Death at the Deep End

by Patricia Wentworth

  Suppose it was really true. There must be some strong reason for the trick that had been played on her. If Anna really was shut up in the ruined part of Deepe House or in the cellars under it, that would be a reason. If she was there, would she be still alive? Or was she dead and buried under one of those ruined floors? If she was alive, every moment must be like an hour. How was it possible to eat and drink, to lie down at night and get up in the morning, and not know whether all those minutes or hours were not dragging by with a torturing slowness for Anna Ball?

  She went on thinking.

  THIRTY

  IF THE MISS Tremletts had been less conversational themselves they might have observed that Thomasina had very little to say for the rest of the evening, but they always had so much to say, and were in such close competition for the opportunity of saying it, that it really was just as well that she had nothing to contribute. Nothing could have suited them better than a guest who sat in attentive silence.

  First of all they naturally desired to discuss Miranda’s trance and the enigmatic communication which it had produced. They had not liked Anna Ball—‘Not that we really knew her, and she had a very rebuffing manner, but one would not like to think that anything had happened to her—’

  ‘And if anything had, why should she wish to communicate with us?’ said Miss Elaine.

  ‘Very puzzling indeed,’ said Miss Gwyneth. ‘Because she couldn’t possibly have met you, my dear Ina, and since she said her—“I don’t want her to know”—the message couldn’t have been intended for Augustus.’

  ‘So that only leaves myself and Gwyneth.’

  ‘And really, as I said, we hardly knew her.’

  ‘But these communications do so often seem to be quite irrelevant. Now I knew a case where a Miss Brown—or was it Jones—I can’t remember which, but she was a niece, or a cousin, or a friend of a Mrs Hawkins who was at Wyshmere when your aunt was there. She went to a medium in London because a young man she was half engaged to had stopped writing a month or two after going to South America and she was afraid something had happened to him. She told the medium all about it, and she looked in the crystal and said she saw a ship coming into a foreign port—and of course that was quite all right, because he wrote once or twice after he got there. And then she said there was a dark woman, and a kind of a cloud. And right at the end she said she saw a funeral. Well, of course Miss Jones—if it was Jones and not Brown, and I really can’t remember which it was—well, naturally she was very much upset and made up her mind the young man was dead. But he wasn’t, because she heard quite a long time after that he had married a Chilean and they had four children. So you see the crystal was quite right about there being a dark girl, but the only thing the funeral could possibly have referred to was that old Mrs Pondleby who lived over the way from them did die about three weeks later. But she was well over ninety and had been an invalid for a great many years, so that it wasn’t a surprise to anyone. And, as I said, it just shows—’

  She did not explain what is showed, because the moment she stopped to take breath Miss Gwyneth broke in with the story of a young man who was connected by marriage with that very charming Mrs Hughes who was a connection of Lord Dumbleton’s. It appeared he had dreamt three times that he saw a grey horse win the Derby, and in the dream he knew the horse’s name and the jockey’s colours, but when he woke up they had gone.

  ‘And all he knew was that he had seen a grey horse win the Derby. So he went to a medium who was being a good deal talked about just then, and the first thing she wanted to know was whether there was a grey horse running, and of course it was most unfortunate, there were two. So she looked at his hand, and she said he was on the threshold of a great opportunity and everything would depend on what he did next. And that was quite true, because he had to decide whether he would go out to South Africa and join the Cape Mounted Police or take a post in a Birmingham bank—and of course if he was going to win a lot of money on the Derby he wouldn’t do either. So she looked in the crystal, and she saw a grey horse all right, but it wasn’t winning the race that she could see. It was just galloping along with a lot of other horses, and it was gone in a flash, and she couldn’t see the jockey’s colours, or what he was like, or anything, only she had a strong impression of the letter H. And as soon as she said that, Mrs Hughes’ nephew got quite excited and said he had that too. But it didn’t really help them, because one of the grey horses in the race was Humboldt, and the other Herring’s Eyes, so she tried again, and she couldn’t see anything but a cloud of dust. And in the end one of the grey horses was disqualified, and the other came in last but one. So the poor young man went out to South Africa, and I never heard what happened to him, because Mrs Hughes left Wyshmere for the Channel Islands.’

