The Shadow on the House

by Mark Hansom

  This was Sydney, the Professor’s son, and this was the first time I had seen him for months.

  He had not changed. He stood for an instant in the doorway, with his mild, courtly smile, and then stepped up to Lady Somerton; and after a formal greeting and a bow to Sylvia and me, he explained that he was looking for his father.

  “He has just gone,” said Lady Somerton. “Not five minutes ago. Perhaps you can catch him up.”

  I thought it rather curious that Lady Somerton should say such a thing, because a moment’s reflection would have told her that five minutes was long enough to take the Professor half a mile off in any direction; and as the Professor had a strong liking for taxis and would likely be whizzing along in one at the moment, Lady Somerton’s suggestion had nothing to recommend it.

  “Oh, that is all right!” said young Wetherhouse. “He will have gone on to his club. I’ll follow him there. It isn’t an important matter.”

  It seemed to me that Lady Somerton had become less animated since young Wetherhouse’s entry. With me she was invariably pleasant. She was one of those women in the forties who have retained a slim figure and a fascinating liveliness. She was dark, of course. Fair women in the forties usually show signs of plumpness. Life sat lightly upon her ladyship, and no doubt that accounted for her charm and for her almost invariable happiness; and it was that that made me observe that she showed less of her usual manner towards young Sydney Wetherhouse.

  The tea-things were still in evidence, and she asked the young man whether he had had tea. He answered that he had, though I had a suspicion that he was not telling the truth.

  The four of us chatted together about nothing in particular for another ten minutes or so, and then young Wetherhouse took his leave.

  But during those ten minutes I learned, by simple observation, that the admiration for Sylvia, with which I had credited this young man when last I saw him, was still alive. One could not mistake the meaning of the way in which his eyes were attracted to her during pauses in the conversation; and though at heart I was sorry, I was sufficiently human to be elated at the thought that other men admired the woman who was going to be my wife.

  And I wondered whether Lady Somerton, too, had noticed that young Wetherhouse was still in love with Sylvia. I think she did. I think so not only because any observant person would be almost sure to notice it, but because of the change in her manner when he arrived.

  It seemed that she was keeping him at arm’s length. Though as Sylvia was soon to marry me and as young Wetherhouse had made no move all these months to put himself into the running for Sylvia’s hand, I thought Lady Somerton’s attitude rather extreme.

  I was to learn later that her ladyship was not given to taking up extreme attitudes in any matter without sufficient reason.

  In the meantime, the three of us were left alone chatting over the remains of the tea. At least, Lady Somerton and I were chatting. Sylvia, when Sydney Wetherhouse left the room, had not resumed a chair, but had gone wandering about, examining ornaments and appearing to be listening to our chatter.

  I happened to look up. Sylvia had wandered towards one of the windows which overlooked that precious patch of garden wherein the delicate laburnum bloomed.

  She was standing with the curtain in one hand, and her attitude of pensiveness struck me as symbolic of the mystery that had always clung about her — the mystery of her distant, maddening femininity which I could never understand, and which, in fact, had been growing more distant and more maddening of late.

  Then I saw her give a sudden movement and half raise her free hand.

  I got up, as casually as I could, and strolled over towards her, talking to Lady Somerton the while. She turned at my approach and would have herded me back to where her aunt sat; but I was not to be turned aside in that manner.

  I took her arm in mine, with a smile, advancing far enough to see the black and white mosaic path that led down to the pavement.

  And on the pavement, turning away from the gate, was young Wetherhouse.

  “Speeding the parting guest!” I remarked, not with any ulterior meaning; for how could I imagine then that Sylvia, who was going to marry me in a few weeks’ time, should be carrying on even a mild intrigue with that shy boy?

  If she were disconcerted by my having seen her making a gesture towards young Wetherhouse I did not notice it, and we returned towards the centre of the room.

  “I have had a secretary forced upon me,” I told them, as we stood together in a group just before my departure.

  “Forced upon you?” laughed Lady Somerton.

