Vanishing Point

by Patricia Wentworth

  If her hand had not been tense on the balustrade, she couldn’t have saved herself. Everything about her was tense. Her hand closed spasmodically. The cord which left a raw mark four inches above her right ankle tripped her with so much violence that but for that unnatural grip she must have pitched down onto the old flagstones of the hall below. The cord cut her, her body took a sickening lurch forward, but the right hand held and the left hand joined it. She found herself standing about six steps down and shaking from head to foot. The telephone bell was ringing.

  The noise made it difficult to think. She groped, and got hold of a word-light. As soon as she was able she turned herself, still holding to the baluster. She went up step by step to the landing and put on the light. Then she went back to the head of the stair and looked down. She had been right about the number of the steps-she had gone down six of them. From the balustrade by that sixth step on the one side to the balustrade on the other a taut line of cord spanned the stair. As soon as she saw it she knew what it was, a length of the garden twine she used for tying her roses. It was the strong tarred kind. It hardly showed at all against the dark carpet and the dark polished treads. If it had been new, she would have smelt the tar, but it was all of two years since she had bought any.

  The telephone bell had stopped ringing. She went back into her room, fetched a pair of scissors and descended the stair as far as the sixth step. She was shaking all over, but she made herself do it. The twine was very securely fastened. When she had cut it through she gathered up the bits and took them into her own room to burn them. She cleaned the scissors, carefully and put them away. Then, and not until then, she went across the landing and opened Henry’s door. The room was dark and the window wide. There was the smell of a man’s room-tobacco and boot-polish. There was the sound of Henry Cunningham’s deep and regular breathing. She stood and listened to it for a while. Then she stepped back and shut the door again.

  Nicholas had the room beyond, at the back of the house. She stood in front of it, her mind full of dreadful irrational prayers- “Don’t let it be Nicholas! Oh, God, don’t let it be Nicholas! He couldn’t! He couldn’t! If he was in Melbury, it couldn’t be Nicholas! Let him be in Melbury! Don’t let him be here!” She put her hand on the door knob and turned it. The room was dark, the window stood wide. There was the sound of deep, quiet breathing.

  Lucy Cunningham shut the door and went back to her room. Her mind was dreadfully clear. She had come up to bed at half past ten. The stairs were safe then. At some later time Henry had come up. Nicholas had come up. One of them had stopped at the sixth step and stretched the cord above it. One of them? They might have come up separately, or they might have come up together. Or the one who had come up first might have gone down again to do what had to be done. Henry, or Nicholas- Nicholas or Henry. There was no one else in the house. One of them had tied the cord which was to trip her to her death. The stair was steep, and the hall was paved with stone. She would be hurrying blindly, and she would fall to her death.

  But who wanted her dead? Henry or Nicholas-Nicholas or Henry?

  The words went round and round in her head until the morning.

  CHAPTER 22

  Mrs. Hubbard would not arrive until eight o’clock, and since Nicholas must be got down to his breakfast by then, Miss Cunningham could not allow herself the indulgence of a cup of tea in bed. She had to wake Nicholas, hurry into her clothes, open the back door, and cook whatever they had been able to contrive for the meal-fish, or sausage, or the occasional egg. On this Tuesday morning Lucy Cunningham had plenty of time. It was a relief to leave the bed which had afforded her no rest. The water was still hot from the night before. She washed her face in it, and then sponged it repeatedly with cold water from her bedroom jug. The nights went near to frost, and the water was icy. When she came to do her hair, the image in the glass had a less ghastly look. She never had much colour, and a round face does not go haggard in a night. She put on the old grey tweed skirt and the grey jumper and cardigan and went across the landing to bang on Nicholas’s door. He always took some waking, but the sleepy voice that answered her in the end was no different from what it had been for all the years she had come to his door and knocked like this.

