Weekend at Thrackley

by Alan Melville

  And Jacobson stood very still, leaning against the stone wall of the cellar a few yards away from Mary. He thought… well, Carson must have got it by this time… only wish I’d been there to see the rat die… no, couldn’t have been down here then… wonder how much longer they’ll be before they come down… suppose this is Amen for comrade Jacobson… why the hell did I get into such a panic when this damned wench stepped out of the little ante-room into the cellar?… and why the hell let her get hold of that gun?… no hope of getting away now… cornered in a cellar with a gun pointed at you… police in it in a few hours now… murder, suppose that’s what it’ll be… murder!… when they ought to give the freedom of London to anyone that put an end to Edwin Carson… if only I get out of this damned cellar there might be a chance… easy enough to get clear of the house… all the guests would still be locked up… once get hold of that gun and keep this dame quiet—only a matter of pushing back that lousy little switch and hacking a way up through the lift and then out… but the dame’s sitting pretty tight across there with that revolver… hell of a risk… and yet…

  Jacobson hoisted himself away from the cellar wall. He knew exactly where Mary was sitting. If she hadn’t changed it since she switched off her torch, the gun was in her right hand. The hand nearest to him. He put one foot forward, leaned on it, brought the other one inch by inch in front. He stopped and listened. He could hear the girl breathing, less than six feet from him. He took another silent step forward and listened again. Then he jumped. His left arm crashed down on Mary’s right hand, jamming the hand and the revolver against the top of the desk. The revolver went off with a report which echoed through the cellar. From the direction of the quick shoot of flame he knew that the bullet had buried itself in the cellar floor. He twisted the hand that held the revolver over the top of the desk as far as he could make it go… until at last the grip round the gun loosened and he jerked it into his own hand. The torch had fallen from Mary’s other hand on to the floor. He kicked it away from the desk and stooped to pick it up, keeping the revolver levelled at where he heard the sound of Mary’s breathing. Then he stood up, sweating, and switched the weak ray of light on to his companion in the cellar.

  “Come over here,” he ordered.

  He walked backwards to the desk, keeping both Mary and the barrel of the revolver in his hand in the circle of the torch’s light. The switch at the side of the desk clicked back thrice to the position marked “Off”—he did not care now if Carson had yet to make his getaway—all he saw was the much more important sight of Jacobson making his. He ripped the dust-sheets from the top of the big desk. Going to be useful, after all, these dust-sheets. He laid the torch on top of the desk so that its beam still lit up Mary crouched against the opposite wall. “Now, then, my lady,” said Jacobson in an unpleasant voice. He pulled the dust-sheets into an improvised rope, whipped it over Mary’s head and round her waist. The girl seemed to develop at that moment a great number of hitherto unknown arms and legs. She kicked, struggled, lashed out with her arms, and once came very near to biting a juicy piece from Jacobson’s ear. Jacobson stood back and brought the barrel of the revolver to within a foot of her face. “Try that again, miss,” he said, “and I’m going to plug you. Understand?” Apparently Mary understood only too well. She allowed Jacobson to carry on his work with the dust-sheets without any further attempts to damage his hearing. “That’s a good girl,” said Jacobson, knotting the sheets tightly round her wrists and ankles. “Now try and get a kick out of that.”

  He watched her for a minute, saw her stagger slightly, trip in the folds of the sheet which bound her feet, and fall heavily on the cellar floor. Fainted, eh? All to the good… keep her quiet for a bit. He snatched the torch from the top of the desk and ran across the cellar to the smashed lift entrance. The torch would last another five minutes or so at the most… after that he would have to do his stuff in the dark. He took a look at the lift. The floor of the cage had been stopped a foot or so beneath the level of the cellar’s ceiling… He jammed the torch in his pocket, stood back and jumped. His fingers caught the cage and he hung to it desperately, jerking his body up and down in an effort to bring the cage down with him. His hands ached until he was on the point of letting go his grip… and at that moment something gave in the lift hoists and the cage crashed to the level of the cellar floor, throwing Jacobson down with it. He stood up, wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, and jumped again. In a minute he was on top of the roof of the cage, inch-deep in dust and the oil of the lift controls. He switched on the torch again and saw above him the gap through the broken panels which would take him into Carson’s study. He put one foot on each side of the shaftway, worked himself up inch by inch until he was able to grab hold of the panelling and heave his body out through the jagged opening. He stood up and leaned against the table in the study, gasping for breath. And then he walked to the door and opened it slowly.

