Just as the man was stooping to look under the bed, something struck me with a wallop. There was not a speck of dust on the floor!
I glanced sharply about me. Under the washstand there was dust and cobwebs, and when I bent to follow Tappin’s example and looked under the bed I saw dust and cobwebs there, too. Which meant—and it was the only conclusion I could come to—that this room had been swept out very recently: at least, the walking space of the floor had been swept; the section between the door and the bed and the section between the bed and the chest of drawers.
I took a pace past the foot of the bed, and glanced down at the two or three feet of floor space between the tall cupboard and the bed. There was dust—thick dust.
While Mrs. Scaife was ranting at Tappin and pulling open drawers to show him that nothing suspicious or horrible or monstrous (the adjectives were her own) was concealed in them I took the opportunity to examine the floor more closely.
The light was fading rapidly, but my eyes are very good. The section between the door and the bed revealed nothing very interesting, but when I came to the space between the bed and the chest of drawers I found myself frowning and nodding to myself. I felt like Sherlock Holmes pouncing upon a new clue and gloating quietly.
Out of the greyness of the floor there emerged an oblong patch that looked unusually clean—and around this patch I could make out distinctly one or two dim stains, brownish or bluish. The general impression was that a piece of linoleum or oil-cloth of oblong shape had been spread out here and that dirty water or some darkish liquid had run off it and left the stains so that when the linoleum had been removed this rectangular patch had remained. The stains looked fresh, too, and I decided to myself that whatever had happened to cause their presence had happened within the past twenty-four hours.
I wrinkled my nose, trying to place that smell I had detected on first entering. A sickly, sweetish smell. Stale perfume? No, not perfume. Ammonia? Perhaps—and yet . . . No, not ammonia. Nothing sharp or volatile about it. I wanted to tell myself that it must be the odour of putrefaction, that some corpse had lain in this room not many hours before, but I rejected the idea as too sensational and fantastic.
I didn’t have much time to dwell on the matter, for Mrs. Scaife turned upon me (I nearly said pounced) and asked me if I, too, would like to have a look into the drawers. ‘Perhaps you might be able to convince this prying idiot that I keep no grisly relics in here, Mr. Woodsley. Come, have a look, please, my boy.’
I declined the offer.
‘Well, then, the cupboard, perhaps!’ she cried, and crossing to the tall white cupboard, wrenched it open. The door came away with a crackle of wood-rot and a swish of cobweb. A musty blast rained through our senses, and dust reached out in grey, swirling tentacles. I coughed and stepped back a pace, but my hostess, unaffected, waved her hand dramatically and shrilled: ‘See! Old clothes! All rotting. Skirts and bodices and a few items of underwear. Left in here as a monument to a happy married life. Yes, that is why this room was locked up, Tappin. Because when the doctor died I knew that my life was over and that henceforth I should exist only in a cloud of memory. My happiness, and my real life—the life that was full and rich—was locked away into these two rooms after the doctor died. I had meant never to open them again. I had meant never to set eyes upon anything in these two rooms, but merely to pass outside in that corridor and smile in quiet memory at all that lay stored in here. But now! This evening, because of your stupid prying, Tappin, I have had to break my resolve. I had to unlock this door and come in here to satisfy you that nothing grim is concealed within these walls.’
I gave a laugh, and, in my usual tactless way, broke out: ‘Are you trying to make out that this room has not been entered since you locked it up after your husband’s death in 1950?’
She jerked her head round and stared at me. ‘What do you mean, Mr. Woodsley? Why do you ask that?’
‘Because I have good reason to believe that someone was in here within the past twenty-four hours.’
‘In here?’
‘Yes, in here, Mrs. Scaife—and in the next room, too.’
‘Are you mad? Are you—but—but I never heard anything more absurd! My God! My God!’ She turned off, and instinctively I put out my hand, for she tottered as though about to faint.
But she recovered. She beckoned weakly towards the door, and Tappin and I went out. Without a word, she followed us, shut and locked the door and went hurrying along the corridor. She disappeared into her room, and I was sure I heard a sound that resembled a sob.