  She went to the head of the stairs and looked down. The cord had marked the balustrade, but no one else would notice a stray mark on the old paint. It had been tied very tightly, and it had had to take her weight when she stumbled. Oak would not have marked, but the balustrade was made of a softer wood. It had dented where the cord had pulled on it. She could see the dent every time she went up and down the stairs. She went down now to unlock the back door and get Nicholas’s breakfast.

  There was no need for her to go and wake Henry. He had views about sleep, and considered it injurious to interfere with what should be a natural process. If you had had enough sleep you woke up. If you had not had enough, it was harmful to be roused. It was, of course, extremely inconvenient never to know when he would want his breakfast, but when you had a man in the house you had to put up with things like that. Papa had had views about early rising, and as long as he lived they had breakfasted at seven. Lucy Cunningham had been brought up on the famous adage, “Early to bed and early to rise, Makes a man healthy, and wealthy, and wise.” She had never been able to make up her mind which part of it she disliked most, getting up at half past six or going to bed at nine, at which hour the electric light had been turned off at the meter and the family restricted to candles in their bedrooms. Henry, of course, did not mind whether the lights were on all night or not-but then he did not pay the bill.

  There were a couple of sausages left from supper. She heated them on the small oil stove, since the fire was out and would be left for Mrs. Hubbard to see to. Meanwhile she took the milk and the butter out of the larder and across the hall to the dining-room. Everything else was there already, since she always laid the table before going up to bed. She stood now and checked the things over just to make sure that nothing had been forgotten. Two packets of cereal-Henry sometimes liked the kind that always reminded her of little straw mattresses, but Nicholas wouldn’t touch it. Brown sugar, marmalade, a fresh pot of mustard. Oh, the bread-

  As she was bringing it through the hall, Nicholas came running down the stairs. Her heart jerked. He came running down without a glance at the sixth or any other step. She felt such a rush of relief that the bread-board tilted and the loaf began to slide. The knife fell clattering.

  Nicholas caught her about the shoulders.

  “Hold up, Lu! What are you doing? Are you all right?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  He laughed and bent to pick up the knife.

  “Well, don’t go throwing things about! Here, you’d better let me have that bread. I really like it better when it hasn’t been on the floor.”

  She turned back to fetch his sausage, whilst he went on. When she came into the dining-room he gave her a laughing, affectionate glance.

  “You know, you do look a bit wonky. You weren’t by any chance sitting up to watch for the wanderer’s return, were you? I’m the one who ought to be looking pale, not you.”

  She had not meant to speak, but everything in her was shaking. The words came of themselves.

  “Were you very late?”

  He was tipping wheatflakes into a soup-plate and pouring milk on them.

  “Oh, fairly. I got a lift, so I didn’t have to depend on the bus. Did you hear me come in?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’ve got to hurry now-I was very nearly late yesterday. Old Burlington has got a complex about punctuality. And he doesn’t care for me much. There’s nothing he’d like better than to catch me out.”

  “Why doesn’t he like you?”

  “Odd, isn’t it? Darling, pour me out a cup of tea. He thinks I’m frivolous. Not one of our blither spirits!”

  When she had poured out his tea she went away and came back again. There was a crumpled piece of paper in her hand. He looked at it acros
s his cup.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “There was a hole in the pocket of your brown tweed jacket. It had slipped down between the stuff and the lining. I found it last night when I was mending the pocket.”

  He put out his hand for it and took it.

  “Thanks, Lu.”

  He was still smiling, but there was something-some change. It was as if the temperature had suddenly dropped whilst the sun was shining, a thing quite apt to happen in an English spring. Lucy Cunningham had a bewildered sense of there being something wrong, but she had no idea what it might be.

  Nicholas put the paper into an inner pocket, gulped down the rest of his tea, and was off in a hurry. But when she went out into the kitchen it was not quite half past eight. He really had plenty of time.

  Mrs. Hubbard was busy lighting the fire, which was being contrary. Presently she would help Miss Cunningham with the beds, but at the moment she wanted the kitchen to herself. Anyone would think something had got into the range this morning. Three times she had lighted the dratted thing and it had gone out. If Miss Cunningham would take and go away, there was a mite of paraffin in the scullery that nobody was going to miss.