  The lights in the hall were still burning. He walked on tiptoe to the front door and found it unlocked and unbolted. Edwin Carson hadn’t worried much about his usual lockings-up to-night—probably the first night since he came to Thrackley that Jacobson could have had free access to the whisky after the guests were finished with it. But for once Jacobson’s thoughts were not inclined to such things as whisky. He pulled the front door open, gave a last look round the hall, and stepped noiselessly out into the garden of Thrackley. He would cross the drive at the corner, at its narrowest part, where there would be the least noise from the crunching of his shoes on the gravel. Only that to do, and to plunge himself into the blanket of the pine-trees and then take his time to get to the gates and get out. Get out for ever, thank God. He had done it!…

  When Jim stepped back at last from staring at the sight of Edwin Carson lying stiff at the foot of the big iron gates, he was reminded that his host had at least left a visiting-card in the shape of a bullet wound in his left leg. He pulled off his shoe and sock and turned up his trouser leg to investigate the damage. A flesh wound only; the bullet had grazed the side of his calf, removing a neat chunk of flesh. Jim hopped across the room on the remaining efficient leg, rummaged in the wardrobe until he found the oldest and most tattered of the shirts he had brought to Thrackley, tore it into a long, untidy bandage and bound it tightly over the wound. And now to get out of here.

  He walked to the door of his bedroom, tried the handle, and took a dissatisfied look at the strength and thickness of the door’s mahogany panels. No use trying that. He turned back to the windows, stared again at the unpleasant yet fascinating sight of Edwin Carson’s body, twisted and still hanging to the iron gates, lit up in the beam of the car’s headlights. Very conclusive proof there that the Thrackley electric current was still functioning. And if that was so, then it was a hundred to one chance that the burglar-alarms would still respond if anyone took it into their heads to open a window. But that, so far as Jim could see, was the only way of getting out of the bedroom. And in any case, however loudly the alarms might ring, the Carson gang had been lessened by fifty per cent—Carson himself lying stiff at the foot of the big gates outside, and Adams lying almost as stiff on the floor of the garage. Only Jacobson and Kenrick to cope with. Unless Carson had already coped with them himself before attempting his exit, which was very likely. The window, then, alarms or no alarms.

  But before he pulled the window open he walked back to where his suitcase lay, disturbed the revolver from its resting-place at the bottom of the case, and filled it to capacity with the ammunition which he had borrowed from Freddie Usher. It felt much better to be gripping that firmly than to go about with one’s hands empty. He jerked back the snib of the window sash and pulled the casement open. Yes… alarms still in excellent working order. From all over the house he could hear bells clanging in angry, urgent tones. He looked over the sill of the window—a fifteen-foot drop ending in a neat bed of gloire de Dijon roses. In ordinary circumstances he would have thou
ght nothing about it (there had been an equally high wall at school which had to be negotiated every night when travelling fairs pitched their caravans a mile or so out of bounds), but with only one leg functioning properly it was an altogether different matter. He selected a landing-place between two of the gloire de Dijons, uttered a brief prayer to heaven that he would land on the right leg, and dropped.

  Jim’s opinion of Euclid, or whoever the fellow was who said that any heavy body would fall perpendicularly through space, dropped, too. Either (a) he took a decided list to starboard half-way on his journey between the window sill and the rose-bed, or (b) the two gloire de Dijons shifted their positions out of sheer spite immediately after he jumped. In any case, he appeared to land fairly accurately on both of the rose-trees. They were by far the finest and most thorny trees in the bed. For the first time in his life Jim knew exactly how a pin-cushion felt when full. But if they did nothing else (which they did), the rose-trees, at any rate, broke his fall and he picked himself up and extracted a score or so of elderly thorns from the seat of his trousers.