Tappin accompanied me downstairs, a gloomy, half-fearful look on his face. In the dining-room, Jackman and McTurk and Bayley stood in a group near the sideboard murmuring. They turned and looked at us with wondering, frightened eyes. Then Jackman said: ‘Mr. Woodsley, sir, what happening upstairs? What wrong wid de mistress, sir?’
‘Your question voices my own thoughts, Jackman,’ I replied. I lit a cigarette, and offered one to McTurk, but he refused. ‘Oi never smoke dose t’ings, sir,’ he smiled gloomily. ‘Only a poipe.’
Padding footsteps sounded in the pantry, and Walter and Patrick entered.
McTurk turned with a growling scowl on Bayley. ‘But boy, why you loose dese dogs? Ent Oi tell you not to loose dem?’
Bayley looked dismayed. ‘McTurk, Oi forget. They always loose every afternoon, and Oi forget you tell me not to loose dem.’
‘Awright—well, you jest go now and chain dem up again. You too forgetful for a young boy.’
As Bayley called to the dogs I asked McTurk: ‘Why can’t they be released this afternoon?’
He shrugged and replied: ‘Sir, Miss Dahlia told me dat Oi must see and keep dem chain up till she tell me to loose dem. All last noight they had to remain chain up near de kennel, sir-and all to-day. Oi feel sorry for de poor animals, sir, but de mistress order me to do it.’
‘When did she give you these orders?’
‘Last noight before Oi go home, sir. She come to de goat-pen and say Oi must see and not loose de dogs till she tell me. She ent give me no reason, sir.’
‘She tell me de same, too, sir,’ said Tappin who seemed to have regained his self-possession now. ‘She tell me not on any account to unchain de dogs till she tell me.’
‘I see.’
‘Dis de first toime she ever give such orders,’ McTurk rumbled. He shook his head. ‘Somet’ing gone wrong wid dat ole lady, sir.’
Suddenly Mrs. Scaife’s voice screamed down from the top of the stairs.
‘Tappin! Bayley! McTurk!’
Tappin started. McTurk raised his head sharply. Bayley grunted. Jackman exclaimed softly.
Mrs. Scaife came down half-way, and said: ‘What are those two dogs doing in the house? McTurk, Tappin! Didn’t I give strict orders that they were not to be released until I gave the word?’ Her voice was harsh. In the dusk she had a stiff, forbidding, imperious look, standing there on the stairs.
McTurk rumbled out an explanation.
‘Very well,’ she said coldly. ‘See that you don’t suffer any more lapses of memory, Bayley. Take them outside and chain them up again, and then come back. I have something for you to do.’
‘Yes, mistress.’ The boy hurried out with the two dogs.
‘Tappin, I want you to go into the junk-room and get out that old deck-chair. Have it dusted and then bring it upstairs. I want it put into my old room. I’m going to occupy my old room temporarily.’
‘Awright, Miss Dahlia,’ said Tappin, and went off towards the pantry.
‘And, McTurk, I want you to clean the old table-lamp thoroughly for me. You’ll find it in the junk-room, too. When you have cleaned it, have it filled with oil and leave it on the dining-table.’
‘Very well, Miss Dahlia.’ McTurk moved off, his old-man face very perplexed. I saw his lips moving silently.
‘Jackman, what of my dinner? It’s nearly six o’ clock.’
‘Yes, mistress. It nearly ready. De water boiling now to make
de tea, mistress.’
‘Well, please go back to the kitchen and brew the tea.’
I was about to move into the sitting-room when she called down to me: ‘Oh, Mr. Woodsley, I’m sorry to bother you, but would you mind lighting the lamp for me on the dining-table?’
‘Not at all.’
Bayley came out at this point, and Mrs. Scaife told him that she wanted him to run out for her. ‘Go down to the shop at Bathsheba and buy me three candles.’ She held out a coin, and the boy went up and took it from her, then hurried down the stairs and out of the room. His mistress turned and went upstairs, seeming to melt into the gloom at the top of the stairway.