  There are ways of letting people know when they are not wanted. It came home to Lucy Cunningham that Mrs. Hubbard would prefer her room to her company. She went through into the drawing-room and began to straighten the chairs and tidy up, a thing she could never do the night before because of Henry sitting up late and not liking to be disturbed. She had just finished, when she heard him come out of his room. She had left the door open, and by moving a very little she could see as well as hear. He had a slow, heavy tread. It was no slower or heavier than usual. He came across the landing with an abstracted air and on down the stairs without looking to right or left. When she came out to meet him in the hall he took no other notice than to say, “I’m down,” after which he proceeded into the dining-room, leaving the door ajar behind him.

  All the time she was getting his hot plate and the sausage she had been keeping warm the thoughts in her head went round and round-Henry or Nicholas-Nicholas or Henry. She had watched them both come down the stairs, and neither of them had so much as glanced at the step where she had stumbled, or at the balustrade where the trip-cord had been stretched. Nicholas had come down in his usual rush, and Henry in his own deliberate way. Neither of them had done anything at all that was different from what she had seen them do year in, year out all the time that they had been together-Nicholas tearing down as a schoolboy, Henry, young and in love with Lydia Crewe, moving as if he had come only half way out of a dream. It might have been any day as long ago as that or in the years between.

  But if either of them had fastened that cord to trip her to her death, he wouldn’t have left it there to be found in the morning. There must have been some time in the night when one of them had come to the top of the stair and looked over. But the cord would not have been there for him to see, because she had taken it away and burned it in her bedroom grate. So then whoever it was would have turned round and gone back to his bed again.

  She had not closed her bedroom door. She did not think that she had slept. Could a man move so silently that she would not hear him? She looked back over the hours of the night, and she wasn’t sure. There were stretches of time which were like some dreadful dream. She couldn’t be sure whether the dream had crossed the boundaries of sleep or only trembled on the edge. She took Henry his sausage, and found him reading the paper and dawdling over a brown mess of cereal.

  CHAPTER 23

  Making the beds with Miss Cunningham, Mrs. Hubbard was perfectly well aware that she was not in her usual. Under an appearance of great neatness and restraint she herself was one of the most inquisitive women in Hazel Green. She had a nose for a secret comparable only to that of a ferret on the trail, but all very quietly, very decorously, and the prize when attained to be shared only with the chosen few and under pledge of secrecy. When Miss Cunningham took the side of the bed which enabled her to keep her back to the windows, she was at once aware that this had been done in order to conceal the fact that she had been crying and that she had passed a wakeful night. When brushing down the stairs she did not fail to observe a slight flattening at the edges of two of the balusters. It was an old staircase, but at some time it had been painted. Where the flattening had occurred the paint on at least one edge had flaked away. It was perfectly plain to Mrs. Hubbard that something tight had been tied round the baluster. Now what would anyone want to do that for? And blessed if there wasn’t just such another mark on the far side of the step. The stairs ran down without a break, the balusters on either side. You couldn’t get from it but that someone had stretched a cord across the stairs-as nasty and spiteful a trick as she had ever heard of. Must have been some boy. There were those she could name that wouldn’t think twice of breaking anyone’s leg if they were up to a lark, but how in the world would a boy get in to play off one of his jokes on Miss Cunningham, or why would he want to? There wasn’t anyone with what you could call a spite against her, not that she knew about-and there wasn’t much that she didn’t know.

