‘Yes, her will. She mentioned that to me this morning,’ I said.
Working back towards the western end of the bay, we met a farmer called Hart whom Tappin knew well. From him we got a piece of information that alarmed me. He said that his son, a fisherman, had hired a boat to Mrs. Scaife. He pointed to a rock on the beach. ‘Look at it dere, sir. Dat lil’ skiff. She say she won’t need it till dis evening.’
‘Did she say what she needed it for?’
‘No, sir. She didn’t say. But she pay Tom handsome for it, sir.’
The rain hissed spitefully at us. The wind and the huge foaming waves on the beach created a turbulent rumble of sound that was almost palpable. The air reeked of fish and seaweed. I glanced towards the rock where the skiff was safely moored. It was well out of reach of the waves. I felt a sort of irresolution, and was about to suggest returning to Eltonsbrody when Hart said: ‘Sir, you look fatigue. Why you don’t come in and lemme give you somet’ing to eat before you cloimb up back to de house?’
‘Well, that’s very nice of you, Hart,’ I said. ‘And I’m going to take you at your word, because I’m ravenous.’
The meal, which consisted of fried flying fish, boiled sweet potatoes and pigeon peas and a large mug of cocoa, went a long way towards raising my spirits. We sat in the tiny sitting-room of Hart’s cottage, each with a plate in his lap, for there was no room at the small table to accommodate even three people, and the table was already crowded with glassware and crockery of a diverse type (I don’t remember seeing two cups or glasses that were exactly alike). Hart was a widower, though the wife of a neighbour cooked for him.
The meal over, I thanked Hart for his kindness, but he laughed and said: ‘No, sir. Don’t t’ank me. T’ank Mary who cook for me. She always cook big so plenty leff over. Dat’s why Oi risk to offer you somet’ing.’
‘Anyway, before I go back to Bridgetown, I’m going to come down and look you all up,’ I said. ‘Now let’s hurry back up to the house, Tappin. I have a nasty feeling I should be up there to keep an eye on things. Miss Graham may be needing me to boost her morale. Come on.’
The wind and rain chattered and whisked at our backs as we made our way up the winding difficult track. More than once boulders would come rattling down—not large ones, but they served to remind me of what Tappin had said about landslides. In some places the track was a rushing, gurgling torrent; reddish-amber water swirling around our ankles.
At length, the grey bulk of Eltonsbrody appeared ahead of us beyond a hump of land bristling with sisal grass. The last hundred yards seemed to stretch out into a mile, but, at last, we plodded our way through the back gate into the back-yard.
The first person we saw was McTurk hurrying towards the goat-pens, his head and shoulders covered with flour-bags. I hailed him and he halted and stared at us. ‘Mr. Woodsley, sir! You come back?’
‘What’s been happening, McTurk? Is your mistress still in the house? She hasn’t been out, has she?’
‘No, sir. Miss Dahlia upstairs. She didn’t go nowhere. In dis wedder, sir? How she could go out?’
‘Miss Dahlia didn’ ask for me, McTurk?’ Tappin asked anxiously.
‘No, she ain’ ask,’ growled McTurk, frowning, ‘but you know full well de mistress never loike you to go out widdout telling her first.’
‘I asked him to come with me,’ I said. I glanced towards the kitchen door. I saw Jackman beckoning to me. She was calling, her voice muffled by the savage weather.
‘What’s it, Jackman?’ I called back.
‘Sir, de young lady in de dining-room asking for you. We was wondering where you gone to!’
I approached her and asked: ‘What young lady? Miss Linton?’
‘No, sir. De new nurse.’ Then she exclaimed: ‘Oh, lawd! Look how you soaking wet, sir! Lemme get you somet’ing to drink.’
‘Thank you, Jackman. I’ll go to the dining-room and see Miss Graham.’
Miss Graham rose from a chair at the dining-table. Her face looked puzzled and worried—even a little frightened. ‘Mr. Woodsley, I couldn’t imagine what had happened to you. My goodness, you’re in a state!’
‘What are you doing down here, Nurse?’
‘That’s what I wanted to speak to you about. I haven’t been able to get into the room upstairs since I came down here this morning.’
‘Why? Did Mrs. Scaife—?’
‘Mrs. Scaife has locked herself in the room. I’ve knocked and called out to her until I’m tired, but I can’t get an answer.’