It was virtually night now, and after I had lit the lamp on the dining-table the weak, yellowish light, if anything, seemed to deepen the shadows in corners and niches all over the room. The long, dark mahogany dining-table gleamed mysteriously, and the glassware on the sideboard reflected the lamplight in a soft array of distorted ruddy eyes squinting from the sides of tumblers and decanters and flagons and sugar-bowls. In the midst of them, dim and dusty-grey, the clump of brain coral lay with a crouching air as though in waiting for some uncertain and sombre event.
The wind kept whistling and moaning round the house. I could sense it pushing and driving against the beams and boards and the stone that went to make up the structure. I could sense it trying to pierce its way into the rooms past the crevices of the windows. And the groping whimsical draughts. Even as I stood there in the dining-room I could feel one of them curling round my ankles as though it were an invisible serpent emerged from the dense gloom under the long table.
I went into the sitting-room and looked out at the weather. The sky had cleared up considerably. Only one or two slate-grey rags moved in it now, heading for Hackleton’s Cliff which frowned menacingly in the southwest.
Down in Martin’s Bay, one or two yellow lights gleamed in the deep mist of darkness that had settled upon the cottages and rocks. Unlike at Bathsheba, there were no electric lights down there. Only lamplight. Lamplight in tiny cottages made of wood and unpainted shingles in which farmers and fisherfolk lived. Down there, too, I remembered, was the Well Pit, the bottomless crevasse over which the sea boiled day and night and into which boats were sometimes sucked down never to be seen again.
The uneasiness in me had increased threefold, and I think that but for the knowledge that the nurse was coming—for, of course, her coming meant welcome companionship for me and someone rational, I hoped, in whom I would be able to confide all that was happening in the house—but for this fact I think I would have broken my resolve and gone back to Bridgetown the following morning, leaving Eltonsbrody and its mysteries to take care of themselves.
This sitting-room gave me the gooseflesh. There was that epergne, for instance, on the centre table which, in this uncertain light, had a most disturbing effect upon me. Intricately wrought out of pale-green glass, thin, opaque and convuluted around the top, it kept persistently obtruding its presence upon my gaze. I seemed unable to avoid it. It was forever sidling itself into the corner of my eye, elegant and spectral, hovering there above the heavy round-topped table as though determined to mock me with its glassy elusiveness. At length, it got on my nerves so much that I left the room, deciding to go upstairs and do a little reading.
I was half-way up the stairs when something made me pause.
The floor of the upper storey was on a level with my chin, and I was just about abreast of the door of the doctor’s old room on my right, across the corridor. Standing where I was, I was aware of a strong, dank smell. At first, I thought it was another instance of my fancy getting the better of me, so I retreated two or three steps down. The smell thinned off at once. Descending right to the bottom, I found that I could discern no smell at all. Then I went up again. The smell struck me again—strong, unmistakable. Dank and earthy. I might have been standing on the brink of a freshly opened grave. I turned my head and looked at the silent blankness of the door on my right, and knew without any doubt that it was out of the doctor’s old room that this deathly odour was seeping.
10
I found that I could not read, so I smoked and stood at one of the two western windows in my room watching the sunset tints over Hackleton’s Cliff. Small clumps of alto-cumulus from a bright pink merged into gamboge, and then into a dull sienna, edged with bluish white, then the sienna gave way to a slate-grey, sombre and peaceful. Some of the higher clouds dissolved into the lapis-lazulis of the sky, and the lone coconut palm on Hackleton’s Cliff suddenly stood out jet-black and significant: a plumed sentry watching over the rugged landscape. The chill of night tingled on my cheeks, and the air smelt of the sea—iodine-tinged and fishy. I could hear the peep-peep of the chickens in the coops, and the monotonous hissing rustle of the casuarinas which, as usual, looked unreal and not of the earth. Their needle-like foliage kept fingering delicately against the sky, phantom-wise and indefinite. They might not have been trees at all but mere segments of the deep twilight congealed into wisps of greater density: shapeless shadow-nuclei out of which the night would grow and send out tentacles to envelop the rocks and the canefields and the tiny shingled cottages and the sea visible now as a dull purple haze encircling the jagged coastline.
Overhead, the sky was clear with a look of frosted glass. The thundery clouds of the afternoon had vanished, and one or two stars were winking, blue-white and inscrutable, chilly, too, like the feel of the rain-cooled air.