  He limped quietly along the side of the house and was turning the corner to go and tackle the front door when he realized from the widening strip of light thrown on to the gravel drive that the said front door was being slowly opened. He stepped back against the wall, thanking heaven that it was a rhododendron bush and not a rose-tree this time in which he was hiding. He heard the slight but unmistakable sounds of feet stepping carefully on the drive and coming towards him. He stood perfectly still and watched from the corner of his eye as the owner of the feet appeared round the corner of the house. Jacobson. With a gun in his right hand. He saw the butler walk past the end of the house and cross the drive to the flower-beds on the other side. And with no regard at all for the feeling of the Coltness dahlias in the beds (which could scarcely have recovered from their encounter with the tyres of Freddie Usher’s car at the beginning of the weekend), Jacobson stepped over the bed and into the jet blackness of the pine-trees farther on. Jim waited a minute and thought out this latest development. Was Jacobson after Carson? If so, he was in for a disappointment, being just half an hour too late. Or had the wanderlust got hold of the butler?—was this to be another attempted getaway? In any case, there was no point in standing here behind a moist rhododendron bush—much better follow Mr. Jacobson and see exactly what was in the air. And, thought Jim as he stepped out on to the drive, one body hanging dead to those damnable gates was quite enough to be going on with. He pushed his way on between the pine-trees, stepping as carefully as he could with his damaged leg. Jacobson must have been twenty yards or more ahead… he stepped silently from tree to tree, peering into the darkness to try and catch sight of the butler. He was within a dozen yards of the high stone wall when he did so.

  Jacobson was standing beside the gates, in the glare of the Lagonda’s headlights. He stared down at the twisted figure at his feet. The unpleasant grin on his face, which was the first thing that Jim noticed, changed almost at once to an expression of real fear. And Jacobson stretched out his hands, grabbed hold of the other half of the iron gates to that where Carson was lying, and pulled it towards him. Jim opened his mouth to shout… and then realized in amazement that the gates were not having the same grim effect as they had had on Edwin Carson. The butler had the half-gate open now and took a last look round at the house, the empty car, and the body of his former employer. And at that moment Jim’s left leg gave a twinge of pain rather more angry than usual. It may have hurt badly, but it made up Jim’s mind for him in a fraction of a second. He raised his revolver, took careful aim, and plugged Jacobson in as near a spot as possible to that chosen by Carson in his own anatomy. Jacobson fell with a grunt to the ground. “A few more,” thought Jim, “and we’ll have to close the gates and put up the ‘House Full’ notices.”

  It took him five minutes to heave Jacobson into the back seat of the Lagonda, truss him up and lock the doors of the car on him. In another couple of minutes he was inside the house and rummaging through Edwin Carson’s study. He gave a grunt of satisfaction as he found the big bunch of keys lying deep in the mass of papers and rubbish which Carson had left heaped on the table. He forgot the pain in his leg once again and took the stairs three at a time to reach the door of Freddie Usher’s bedroom. It was, naturally enough, the last key on the bunch that opened the door. He marched into the room and said, “Good morning, Freddie.”

  “Oh, it’s you, is it? How’s the massacre going?”

  “Not too bad. One death, two wounded legs (one of them mine), and a Grade A sock on the jaw.”

  “Death, did you say?”

  “Mine host… killed by his own dirty invention. He opened the gates to leave us all in the lurch… unfortunately for him he either forgot to turn off his damned electric current or someone else turned it on again after he’d left the cellars. At any rate, he’s dead… good and stiff.”

  “Good God!”

  “Well—now I want you to get busy, Freddie. I think I’ve done enough work for one night. This blasted leg is beginning to hurt like hell.”

  “At your service, James.”

  “Good man. Get hold of this bunch of keys, then, and go round the house and let all the family out of their bedrooms. You may find Kenrick, the servant, is locked up in his room; he’s the only one I haven’t met to-night. If you do, let him stay put. Get them all down in the lounge in ten minutes. I’ve got a little speech to deliver.”