‘You mean since you came down here to tell us that the patient was dead you haven’t been able to get into the room?’
‘Yes, since then I’ve been down here. Over four hours. I just can’t understand it. Mrs. Scaife won’t open the door. And my suit-case is in there with all my things.’
‘Did you hear any movement in the room?’
‘Yes, she was doing something. I—I heard a sound as though she was using tools—or instruments or something. The keyhole is blocked up.’
Jackman appeared with a tall tumbler of yellow liquid. ‘Look, sir. Drink dis. It’s a egg-flip Oi make for you. A lil’ rum in it, sir. It will keep out de chill from you’ bones.’
‘By George, you’re a brick, Jackman! Just the thing I need!’ I took a sip and asked: ‘Where’s Bayley, by the way?’
‘He gone to Horse Hill to get hibiscus bush for de goats, sir. Oi hear McTurk sending him off lil’ whoile ago. You want anyt’ing?’
‘Yes. Ask McTurk to go out on the road and see if an old car is parked under the big sandbox tree. Tell him to hurry. It’s important.’
‘Oi will tell him now, sir.’ She hurried out.
‘Nurse, you remain downstairs here,’ I said to Miss Graham. ‘I’ll go up alone to see what’s happening to the old lady.’
I finished the egg-flip and went upstairs. Draughts, as though gone mad like everything else in the house, danced and whirled about me so that I imagined I could see them describing rings and spirals round my head. There was a continuous whistle and whine in the windward rooms, and the wardrobe creaked at regular two-second intervals. The whole house seemed to sway and quiver in the strong wind-gusts.
At my knock on the door, I heard a slight movement within.
‘Open this door at once, Mrs. Scaife! Come on! Open it!’
I heard a gasp—then nothing more for such a long interval that I knocked again and shouted: ‘Did you hear me? Open the door! If you don’t open it I’ll smash it down! And I mean that!’
‘Did you find Miss Linton?’
‘No! I didn’t—because she’s probably still in this house. And you have got to tell me all about it and let me into the other rooms, too! Hurry up. I’m in a nasty mood!’
I heard a chuckle—then suddenly came a click in the lock, and the door opened.
‘Since you insist, very well, my boy. Come in and have a look!’
I stared past her. Stared past her and saw something I shall not forget if I live to ninety.
22
She was smiling sweetly, benevolently—the same dear old lady. The mild, twinklingly humorous Mrs. Scaife who had greeted me so hospitably on the evening of Maundy Thursday. The same gentle mocker who had taken a pleasure in baiting me during the past few days. She waved her hand and said in a voice soft and sighingly contented: ‘There you are, my boy! Tell me what you think. Isn’t that a really pretty sight!’
The pretty sight was what the corpse of Malverne had been converted into. The marble-topped washstand had been cleared of the toilet receptacles. Now it was piled with human remains—two legs cut up neatly and expertly into sections and arranged in an orderly clump at one end of the washstand. At the other end, as though for symmetrical effect, sections of arms stood in another clump. In the middle lay the torso disembowelled and with the shaven head of the girl set in the middle of the glistening coiled mass of intestines. The mouth gaped rigidly, the eyes stared blue and glassy.
On the floor near the wa
shstand lay a white enamel surgical tray containing water under whose surface gleamed several surgical instruments. The water was a pinkish brown. A smell of blood and flesh hung in the air, and my gaze travelled round and rested on a white enamel pail that stood in the corner near the wardrobe. It was half-filled with thick clots of blood.
I could say nothing. A numbness seemed to spread slowly through my stomach. Vaguely a panicked impulse to turn and rush downstairs came alive in me, but somehow I couldn’t move.
‘I enjoyed myself, my boy,’ said the old lady. ‘Oh, it was lovely, lovely! And you annoying young man! You wanted to deprive me of my fun! That’s why I had to send you off to Martin’s Bay on a wild goose chase. It was your own fault. Tolerance is what matters, Mr. Woodsley. If only we could learn to smile and wink at each other’s vices! Prudery is the most disgusting plague of mankind. But there, there! I mustn’t moralise at this time of day—and in this weather. It’s indecent. I have so many other interesting things to show you.’
She moved across the room to the door of the small room. She inserted a key into the lock, turned it and then pushed the door open. ‘Come,’ she called. ‘Come and see. Have a look, my boy!’
