‘Look, for God’s sake, girl,’ I told her, ‘you’re giving me the jitters. I’m not accustomed to being sexually stimulated at this time of day. I mean it. Put on your bodice and let’s talk about what you saw this morning. I can meet you this evening if you like.’
She gave me a scandalised stare. ‘Oi don’t do no nastiness with men,’ she said. ‘Oi is not dat koind of girl, Mr. Woodsley.’
‘All right. I give up. I’m going—’
‘Please don’t go till Oi finish tidying up in here, sir. Oi ’fraid.’
‘What are you afraid of?’
‘What Oi see dis morning, sir. It was a bad face. It froighten me.’
‘Didn’t it seem like the face of a solid human being? It didn’t seem shadowy, did it? I mean like a ghost?’
‘No. It was a real face, sir. A black man. But ghoses does look real. My aunt and uncle say they see plenty ghoses.’
‘They live down at Martin’s Bay, don’t they?’
‘Yes. Oi is an orphan. My fadder and mudder dead. My aunt and uncle does see their ghoses plenty toimes.’
‘But you’re sure this face this morning wasn’t a ghost? It looked like a black man’s face? A real black man?’
‘It moighta been a ghost. Oi ain’ know.’ She began to sway herself from side to side, waggling her breasts seductively.
I sighed, gave her a pat on the shoulder and went out, despite her appeal to me to stay. Half-way down the stairs, I glanced back and saw her gazing down at me, her face mournful and still appealing (I was to recall it with much remorse sooner than I had thought. Even as I went down I was feeling a bit callous for leaving her up there alone; already a bit remorseful, in fact).
I went out back to where my easel stood. Tappin was there awaiting me. He gave me a look of inquiry, and I smiled and told him: ‘Just as you predicted. She didn’t waste any time to shed her bodice. But at least, I managed to get this out of her. It was the face of a black man—and she seems to think it was a solid face. Not that she doesn’t believe it might have been a ghost—’
‘She not too roight in her head, sir. You can’t go too much by what she say—but Oi believe she see somet’ing dat froighten her dis morning.’ He chuckled and pointed towards the house. ‘Look, sir. She at de window shaking out de rug. Naked as she born.’
I looked and saw Malverne at the window of her mistress’s room. She still had not put on her bodice yet.
‘Nutting strange, sir,’ said Tappin. ‘More dan once she do dat when me or Bayley in de yard here working. Purposely stand naked before de window and call out to me.’
‘Wait. Look! Look, Tappin!’
I caught the man’s arm and gasped. He followed my gaze, and we saw that Malverne had turned off from the window, the rug still in hand. She recoiled, as we watched—then darted out of sight with a scream.
‘What the devil!’
Without hesitation, Tappin and I began to hurry towards the house.
‘Somet’ing must be froighten her again,’ said Tappin.
A vague thudding sound came from in the house accompanied by another scream from Malverne. Then we heard another scream—Jackman’s.
‘Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God!’ Jackman screamed.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mrs. Scaife appear round the corner of the building, a garden-trowel in hand.
Jackman nearly collided with Tappin and myself as we tried to rush in through the kitchen door both together. She was grey with fright and panic. She wrung her hands and gasped: ‘Oh, God, Mr. Woodsley sir! Come quick! Malverne fall down de stairs. She look as ef she dead.’
8
We found her half-nude, as I had left her not many minutes before. She had dropped the rug at the top of the stairs. It must have tripped her up. She was moaning and turning from side to side, but was unconscious.
Mrs. Scaife asked me to take her upstairs to her bedroom. She helped me, and we took her up as carefully as we could and put her into the big fourposter. Mrs. Scaife drew a blanket over her nudity, and got on the telephone. ‘I must ask Doctor Dayton to come,’ she said. ‘He’s in Bridgetown, but he’ll come. He always liked Michael.’
An hour later Doctor Dayton arrived, and he said it was rather serious. She had sustained severe injuries to her head and her spine, and was suffering from partial paralysis and concussion. When I asked him he said that it was quite feasible that a fall down the steps could have been responsible for the injuries. He and I were alone in the dining-room just before he left when I put the question to him. He looked surprised and asked me if I had any particular reason for asking the question.
