by Maggie Joel
‘I thought, if you did wish to talk to the man, I could put him in the front reception room,’ she suggested, and it was clear that what she meant was, I could ensure no one sees him.
He smiled gratefully. ‘Thank you, Mrs Logan, as always you have a solution to everything. I shall see the man in the front reception room.’
Police Constable Matlock took the news that a madman had attempted to break down the door of an establishment in Cadogan Mews in his stride, licking the end of his pencil and recording the details in his notebook with no more than the occasional nod of his head and Lucas, pausing in his story to observe the man, wondered how he would react to the report of a grisly murder.
‘And you say you knew the man, sir?’
‘I believe I may have seen this man, yes. Briefly. At my offices a few days ago. There have been some minor disturbances there recently. Protestors angry about a railway accident. It’s possible this is connected.’
‘It would seem likely, sir. However we try to avoid assumptions in our line of work. How many casualties did you say there were, sir, in this railway accident?’
Lucas stood up and walked around the chair to the window. ‘Three. That is, three fatalities. Twenty-nine injured.’
‘Taking into account wives, husbands, parents, children of the dead plus survivors and their wives, husbands, parents, children …’ the constable paused as though doing some enormous calculation in his head ‘… potential for quite a large number of aggrieved people, I would suggest.’
Lucas made no reply.
‘Well, your bloke’s probably long gone by now,’ the man sighed. ‘Still, to be on the safe side, we’ll keep this place under observation for the next few days. Might be as well to let your family know to be vigilant, not go out alone if they can possibly help it.’
‘You can’t believe the man will try it again?’
‘Can’t be too careful, sir. He’s tried it once. Why not a second time?’
‘Because my cook went at him with a meat cleaver. That would be reason enough, one would have thought.’
The constable rubbed the bristles on his chin. ‘I have had occasion to meet the lady in question, sir, and I can testify that such an encounter would not be one any man would wish to repeat. But this fellow sounds like a madman. Can’t predict ’em, sir. Irrational,’ and Constable Matlock tapped the side of his head.
‘I am sure you are right, Constable, nevertheless I would prefer to keep this … incident quiet, at least from my wife and children. By all means patrol the street and keep an eye on the house but please do so unobtrusively.’
After the man had gone, Lucas stood by the window thinking. The other directors should be told, they had a right to know in case the man came to their homes. He would go into the office and call a meeting for later that afternoon. As for Aurora and the children, no, he would not tell them. He had no wish to alarm them. He had already told them nothing had happened, how could he now go to them and say that he had lied? Besides, it was surely unlikely the man would return. And if he did, the constable would be on hand to deal with him.
If he could just have spoken to Brinklow. If he could have had ten minutes with the man … And said what, exactly? I understand your pain—
There was a soft tap at the door.
‘Mrs Logan. Come in. Close the door. Has the constable been shown out?’
She nodded. ‘Yes, Mr Jarmyn. It was managed … discreetly.’ She touched the surface of the table with her fingers and looked down as she said this.
‘Good. Good, thank you.’ Lucas paused. It was important now to phrase his words carefully. ‘As you will have ascertained, I have decided not to tell Mrs Jarmyn or the children what has occurred. I have no wish to alarm them. The constable seemed fairly certain that the man will have long absconded and as a precaution the police are to keep the house under observation so I feel justified in keeping this from my family.’
He stood at the window with his back to her. What must she think of him, lying to his family? What must her opinion of him be now, after this?
‘No doubt that is the wisest course, Mr Jarmyn,’ she replied, which told him nothing. He imagined himself turning around and searching her face to see her thoughts, imagined himself saying, But is it? Do you really believe so? What do you really think, Mrs Logan? But instead he said:
‘And I am sure I can rely on you to ensure the discretion of the staff in this matter?’
He was asking her to make the servants keep a secret from the mistress of the house. He was asking her to collude in a deception.
‘Their discretion is assured,’ she replied.
He nodded, not turning around. ‘Thank you. That will be all.’
He waited until he heard the door open then close behind her before going over to the spot where she had stood. He reached out and traced the place on the table that her fingers had touched and this simple act meant more, at that moment, than the railway accident and the deranged man and the lies he had told to his family.
Something, he realised with a growing sense of unease, had gone very awry.
Jack knew what he had seen and he was not going to be fobbed off. That no one else in the family admitted having seen it or appeared to believe him only spurred him on. Something had happened and it was being deliberately kept from him. This did not, in itself, surprise him. Things happened all the time in the adult world that he was simply not a party to. Sofia was kept alive in a darkened room for ten days and neither he nor Gus were allowed to see her. Her funeral happened and they did not attend. Cousin Roger came to dinner then a telegram arrived to say he was dead. There was no body, and they did not attend the memorial service or the gathering afterwards. People came to make calls, other people came for dinner. They arrived, they stayed a while, they left. He and Gus saw none of it. And now a man had attempted to batter down the door and everyone was pretending nothing had happened.
He left the morning room and instead of going up to the schoolroom to join Gus for lessons he went downstairs to investigate the front door. Before he had even reached the door he paused, noticing, with mounting excitement, the scuff marks on the hallway carpet. It looked just as though the table had been dragged out of position and moved to a spot in front of the door! And yes, the big fern had similarly been moved and then moved back! The marks were unmistakable.
