Weekend at Thrackley

by Alan Melville

  Only for a moment, though. For Catherine Lady Stone had gone no further than three steps along the narrow grass edging when the large and unpleasant form of Jacobson, the butler, appeared from behind a bush of ghostly white broom and laid a heavy hand on the back of Lady Stone’s neck. “Now, what the bloody hell,” said Jacobson the butler, “do you think you’re doing at this time of the morning? Got up to see the sunrise, did you?”

  Catherine Lady Stone, President of (inter alia) the Women’s Council of Charitable Workers, fainted for the second time during her weekend at Thrackley.

  XVIII

  When Jim, having firmly expected to find his bedroom door locked, tried the handle and found that this was not the case, he promptly put the previous evening’s events down as a particularly bad nightmare. Secret passages to jewel-laden cellars… sensational discoveries of half-drugged women… dispatching of guests to bed by servants wielding revolvers in their hands… no, definitely no. He decided that he had been reading far too many of these detective novels recently. Or possibly it was that slightly over-ready Gorgonzola with which he had rounded off last night’s dinner. Yes, all blame to be attached to the Gorgonzola. He had had much too much, anyway.

  By the time he had bathed and dressed and arrived downstairs in the lounge there was no doubt at all that the evening’s excitement had taken place in his dreams. The rest of the guests were already at breakfast. One glance at them was enough to satisfy Jim that the whole affair… the jewels in the cellar, the finding of Lady Stone, the revolver in Jacobson’s fist… had been part of the scenario of a Gorgonzola-flavoured sleep. Such a perfectly ordinary house-party, munching their eggs and bacon in the middle of a perfectly ordinary country like England. Catherine Lady Stone chatting with Henry Brampton on the possibilities of the weather breaking down. Raoul, sleek and immaculate as ever, listening more or less attentively to Marilyn Brampton’s discussion on the misunderstood depths of D. H. Lawrence. Freddie Usher reaching out his third cup of coffee for Mary Carson to refill. Quite absurd, all these detective-thriller notions! Damn that Gorgonzola! And then Jim took another and a more careful look at the occupants of the breakfast-table. And noticed that Catherine Lady Stone’s complexion had changed from its usual expensive blush to an unpleasant shade of ash. That both Marilyn and Henry Brampton were talking in high-pitched, excitable tones. That Mary Carson looked worried, almost tearful. He walked across the room and helped himself to grape-fruit from the sideboard.

  And, as he settled himself into the chair next to Mary Carson, the door at the other end of the lounge opened and Edwin Carson walked to his place at the head of the table. He was looking a great deal more unpleasant than usual. His forehead frowned down over the thick lenses of his spectacles. The fringes of his grey hair stuck out untidily about his ears. He had not shaved. Jim decided that he had not been to bed. Or that, if he had, he had eaten even more Gorgonzola than Jim. As he sat down in his chair the conversation at the table petered out and stopped completely. Lady Stone, reaching for marmalade across the table, gripped the jar with a rather shaking hand. The spoon fell from it with a clatter on to one of the plates. Then there was silence.

  “I must apologize,” said Edwin Carson, after a moment’s pause, “for leaving you to yourselves last night. It was most unfortunate. But quite unavoidable. As you know, I had taken Raoul out for a short drive in the afternoon. Unfortunately, we came across Mr. Edwards, who is Raoul’s manager. Mr. Edwards insisted that Raoul should perform at the evening show of her delightful little play… I can quite well understand that the absence of Raoul would have a very serious effect on the success of the performance. And on the box-office receipts. So we had no option but to remain in town until the end of the show… and most charming it was, especially to one who had not been inside a theatre for nearly ten years. I hoped you looked after our guests, Mary? But then you would all probably have a much more pleasant time in my absence than you would have had if I had been here to bore you with my conversation. Captain Henderson, you are eating nothing… please help yourself…”

  Jim looked across the table at Lady Stone. She had laid down her knife and fork and was fumbling in her handbag. From the bag she took a small crystal bottle of smelling-salts, waved it for an instant under her abrupt little nose, replaced it in the bag.

  “Three of the occupants of the house, I know,” continued Edwin Carson, “had a much more satisfactory evening than would have been possible if I had been here at Thrackley.”

  He paused. The heavy lenses swivelled round the table. He reached in front of Mary for the pewter coffee-pot and poured himself out coffee in silence. Then he went on talking in his quiet, monotonous voice.

  “I am going to tell you exactly what happened when Raoul and I returned to Thrackley last night. I am going to tell you a great deal more than that… I hope you will not be too bored or uninterested to listen to me. But please continue with your breakfasts. There are more eggs on the heater on the sideboard… Lady Stone, you have no coffee…”

  “Thank you,” said Lady Stone, in the kind of voice which may accurately be described as still and small. “I have had quite sufficient, thank you.”