I shrugged and said: ‘No, no. I just wondered. As a boy, I’ve fallen down stairs umpteen times without any serious results.’
He smiled and said: ‘Well, of course, what doesn’t happen in a year can happen in a split second. I remember a case like it two years ago in Bridgetown. Those stairs are very steep. She must have fallen head foremost. This bedroom rug, it’s obvious, must have tripped her up. You saw her with it at the window, you said, when she screamed and turned off?’
‘Yes, yes. I did see her with the rug.’
‘Anyway, her mistress is being very decent about it. She has agreed to have a nurse come here and take care of her.’
‘She has, has she?’
He nodded. He was a short, thick-set man, forty-ish and with slightly projecting teeth. A good-humoured fellow, and I had taken to him on the spot. ‘Yes. She’s a good sort, Mrs. Scaife—if a little peculiar in her ways. And a nurse is absolutely necessary. To try to remove her to the hospital thirteen miles away would be as good as killing her off right away. She couldn’t stand the trip. Must be kept very, very quiet.’
‘An operation wouldn’t be of any use?’
‘Her heart is too weak. She suffered from chronic dyspepsia, Mrs. Scaife says, and I can well believe it. Very shaky heart.’
After he had taken his departure, I paced for a long time in the sitting-room, thinking things over. Why, I asked myself, had she uttered that scream? What had frightened her? Mrs. Scaife had tried to assure the doctor that the scream was nothing to be taken seriously. ‘A most hare-brained girl, doctor. She must have imagined she heard some strange noise that was frightening. Perhaps the wind in one of the closed up rooms. There’s an old wardrobe that creaks in Michael’s room.’ I had said nothing, but I had known that she was trying to put the doctor off the scent.
I felt convinced that it was no mere ‘strange noise’ that had scared Malverne. The girl had seen something again that had made her scream as she had and dash for the stairs. Could it have been the same face that had frightened her that very morning?
Hearing footsteps on the stairs, I glanced round and saw Mrs. Scaife coming down. She joined me in the sitting-room. Her face was flushed, and her eyes gleamed with excitement. A wisp of her hair hung loose down her forehead. ‘Oh, Mr. Woodsley, isn’t it terrible? Just terrible? The poor girl! The doctor says there’s very little hope for her.’
‘He didn’t put it quite like that to me—but he did say it’s rather serious.’
‘Yes—very serious.’ She sighed softly. ‘I’m horribly depressed—yet I’m overjoyed, too.’
‘You are, are you?’ I gave an expressive grunt. But she ignored its implication and said: ‘I came down to tell you not to be troubled over the matter of accommodation. We’ll make out somehow, I’m sure. You can still keep your room.’
‘But haven’t you given your room over to Malverne?’
‘Yes. So I have. And I’m having a small cot erected for the nurse. It used to be kept stored in the junk-room near the pantry. I never thought we should need it some day. But don’t upset yourself, my boy. I’ll make out, no fear. I don’t mind being inconvenienced sometimes—especially at such a time as this. You should see the shadow . . . oh! I’m sorry.’
‘What? What were you going to say about a shadow?’
‘Nothing, nothing. I was allowing myself to think aloud. Silly ha
bit of mine at times, my boy. Take no notice of me. I’m so overwhelmed. So keyed up.’ She sighed again, and squeezed her hands together ecstatically. ‘Tappin is upstairs now seeing after the cot for me. He’s such a useful fellow—’
‘Tappin upstairs? But—’
‘Yes. He’s in my room fitting up the cot. I told him to be as quiet as he could. The doctor said Malverne must not be disturbed—’
‘But I understood that Malverne was the only servant you allowed to go upstairs.’
She gave me a sharp glance. ‘Ah. What’s this? Who told you that? Yes, it is a strict rule of mine—but I had to break it to-day because of force of circumstances.’
‘And would it be too inquisitive of me to inquire why you made such a rule?’
She held up her hand. ‘Never use the word “inquisitive” to me. You must consider it your right to ask me anything you like.’ She gave me a teasing glance and added: ‘Not, of course, that you must always expect to get satisfactory answers to every question you ask. Oh, by the way, you did know that a nurse is coming, didn’t you? Did the doctor mention it?’
