Darkness at Pemberley

by T. H. White

  "What is it?"

  "Come and look at it. I locked my door and bolted my window last night, as you told me to. Also, on my own account, I looked in the cupboards, under the bed and up the chimney. I was absolutely terrified, but I did. That was the only kick I got out of it until this morning. Then I got this one."

  She opened the door into her room.

  On the cheval glass of her mirror was a rough sketch drawn in lipstick:

  Lipstick sketch of face

  Buller walked over and examined it dispassionately.

  "Were your door and window still fastened when you woke up this morning?" he asked.

  "No. The door was open, but the key was still under my pillow."

  Buller stood biting his thumbnail.

  "It isn't very nice for you," he said.

  "No. It made me feel horrid when I first found it. That man walking about in my room and drawing pictures in Louis Philippe! It's the other things he might have done—perhaps did do.... But any way we're still alive. How on earth did he get in?"

  "I don't know. Locked doors can always be unlocked, you know. He may have a master key, or be clever with his fingers. He may have hidden himself in the rhododendrons when we searched the house for the second time last night, and let himself in again later on. We shall have to have bolts put on all the doors to-day, and from to-night onwards we'll set guards in the passages and in the hall. Will the servants stand for it?"

  "Yes. All that remain now are devoted to Charles, and wouldn't leave him for anything. We've gradually let the staff whittle itself down to the ones who would still be here after an earthquake. Does this little picture mean anything in particular?"

  "No," said Buller. "Let's get down to breakfast. Perhaps we'd better rub it out first, for the sake of the servants—though I suppose your maid has seen it already?"

  "Yes. We didn't say anything, though. She may have thought I did it myself."

  Buller took his clean handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped the glass. This red stuff, he reflected, is Liz's lipstick: I shall be able to kiss my handkerchief because it shares the same colour with those lips. Out loud he said: "The picture is simply an attempt to make our flesh creep. We mustn't let it. I don't think it applies to you at all. The man simply wanted to rub it in that he could get into anybody's room with impunity. Now for some breakfast."

  They were just finishing their coffee when a knock was sounded on the door and Smith came in with the police surgeon from Cambridge.

  "Hullo, Lucifer," said the latter. "I thought I'd come and see how you were doing since you fell from heaven."

  Buller said: "Miss Darcy, this is Dr. Wilder, a very old friend of mine. He's the fellow I sent the toothbrush to."

  "How d'you do?" said the surgeon. "As a delicate hint I thought it in rather bad taste."

  "Won't you sit down and have some breakfast?" Elizabeth asked. "You must be absolutely exhausted. And you, Smith, you'd better go and have something to eat too, and a rest, you've been splendidly quick."

  Smith shuffled off looking proud of himself, and the surgeon proceeded to fill his mouth with bacon.

  "There's nothing like driving through the dawn, and that sort of thing," he said, "for giving one an appetite for bacon. Now what about the toothbrush?"

  "What about it?" asked Buller.

  The surgeon drank a large cup of coffee.

  "You can't have expert opinion," he said, "without fee. Your chauffeur told me something about the excitements going on here whilst we were on the way. If I tell you about the toothbrush I insist upon being let in on the ground floor."

  Buller said: "I'm afraid the excitement isn't public property."

  "If you're going in for bootlegging or murder, you can confide in Uncle. I'm on holiday."

  "It isn't my secret," said Buller.

  "Well, the toothbrush is mine and unless there's a fair exchange it's likely to remain so. Forgive my abruptness, Miss Darcy, but Buller's so punctilious that he has to be stampeded into everything."

  Buller said slowly: "Actually we're terribly short-handed if it's going to be a question of guards in the passages. I think you'd better come and see Charles." He drew Elizabeth aside. "Wilder's a good man," he said. "He might be useful if you don't object. Do you think you could put him up?"

  "Why, certainly, if he'd like to stay. But this isn't exactly a house-party."

  "If it was," said Buller, "he wouldn't stay."

  "Now that you've arranged it," remarked the surgeon cheerfully from the sideboard, "let's hear about the toothbrush. Is Miss Darcy the murderess or are you?"

  There was such a twinkle in his eye that Elizabeth couldn't resist him for long. "My dear," she said, "the whole house is a shambles."