  “Literally forced upon me,” I protested. “In the matter of a private secretary one should have a perfectly free choice. And one should be as careful in choosing one’s secretary as in choosing one’s wife. But — ”

  “You can always dismiss a secretary,” remarked Sylvia.

  “Almost as easily as you can dismiss a wife these days,” put in Lady Somerton. “But go on. You were saying — ?”

  “I was saying that the Professor has deprived me of my rights by forcing me to accept Mr. Ashton. Or by introducing Mr. Ashton to me, which amounts to the same thing.”

  “Mr. Ashton!” exclaimed both the ladies at once.

  “I wondered why the Professor brought Mr. Ashton along here this afternoon,” added Lady Somerton.

  “And I was wondering all the time,” said Sylvia, “where I had met Mr. Ashton before. I am still wondering. I’m sure I have met him, but I’m equally sure that I don’t know anybody of the name of Ashton.”

  The mildly puzzling position had brought a look of animation to Sylvia’s face such as it had lacked during the greater part of the afternoon.

  “Now that you mention it, Sylvia,” said her ladyship, with a frown, “I thought that there was something familiar about the man . . . Ashton? Ashton?”

  But neither the frown nor the repetition of the name brought forth anything definite regarding my new secretary; and I took my leave almost at once, promising to let them know how Mr. Ashton behaved himself.

  CHAPTER XI

  The Thing

  D

  uring all this time the fears to which I had once been a prey had been gradually sinking into slumber, and I could think of the two deaths without any sense of horror. Even the story told by Makepeace — who, since our removal to Grosvenor Square, had wonderfully recovered his pride and well-being — even that story now seemed rather fantastic. I had learnt that it is not possible to experience any emotion intensively, by recollection at least, for any length of time, whether it be an emotion of pleasure or an emotion of pain.

  The whole ghastly business had faded into the past — not only in my mind but in the minds of everybody else. The police had apparently given up the search for the murderer of Christopher Knight. Nothing more had been heard of the suspect whom the Professor had mentioned some months ago.

  But that there were queer things still going on around me I was soon to learn.

  Mr. Ashton had now taken up his duties as my secretary. Of course, he lived in the flat. In one way and another quite a lot of people lived in the flat. I had given Makepeace a free hand in the arranging of the domestic side of my existence, and he had exercised this free hand in a really royal manner. It seemed to me, after my long period of careful living, that one young man could not possibly want so many attendants to look after his personal comfort; but Makepeace was of a different opinion. And I had not the courage to disagree with him. I could not forget the care with which, in the Brompton Road days, he used to save fractions of coppers off my electric light bill, and I could not now deny him the glory of an imposing domestic staff. For the glory was his, not mine. I had absorbed some of the detached grandeur of spirit that Sylvia showed in these matters, and I could not work up great enthusiasm over having three times as many servants as I required.

  Mr. Ashton, alone of the household that must have numbered eight or ten people all told, dined with me. Although I had not yet mus
tered up sufficient dignity to give him a single command, the work that he was paid to do did not suffer. I had been uneasy about my ability to instruct him as a master should instruct a servant, but when it came down to practice I found that there was no need to instruct him. He was the perfect secretary — so far as I, who had never had a secretary, could tell — and the frightening pile of unanswered letters that had stood beneath an unsteadily poised paperweight on my desk vanished within the first few days. Where they vanished to I did not inquire; but as most of them seemed to be signed by other secretaries-secretaries of this, that and the other league for this, that and the other purpose — I supposed that Mr. Ashton had dealt with them in his own way and according to his own opinion of their merits, for he never once asked me to sign a cheque.

  One night I came home unusually late. I had been to a theatre with some of my club friends, and after the theatre we had gone on to the club. For some time I had been suffering from sleeplessness, and I had got into the habit of keeping late hours in the belief — mistaken, I think — that by tiring myself out I should sleep better.

  And to tire myself out further on this particular night I had walked from the eastern end of Pall Mall, so that it was getting on for two o’clock in the morning when I found myself in Grosvenor Square.