‘He did—but why have you changed the subject so abruptly?’
Ignoring me, she prattled on: ‘I really want to do my best for Malverne. She’s an orphan. Only an old invalid aunt and an uncle alive. The MacMullochs once had her on their plantation—they adopted her unofficially—but when her uncle and aunt heard rumours of the unusual ways of the MacMullochs they took her away from them. A pity. The MacMullochs are a good family. They help the peasants a lot. I must remember to tell Tappin to take a message to Malverne’s aunt and uncle this evening on his way home. I’ve had to cancel the holiday I promised the servants tomorrow. It’s most annoying, because I really wanted to get them all out of the way for at least twenty-four hours.’
She kept fidgeting in her garrulity, and under her buoyancy I detected something feverish and unnatural. Yet the gay, light note in her voice seemed to ring true. She baffled me completely.
It was nearly five o’clock, and the weather appeared to be undergoing a change. Clouds had massed in the sky, slate-grey and thundery. The wind, however, was still as strong as ever, and the air could not be described as oppressive. Now and then a fine drizzle would throw a thick, misty curtain round the house, blurring the vista so that the cottages down at Bathsheba and Martin’s Bay looked flimsy and unreal like cottages in a water-colour sketch.
The sitting-room was gloomed and bleak, alive with shifty, uncomfortable draughts, and the dark walls and the heavy Victorian furniture in no way decreased the general cheerlessness.
‘I do wish it would rain,’ Mrs. Scaife remarked, glancing outside. ‘My celery is badly in need of a good sousing. I don’t know what would have happened to the poor things by now if I hadn’t been watering them twice a day.’ She turned off abruptly and said she had better be going upstairs to see how Tappin was getting on.
I resumed my pacing—and my pondering of the situation.
I cursed myself for not having remained upstairs with the girl until she had finished her cleaning activities. Especially as she had asked me to. What, I asked myself, could possibly have appeared on the scene to scare her into screaming? Had someone entered the room? The owner of the ugly face she had seen from the foot of the stairs that morning?
I remembered the old servant, Borkum. Could there be any connection between that telephone call and the face Malverne said she saw? Again, there was that cleaned and oiled door lock. Who had cleaned it? I had tried the knob of the other door after lunch, and found that it worked freely, too. Had anybody gone into those two windward rooms within the past twenty-four hours? If so, for what purpose? Suppose Borkum had been concealed in one of the rooms, and had emerged briefly and seen Malverne half-nude in her mistress’s room? Mrs. Scaife had said that he was fond of females’ bosoms. Could he have tried to attack the girl? But what, in the first place, would he want to be concealed in the house here for?
At this point, my conjecturings came to an end. Above the howling of the wind I heard the voice of my hostess. It came from upstairs, and it was shrill with anger and alarm.
I dashed for the stairs. Took the steps three at a time. As I got to the top, I heard Mrs. Scaife’s voice again.
‘Come, Tappin! Speak up! Tell me! What were you doing outside that door?’
A few yards further along the corridor, I made out the big, awkward form of Tappin. He was staring at his mistress in a silly, baffled manner.
‘Tappin! I’m speaking to you! Answer me! When you left my room a few minutes ago I assumed that you would have gone downstairs at once. Why didn’t you? Why did you stop to make a peering investigation through that keyhole? What could have possessed you to do such a thing, Tappin? Tell me. Come on. This is serious, I’m waiting.’ There was a cracked note in her voice.
Tappin lowered his head and began to mumble something.
‘What’s that? What’s that? I haven’t heard. Repeat it.’
‘Mistress, Oi didn’t do it for no reason.’
‘You didn’t do it for any reason?’ Her voice was a shriek. ‘Don’t tell me that! Don’t dare tell me that! That’s a lie! You know it’s a lie! You must have had a reason. What was it? What did you expect to see in there? That is my old bedroom. It has been locked up for years and years—like the doctor’s next to it. What did you hope to see in it that would interest you? Come, loosen your tongue! This is important. I want to know what was your motive. I’m determined to find out.’
Tappin said nothing.
Mrs. Scaife moved up the corridor a little closer to him.