Automatically I crossed and stopped beside her and looked into the room.
On the small bed lay the skeleton of a child—a child of about six or seven, to judge by its length. The bones seemed linked together with bits of thread, and it was dressed in a boy’s tweed shorts and shirt, and a small cricket cap rested at an angle on the skull. A faint sickly-sweet smell came to my nostrils.
‘My dear, dear little grandson Gregory who died on Monday. See what love can drive a doting old lady to do, my boy! This is what I paid a thousand dollars for. Borkum is such a versatile fellow, and such an expert anatomist!’ She tittered. ‘And so good at robbing graves! But I shouldn’t slander the poor man. Robbing graves isn’t a habit of his. It was done at my request. A special job. Like the one years ago—on the thirteenth of January, 1950.’
She smiled and sighed softly. ‘Yes, my boy. In the room over there the doctor’s skeleton reclines on the bed. I have him decked off in evening clothes—we Barbadians insist on correct dress, even for the dead. The clothes have got a bit moth-eaten now, of course, but never mind! It’s been nice to know that I had such a vital part of my dear Michael with me in this house. His fleshly remains are in there, too. In a neat leaden box built over with a mound of earth like a miniature tomb. Gregory’s remains have been treated in the same way—the fleshly remains. Heart, liver, entrails, and all the tissue scraped off the bones. But there was no space in this room here, so I had to have them left in the doctor’s room. I’m sure you must have smelt fresh earth in the corridor two or three nights ago—the night you heard the bump. Remember? Borkum, clumsy fool that he is, dropped the leaden box. Good thing it was well sealed. I was furious with him. Suppose the box had burst and spilled its contents over the floor! I so hate a mess!’
She waved her hands towards the washstand. ‘You can see for yourself what a neat, tidy job I’ve made of Malverne. Good gracious! What’s that?’
Above the weather noise there came a deep rumble. It was not thunder, I was certain. It was too leisurely a sound, and it ended suddenly in a dull sort of bump.
Mrs. Scaife looked at me. ‘Do you know what that is, Mr. Woodsley? It’s a landslide.’
The house seemed to rock gently with a new vibration—a troublousness that seemed to seep up out of the earth. Mrs. Scaife wagged her head. ‘I wonder if any lives have been lost. If the weather hadn’t been so fierce I’d have taken a walk to see. Dead bodies fascinate me so much! Death, death! The one luscious adventure we can every one of us look forward to without any fear of disappointment. Isn’t it satisfying to contemplate on, my boy?’
She must have continued in this vein for fully five minutes longer, and I simply had to stand there and listen to her.
‘. . . I’d have taken you into the doctor’s room to show you the skeleton in there, but Borkum is at work now. He’s packing the bones and the leaden boxes into my old travelling trunk. He’ll come in here for Malverne’s remains, too, and little Gregory’s skeleton. I want everything dumped into the sea. I’ve got a boat down there in the bay, and towards evening Borkum would have gone down with the trunk and put it into the boat and rowed out near the Well Pit. Borkum is a good boatman. He could manage safely. But I’m afraid the weather has upset our plans, so he’s got to venture down earlier—perhaps in an hour’s time. None of my keepsakes must remain in this house for unsympathetic eyes and hands to violate. Everything must be disposed of because my time is short. The Shadow is dense on me, my boy. On Tuesday evening I watched it flit by my window, but I’d put it down to an accident—just one of those little psychic accidents that happen to us strange people occasionally. But on Wednesday morning when I got up I knew it had been no accident. The gloom had settled on my shoulder, and I knew that for me it was only a matter of a few days. I have no idea how it will come to me, but death is near, Mr. Woodsley. For Borkum, too, though I haven’t told him. I saw the Shadow on him since Monday evening when he brought little Gregory’s body.’
She gave another of her sighs and said: ‘Yes, on your friend, too. Miss Linton. I saw it on her when she arrived on Tuesday evening. The Shadow. And something told me that she was meant for me. For my pleasure. For my supreme ecstasy. And as my time was short, I said to myself why shouldn’t I have a revel of gruesome fun before the end? Nothing to fear from the law, so why not? They can’t hang me. Long before they discover that she’s missing and attempt to arrest me I’ll be dead. You see now why I’ve been so careless in dropping clues for you to find, my dear Holmes? You see now why I’ve been so free in talking about my doings and plans?’