  "Splendid! Naturally I shall give everybody a certificate of death from natural causes."

  "Don't talk so much," said Buller, "and finish your breakfast. I want to take you upstairs to see Charles."

  "Whilst I'm eating, you might give me an outline of the position. You forget that I don't even know whom you are proposing to murder."

  Buller looked at Elizabeth and, receiving her nod, proceeded to explain.

  When he had finished, the surgeon drummed on the table, with a grave face. "We'd better go and talk to Sir Charles," he said.

  Charles was standing in the dressing-room, staring moodily out of the window. He was delighted that Wilder should join the garrison.

  "Stay and talk to me," he said. "You can't imagine what hell it is being locked up in this piffling little room."

  "Actually," said Wilder, "there are several things to talk about. First of all that toothbrush was simply crawling with diphtheria. Now why was it given to the butler?"

  "It was given," said Buller, "as a hint. It was Charles's own toothbrush taken from this room. Mauleverer meant us to realise that he might much more easily have simply left it here for Charles to use and possibly die of."

  "It's extraordinary," said Elizabeth, "how Mr. Buller mentioned the death-from-natural-causes kind of attack when we were talking it over yesterday, before the search."

  "You don't think," said Wilder slowly, "that this man may have heard you talking it over? He seems to be pretty well at home in this house...."

  The house seemed to stand still and catch its breath about them.

  "If he had overheard," Wilder went on in a lower voice, "the procedure might have been a little different. I'm inclined to think that he had already treated the toothbrush and left it for use. Then he heard Buller vapouring about his probable methods and very naturally changed his mind. He was too proud to give Buller the chance of saying: I told you so. So he went back and took the toothbrush away again and gave it to the butler to show what he could have done."

  "But it's preposterous," said Charles. "How can we have been overheard?"

  "How can the man get into any room he likes, with all the doors locked? You haven't been told about Miss Darcy's looking-glass."

  They told him.

  Charles said: "Liz, you've got to go away at once."

  Elizabeth said: "If you turn me out I shall walk about the grounds in my nightgown, and if you turn me out of the grounds I shall sleep in the road outside the gates. Wouldn't it be safer to stay?"

  Her tone of voice made further argument useless.

  "What I can't understand in you, Buller," said the surgeon, "is why you don't plump for police protection."

  "Simply because we can't. I'd give my soul to be able to, but the circumstances are peculiar. You know what police protection is, and, even if we could get it on our flimsy story, it would only work for a few days. The nation can't afford to support a posse of constables simply to protect Charles. They would have to let up sooner or later and then the man would step in and finish it off. Mauleverer has the patience to wait for any length of time, and the ingenuity to kill Charles safely in the end even if the police knew that he was trying to kill him. I sent a telegram to Mauleverer saying that we had informed the police
—though we hadn't—so as to make him be careful at any rate. We've got the moral protection of the police, in so far as he won't dare simply to shoot Charles from a distance, unless he's worked up an alibi, but that's all we can afford to get."

  "Actually," put in the surgeon, "I doubt if he would want to shoot Sir Charles from a distance. From what you've told me of him, I should think he would be very keen on letting Sir Charles know that he was in his power before he died."

  "Quite so. But to get back to this police protection business. We should have a couple of country Roberts sitting about the place, and we should have the moral support of Mauleverer's knowing that he would be suspected if Charles died. That's all we should have. The Roberts would have to go and Mauleverer would work out an assassination which couldn't possibly be connected with himself, even on presumptive evidence. Then the real snag crops up. If we ask for police protection and Mauleverer disappears, Charles will be suspect. Protection makes it impossible for us to protect ourselves by the only hopeful method—that of polishing off Mauleverer before he finishes Charles. You see, we're up against a man who has the tenacity of a viper and is more or less above the police. We get a regular mediæval feud forced upon us by the special circumstances of our adversary."

  "So our late detective is going to countenance an attempt to murder a Fellow of St. Bernard's?"

  "Yes. It comes down to that. About murdering Mauleverer I haven't the least compunction. It's a case of self-preservation, not a social case at all."

  "And how do you propose to get him?"