  But late as I was, I reflected, as I walked up the steps of the block in which I had my flat and in which Makepeace had his retinue of servants, there was someone even later than I; for as I looked about the square, which at that time lay solemn and ghostly, I saw a man enter it by the same way as I had come.

  I took no particular notice of him, only remarking that he was in a dark grey suit so far as the distance and the uncertain lamplight permitted me to judge.

  When I looked for him again, as I stepped through the main doorway of the building, he had disappeared.

  I remember the incident, because the incident of a brother wayfarer in Grosvenor Square at two o’clock in the morning is likely to be remembered. I remember it also because it was associated, however accidentally, with the first of a new series of mysterious happenings.

  I had told Makepeace never to wait up for me after eleven o’clock. He had demurred at first, for he was a bit of a tyrant towards me and would not allow me to deprive him of the smallest part of his duties without making a fight for it. But I had made him obey me in this, and had told him that if I were later than eleven I should have to bear the discomfort of disposing of my own hat and coat and finding my way to bed unattended. The subtlety of that was lost upon Makepeace; but I gained my point.

  On this particular night — or morning — I opened the flat door noiselessly and stepped quickly into the darkened hall.

  As I did so, I thought I heard a sound near at hand — just the breath of movement with nothing to distinguish its source. I was conscious, too, of a presence. I could see nothing, for there was only blackness about me. And, after the first sound, I could hear nothing. But there was in the air that indefinable something that tells us we are not alone.

  It was but a couple of seconds before I had reached the switch and flooded the place with light.

  There, against the farther wall, stood Makepeace, his eyes blinking because of the sudden brightness, and his face grey. Whether this last was an illusion caused by the quick transition from darkness to brilliance I could not tell. And I could not tell, moreover, whether the sudden light was responsible for his shrinking attitude.

  “Hallo!” I said, quickly recovering myself. “What’s the matter? What are you standing there for?”

  It was the dark hall and the manner of his standing in the dark hall that struck me; otherwise, I should merely have said, “Why aren’t you in bed?”

  He came forward then. The greyness of his face was still evident, and I concluded that it was not due to the light.

  “I — I thought I heard something, sir,” he said.

  “Where?” I asked. I think my tone conveyed impatience, but at that moment I was not sure whether I trusted Makepeace’s words or not. It was seldom that he was other than deliberate in his utterance, and in this case there was a hesitation that did not escape me.

  “In your bedroom, sir.”

  “What did you hear?”

  Again Makepeace hesitated.

  “I can’t rightly say, sir. It might have been a chair being moved, or it might have been the door into the study shutting.”

  “Have you looked?” 1 asked him, stepping towards my bedroom door as I spoke.

  “No,” he said. “I was waiting here. I wasn’t sure whether you had come in or not.”

  I stood with the bedroom door-knob in my hand, listening. Then I threw the door wide quickly and switched on the light.

  The bedroom lay silent and innocent.

  I stepped within and listened at the door that communicated with my study; and I threw that open in the same way, letting the light from the bedroom shine into the small chamber. The study, too, was empty and had the same look of innocence.

  “You must have been dreaming,” I said.

  “No,” he began in a very certain voice. Then he half turned on his heel, and said, “Well, perhaps I was dreaming.”

  “Or perhaps it was one of your servants,” I suggested. I always referred to them as his servants, but he was slow to appreciate my kind of humour.

  “No,” he said. “They are all at the other side of that door” — meaning a green-baize door at the back of the hall — “and none of them dare come in here without my permission. Nobody is this side of that door after nine o’clock at night except you, sir, and me, and Mr. Ashton.”

  “And Mr. Ashton is in bed?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mr. Ashton had the honour of having a bedroom on this side of “that” door.

  “Then you’ve been dreaming, Makepeace,” I concluded. “You had better go back to bed. The night air, even in summer, won’t do you much good.”

  He was turning away, and had reached the hall, when I recalled him.

  “How is it that you are fully dressed?” I asked; for he was dressed correctly in every detail exactly as I had seen him when I left the flat immediately after dinner. “Haven’t you been to bed?”

