror. The mirror reflected only the wardrobe ...
I passed my hands across my eyes. Then I sprang across the room and tried to pull forward the wardrobe and at that moment Neil entered by the other door from the passage and asked me what the hell I was trying to do.
He must have thought me slightly barmy as I turned on him and demanded whether there was a door behind the wardrobe. He said, yes, there was a door, it led into the next room. I asked him who was occupying the next room and he said people called Oldham - a Major Oldham and his wife. I asked him then if Mrs Oldham had very fair hair and when he replied dryly that she was dark I began to realise that I was probably making a fool of myself. I pulled myself together, made some lame explanation and we went downstairs together. I told myself that I must have had some kind of hallucination - and felt generally rather ashamed and a bit of an ass.
And then - and then - Neil said, 'My sister Sylvia,' and I was looking into the lovely face of the girl I had just seen suffocating to death ... and I was introduced to her fiancû, a tall dark man with a scar running down the left side of his face.
Well - that's that. I'd like you to think and say what you'd have done in my place. Here was the girl - the identical girl - and here was the man I'd seen throttling her - and they were to be married in about a month's time ...
Had I - or had I not - had a prophetic vision of the future? Would Sylvia and her husband come down here to stay some time in the future, and be given that room (the best spare room) and would that scene I'd witnessed take place in grim reality?
What was I to do about it? Could I do anything? Would anyone - Neil or the girl herself - would they believe me?
I turned the whole business over and over in my mind the week I was down there. To speak or not to speak? And almost at once another complication set in. You see, I fell in love with Sylvia Carslake the first moment I saw her ... I wanted her more than anything on earth ... And in a way that tied my hands.
And yet, if I didn't say anything, Sylvia would marry Charles Crawley and Crawley would kill her ...
And so, the day before I left, I blurted it all out to her. I said I expect she'd t
hink me touched in the intellect or something, but I swore solemnly that I'd seen the thing just as I told it to her and that I felt if she was determined to marry Crawley, I ought to tell her my strange experience.
She listened very quietly. There was something in her eyes I didn't understand. She wasn't angry at all. When I'd finished, she just thanked me gravely. I kept repeating like an idiot, 'I did see it. I really did see it,' and she said, 'I'm sure you did if you say so. I believe you.'
Well, the upshot was that I went off not knowing whether I'd done right or been a fool, and a week later Sylvia broke off her engagement to Charles Crawley.
After that the war happened, and there wasn't much leisure for thinking of anything else. Once or twice when I was on leave, I came across Sylvia, but as far as possible I avoided her.
I loved her and wanted her just as badly as ever, but I felt somehow that it wouldn't be playing the game. It was owing to me that she'd broken off her engagement to Crawley, and I kept saying to myself that I could only justify the action I had taken by making my attitude a purely disinterested one.
Then, in 1916, Neil was killed and it fell to me to tell Sylvia about his last moments. We couldn't remain on formal footing after that. Sylvia had adored Neil and he had been my best friend. She was sweet adorably sweet in her grief. I just managed to hold my tongue and went out again praying that a bullet might end the whole miserable business. Life without Sylvia wasn't worth living.
But there was no bullet with my name on it. One nearly got me below the right ear and one was deflected by a cigarette case in my pocket, but I came through unscathed. Charles Crawley was killed in action at the beginning of 1918.
Somehow that made a difference. I came home in the autumn of 1918 just before the Armistice and I went straight to Sylvia and told her that I loved her. I hadn't much hope that she'd care for me straight away, and you could have knocked me down with a feather when she asked me why I hadn't told her sooner. I stammered out something about Crawley and she said, 'But why did you think I broke it off with him?' and then she told me that she'd fallen in love with me just as I'd done with her - from the very first minute.
I said I thought she'd broken off her engagement because of the story I told her and she laughed scornfully and said that if you loved a man you wouldn't be as cowardly as that, and we went over that old vision of mine again and agreed that it was queer, but nothing more.
'Well, there's nothing much to tell for some time after that. Sylvia and I were married and we were very happy. But I realised, as soon as she was really mine, that I wasn't cut out for the best kind of husband. I loved Sylvia devotedly, but I was jealous, absurdly jealous of anyone she so much as smiled at. It amused her at first, I think she even rather liked it. It proved, at least, how devoted I was.
As for me, I realised quite fully and unmistakably that I was not only making a fool of myself, but that I was endangering all the peace and happiness of our life together. I knew, I say, but I couldn't change.
Every time Sylvia got a letter she didn't show to me I wondered who it was from. If she laughed and talked with any man, I found myself getting sulky and watchful.
At first, as I say, Sylvia laughed at me. She thought it a huge joke.
Then she didn't think the joke so funny. Finally she didn't think it a joke at all -
And slowly, she began to draw away from me. Not in any physical sense, but she withdrew her secret mind from me. I no longer knew what her thoughts were. She was kind - but sadly, as though from a long distance.
Little by little I realised that she no longer loved me. Her love had died and it was I who had killed it ...
The next step was inevitable, I found myself waiting for it - dreading it ...
