Weekend at Thrackley

by Alan Melville

  “Right, then, Jacobson… I think we are nearly ready now… just have a last look round, will you?… No, come over here and help me push the desk back against this wall… that’s right… and take those chairs up to the study—and that little cabinet over there… don’t leave any furniture down here at all except the desk… we can’t very well take that out…”

  Jacobson collected the two chairs and the small cabinet, placed them in the lift, pressed the switch which sent the lift whirring smoothly up to the study.

  “Jacobson!… just a minute!…”

  The lift stopped half-way on its journey. The feet of the two chairs, the cabinet, and Jacobson were all that could be seen from the cellar.

  “The dust-sheets,” said Edwin Carson. “Bring them down while you’re up there… and some dust—a lot of dust, Jacobson.”

  “Dust?”

  “Yes, you fool… dust. I told you to collect some, didn’t I? We have to leave this place looking as though it hadn’t been opened up for years.”

  “You’re doing the thing properly, aren’t you?” said the voice of Jacobson.

  “It is the best way to do anything, Jacobson.”

  “All right… I’ll get your damned dust.”

  “And hurry, for God’s sake… it’s after one o’clock already.”

  The lift whirred again and Jacobson’s feet disappeared upwards. Edwin Carson looked round. The fire of papers was almost out now and the dull red glow of it was the only light in the cellar. He crossed to the desk, felt along the top of it, found his electric torch and switched it on. He played its beam around the walls. He made it stop for a while on the built-up door to the machinery room, and smiled in satisfaction at the solid piece of stone wall which he saw. Then he crossed to the other end of the cellar and tried the door of the little room in which Catherine Lady Stone had spent her very uncomfortable Friday and Saturday evenings. It was locked, though the bolts on the outside of the door were back from their catches. He stood back, pulling at his nose in annoyance. He could not remember having locked that door… yet he supposed he must have done so… anyway, the keys were upstairs in the pocket of his jacket and he had no time to worry about that now… there was nothing in there to give anything away, anyhow. He walked back to the desk, collected the papers which he had taken from the pigeon-hole, tied the string around them and patted them untidily into his hip pocket. And then he placed his finger on the only two switches left fitted in the desk, and pulled them back in their sockets. He smiled again at the thought of his guests lying more or less peacefully in their beds, quite convinced that they were imprisoned in a house surrounded by burglar alarms and powerful electric currents. Whereas, from that moment onwards, any of the people inside Thrackley were able to walk out of the house and past the high wall which ran around the grounds without the slightest fear of raising an alarm or receiving a shock. A very satisfactory situation indeed.

  He walked to the lift, pressed the switch in front of him, waited until the cage came to rest opposite him, and stepped in. Jacobson was in the study when he stepped out of the lift and through the broken panels.

  “Dustcloths,” said Edwin Carson, surveying the butler. “Dustcloths and dust… very good work, Jacobson. Just go down and do what I told you, then… spread the cloths over the desk… and just scatter all that mess about the place to make the cellar look something like a cellar… and don’t take all night about it, Jacobson, for God’s sake… Hurry, now… we’re ready to go, Jacobson… ready to go!”

  The butler stopped before entering the lift with his load of dustsheets and his bucketful of dust.

  “Good many hurried getaways we’ve made—you and I, Carson,” he said.

  “A good many, Jacobson, as you say. And I’m not so sure that this one isn’t going to be the most successful of the lot. Come on, man, get down and get that done… let’s get out of here.”

  “I won’t be sorry, Carson.”

  He looked back over his shoulder at the little man busy foraging through the papers on the study table.

  “What about Adams and Kenrick?” he asked.

  “Don’t you worry about them, Jacobson,” said Edwin Carson. “I’m looking after them all right.”

  “And the girl?”

  “She… she’ll just be left behind, Jacobson.”

  And the butler smiled and vanished behind the panels with his dust and dustcloths. Edwin Carson put his finger to the switch—the lift went smoothly down to the cellars again.

  “All right, Jacobson?”