‘Mrs. Scaife! What are you trying to tell me? Where is Miss Linton? Have you done anything to her?’
She chuckled. ‘I believe you are in love with her. Just step into the room there and lift the bedsheet. Look under dear little Gregory’s bed and sigh a deep, long sigh, my boy.’
I hurried into the small room, bent and lifted the bed-sheet.
There was nothing under the bed.
I turned but the door had closed. I heard the key click in the lock. I knocked and shouted. ‘Open the door, you bloody fiend! Open it!’
But there was no reply.
I looked through the keyhole and saw her cross the room and take the sheet from the bed. She spread it over the gruesome array of Malverne’s remains on the wash-stand. Then she moved out of view.
I went to the window and discovered that it had been nailed to the sill. The nails were new ones.
Suddenly, above the noise outside I heard voices in the larger room. I began to hammer on the door again with my fists. I looked through the keyhole but only a corner of the bed and the washstand appeared in my range of vision. I recognised Jackman’s voice. Then I heard Mrs. Scaife shout: ‘What is the meaning of this, Jackman! Don’t you know it is forbidden for you to come upstairs here!’
‘Mistress, Oi had to come,’ I heard Jackman say, and her voice sounded hysterical. ‘Bayley jest come back from Horse Hill, mistress. ’E say a big landslide happen near de cemetery and de house me sister and cousin living in get buried. Mistress, you can let me run off to see what happen to dem? Me sister got two young children . . .’
At this point her mistress interrupted her. ‘Did I hear you say there was a landslide near the cemetery?’
‘Yes, Miss Dahlia. Oi hear de land fall down ’pon part of de graves and bury dem—’
‘What! What’s that! The graves! Oh, my God! What of the doctor’s tomb, Jackman? Has anything happened to it? Has it been damaged?’
‘Mistress, Oi ain’ know. Bayley ain’ say nutting—’
‘Oh, my God! Quick! Get out of my way! I must go and see for myself. Oh, my God! Michael’s tomb!’
I heard the footsteps receding into the corridor. I began to hammer on the door again, but Jackman, too, must have hurried
out after her, for no one came to open the door.
I crossed to the window again, and looked through its streaming panes at the scene outside. I could make out the poultry-runs and the goat-pens, the back fence and the gate, but beyond that all I could see was a greyish-white pall of misty rain-drops. Here and there a maypole stalk from a clump of sisal grass reared itself dimly like some ghostly skeleton. Eltonsbrody might have been a house drifting among the clouds. The very foundations seemed to creak under the strain of the driving wind and the fierce slashing drops; I could well imagine what it would be like if a hurricane had come along instead of this savage rainstorm.
Suddenly I heard footsteps in the next room. I ran across to the door and started my hammering tattoo again, and called out: ‘Who’s in there! Open the door!’
There were quick footsteps in the next room, then the key clicked in the lock and the door opened. It was Miss Graham.
‘Mr. Woodsley! What are you doing in here? Did she lock you in?’
‘She did. Has she gone out? I’ve got to get after her.’
‘But where’s the corpse? What’s happened to it?’
‘The washstand,’ I said briefly. ‘She’s out of her mind. Look, better get back downstairs—and stay downstairs. Do you hear me? Keep in the kitchen with the servants.’ I hurried out of the room and she accompanied me downstairs. We found Tappin and Bayley in the dining-room.
‘Sir, you hear about de landsloide?’ Bayley began excitedly, but I cut him short. ‘Where is your mistress? She went out, didn’t she?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Tappin said. ‘She gone running out in de rain. She gone to see ef de doctor’ tomb get damaged. Sir, remember Oi tell you about Miss Dahlia and dat tomb! She will kill herself ef anyt’ing happen to dat tomb. She worship it.’
McTurk entered and said: ‘Mr. Woodsley, de car still dere outsoide by de roadsoide near de sandbox tree.’
‘Oh, good. Thanks, McTurk. Well, look here, Tappin, you and McTurk remain in the house here with Miss Graham. Understand? Don’t leave her under any circumstances. And keep an eye on the stairs. Don’t go upstairs, but keep an eye on the stairs. I believe there’s somebody in the doctor’s room.’
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