  "That's absolutely beyond the horizon so far. The bait is here in Charles, and if we can make it a trap we must do. We can only sit over the bait and hope that Mauleverer will betray himself."

  "I don't object to being a bait," said Charles, "not in the least. But I do find it boring being shut up in this cursed room, away from all the fun. Also it's bad for the nerves, you know."

  "Nerves!" exclaimed Buller. "In a couple of days nobody will be able to hear a door slammed without screaming."

  As if to confirm his statement a door slammed in the hall and they all jumped.

  "Couldn't I get out a bit?" pleaded Charles. "I should be just as good a bait in a motor-car every afternoon, or taking a short walk round the grounds."

  "Too good a bait, I'm afraid. We should find the cheese gone and the trap empty. Seriously, Charles, you won't see what you're up against. You are thinking about murders with knives and pistols and that sort of straightforward stuff. You forget that you've got a madman against you who is also a recognised intelligence at one of the leading Universities. As Wilder says, Mauleverer will probably prefer to get you in some way which will leave you time to understand perfectly that you've been beaten and by whom. And I should think, myself, that he will probably try to get you in some bloodthirsty way. You see, he was blooded over this unfortunate porter. But, if he can't get you like that, he has the whole of modern science to play with. He can induce blood poisoning in several ways. The whole world is a potential arsenal of things that might puncture or poison you: of tetanus, and meningitis and chronic diseases. He may gas you, or electrocute you or even blow you up like Darnley. I'm trying to put the wind up you because it'll do you good. You're too lazy about it. I wish you'd realise that when you light a cigarette, or cross your knees, or turn over in bed, you may be touching off the spring. The only safe position for you is lying flat on your back and motionless. And then you'd be in grave danger. Yet you talk about strolling round the grounds."

  "You don't make great efforts to improve my morale."

  "No, and I won't till you realise that you're not safe in this room even. It isn't pleasant to have to say these things in front of Miss Darcy, but you make me."

  "Why don't we go away?" asked Elizabeth. "Surely Chiz might be safer travelling about, instead of sitting still where the man can lay his traps just where he's sure to catch him."

  "I've thought of that. But it isn't so really. Charles would be on the move, certainly, and it wouldn't be so easy in one way to locate him for the coup de grâce——"

  "You don't, if I may say so," put in the surgeon, "stint yourself of expressions likely to encourage the invalid."

  "—I'm sorry. There it is. We must face it. But as I was saying, it might be better to keep Charles moving except that he has to move in a large space. The bigger the crowd which Charles shoulders through, the easier Mauleverer can hide in it—with a little pin. If we took Charles to London, for instance, imagine the increased chances of ambush! No, he's safest in the smallest room, with somebody inside it all the time. Of course we could take him to greater safety—on a yacht, for instance. In the middle of the ocean even Mauleverer might find it difficult to bump him off. But then, I take it that you don't want to live in the middle of the ocean for the rest of your lives. The yacht plan, and all others like it, would merely defer the crisis. Mauleverer would be there when you landed. There is only one course open to us, and that is to stay here with Charles as a bait. We must guard him to the top of our bent, but still keep him faintly exposed. Then Mauleverer will have to attempt him, and may give us a chance to strike back and end the suspense for good."

  "I agree," said Wilder, "that there doesn't seem anything better to do."

  Buller looked enquiringly at Charles, who nodded.

  "Very well, then. Wilder and I will take it in turns to sit with you, day and night. Kingdom will keep an eye on Miss Darcy. Would you, Miss Darcy, send somebody for tinned provisions from Derby—everything we can possibly need for a week? We won't eat anything which doesn't come out of a sealed vessel. You'd better order Vichy or Tonic water to drink. Also would you get somebody up from the village to put bolts on all the doors. After that I think we'll have done all we can do and it'll just be a question of waiting."

  Elizabeth looked nervously round the room.

  "I'm afraid I'm going to be a nuisance," she said, "just as you said I would. But I should be worse out of the house. I couldn't bear it. You'll have to put up with me."

  "My dear Liz," said Charles, "you'll be as good as anybody else."

  "Or better," said Buller, with a great effort.

  Elizabeth gave him a grateful smile.