  “Very well, then. Raoul and I got back here about one o’clock. We would have been home sooner, but unfortunately we were held up on our way down from London by a belt of that annoying variety of fog in which this part of the country specializes. I say unfortunately, because perhaps if it had been a clear night some of the rather distressing events of last evening would not have occurred.”

  (“Rather distressing events?” thought Jim. Gorgonzola, after all, detached from all blame.)

  “When Raoul had gone to her room, I had a drink and then went to my study. You all know my study… not a very elaborate room, but small and—in my opinion, at least—tastefully panelled in a very cheap imitation of a very expensive oak. When I opened the door of my study last night, I found that that panelling had been ruined. I do not think I have ever told you that part of that panelling conceals a lift which descends to the cellars underneath this house. I will tell you the reasons for that later. Someone, in any case, had been extremely anxious to find the entrance to that lift. Up to a point, they were not very successful. They had to use force, chisels, saws—all of which would have been quite unnecessary if only they had thought of using instead a little intelligence. But the point is that they found the lift. And, having found it, they gained access to the cellars of Thrackley.”

  Jim looked across the table at Freddie Usher, and found him staring open-mouthed at the ceiling. He wondered how Burroughs was getting on with his breakfast in the kitchen. Edwin Carson had paused for a moment. He was stirring his coffee slowly, looking in turn at each of his guests as he stirred. Then he laid the spoon back in its place in the saucer and went on speaking in the same quiet voice.

  “Now, why should anyone wish to get into the cellars of this house? I will tell you. The cellars of Thrackley are not quite ordinary cellars. There are, in those cellars, round about four and three-quarter million pounds’ worth of the most marvellous collection of precious stones existing in Europe to-day… four and three-quarter millions…”

  He had raised his voice slightly now, and his hand, as he lifted his cup of coffee to his mouth shook just a little. “Now,” thought Jim, “we are getting warm.”

  “Nearly all my life has been spent in getting together that collection. Apart from myself, no one, up to last night, has ever seen the whole of it. Those jewels were intended for my eyes alone. Partly because there are very few… I might almost say there is no one… who understands those jewels as I do. And partly because, if the police of Europe were to see even a few of the stones in that collection, I should be arrested within an hour and probably spend the rest of my days on the wrong side of a prison wall. Which I have not the slightest intention of doing…”

  He paused again. There was absolute silence in the room. Two small beads of s
weat appeared on Edwin Carson’s forehead and ran slowly down his brow. He ran his hand over the deep forehead and across his bald head.

  “You are probably thinking that I am a fool to tell you this. But I am no fool… you will find that out, my friends. You are my guests. You are also very much in my power. You will find that until I choose to let you do so, not one of you can get away from the grounds of this house. And I do not choose so yet. When you do go, you may be quite certain that I shall have gone before you… that I shall be very far away from Thrackley. It is not such a terribly difficult matter to get out of England overnight if one has money. And once I am on the Continent… then my hospitality to you will be over, the gates of Thrackley will be opened, you may go out and tell your stories of stolen jewels to the first policeman you meet, to Scotland Yard, to the Sunday newspapers… I shall not care. I hope that they will believe you… for when they come to search the cellars of Thrackley they will find very little. A little wine, perhaps… a stack of logs in one corner and a pile of coal in another… but jewels? I am afraid not. You see, my friends, it is you who have been the fools.”

  The quiet voice had vanished now. Edwin Carson quivered with excitement, almost shouted each word as he glared round the table.

  “Yes… you, not I, are the fools,” he repeated. “Why do you think each of you was invited to stay with me in this house? For my pleasure or entertainment? I am afraid I must disillusion you if that is what you thought. You came here to add to my collection… to fill just a few gaps which were spoiling the effect of that collection. Some of you have obliged already. Others will do so before they leave this house. Will you look for a minute at that exquisite ruby in the centre of the necklace which Lady Stone is wearing? I cannot imagine why she should wear a choker necklace at breakfast… unless perhaps she thought that the safest place for such a thing in Thrackley was round her neck. That ruby is worth… perhaps fifteen shillings. Probably less, certainly not more. The original stone is lying on white velvet in the cellars underneath this room. For that, my friends, was my original idea in bringing you to Thrackley. You were to contribute unknowingly to my collection. It was not to be discovered until you had safely left Thrackley behind you that the delightful jewels which you brought with you had been replaced by equally delightful but quite worthless imitations. Perhaps such an unfortunate discovery would not be made for years… until, shall we say, some of you fell on hard days and were forced to dispose of your priceless jewellery? But unfortunately that scheme of mine did not work out as I had planned. Lady Stone is a distressingly light sleeper… you should do something about it, Lady Stone… there are excellent cures for insomnia. And so Lady Stone had to be kept quiet for the remainder of her stay at Thrackley. She was admirably quiet until last night, until Captain Henderson and Mr. Usher and one of my servants so ungallantly disturbed her. A great pity…”

  Five pairs of eyes stared across at the red centrepiece of Catherine Lady Stone’s necklace. It shone vividly, catching a fresh glint of light with each motion as Lady Stone breathed. Yet not one of the owners of those five pairs of eyes doubted for an instant that the stone was made of glass. And somewhere, not very far away, the real stone was shining a little more vividly.

