The Shadow on the House

by Mark Hansom

  Then, after a time, I found myself standing close beside the bed. The Professor signed to me to turn back the sheet. At first I could not. I could only stare.

  I have already said that I regarded life lightly, and that I deliberately avoided morbid speculations. To me the idea of death had always been painful, and my subconscious mind had made me rather to scoff at all the mystery and awe with which death was surrounded. I argued that the mystery and the awe were due merely to ignorant superstition, that a dead man was essentially the same as a dead dog or a dead rat; and in my vast youthful vanity I was, of course, beyond being affected by ignorant superstition.

  Alas for my materialism!

  But I did at length muster up enough courage to draw back the sheet so that I might see the face of my friend.

  I think I must have given an exclamation of horror, for, on turning away quickly, I saw that even Jepson had ceased from his staring and had risen and was coming towards me with a look of alarm on his face. Then I hid my face in my hands.

  I understood the Professor’s diffidence about telling me what had happened. And I realized that on no account must Sylvia Vernon be allowed to see what I had seen. Christopher had been murdered. He had been strangled. I shall not try to analyse the emotions that I suffered then. Let me say only that I experienced a revolting nausea and that I was filled with an unnameable horror.

  It was bad enough to know that my friend was dead. But the ordinary sense of loss was entirely swamped by the terrible circumstances of his death.

  He had died apparently after a terrific struggle, and his now fixed expression showed that his last moments had been filled with sheer terror. I refrain from giving the sickening details of his appearance.

  After a time we returned to Sylvia, whom we found sitting exactly as we had left her. I had the curious sense of existing in a dream. I was not conscious of having to exert myself in order to move or to talk. Everything seemed unreal.

  The Professor was pleading with Sylvia again, and I was adding a word now and again to his pleading; and at length Sylvia rose and took my arm and the three of us went down the ancient staircase.

  In Piccadilly the Professor left us.

  “Let’s walk home,” Sylvia had said. “I must be active.”

  These were the first words I had heard her speak that morning, and she said them with a sudden energy that seemed to show that she was determined to take a firm grip upon herself.

  The Professor looked sharply at me, as though to see whether I were capable of being left in charge of a girl who had suffered as this girl had suffered, and then, evidently satisfied, he took his departure eastwards to fill an engagement that he mentioned.

  “Are you sure you would rather walk?” I asked. “It’s a good way. I’ll call a taxi if you like.”

  “Do nothing of the sort,” she said with a touch of impatience. “It’s only a step. And I told you I wanted to be active.”

  So I fell in beside her, and we strode along in silence for some minutes.

  “Why wouldn’t Professor Wetherhouse let me see him?” she suddenly demanded.

  It was not an ordinary question: it was a demand, and it suggested that she objected to being treated as a child in a matter of that sort.

  “The Professor knows best,” I parried. “I almost wish he hadn’t allowed me to see him. You know the circumstances, of course?”

  “He was murdered. I think the Professor would have kept that from me too, only they told us that on the telephone when they rang up this morning.”

  I was surprised by the control that she now had over her feelings. Of the two of us she seemed to have the firmer grasp over herself.

  She had now let go of my arm, and was walking along independently by my side.

  “His valet found him dead this morning when he went in to call him,” she went on. “He had been strangled, I understand. Can you account for it at all?”

  She spoke in an amazingly level voice, considering the dejected state in which she had been less than half an hour earlier.

  Strange as it might seem I had not yet thought about that point. The death and the horrifying circumstances of the death had been in themselves the one overwhelming phenomenon. I had not related the death to anything beyond itself.

  “No,” I said. “I can’t imagine who could have done it. He hadn’t an enemy in the world so far as I know. Was it robbery, do you think?”

  I was suddenly immensely curious about the reason for the murder. I regretted my not having been sufficiently master of myself to ask the Professor for practical particulars, for Sylvia’s question made me realize that there was this other side to the matter.

  “No, not robbery,” she said. “The Professor told me that much just before you arrived. Jepson says that nothing has been disturbed. Shall we sit in the Park for a few minutes?”

  We had crossed the road in the meantime, and instead of turning up towards Park Lane she raised her hand towards Hyde Park Corner.

  I nodded, and we continued forward and entered the Park by the big gates.

  The sun had taken the earlier crispness out of the air and it was now warm enough to sit. Beyond the shrubbery we found chairs in a not too exposed place under some trees.

  “But don’t you think Lady Somerton will be wondering what has become of you?” I asked. “In any case, won’t it be better for you to go home?”

  “Now, please!” she exclaimed. “Don’t you try to treat me like a child as well. It was very kind of Professor Wetherhouse, I suppose, so far as his intentions went; but it is not very flattering — of either of you. I think I am as well able to withstand the shock as — as you are. I can forgive the Professor. He is old enough to have forgotten that young people have a peculiar capacity for withstanding such shocks.”