  He came back into the room.

  “No, sir. I — I didn’t feel like sleep, sir.”

  “But that’s preposterous!” I exclaimed. “You’re up before seven in the mornings, and you’re on the go all day. You must be dead tired by eleven at night. Didn’t feel like sleep? I don’t believe you.”

  Saying that, I stepped behind him and shut the door.

  “Now tell me what this means!” I demanded.

  My attitude took him by surprise. I was glad I had suddenly adopted such an attitude. Had I been wrong in my assumption that there was something in my old servant’s behaviour that required explanation, I should have felt unspeakably sorry for having doubted his assertion that he could not sleep, for my doubt would have pained him excessively. But I could see at once that I had not been wrong.

  “What is it?” I asked. “You might as well tell me. You can’t expect me to believe that you have been waiting up, fully dressed, in case you might happen to hear a noise.”

  “Well, Mister Martin,” he said, adopting, instinctively, the name by which he had known me for so many years, so that I knew something significant was to follow, “that’s just what I was waiting up for — in case I might happen to hear a noise. You say I can’t expect you to believe it. But I hope you will believe it, Mister Martin.”

  I looked at him with a different interest.

  “But I don’t understand,” I said. “What made you think that you might hear a noise? Explain it all, Makepeace; I don’t follow you at all.”

  And though I was right in saying that I did not follow him, I was almost certain that his behaviour had to do with the secret that was shared between him and me — the dreadful family secret that he had disclosed to me some months ago.

  We had never mentioned it since th
at time. There had been no need to mention it. I, for my part, had been only too glad to let it sink out of sight, and not to disturb its slow sinking. Makepeace must have been of the same mind, hoping, no doubt, that it would lie dormant for another decade.

  “I told you a lie, Mister Martin,” he said. “I didn’t hear anything to-night. But I heard something last night.”

  “Where? In this room?” I asked. “What did you hear?”

  Makepeace, I could see, was in genuine trouble. He did not want to speak. But that made me only the more determined to know what was in his mind.

  “I insist on your telling me, Makepeace,” I said. “I insist on it, so you might as well tell me now as later.”

  “Well, then I will,” he said, as though to state that the responsibility was no longer his. “And it wasn’t only what I heard, Mister Martin, though that was queer enough: it was what I saw . . . Did you sleep well last night, sir?”

  “Yes,” I told him. “Strangely enough I did. I haven’t been sleeping very well lately. What then?”

  “Well, I waited for you to come in. I went to bed, I might say, but I knew I shouldn’t sleep until you were in. Then I heard the flat door open and I heard you go to your room, and I could hear you moving about for a good while after that, and then everything grew quiet. But I couldn’t sleep.

  “And then I heard somebody talking. I thought it was you, Mister Martin. But when I listened I could hear that it wasn’t you, and that it wasn’t talking. It was singing. Leastways, it was something between the two. And it was coming from this room. To make sure I got up and opened my door a bit wider; and it was coming from this room — the eeriest, mournfulest sound you ever hear, and that’s a fact, sir. In the dead of night, too. It did give me a turn, that it did. I thought of what you and I had spoken about that night after Mister Michael died — you know what I mean, Mister Martin — and I thought that this was it. And I stood there listening, and trying to make up my mind what to do. But I didn’t seem to be able to move, for the thing went on and on without a stop. And the place was all that quiet and that dark, and nothing but this weird sing-song going on, that it made my hair fairly stand on end. I might have stood there all night, getting more scared every minute, but I thought that maybe it was you after all, and that you were ill perhaps. So I put out my hand and switched the light on, and went to your door and called you. The noise stopped at once, and I thought I heard somebody moving. And as you didn’t answer I thought that was queerer than ever, for you would have said you were all right if you were all right. I fair lost my head then, for you can guess what I was thinking, and I opened the door right wide. And I saw something — but I can’t for the life of me say what it was. It was something disappearing into the study there. It might have been a man. It might have been — something else. I don’t know. It just disappeared — flick! — as I opened the door, and the room being half dark — ”