Exhilarated by his discovery he turned triumphantly to tell someone and ran smack into Hermione, who had appeared out of nowhere and was armed with a rug beater, a dustpan and a broom.
Averting her eyes, Hermione curtsied then she swung the broom around and began to sweep it across the hallway carpet.
‘No! Wait! Stop!’ cried Jack and Hermione jumped and stared at him in alarm. But it was too late! The scuffs on the carpet had gone. It was as though they had never been there.
Jack stared in dismay and Hermione stared too, though she clearly had no idea what they were looking at. Or did she?
Jack looked up and studied the maid, who realised she was being studied and at once cast her eyes down and took a step backwards so that she was flat against the wall. Did she know? Was she party to the conspiracy? How likely was it that the girl would decide to sweep this part of the carpet at this particular moment? Not very likely!
‘Who was the man who came to the door last night, Hermione?’ he demanded, determined to force the issue.
‘I couldn’t really say, sir. There was lots of gentlemen come to dinner.’
Oh, she was clever. Too clever by half.
‘I mean the man who tried to come in, who tried to batter the door down, that’s who I mean.’
‘Hermione, the laundry still has not been collected and packaged up. Please leave the carpets till afterwards. Good day, Master Jack,’ and Mrs Logan appeared, signalling to the maid to hurry along, which she did—gratefully, it appeared to Jack.
He stood his ground, furious, as Hermione moved swiftly away.
‘Mrs Logan, wait. Who was the man who tried
to break the door down last night?’
‘I’m afraid I was too busy with the dinner to see what was going on outside. Did you fancy that you saw something?’
‘No, I did not fancy, I did see something! Only everyone is pretending nothing happened.’
‘How extraordinary. Why do you think they would do that?’
‘Because they always keep things from me.’ Jack kicked angrily at the wall. ‘There were marks, here on the carpet, you could clearly see it, where things had been moved around, probably to stop the man getting in … But now they are gone and no one will believe me!’
Mrs Logan took a step towards him, paused, looked cautiously down the length of the hallway, then leant down to whisper in his ear. ‘I know. I saw them too. But now they are gone no one will ever believe us. I think it had better be our little secret. What do you think?’
Jack was astonished. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘Yes, I see. And we will know something that no one else knows! Not even Gus!’
‘No one,’ and she put her finger up to her lips.
When he had gone, Mrs Logan studied the carpet and the two items of furniture that she and Mr Jarmyn had positioned and replaced but there was no evidence at all now that anything untoward had happened here. Next she opened the front door and, with a cloth, removed the dirty marks left by the man’s fists. The dents in the door caused by the rock she could do nothing about but unless the sunlight was directly upon them they were not too noticeable.
Poor Jack, she thought, standing on the front step for a moment to rub her hands briskly together in the chilly morning air. He so desperately wanted something … but what that something was she did not know, and she doubted that he did either.
In the afternoon, Mr Jarmyn went off to a hastily convened meeting of the board of directors.
In the schoolroom, the boys worked silently on a Greek translation, Gus thoughtfully chewing the end of his pencil, Jack going over in his mind the extraordinary sight of the unknown man at the door and smiling to himself at the secret he now shared with Mrs Logan.
Dinah and Mrs Jarmyn called on Aunt Meredith and cousin Rhoda. They returned a little after four o’clock, when the sun was already sinking below the Bloomsbury rooftops and ice was beginning to form in the windows of the houses.
As their cab drew up outside the house and the two ladies alighted, they were observed, from two storeys up, by Uncle Austin.
The major was enjoying a rare moment of clarity. He understood that he was in a house in London and that the war was many years over. He knew that the lady in the dove-grey cloak on the street below who was turning to address the cab driver was his niece and that the younger lady in a lighter shade of grey, her hands snug inside a fur muff, was that lady’s daughter. And he recognised the neatly dressed serving woman who now knocked on his door and entered his room, carrying a pile of newly laundered sheets.
‘Good afternoon, Major,’ she said.
‘Good afternoon, madam,’ he replied with a stiff bow. He knew she was a serving woman and yet he did not like to address her as such. There was something in her manner that prevented it.
He watched as she stripped the sheets from his bed and replaced them with clean sheets. She worked efficiently, making her way around his room with the minimum of fuss, shaking out the clean bedding and tucking in the corners with deft fingers. She pulled the massive oak-framed bed out from the wall to reach the corners, and he wished very much to go to her assistance but he remembered that he was an old man and that she was doing her job. He remembered that his hand was missing a finger and that the face that watched her was hideously scarred. He remembered that the war had been over a long time.
He lowered himself into a chair, the better to observe her and she looked up and gave him a smile.
‘You are looking well today, Major,’ she observed and he flapped his hand at her, pleased that she had taken the time to notice and to make her comment.
He wanted to tell her that he was well today, that he did indeed feel well. But he remembered the crazed man outside the house the previous evening, cursing and hurling himself at the front door, and he remembered the demonic being with a chopping knife who had come at the man with a terrifying roar and chased him off, and he realised he could not tell her these things and that the worst part of being ‘well’ was that one realised just how unwell one was most of the time.