  I was thereby led to understand that Sylvia Vernon had a strength of character that her delicate appearance did not suggest; and I in turn gathered strength from her courage.

  We spoke of other things. She told me about herself — how that Lady Somerton was her nearest relative, and how she had only recently come to London from Cambridge, and a number of other everyday particulars in no way connected with the tragedy of that morning. And as she continued to speak, the shadow of the tragedy became less oppressive, and it was difficult to believe that this was the girl who, such a short time ago, had been overcome with horror.

  To me then it seemed almost callous of her to be sitting there chatting about inconsequent things. When I had gathered myself together at the Professor’s request in order that I might be of assistance to Sylvia Vernon I had expected that my utmost tact would be required in the handling of a girl rendered frantic with grief. But her composure was perfect.

  “You must come in to lunch,” she said. “My aunt will be glad to see you, I am sure. This has been a terrible upset for her. It is really selfish of me to stay out for so long.”

  I said I should be delighted to be of any service.

  But I was amazed at the marvellous way in which she had recovered her grasp on life. It struck me then that perhaps she had not been so completely in love with Christopher as I had been led to understand.

  “You see,” she went on, rising as she spoke, “my aunt is getting on in life. Such things are bound to affect her. She hasn’t the ability to — ”

  She stopped suddenly.

  We had both risen. Without warning she sat down again, and burst into the most violent fit of tears.

  I sat down beside her, hurriedly, startled by this complete change in her manner.

  “What is there to live for now?” she muttered distractedly, speaking, it seemed, to herself. I could not help overhearing, though her face was buried in the fur coat about her knees. “And he never harmed a soul! He never harmed anybody. He was the finest man in the world. Why should this happen to him?”

  I tried to soothe her, but I could not. She, who but a moment ago had been deceiving herself with solicitude over Lady Somerton, was now completely heartbro
ken.

  Somehow I was glad. I should have been intensely disappointed if this lovely creature had not had the weakness that she was now exhibiting.

  In the midst of this paroxysm of weeping she straightened herself and turned to me, unashamed of the tears that were flowing down her cheeks.

  “Don’t leave me!” she pleaded. “The horror of it will drive me mad. He was your best friend, and he was mine. You and I know how splendid he was.”

  I promised. I promised readily. That seemed to go some way towards pacifying her. In a few minutes she said she would now return home.

  And, feeling the clutch of her arm linked in mine, my thoughts flashed unbidden back to last night.

  “What’s the matter?” she exclaimed in alarm, stopping in her stride because I had stopped.

  “Nothing!” I said earnestly. “Nothing!”

  I could not tell her that last night I had for a mad moment been moved by elementary impulses so that I had wished his death.

  I have already laboured the point that I was not superstitious; but from the instant of stopping in my stride a terrible superstitious fear took hold of me.

  My prayer — for it had the force of a prayer — had been answered; and Christopher, the man who had possessed what I coveted with my whole soul, lay dead.

  This was more horrifying than anything else.

  CHAPTER III

  Persons Unknown

  T

  wo or three days later I found myself in a long low room that was uncomfortably close and hot and that was lit by electricity, although the time was the early afternoon.

  Sylvia was with me, and Professor Wetherhouse as well; and the three of us stood in the gangway by the wall because such seats as were there were crowded by what, in a court, is known as the public, as distinct from the officials and principals in the several cases to come under review.

  “What are all these people here for?” asked Sylvia, holding my arm tightly and peering into the semi-darkness. “Surely they have nothing to do with the inquest?”

  “Ours is not the only one,” I told her. “But the most of these people are here to — out of curiosity.”

  “How horrible!” she exclaimed. “I wish I hadn’t come.”

  “Do you want to go? There’s really no need for you to be here.”

  “I should feel as though I were deserting him.”

  “No, no. The Professor will stay.”

  But the surprising creature, giving a shrug of abhorrence, decided to go through with the ordeal.

  Fortunately ours was the first case to be inquired into.

  The coroner was a fussy little man who seemed to be out of temper about something; and instead of coming to the matter in the reverential attitude that would have been in keeping with our feelings, he began by rating one of the minor officials because of some document that could not be found immediately.

  It never occurred to us, I suppose, that perhaps the supreme matter of interest to the coroner was the failure of his son to pass an important examination, or the fact that his wife was insisting upon going to Switzerland or to Italy at a time when he could not afford to take her to Switzerland or to Italy. The tragedy of Christopher’s death was to him not a tragedy but so much legal work to be got through before he could push on to some more legal work.

  The only important witness called was Herbert Thomas Jepson, who gave evidence regarding the finding of the body of his master when he went to call him at half-past eight in the morning. Then Jepson told how he telephoned to the police and then to one or two of his master’s intimate friends.