  “All right… I could do with a light, though.”

  “Just a minute. I’ll bring down my torch.”

  And then Edwin Carson did a very strange thing. He threw the light of his torch on to the switch which operated the lift, pressed for a moment on the small ebonite panel in which the switch had been built. And a section of that panel slid back, showing a second socket into which the switch might go if anyone chose to make it do so. He pressed on the switch with his thumb until it shot with a click into the socket. And the lift from the cellar came slowly to half-way between the cellar and the study floors. And stayed there.

  He turned off the light of his torch and listened in the darkness.

  Very faintly the voice of Jacobson could be heard… miles below, it seemed:

  “Carson!… Carson!… what the hell are you doing with this lift?… Send the damned thing down, will you?… Carson! Carson, you bloody little swine!…”

  And in the study Edwin Carson leaned over the shaft of the lift and said quietly:

  “The dustsheets over the desk, Jacobson, and spread the dust about carefully… all over the floor, you understand?… I want it to look as though no one had entered that cellar for years…”

  He knew that Jacobson could not possibly hear him. But it was rather satisfying to be able to say these things to a man whom he had just fooled so successfully. And Edwin Carson put on his jacket and began to hum contentedly to himself. A pity that he had not got Jacobson to dust the jacket before he went down to the cellars. But still—another very good night’s work, he thought.

  XXII

  There are many ways of spending an evening more pleasant than lying quite still on the stone floor of a small, unlit room. Mary had found this out early in the evening, and by one o’clock the truth of it was painfully evident. She lay flat on the cold floor of the room which led off the main cellar and listened at the gap between the floor and the bottom rail of the heavy door. They were still there, and still busy. The smell of smoke, which had puzzled her a short while ago, had almost gone now; the lights of the cellar had evidently been turned off, for the thin streak of light no longer came under the door. Now they were moving furniture… she could hear the big desk being dragged across the cellar floor, and the other chairs and things being collected together. And one of the two persons who had spent so busy an evening within a few yards of where she lay was carrying something to the lift and taking whatever it was out of the cellar. The shaftway of the lift ran up the wall at her side… she could hear the whirr of its machinery. And whoever had been left in the cellar was walking slowly round the walls; she could make out the sound of his feet as he came nearer the door in front of her. She lay very still when the feet stopped in their walk and someone tried the handle of the door…

  He tried it again, giving the lock a hefty shove. She recognized the muttered “Damn the thing!” as Edwin Carson’s voice, and lay back against the wall, holding her breath in the silence. The footsteps sounded again in the cellar outside… going slowly away from the door. She put her hand to her forehead and found it wet and very cold. And what was Edwin Carson going to do now?

  She listened again. Evidently something else being dragged across the floor towards the lift. A second’s silence, then the sound of the lift coming down from the floor above. She heard the two bumps as Edwin Carson placed his very valu
able luggage on the floor of the lift cage. And then up again, more slowly than usual this time. She waited for nearly five minutes… had almost decided to turn the key in front of her and step out into the cellar when the lift whirred down again. Not finished even yet, apparently… only one pair of feet on the stone floor this time, though. And almost as soon as the feet had stepped from the lift, the cage shot up the shaft again. Quickly… more quickly than ever she had heard it before. Another silence, and then, echoing through the cellar, so loud that it seemed to deafen her:

  “Carson!… Carson!… what the hell are you doing with this lift?… Send the damned thing down, will you?… Carson!… Carson, you bloody little swine!…”

  Jacobson!… She listened for an answer and heard none.

  “Carson!… My God, I’ll kill you for this!… You filthy swine… let me out of here… let me out, do you hear?… Carson, for God’s sake…”

  Mary felt on the floor of the little room for the electric torch which she had brought, found it, raised herself on her knees, and slowly turned the key in the lock of the door. The door opened easily, without the slightest noise. She stepped out into the big cellar. Pitch darkness everywhere. She could hear Jacobson’s breathing a few yards in front of her. She pressed down the switch of the torch, flung the circle of light full in his face.