  They went on telling stories like this for a couple of hours. Thomasina didn’t mind as long as they kept away from the subject of Anna Ball. She had only to look attentive and make a kind of murmuring sound every now and then. None of the stories seemed to prove anything very much except the readiness with which people will believe whatever they wish to believe.

  At ten o’clock they all drank tea and went to bed. That is to say, the Miss Tremletts went to bed. Thomasina did not. She turned her light low and sat down to wait, and to count the strokes when the wall-clock in the living-room chimed the quarters. She had made up her mind to wait until half past eleven, and it seemed a long, long time. It grew cold, and colder. The house gathered its silence about it like a cloak. Every time the clock struck, the sound was more startling. Thomasina found herself waiting for it and dreading it. It was like expecting the sudden flare of a magnesium light.

  The time dragged unbelievably as quarter followed quarter on the old wall-clock in the living-room below—half past ten—a quarter to eleven—eleven o’clock—a quarter past— She put on her coat and made sure that the battery in her torch was all right.

  As the two strokes of the half hour came upon the air, she opened her door and went softly down the stair.

  THIRTY-ONE

  PETER BRANDON WAS quite as angry with Thomasina as she was with him. There were moments during the afternoon and evening when he found himself disliking her to such an extent that he would have turned his back on Deep End and shaken its soggy clay off his feet for good and all if he hadn’t been unalterably convinced that she would get herself into some really horrible mess if he wasn’t there to restrain her. He had been fond of Thomasina for a great many years in the casual, unemotional way of family relationship. He had teased her, criticized her, and quarrelled with her, all without heat, but it was only in the last six months that he had committed the folly of falling in love with her. He hadn’t had the slightest intention of doing it. Somewhere between thirty and thirty-five he intended to marry and have children—not less than two and not more than four, and preferably two boys and a girl. He proposed to be a good husband and father, and to have the kind of pleasant calm affection for his wife which made no demands upon the emotions and conduced to a tranquil atmosphere in the home. The wife had remained a quite nebulous figure—she bore no resemblance whatever to Thomasina. And then he had to go and fall in love with a creature whom he had known in her pram.

  When the fact came home to him he told himself that it was a temporary aberration. He had been summoned to Barbara Brandon’s deathbed, and his emotions were not under the usual control. He saw Thomasina being incredibly brave, and when everything was over he saw her heartbroken and desolate. She wept on his shoulder. They were both quite taken out of themselves. But when he went back to London he couldn’t get her out of his head. He told himself that it would pass, but it didn’t pass, it got worse. He began to write her long letters and to look out for the answers. And then all this damnable business about Anna Ball blew up, and when Thomasina came south he could do nothing but quarrel with her.

  It ought to have put him out of love with her, but it didn’t. It is quite extraordinary how angrily you can dislike a person with whom yo
u are in love. Peter had moments of cold fury in which he told himself that he never wanted to see her again. As these persisted side by side with a complete inability to stay away from her, his mental state was naturally an extremely uncomfortable one, and as far as possible removed from the placidity of his hypothetical courtship.

  When he had walked himself tired he returned to his room at the Masters’ cottage, where he read doggedly by the light of an oil lamp until summoned by old Mr Masters to the evening meal. Mrs Masters being absent on an errand of mercy—a neighbour having scalded her hand—they sat down to a tête-à-tête.

  ‘And she may be long, or she mayn’t, there’s no saying with scalds, but I shouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t all a much about little, seeing it’s Louie Gregory that’s been known from a child to be one to cry out afore she’s hurt. Six children she’s had, and was agoing to die with every one of them, and there they all are a-flourishing like weeds, and Louie trying to make out what a time she’s had a-bringing of them up.’