  "It's the waiting," she said, "that's so awful. That and not knowing—whether it won't happen—— Now!"

  The next second there was a swish behind them, and they all spun round.

  CHAPTER XI

  "It's only some soot from the chimney," said Buller guiltily. "You'll have to have your chimneys swept, Miss Darcy, if we're going to keep sane." The tense atmosphere gave place to one of slight hysteria.

  "My dear!" said Elizabeth. "Actually they've just been swept. I did my spring cleaning early when I heard you were coming to stay." She giggled weakly. Wilder began to whistle the Spring Song and they all laughed—nobody knew why.

  *****

  The mellow old brickwork and peaceful scenery of Pemberley seemed to take on an air of menace and exhaustion under these new conditions. The three men became secretly tiresome to one another. Charles began to find the continued presence of one or another of them a memento mori. Elizabeth could have screamed when, for the hundredth time, she came upon the white moustache of Kingdom discreetly hovering just outside her range of occupation. It was not that there was any antipathy between the members of the beleaguered garrison, but that each reminded the other, simply by his presence, of an unpleasant doubt. The silence was sinister with possibilities.

  Buller, when it was the surgeon's turn for duty upstairs, could bear it no longer. He went in search of Elizabeth.

  "Here," he said, "I can't stand this. Let's go for a drive or something. I don't think anything can happen during the day in any case. We're not really needed here, and we owe our nerves a rest."

  "Where shall we go?"

  "Anywhere, so it be out of this whispering."

  *****

  Elizabeth had insisted that Buller should drive, though it was her car; and he did drive:
at a pace which was hardly in keeping with his usual solemnity. The beautiful engine huskily purred beneath his foot. The roads were shining with rain, the sun was out, and the drenched buds unclasped themselves in green and bursting ecstasy.

  "This is better than stuffing at home, isn't it?" asked Buller. He thus temperately expressed the sensation of driving a powerful coupé through the spring sunlight, with his heart's sun and moon sitting alone beside him.

  "Yes, isn't it?" replied Elizabeth, in the attempt to phrase adequately the melting of her limbs.

  Beyond these declarations the rest of the drive was uneventful.

  *****

  The day dragged itself out in futile discussion. They dined together in Charles's room, and there made their last dispositions. It was arranged that the sleeping quarters of all four of them should be confined to a single passage, into which, though it was in the old wing and by no means straight, all the doors opened fairly conveniently. In this passage Buller and Kingdom were to remain by four-hour spells. Wilder was to sleep that night with Charles. He would change places with Buller every other night. Smith, the chauffeur, was instructed to sleep in the passage outside the maid-servants' rooms in the other wing. The gardeners and gamekeeper had to look after themselves in their own cottages, though one or another of them was to be about the grounds all night.

  "Wouldn't it be a good idea," asked Elizabeth, "if we got some of the dogs inside the house?"

  This was done.

  Meanwhile the early spring twilight had come down in rain again, bringing the battlements of neutral clouds to brood over Pemberley. The darkness which had never weighed upon the house before, in four hundred years of English weather, gathered above the eaves and crept up the great staircase. The clocks began to steady themselves for their lonely concerts of the night, and the less durable human creatures took themselves with a final clatter to their beds or vigils. The house congealed again into silence and the life of things.

  Charles, who was taking the first watch this time, sat in the dressing-room where Buller had sat the night before. He also was reading a book, but with different mannerisms. His progress through it was less absorbed, the movement of his hands and his attention to the duties of his guard less measured and automatic. His eyes would stray from the page before he was ready to turn over. He played with a paper-knife. The electric light poured down, not upon an absorbed or taciturn and efficient watchman, but upon a restive manhood: upon a yellow head which moved perpetually like a bird's, and a frame which rose and walked to the windows each time that the silence seemed to gain an ascendancy. There was nothing to be seen outside the windows, for it was as dark as pitch. Charles would stare gloomily at his own reflection, stamp about the room for a moment and drop back into his chair with a disgruntled sigh. He would open his book, shift in his seat, read a few sentences, and shift again. Round this restlessness the same room that had surrounded Buller's absorption pursued its identical interests. The clocks counted as usual, and Wilder's unconscious breathing sounded from beyond the human mind.