He turned away and watched the pigeons on the sill outside his window until she had finished her work and he had heard her depart, softly closing the door behind her.
‘I’m tellin’ you, Mrs Logan, I ’eard it!’
Mrs Logan stood in the kitchen doorway and regarded Cook with some consternation.
‘Heard what, exactly?’
‘The ghost!’ hissed Cook, and she glanced to left and right as though fearing the apparition were amongst them and might overhear and strike her down this very minute.
‘Oh Mrs Varley!’ Mrs Logan stared at her in speechless disbelief.
‘You may very well roll your eyes, Mrs Logan, but I know what I ’eard and I ’eard the ghost. Same as the girl did. Same sound, just like she told it.’
‘Hermione heard exactly what you told her to hear. You put the idea in her head and she believed it so much she thought she heard it. Now she’s making you think you’ve heard it!’ retorted Mrs Logan. Really, the weak-mindedness of her colleagues was both astonishing and disappointing.
‘That’s as may be but I know what I ’eard!’
Mrs Logan sighed. It was gone midnight. They had eaten a late supper because the family had eaten a late dinner. Bill was dining out, the boys had been given an early tea and Mrs Jarmyn had not appeared at all, so it was only Mr Jarmyn, the major and Dinah and they had eaten little and, if Hermione’s report was to be believed, said nothing to each other.
Now the house was still, a clock in the distance struck midnight and cook and housekeeper faced each other in a silent stand-off.
‘Then, Mrs Varley, I propose we go and find this ghost and settle the question once and for all.’
And Cook, who a day earlier had chased a madman off the premises with a chopping knife, turned pale and gaped at her.
‘I ain’t goin’ up them stairs to find no ghost and that’s that!’ she replied.
‘And I say there is no ghost! Come, Mrs Varley, where is your spirit of adventure?’
Cook regarded her the same way she had regarded the madman yesterday.
‘Right!’ And she spat in a handily placed bucket and grabbed a meat cleaver in her fist. ‘We’ll see, and it will be the worse for us, just you wait!’ she prophesied darkly. But she let Mrs Logan lead the way as, for the second time in as many days, Cook ascended the stairs.
Mrs Logan cradled a guttering candle to light their way, shielding the flame from the sudden breeze that shot down the stairs. They set off from the kitchen and climbed up the basement stairs, taking each step carefully, and Mrs Logan was aware of the creak of each floorboard, of the vast bulk of Cook half a step behind her, of Cook’s breath rapidly turning to a wheeze as they ascended to the hallway. Here they paused and looked up and down the deserted passage. A scurrying below suggested a mouse. From the street outside they heard the sharp click of a man’s boots on the pavement, a shout in the distance then nothing. They set off once more, going up the main staircase, and now that they were on carpet they moved more easily, their footsteps deadened by the thick pile.
They paused again, halfway up to the first floor, but no sound came to them. Mrs Logan was aware that, for the second night in a row, her heart was thudding very loudly in her chest—though last night it had been Mr Jarmyn who had stood beside her.
She smothered the thought. Tonight it was just herself and Cook and the guttering candle, whose flame darted about in every direction because her hand shook so much. How ridiculous! Didn’t she walk up and down this staircase a dozen or more times each day, and yet now, because it was dark, because Cook was standing at her heels gri
pping a meat cleaver, because the light from the candle flickered around them, grotesquely distorting their shadows one moment and threatening to blow out the next, her heart was knocking painfully against her ribcage.
Ridiculous.
They started off once more, reaching the first floor landing, which was when they heard it.
A sobbing, a single gulping sob, and it came from the drawing room.
As one, they froze and the candle went out. Thrown into darkness, Mrs Logan knew a moment of sheer panic. Behind her, Cook stifled a gasp and clutched her arm so tightly they seemed fused together. Slowly the panic cleared enough for Mrs Logan to notice that it was not quite pitch dark. The door to the drawing room was very slightly ajar and through it an eerie light could be seen; not a light from a fire or a lamp or a candle, but a faint, pale, ghostly light.
Behind her, Cook moaned softly.
But they could now see their way forward, or at least Mrs Logan could, and she took a tiny, terrifying step towards the door. Cook, at once realising her intent, tried to pull her back. But Mrs Logan pressed onwards, one agonising step at a time until she had arrived outside the door.
A second sob followed the first.
Behind her, Cook had frozen, unable to move forwards or backwards, and Mrs Logan knew that if she made a sound now they would be heard. She stood directly before the door, her eyes fixed on the unearthly light that seeped beneath it and through the thin crack where the door was ajar.
Did this door creak when one opened it? She could not remember. Think! Think! She could not remember. Probably, in the daytime, if it did creak you would not notice it. Here, now, if she so much as breathed the sound would shatter the silence.
She reached out her hand towards the door and touched it. The hand shook. With her forefinger she pushed the door and it noiselessly moved an inch. The light from inside increased just a fraction. She had no thoughts now but to push the door again, and a third time and finally her head, seemingly of its own accord, leant forward and peered inside.