  The coroner then asked Jepson one or two questions.

  “At what time did your master come home on the previous night?”

  “At about eleven o’clock, sir.”

  “Alone?”

  “Pardon, sir?”

  “I said, was he alone?”

  “Yes, sir. He had been dining at Lady Somerton’s, in Park Lane.”

  “And he retired immediately?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did he seem in his usual spirits?”

  “I didn’t notice anything unusual.”

  “Then he was in his usual spirits?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, why don’t you say so! You sleep in the flat, I understand?”

  “I do.”

  “Did you hear anything in the night?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “Now, correct me if I’m wrong. I understand that your master slept with his window open, and that the window, which is at the back, gives access to a flat roof, which in turn communicates by fire-escape ladders with the rest of the block of buildings in which your rooms are situated. It would be quite easy for anyone who wished to enter the room to enter it without having to use any force or any special skill.”

  Jepson nodded, and was then told to stand down but not to leave the court.

  There then followed some sort of conclave amongst the officials and a shifting and coughing among the public, and this shifting and coughing was accompanied by a rising volume of chatter.

  “Do you know,” I whispered to Sylvia, “that he left almost the whole of his money to Jepson?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Do you think — ”

  An angry call for silence cut her words short.

  “Is Lady Somerton present in court?” asked the coroner, with a glance at the clock on the wall.

  Some of the public looked about them expectantly. Sylvia started, and clutched my arm nervously. There was a dead silence for some seconds.

  Then I, on a sudden impulse, detached Sylvia’s hands from my arm and walked towards the front of the court. The coroner looked up inquiringly at my approach.

  I spoke to the first official I reached, telling him who I was and how I believed that I was the last of Christopher Knight’s friends, except Jepson, to see him alive. My words were conveyed to the coroner, and after some deliberation and frowning and another glance at the clock he asked me to take the oath.

  My evidence did not amount to much, but I was anxious that I might help in any way possible in the business of running the murderer to earth.

  I told them that I had left Christopher at Hyde Park Corner at a quarter to eleven and that I had no reason to believe that he had an enemy in the world. I said that he had been in the highest of spirits all the evening. I also mentioned — for what reason I do not know unless it was a desire to put every relevant piece of news in the possession of the officials — that I had a duplicate key to Christopher’s flat.

  They dismissed me then, and I rejoined Sylvia and the Professor.

  There was more talking, most of which I did not understand because my mind was occupied in sifting out the evidence on my own account and I could see that the authorities might jump to any one of three conclusions — namely, that someone had found the way in by the open window with the intention of robbery, had been disturbed by Christopher, had killed him in fear, and, panic-stricken, had made off empty-handed; or that Jepson had committed the crime, which to me was unthinkable; or that I, having easy access to the rooms at any hour of the day or night, had committed the crime.

  I was forced to think of this last possibility, for the coroner had given me the impression of soulless officialdom. And, thinking of that, I was amazed to realize that were it to be suggested that I had visited Christopher’s rooms in the middle of that fatal night I should be totally unable to prove the contrary.

  The verdict of the jury was made known shortly afterwards. It was the expected one of murder by some person or persons unknown.

  The relief of getting out to the street again from the closeness and semi-darkness of that sordid room with its reeking humanity was unspeakable.

  The Professor left us and departed in a taxi, and once again I was given the duty of escorting Sylvia Vernon home.

  She clung to my arm. There seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary in her doing so. She had known me for less than a week, but we had been thr
own together in such intensely emotional circumstances that we had, without question, bridged all conventional gulfs and were more intimately familiar than we might have been after years of normal acquaintanceship.

  It struck me then — for up to now my thoughts had been almost wholly concerned with the tragedy — that not only was Christopher dead (it seemed, as I had already realized, in answer to my accursed wish) but I was now in Sylvia’s good graces, also in accordance with my wish.

  Such materialism as I might still have possessed was not proof against that. I saw in these events the fearful hand of an inscrutable power. It seemed that I had only to wish and the wish was granted, and human life was not allowed to stand in the way.

  The thought seemed fantastic, of course; but when one begins to speculate upon the supernatural there is no such thing as fantasy. With me there was only a strange terror because of the thought that there might be within me such an awful power as that suggested by the events.

  As we turned to walk back to Park Lane — for Sylvia seemed to set much store by walking — I thought to tell her what was in my mind. Fear prompted me to drop her friendship. I had the feeling that either she or I was accursed.

  But I delayed. Even the tragedy of Christopher and the effects of my private fear had not, even temporarily, blinded me to her extraordinary physical attractiveness; and though I could not dream then of taking advantage of the circumstances that threw her so much into my company, I could not, at the same time, refrain from being in love with her.

  So I did not say one word of any of the thoughts that were in my mind.

  CHAPTER IV

  Cousin Mick