  When she had finished the stairs she took her dustpan and brush round the hall, and right underneath where that mark was on the baluster the brush picked up a little curly piece of twine-some of that black garden stuff that gets used for tying up creepers and such. She put it in the pocket of her overall and went up to Miss Cunningham’s bedroom. There had been no fire in the grate, but something had been burned there. When she picked up the piece of tarred twine it came to her that there had been ash in the bedroom grate, and she hadn’t to look at it twice before she could see what it was before it come to that- twine, same as the piece she’d got in her pocket. There was a bit with the very shape of it in the grey ash, and when she raked the stuff over there was a knot that hadn’t burned at all. Mrs. Hubbard put it in her pocket with the bit she had picked up in the hall. It was altogether past her to think of any reason why Miss Cunningham should have cut the twine from the baluster and burned it, but that was what she had done. She had cut it-you could see the mark of the scissors close up by the knot- and she had burned it in her bedroom grate.

  All the time that she was doing her work, Mrs. Hubbard kept on putting two and two together. The trouble was she couldn’t get them to make anything, and it was pain and grief to her. It wasn’t until she was going away at half past two that she noticed something which excited her curiosity to a really passionate degree. Miss Cunningham had come out onto the back-door step to ask her whether they needed another packet of Vim. It had been a grey morning, but the sun was out now. It slanted in across the step and across Miss Cunningham’s ankles. There hadn’t been anything to notice in the house, which was dark enough like a lot of these old houses were, but out here with the sun right on it, you just couldn’t help noticing the weal. Just about six inches up from the right ankle it was, and so red the stocking didn’t hide it, not out here in the light. With the sideways look which took in a great deal more than it seemed to, Mrs. Hubbard decided that there was quite a piece of swelling too. She didn’t risk more than the one glance, and it was in her usual rather mousy little voice that she replied to the question about the Vim that they didn’t really want it till next week, but no harm if Miss Cunningham was putting her order in.

  Mr. Hubbard worked in Melbury. He took a wrapped lunch with him which he supplemented at the canteen. It was therefore nothing to anyone if Mrs. Hubbard liked to drop in on Florrie Hunt at the White Cottage. There was a faint faraway connection between them, and Florrie would be pleased enough to give her a cup of tea, and perhaps the latest about the finding of poor Miss Holiday’s body. The White Cottage being right at the corner of Vicarage Lane, there couldn’t be anything either coming or going but what Florrie would be bound to notice it.

  She got her cup of tea, but she didn’t get such a very warm welcome. Florrie was in one of her moods-she could see that at a glance. Put her in mind of a hous
e with all the blinds down and the people away. Nothing but a yes or no out of her, and not at all easy to get either. She handed up her cup to be filled a second time and began to tell Florrie about the marks on the balusters at the Dower House and the weal on Miss Cunningham’s leg. By the time she had come to the end of her story Florrie was looking at her for the first time.

  “Sounds like nonsense to me,” she said.

  Mrs. Hubbard sipped her tea.

  “Well then, it wasn’t,” she said. “Plain as plain the marks were. And the bit of string in the hall-what would anyone be doing with that nasty tarred-stuff indoors? And more of it burned in the bedroom grate. Just look here if you don’t believe me!”

  She had to put the cup down and slip a hand under her coat to bring out the little curl of twine and the knot which had survived the fire.

  Florrie stared at them and said bluntly,

  “Seems to me you’re hinting at something, Annie.”

  Mrs. Hubbard lowered her eyes.

  “I wouldn’t be one to do that.”

  “Well, I don’t know what else you’d call it. And if you’re hinting that there was a string tied across those stairs to trip Miss Cunningham when she came down, well, who is supposed to have put it there?”

  Mrs. Hubbard sipped her tea.

  “It’s not for me to say. I’m not one to gossip, and that you know.”

  The conversation wasn’t turning out at all as she had hoped. When Florrie was in that sort of mood she could be right down disagreeable, and no good trying to get anything out of her. She finished her cup and said she must be getting along.

  It wasn’t until she was half way home that she remembered she had left the knot and the bit of twine behind her. Not worth going back for of course. She wouldn’t have shown them to anyone except Florrie. The job at Miss Cunningham’s suited her, and she wouldn’t want it to get about that she’d been talking. Which she wouldn’t do, only to Florrie. And Florrie was safe enough. Why, she could hardly get a word out of her herself.