‘Tappin, I’m speaking to you. Are you going to tell me? Come. I’m very serious.’ Of a sudden her voice became coaxing. ‘Tell me, Tappin man. Come. What was it you expected to find in that room? I’m really curious to know. I want to know. Did anybody tell you I had something strange concealed in there?’
The man shook his head and mumbled: ‘Miss Dahlia, Oi ain’ had no definite reason, mistress.’
She stared at him, tense. I could see that this time she was genuinely shaken. Tappin’s curiosity had driven fear deep into her. But fear of what?
She sighed and said: ‘So you won’t tell me. Or perhaps it may be that you really have nothing to tell. It was sheer inquisitiveness that made you do it. The ugly face Malverne fancied she saw up here this morning.’ She spoke as though to reassure herself, as though hoping she would see him give some sign indicating confirmation that her surmise was correct.
But Tappin kept his head bent, dejected, ashamed.
Mrs. Scaife smiled and said: ‘Very good. We’ll have to have this matter straightened out at once. Stand just where you are. Don’t go.’
She turned, and as though unaware of my presence only a yard or two behind her and of the faces of the three servants at the foot of the stairs, took two quick paces into her room.
Round the house the wind howled in a monotonous, mournful passion of sound, and downstairs in the sitting-room the windows kept rattling off and on.
Mrs. Scaife appeared from her room. She carried a bunch of keys.
‘Come, Tappin. Follow me!’ She spoke calmly, and Tappin began to follow her reluctantly along the corridor.
She glanced back. ‘Mr. Woodsley! You, too, please! Come. I want you both to accompany me.’
‘What’s the matter? What do you want with me?’
She stopped at the door of her old room. ‘We’re going to settle the mystery, Mr. Woodsley. That’s what I want with you. I want to show you the grisly objects Tappin was hoping to see when he peered through the keyhole here a few moments ago. Come. We’ll all go in and look round.’
She inserted the key into the lock.
9
As she pushed the door open a dry, musty smell of rotting clothes and wood and paper struck our senses—and another smell was too vague for me to identify at once, though it gave me a bit of uneasiness.
A huge fourposter bed loomed before us in the rainy lig
ht that filtered in through the dirt and salty encrustations on the window panes. It was faultlessly made up with sheet and counterpane and pillows with embroidered cases, the tester overhead hung around with a heavy lace frill. But this bed must have been made up many years before, for the counterpane and pillows were covered with a thick layer of grey dust, and the tester billowed down as though weighted with wood-rot and a dense wealth of dust. The lace frill was yellow and blotched. Pillows, sheets, tester, lace frill and bedposts were all linked together in a dim, involved network of cobwebs.
Two or three feet away, on one side of the bed, stood a tall, white cupboard, and on the other side, with a much wider separating space, a mahogany chest of drawers, both thickly coated with dust and draped with cobwebs. Just beneath one of the two western windows, and in the space between the chest of drawers and a marble-topped washstand, stood an old-fashioned, flat-topped travelling trunk, this, however, unlike the washstand and the chest of drawers, bearing hardly any dust or cobwebs.
Mrs. Scaife turned and pointed at the door. ‘Look, Tappin! See! It’s this curtain behind the door that prevented you from seeing into the room when you spied through the keyhole. It used to act as a protection for the few garments I hung behind the door on pegs. There is no mystery in it. It hangs over the keyhole just by accident. I didn’t block the keyhole to prevent spies from looking into the room.’
She jerked her thumb. ‘The other room over there—the doctor’s room—is the same. There is a curtain behind the door that prevents inquisitive persons like yourself from looking through the keyhole into the room—but, as in here, it’s simply an accidental circumstance.’ She pointed at the bed. ‘Look! My old bed! It’s decorated with cobwebs. But there’s nothing else very remarkable about it that I can see. And you’re at liberty to look under it. You’ll see nothing startling.’ She beckoned to him. ‘Go on. Stoop down and look. Satisfy yourself.’
Tappin made no attempt to stoop down.
‘Go on! I insist. Stoop down and look. Make sure there’s no fearful monster with green eyes and a slobbering mouth crouched up under the bed.’
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