  They had scrambled eggs, and Mr Masters claimed with justice that he made them better than his daughter-in-law did. He was in high feather, and by the time the meal was over and he had lighted his pipe he had got going upon his repertory of old stories, and by way of that to the history of the Everlys.

  ‘And I wouldn’t tell it, not to anyone but you, Mr Brandon, because it isn’t a thing that ought to be spoken of. There’s those that would come here and ask their questions, but they’d never get no answers out of me. All happened a long time ago and best forgotten, that’s what I say, and that’s what I told him when he come asking, that there Craddock up at the House. And he says, “What’s the story, Mr Masters?” And, “What story?” I says. And he says, “Is it anything about a hand?” And I says, “Lord—who told you that! Have you been a-seeing things?” I says. Well, he says he might have been. But I didn’t tell him nothing, because it wasn’t none of his business. Stands to reason, if there’s hauntings going on, those that’s doing it wouldn’t want no upstarting strangers a-coming in. Very high-up people they was, the Everlys—kep’ themselves to themselves, very proud and haughty, as you might say. And the three Miss Everlys that was the last of them, they weren’t no different from the rest. I knew them all when I was a lad—Miss Maria, Miss Isabella, and Miss Clarice. …’

  He dawdled on through his tale of three lonely women in a decaying house and the cousin who came to stay and was going to marry Miss Clarice.

  ‘Only Miss Isabella, she wouldn’t have it. Seems she wouldn’t bear to have her younger sister put over her, and she went out of her head with spite, and it come to murder between them. So when Miss Clarice was dead and Miss Isabella was shut up for mad there was only Miss Maria left, and she lived on there alone in the shut-up house until she died. And they say it’s Miss Clarice that haunts the house with her cut-off hand.’

  ‘Her cut-off hand?’

  Old Mr Masters screwed up his face into a thousand wrinkles and nodded.

  ‘That’s what Miss Isabella did—cut off her hand with the ring on it.’

  There was something about the casual way he said this that added to the horror. It was as if it had been repeated so many times as to become a mere shadow of a tale long told. The old voice going on in the old room with the lamplight spilled in a patch of brightness and the shadows black beyond, all heightened the effect. Peter had a sense of the stark facts of human nature against the peacefully flowing current of village life. This horrible thing had happened, and the village had gaped and accepted it, but it seemed they kept away from the place where it had happened. Old Mr Masters was saying so.

  ‘I won’t say I’m afraid of ghosts, not if they was my own folk and such that’s died lawful in their beds, but I wouldn’t go up round Deepe House in the night—not in that middle part of the house where the murder was, not for a pound weight of gold I wouldn’t. There was a boy that lost his wits and never spoke after, and there was others. Stands to reason Everlys don’t want no one prying in on them, nor I wouldn’t be the one to pry.’ He dropped his voice to a croaking whisper. ‘There was a tramping chap thought he’d get in and sleep there the way they do where there’s an empty house. They say he got up to the window—all cracked it was after the bomb, and he thought he’d pull out a bit of the glass and get in. But when he put his hand to it there was another hand came out of the dark to meet him, and he upped and ran for it through the courtyard and down the drive, yelling his head off.’

  There might have been more to say, or there might not. Whether there was or no, old Mr Masters did not get the chance of saying it, because that was where his daughter-in-law came in, a good deal put about and with views of her own to air on the subject of people who didn’t know enough to tie up a scalded finger without sending for someone else to do it for them.

  ‘And that’s Louie Gregory all over, if it’s the last word I spoke. And her mother the same before her. So long as there’s someone else to do a thing you won’t never need to do it yourself—that’s the way they looked at it, and that’s the way they acted it out. Whether it was borrowing sugar and forgetting to pay it back, or leaving you to bathe the baby whilst they had a nice comfortable faint on their beds, that was them!’

  Old Mr Masters looked up with a twinkling eye.