  “What—who the hell’s that?”

  “Put that revolver down, Jacobson.”

  “You… Miss Mary… what the—?”

  “Never mind how I got here, Jacobson. I’ve been here all night. Carson’s tricked you, has he?”

  “Looks like it… the dirty little blackguard…”

  “Sounds good, that, coming from you. Come over here. And lay that revolver down somewhere. Any lights down here at all?”

  “Not now. Taken them all out not an hour ago.”

  “Well, this torch will last for an hour or so. Now you do some talking, friend Jacobson. What’s been happening here to-night?”

  “Mind your own damned business.”

  “And let Carson get away scot free, with you left to explain a dead man and a wholesale theft of jewellery? Come on, now, Jacobson, think again.”

  Mary waited a minute before he answered. Jacobson apparently had thought again.

  “You’re right, Miss Mary. By God, you’re right. I’ll tell everything I know about that damned crook… I will, honest to God… I don’t care what the hell happens to me… but, my God, I’ll do my best to get something to happen to him.”

  “Now,” said Mary, “you’re talking sensibly, Jacobson.”

  “You know what’s been going on here, don’t you, miss? You know what the boss’s game has been these last two or three years?”

  “I could make a pretty good guess.”

  “Well, this here cellar has been where the dirty’s been going on. There’s a room in there—at the end there—same kind of place as the one you came out of… God, you didn’t half give me a turn, miss…”

  “Never mind your turns. What about this room?”

  “That’s where he kept all his doings. For turning out dud jewels. Worked there all night, he did. Never went to bed. He got me or one of the other lads to snaffle the stuff… said at first he wanted to borrow the goods for experimenting on… that went a long way down with me, I must say… and by the morning he’d have a dud fixed up to put back in place of the real ones. Regular wonders, they were, too… couldn’t tell the difference if they was standing side by side…”

  “I know. I’ve seen them.”

  “That was in there. He’s had me block up the doorway to-night. Wanted everything to be left as if it was just an ordinary cellar. Dustsheets over that desk and everything. Even got me to bring dust down here… the lousy little swine!… If ever I so much as…”

  “All right, all right! What else have you done to-night?”

  “Taken down all the electric lights and all the wiring.”

  “Wiring?”

  “Yes, miss—the whole place has been wired up so much you couldn’t move without tripping on something. Telephones, dictaphones, microphones, this burglar-alarm of his… he did the thing proper, I’ll say that for him…”

  “You’ve disconnected everything? Nothing’s left wired up?”

  “Not a thing… except the alarm and the wires to the current round the walls. Had to leave that, you see, to keep all you people inside. If you’d tried to open them gates while that current was on, you’d have had a nasty surprise all right.”

  “And that’s still connected up?”

  “Yes—he switched it off just before he went up to the study. Then he sent me down with this damned dust. Dust!… I’ll dust him if ever I get my eyes on him again. That’s what he’ll be, Miss Mary… just dust…”

  “Jacobson! Where’s this switch?”

  “The one he’s left? Over there… inside the desk.”

  “Come over and show me.”

  They crossed to the other end of the cellar. The butler pulled open the top of the big desk. Mary shone her torch inside it.

  “There… that switch in the black panel.”

  “D’you realize what’s happening, Jacobson, at this moment? Carson is getting away. Getting clear of this for ever, if he’s at all lucky. He’s probably in the garage now, getting that stuff into the car. In a few minutes he’ll be going down the drive, through the gates, out into the world. D’you realize, Jacobson? Through the gates!”

  “My God, Miss Mary…”

  “That little switch is the one thing that can stop him. It’s at ‘Off’ just now, Jacobson…”

  Jacobson peered down into the desk. His head showed up as a huge shadow on the cellar wall.

  “Off… quarter… half… full…” he read. “Clear out without me, would you, Edwin Carson? Get away after making me do all your filthy work for you… bringing down dust to the cellar to put your ruddy finishing touches to it… Well, good-bye, you dirty little swine…”

  Mary turned off the light of her torch. In the dark she heard the three clicks as the switch was pushed along the panel.