Then Derek Wainwright came into our lives. He had everything that I hadn't. He had brains and a witty tongue. He was good-looking, too, and - I'm forced to admit it - a thoroughly good chap. As soon as I saw him I said to myself, 'This is just the man for Sylvia ... '
She fought against it. I know she struggled ... but gave her no help. I couldn't. I was entrenched in my gloomy, sullen reserve. I was suffering like hell - and I couldn't stretch out a finger to save myself. I didn't help her. I made things worse. I let loose at her one day - a string of savage, unwarranted abuse. I was nearly mad with jealousy and misery. The things I said were cruel and untrue and I knew while I was saying them how cruel and untrue they were. And yet I took a savage pleasure I saying them ...
I remember how Sylvia flushed and shrank ...
I drove her to the edge of endurance.
I remember she said, 'This can't go on ... '
When I came home that night the house was empty - empty. There was a note - quite in the traditional fashion.
In it she said that she was leaving me - for good. She was going down to Badgeworthy for a day or two. After that she was going to the one person who loved her and needed her. I was to take that as final.
I suppose that up to then I hadn't really believed my own suspicions.
This confirmation in black and white of my worst fears sent me raving mad. I went down to Badgeworthy after her as fast as the car would take me.
She had just changed her frock for dinner, I remember, when I burst into the room. I can see her face - startled - beautiful - afraid.
I said, 'No one but me shall ever have you. No one.'
And I caught her throat in my hands and gripped it and bent her backwards.
Suddenly I saw our reflection in the mirror. Sylvia choking and myself strangling her, and the scar on my cheek where the bullet grazed it under the right ear.
No - I didn't kill her. That sudden revelation paralysed me and I loosened my grasp and let her slip on to the floor ...
And then I broke down - and she comforted me ... Yes, she comforted me.
I told her everything and she told me that by the phrase 'the one person who loved and needed her' she had meant her brother Alan ... We saw into each other's hearts that night, and I don't think, from that moment, that we ever drifted away from each other again...
It's a sobering thought to go through life with - that, but for the grace of God and a mirror, one might be a murderer...
One thing did die that night - the devil of jealousy that had possessed me so long...
But I wonder sometimes - suppose I hadn't made that initial mistake the scar on the left cheek - when really it was the right - reversed by the mirror ... Should I have been so sure the man was Charles Crawley? Would I have warned Sylvia? Would she be married to me or to him?
Or are the past and the future all one?
I'm a simple fellow - and I can't pretend to understand these things but I saw what I saw - and because of what I saw, Sylvia and I are together in the old-fashioned words - till death do us part. And perhaps beyond...
Problem at Pollensa Bay *1991 *
PROBLEM AT POLLENSA BAY
The steamer from Barcelona to Majorca landed Mr Parker Pyne at Palma in the early hours of the morning - and straightaway he met with disillusionment. The hotels were full! The best that could be done for him was an airless cupboard overlooking an inner court in a hotel in the center of the town - and with that Mr Parker Pyne was not prepared to put up. The proprietor of the hotel was indifferent to his disappointment. "What will you?" he observed with a shrug. Palma was popular now! The exchange was favorable! Everyone - the English, the Americans - they all came to Majorca in the winter. The whole place was crowded. It was doubtful if the English gentleman would be able to get in anywhere - except perhaps at Formentor where the prices were so ruinous that even foreigners blenched at them.
Mr Parker Pyne partook of some coffee and a roll and went out to view the cathedral, but found himself in no mood for appreciating beauties of architecture. He next had a conference with a taxidriver in inadequate French interspersed with native Spanish, and they discussed the possibilities of Soller, Alcudia, Pollensa and Formentor - where there were fine hotels, but they were expensive.<
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Mr Parker Pyne was goaded to inquire how expensive.
They asked, said the taxi driver, a price that it would be absurd and ridiculous to consider, since it was well known that the English came to the island because the prices were cheap and reasonable.
Mr Parker Pyne said that that was true, but all the same what sums did they charge at the Formentor?
A price quite incredible!
Perfectly - but WHAT PRICE EXACTLY?
The driver consented at last to name exact figures. Fresh from the exactions of hotels in Jerusalem and Egypt, the figure did not stagger Mr Parker Pyne unduly.
Mr Parker Pine's cases were loaded on the taxi in a haphazard manner, and they started by the coast, round the island, trying to find a cheaper lodging en route but with the final objective of reaching the Formentor.
But they never reached that nest of plutocracy, for after they had passed the narrow streets of Pollensa and were on the curved line of the seashore, they came by the Hotel Pino d'Oro - a small hotel standing by the sea looking out over a view that in the misty haze of a fine morning had the exquisite vagueness of a Japanese print.
At once Mr Parker Pyne knew that this, and this only, was what he was looking for. He stopped the taxi, passed through the painted gate with the hope that he would find a resting place.
The elderly couple to whom the hotel belonged knew no English or French. Nevertheless the matter was concluded satisfactorily. Mr Parker Pyne was allotted a room overlooking the sea, the suitcases were unloaded, the driver congratulated his passenger upon avoiding the monstrous exigencies of "these new hotels," received his fare and departed with a cheerful Spanish salutation.
Mr Parker Pyne glanced at his watch and perceiving that it was, even now, but a quarter to ten, he went out onto the small terrace now bathed in a dazzling morning light and ordered, for the second time that morning, coffee and rolls.
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