After a while, I became aware of sounds in the corridor, and assumed that it must be Tappin bringing up the deck-chair for his mistress. She was going to occupy her old room temporarily, she had said. Her intention, no doubt, was to sleep in the deck-chair. Perhaps tomorrow she would have the big four-poster dusted and prepared for use.
I kept remembering the clean patch, oblong-shaped, on the floor of the room she was going into. And the stains around the edges. What had happened in there last night? And the odour of the grave coming from the doctor’s room—and the sweetish smell in the other windward room—what conclusions could anyone come to about these things?
Then there was the travelling trunk. She had not opened that. Why? She had taken pains to reveal to Tappin the contents of the chest of drawers, and had pulled open the door of the cupboard and dramatically pointed at the old clothes hanging in it. But why had she chosen to overlook the trunk? Was there something ghastly locked up in that trunk?
A car was turning into the driveway. It must be the nurse.
I made my way downstairs, Mrs. Scaife close behind me. As I was about to enter the sitting-room she called to me: ‘Very nice of you to come down to help me greet the nurse, Mr. Woodsley!’ She spoke in her old affable, benevolent manner, and seemed to have completely forgotten the scene she had created upstairs only a short while before. Lamp in hand, she accompanied me to the front door.
‘I do so like to meet people for the first time, my boy,’ she said—and there was a genuine ring of pleasurable anticipation in her voice. ‘One never can tell what one may not see on their faces,’ she added softly.
The nurse turned out to be a much younger person than I had expected. She looked no more than twenty-three, and was attractive, too. No stiff, gaunt, hawk-faced creature, practical and efficient and bossy, as I had pessimistically envisaged. Her name was Linton—Grace Linton, though it was not until the following day that I discovered her first name. She had blue-green eyes, and I noted in them a pleasant, half-humorous glint that instantly appealed to me.
‘I’m Miss Linton,’ she said to Mrs. Scaife. ‘I think you’re expecting me.’
‘Yes, yes. Of course.’ To my surprise. Mrs. Scaife’s voice was curt, almost insulting in its complete lack of cordiality. I saw her face in the light from the lamp, and was struck by the scowl which had taken the place of her smile. Her face looked positively hostile. She turned abruptly to me and said: ‘Mr. Woodsley, would you be so good as to show Miss Linton upstairs to my room?’ Before I could even open my mouth
to reply she jerked round and said to the nurse: ‘You’ll find the patient in much the same condition in which Doctor Dayton left her, Miss Linton. The cot is for your own use—and dinner will be served for yourself and Mr. Woodsley at seven.’
And she went off. She made her way towards the dining-room and vanished into the pantry.
Miss Linton looked at me. ‘Is there anything the matter? Isn’t she keen on having me here?’
‘So keen that she went to the trouble of having the cot she mentioned erected for you, and she’s been making all sorts of fussy preparations for your arrival. But don’t let her upset you.’ I touched my temple. ‘I don’t believe all is right up here. Round the bend, that’s my diagnosis. Shall we go up?’
The earthy odour had disappeared, and I decided that, for to-night, at least, I would tell her nothing about the frighteningly puzzling business of the past two days. I didn’t want to get her scared.
A little later when we were dining, I asked her what she thought about the patient. ‘Any signs yet of returning consciousness?’
‘Not yet,’ she said.
We ate in silence for an interval. The wind moaned and whooped round the house, tirelessly, and once or twice came the flap-flap of the canvas sacking in the pantry.
Surreptitiously I kept watching Miss Linton’s profile, deciding that it was quite a nice profile. She had poise, and her starched, white nurse’s uniform looked well on her. Very good figure, too. Not up to Malverne’s standard, perhaps, but extremely presentable.
Once she shivered and remarked on the draughtiness of the room, and I nodded and said: ‘Never came across a place for draughts like this. They come crawling along the floor. They swoop down your back from the ceiling. They shoot out of corners. And listen to the wind!’
‘Yes, it’s very strong.’ She gazed round slowly, as though taking note of the place for the first time. Could it be my imagination or was there already a look of uneasiness in her eyes? ‘It seems to be a very old house. The furniture is so old-fashioned.’
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