  “And what about you?”

  “I’m going to get hold of Mary, if I can. She’ll still be down in those ruddy cellars. It may be that she’s responsible for stopping Carson’s getaway… and also causing that very nasty death of his… and if that’s the case, it’s going to be kept as quiet as possible.”

  “Righto. I’ll go and unveil the bodies. Nothing else?”

  “Yes. I want you to get into Adderly village as quick as you can, knock up the local bobby and bring him back to this godforsaken house just as fast as his size elevens will carry him. And put a call through to Scotland Yard—there’ll be a phone where the bobby stays, I expect—and get them to send a man down here right away. Tell them that both Hempson and Edwin Carson are dead. That’ll fetch them. And for God’s sake, Freddie, don’t waste any time in the Hen and Chickens.”

  “Swifter than the eagle in its flight, old boy,” said Freddie. “Greased lightning simply left at the post. Oh…”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “It just occurred to me… how do I get to Adderly? Carson’s car?”

  “No-—we’d better leave Carson and his car and what’s in it just as they are.”

  “Well… if you’ve taken out all the plugs of my bus, it looks as if I’d have to walk.”

  “No—wait a minute. Remember the day we came to Thrackley? When you in your wisdom insisted on driving down a side road and hit a girl on a bicycle?”

  “Yes. But of course it was you who said that—”

  “That bicycle’s in the garage. The front wheel’s a bit out of sorts, and both tyres looked pretty fed up last time I saw them. But it’ll go, Freddie.”

  “Me? Go three whole miles on a push-bike?”

  “Why not? The finest thing on earth for developing the calf muscles. Freddie, get going.”

  And Jim slammed the door on an extremely worried Mr. Usher and (this being the most sensible way of getting downstairs with a bandaged leg) slid recklessly down the banisters and landed neatly outside the study door. He crossed the room and peered down the lift through the opening in the broken panels. He yelled twice… “Mary!”… and imagined that he heard a faint answer to the second of the yells. He pressed desperately along the moulding at the side of the panelling… why the blazes hadn’t he watched more carefully when Burroughs demonstrated how the lift was worked? But at last there came the pleasing sound of the lift whirring up towards him… but not with the usual smooth whirr, but
as though something had gone sadly amiss with the works. Thank God it worked, anyway!… In a couple of minutes he had the limp, trussed-up. figure of Mary deposited safely on the study carpet. He ought, he knew, to have set about immediately on the job of undoing the sheets tied round her. Instead of which he indulged in a long and very satisfying kiss as a reward for his evening’s excitements.

  When he reached the lounge he found that Freddie had already performed his unveiling act. Catherine Lady Stone sat on the extreme edge of a chair, fully dressed and with her handbag stuffed to overflowing under her arm—ready, apparently, to make another bolt for it. Marilyn and Henry Brampton had evidently decided that there was no sense in remaining fully dressed in their bedrooms all night and were now clad in dressing-gowns of such vicious tones that they made Freddie Usher’s pyjamas seem pale and anaemic in comparison. Raoul had not changed from her evening gown… she looked as sleek and immaculate as ever. Jim saw Mary comfortably settled in a chair, then turned and addressed the other members of the house-party. “I’m very sorry to disturb you at this hour of the morning, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “but there are one or two things which I feel you might be interested to know.”

  Catherine Lady Stone rose rather shakily from her chair. “Mr. Usher gave me this to give to you,” she said. “Where he is now, and what he is doing, I have no idea.”

  Jim took the note from Lady Stone. “Kenrick’s in his room all right, and swearing like a sergeant-major,” he read. “Where does a bicycle keep its brakes, anyway?”

  “Thank you, Lady Stone,” he said. “Well, now… the most important thing to tell you is that our—er—host, Edwin Carson, is dead. He was killed an hour ago—killed by his own unpleasant device for keeping us inside Thrackley. I’m sure none of you will be very sorry to hear of his death.”

  “Then… then we can get away from this detestable place at once?” said Catherine Lady Stone.