  “What do we do now?” asked Jacobson.

  “Just wait, I think,” said Mary. “I don’t think we’ll need to wait very long.”

  XXIII

  The Thrackley house-party made for their beds that evening at the early hour of nine-thirty. Their day had consisted entirely of sitting opposite one another, talking to one another about one another, and eventually looking at one another in a peevish silence… just the sort of programme which is apt to have a fraying effect on the stoutest of nerves. Catherine Lady Stone was the first to go. Lady Stone had not spoken for the last two hours (which, as Henry Brampton remarked, made the situation seem all the more unreal), and when she suddenly shot from her chair and said loudly: “I can’t stand it another minute!” the effect was much the same as if a lorry-load of milk-cans had collided with a double-decker bus in the middle of the Two Minutes’ Silence. The door of the lounge slammed behind Lady Stone, and the rest of the house-party stared at the door as though they were seeing it for the first time. “You don’t think she’s going to risk the alarms?” said Marilyn Brampton, who had reached the stage when she would gladly have seen Lady Stone electrocuted if only it would enable her to walk over the dead body and out of the grounds of Thrackley. “No,” said Freddie Usher, “I think she’s gone to bed. And as it’s the first sensible thing she’s suggested to-day, I think we might do much worse than follow the old dear.”

  So the Thrackley guests walked silently upstairs to their rooms. If one had been able to snatch a glimpse in those rooms one would have noticed that the guests behaved very differently from their first night at Thrackley. Catherine Lady Stone lay on her bed, fully clothed. She had tried to make her day’s entry in her diary and had been much annoyed to find that on this day of all days, when so much might have been
written down, her hand shook so violently that even she herself could not make out the writing. Marilyn Brampton paced the carpet of her room, lit one cigarette off the stub of another, and jumped at least six inches every time the wind knocked one of the pine branches outside against the panes of her window. Henry Brampton did his best to forget the awkwardness of the situation by a nice use of the decanter of whisky and the siphon of soda water which he had tucked under each arm as he left the lounge. Freddie Usher, who had noticed Mr. Brampton’s armfuls, spent an unhappy hour wishing that he had either Mr. Brampton’s foresight or the courage to go downstairs alone and find another decanter. And Jim sprawled across the settee in his room and read, for the fiftieth time, the note from Mary.

  “I’m down in the cellars, Jim, safely locked in… don’t do anything until you see Carson get out of the grounds… with me down here we’ve a pretty fair chance of coming out top in this…” All of which sounded very much as though Mary had what Catherine Lady Stone kept on demanding—a Plan. But he didn’t like it. The idea of Mary being alone down in those cellars… where Carson and the rest of the gang were bound to spend at least part of the evening before making their getaway… an odds-on chance that Carson would examine the cellars mighty carefully before leaving… would discover Mary… and then God alone knew what might happen… No, he didn’t like it at all. And, for all the way Mary had underlined that “don’t do anything” in her note, Jim felt that a certain amount of co-operation was called for. Besides, he argued to himself in the mirror, if you didn’t do anything until Carson had got clear of Thrackley, what the hell could you do after that? No… one thing he could have a shot at doing, anyway, and that was to make Edwin Carson’s exit as difficult a job as possible. And the obvious way to set about that was to pay a visit to the garage and remove the sparking-plugs of the Lagonda. Remove the sparking-plugs of Freddie Usher’s car, too, if necessary, since Mr. Carson did not seem to be at all the kind of gentleman who would have any scruples about pinching another man’s car when his own was out of action. Right, then. He crossed to the corner of the room where he had laid his suitcase. He felt the hard lump at the bottom of the case where his old Army revolver rested. Move Number One, then: to get a little ammunition for the revolver from Freddie Usher, to pay a visit to the garage and remove all available sparking-plugs and throw same as far into the pine-trees as possible. “What,” said Jim to himself, pulling a pair of golf hose over his shoes, “what could be simpler?”