  ‘Been bathing the baby, Sarah?’

  Mrs Masters’ cheeks, already flushed with vexation and fatigue, became a rich shade of plum. She stared angrily at her father-in-law.

  ‘More fool me!’ she said. ‘And washed up the dinner things which no one hadn’t thought to do, and given the children their tea which they was crying for, and cleared up the worst of the muck in the house! And that poor fool of a Louie setting there crying over her finger!’

  ‘What do’ee do it for?’ said old Mr Masters.

  Sarah Masters was slapping plates together as she cleared the table.

  ‘Because I’m a fool, I suppose! Go on—tell me so!’

  Old Mr Masters told her so with a sardonic chuckle, adding as a crowning insult that she’d got too soft a heart and it would get her into trouble one of these days if she didn’t look out. After which she banged out of the room, and could be heard clattering plates and dishes in the scullery.

  Peter went back to his room and tried to write. It was not a great success. His pen travelled, but just what part of his mind prompted it, he did not know. Not a very intelligent part, because when he came to read over what he had written it didn’t seem to mean anything at all. Thomasina’s name had got into it twice. When he had torn it up and started all over again he did manage to keep some control over what went down on the paper. And at the end of it a duller lot of tripe he had never read in his life. It joined the other torn pages in the wastepaper basket. If he couldn’t get away from thinking about Thomasina he had better do it in an orderly and intelligent manner. To start with, what was he in such a stew about? It wasn’t the first time they had quarrelled, and it wouldn’t be the last. It wasn’t the quarrel that was worrying him.

  Well then, what was it? The moment he began to think about it he knew very well what it was. He had taken up the attitude of the confirmed sceptic in this matter of Anna Ball, but there was just a chance that there was something in it. Girls did get murdered, and Anna was just the aggravating kind who might have asked for it and got it. And if she had—then there was no saying what kind of a mess Thomasina might land in. He didn’t like Deepe House, with its rickety bomb-damaged rooms and its boarded-up windows. If it wasn’t anything else it was probably insanitary. He didn’t like old Mr Masters’ story about the Everly sisters. Like a surprisingly large number of people, he didn’t believe in haunted houses, but he didn’t like them. They linked up with old horrible things that ought to be forgotten. And at this point he knew very well what was making him afraid. It was the idea of Thomasina going off by herself on some crazy search for Anna Ball in that old dilapidated house.

  He remembered what she had said about the cellars. Suppose she
took it into her head to go looking for Anna Ball in that crazy place in the dark. She was certainly capable of it. She was angry, she was stubborn, and quite disastrously brave. And she might stumble into almost anything, from a hole in the floor to whatever it was that had sent old Mr Masters’ tramp running hell-for-leather down the drive yelling his head off.

  A picture came up in his mind, small but horribly vivid—not Thomasina riding her high horse, proud, angry, sure of herself, but a girl with all the courage scared out of her screaming in the dark. He looked at his watch. It was twenty minutes past eleven. He had been too long over his writing, over his thoughts. Anything might have happened, or be happening now, up there at Deepe House. Here the Masters were in bed and asleep, old Mr Masters by nine o’clock, and Sarah as soon as she had finished her angry clattering and clearing up. He opened the window, hung by his hands from the sill, and dropped. Since the downstair rooms were a bare eight foot from ceiling to floor, it was easy enough, and when it came to getting in again—well, he thought he wouldn’t be the first to use the old pear tree as a ladder.

  The night was damp and chill but not really cold. He had no plan except to go up to the Miss Tremletts and see whether any light burned there or not. He had no further thought or purpose, and it came to him that it was a senseless one, because if the windows were all dark, it might mean that Thomasina was in bed and asleep, or it might mean that she was out and away. And if there was a light in her window, it could mean that she was awake. She could be reading in bed. She could be doing any one of the things you do when you don’t want to go to sleep. Or she could be out in the dark, with the light left in her window to guide her home.