  “Now, what is to happen? Well, I think I have told you. You are to stay here until I please to let you go. I do not think any of you will be so foolish as to attempt to leave this house… I can almost promise you that you will not make a second attempt. Excuse me for just one moment…”

  He rose from his chair, folded his serviette neatly on his plate, crossed to the French windows which looked out on to the strip of garden and the pine-trees outside.

  “This, of course,” he said, “is one of the obvious ways of leaving the house.”

  He laid his hand on the handle of the French windows. As he pulled it down to open them, the clanging of an electric bell sounded deafeningly from each corner of the room. The door at the end of the lounge shot open.

  “All right, all right, Jacobson,” said Edwin Carson in his quiet voice, “I was just explaining this little contraption to our guests. I see it is working again perfectly… it was put out of commission by a very adventurous lady at an early hour this morning. That will do, Jacobson, thank you. And please do not point that revolver at my guests. Lady Stone’s heart is not all that it might be.”

  And Edwin Carson took his hand off the bronze handle and walked back to the table. The room seemed uncannily silent after the few moments of din. The door shut quietly behind Jacobson and his revolver.

  “You see?” said Edwin Carson. “In perfect working order. And that is not all. For the front door of this house is unconnected to the wiring of the alarm. You are perfectly free to walk in and out of that door as you please. What then?… I am afraid that you will find that both the gates in the wall which surrounds this house so efficiently have been equipped with the same little device. And have you noticed that wall, my friends? It is, I think, sixteen feet high, and very difficult to scale. Difficult, but not impossible. But, as you may have noticed, at the top of that wall there is a row of iron prongs. They were put there originally to keep small boys from stealing fruit from the trees near the wall. There is no fruit there now, I’m afraid, but the prongs are still there. And they are wired to the distressingly loud alarm which you have just heard. And… in case there might be one of you who would try to scale that wall, trusting to luck that you would be able to get over the top before the alarm took very much effect… just in case of that, there is an exceedingly strong electric current running right through those prongs, through the bolts in the little gate at the back, through the iron gates at the front of the house, running through them all at this very minute. I would not say that it is strong enough to kill a man… but I should advise you, when you are planning how to get yourselves out of Thrackley, to think of some other way than through the gates or over the wall.”

  He crossed to the foot of the staircase, and paused as he placed his foot on the first step.

  “Oh… I forgot to tell you. The telephone is, I’m afraid, out of order. And now please do whatever you wish for the remainder of your stay at Thrackley. And so shall I…”

  And Edwin Carson walked slowly up the wide staircase, and the five people seated at the table followed him with their eyes until he turned at the landing and disappeared from their sight. Then Jim turned and stared out of the French windows… stared through a gap in the pines at a glimpse of the high wall which was only one of the barriers which held those five in the house called Thrackley. As he looked, a cat walked slowly along the top of the wall, silhouetted against the blue of the sky beyond. He watched it, fascinated. It stopped, looked down at the garden below it, then stretched a thin paw out towards one of the iron prongs which stuck out from the rim of the wall, trying, apparently, to catch hold of a leaf or something dangling from the prongs. And then the cat leapt high in the air above the wall and its body fell on to the grass below. It lay there, stretched out, quite still. Jim took a drink of his coffee. He had left it untouched all the time Carson talked, and it was now quite cold. He shivered a little… not because of the coffee’s temperature. Edwin Carson had been right when he said that his wiring was in perfect order.

  XIX

  For the few seconds which followed immediately upon Edwin Carson’s disappearance there was complete silence in the lounge. But only for those few seconds. And then:

  “God bless my soul!” said Catherine Lady Stone.

  With which remark the other occupants of the breakfast-table burst unanimously into conversation. Even the Bramptons threw aside for once their air of aloofness and boredom with everything and everybody and added their share to the mêlée. But it was Lady Stone’s voice which predominated (as it had done at many hundreds of committee meetings, garden fêtes, and political gatherings). After all, felt Lady Stone, she had a right to say her say, having been implicated in this affair more deeply than the r
est.

  “No doubt about it,” said Lady Stone’s shrill soprano. “Not a bit of doubt that the man is mad. Quite, quite mad. A dangerous lunatic.”

  “Did he really lock you up in his cellar?” inquired Henry Brampton.

  “My good man, if you are under the impression that I have spent the last two days in a small stone room, with no light and very little air and with my meals pushed through a disgusting—If you are under the impression,” said Lady Stone, becoming thoroughly warmed, “that I have done all this of my own free will, then you are very much mistaken.”