The Noose

by Philip MacDonald

  Bronson looked up. His blue eyes, cold and steely behind their mask of deadness, stared until the gaze of the brown was lowered. Bronson said:

  ‘Padre: there’s no manner o’ use to it. If it’s kindness you want to do …’ he paused a moment, and jerked a thumb towards the door … ‘let them come back an’ d’you go away about your business.’

  The Chaplain stirred, uneasy, upon the small chair. He began to speak, but the other would have none of it. Suddenly the veil over the blue eyes was gone, like a mist before breeze. Those eyes became vital and more than vital; they bored into the mind of the Chaplain as they had been used to bore into the minds of opponents in the ring.

  ‘Get out!’ said Bronson. The voice was low, scarcely more than a whisper, but the Chaplain’s plump cheeks lost much of their ruddiness. He rose, and, rising, tried once again. He said:

  ‘Bronson: I have come to offer … to ask you to consider … to …’

  He cut off the sentence in mid-speech. He backed, involuntarily, two paces.

  For Bronson, too, had risen. He stood, and the cell seemed to shrink. A thick, immovable, menacing giant of a man. He raised his voice and called:

  ‘Warder!’

  The door which had seemed shut swung open with the word. Bronson said, his voice low again:

  ‘Take him away!’

  The Chaplain went. Once more the two chairs supported the pair of blue-clad figures. Blue-clad figures who now were so accustomed to the silence of their charge that almost they started when his voice came.

  ‘Christ!’ said Bronson, ‘he was going to talk about God!’

  He began to laugh.

  V

  Lucia Gethryn poured coffee for herself. She said:

  ‘After all, I did eat.’ She looked across the table at her husband with some wonder. ‘You said I would. I owe you five shillings, don’t I?… You know, you’ve got the most exasperating habit of being right. I’m not used to it yet, and I don’t suppose I ever shall be.’

  Anthony smiled at her. He put away the notebook he had been using. He said:

  ‘Time for Sister Anne yet?’

  Lucia shook her head. ‘Five minutes.’ Her tone was lightly despondent. ‘That was a failure, wasn’t it? I did think I’d be able to get her to talk. But all I got was your name babbled at me like a parrot.’

  Anthony lit a cigarette. ‘I’m worried about that girl. Her demeanour’s magnificent—from our point of view; if ever anyone went about with a guilty secret in her bosom, that one does. And she wants to get rid of it. Trouble is, what weighs so heavy on her may really be the smallest of new potatoes. I …’

  He broke off sharply. Wide-eyed, Lucia met his look. They sat motionless. They listened. Lucia lifted her chin and gazed at the ceiling; it was from above that the sound had come.

  No further sound came. Lucia lowered her head. She began to speak.

  ‘It sounded …’

  ‘Ssh!’ Anthony raised a hand.

  And they heard it again. The choking fragment of a scream. Then silence. Then a shuffling, scraping noise on the floor of a room above their heads.

  Anthony’s chair fell with a soft crash to the carpet. He was out of the room before Lucia had moved.

  He crossed from the door of the Coffee Room to the stair-foot in a stride and a leap. He took the stairs four at a time. At the stair-head he paused and stood without movement, all other senses subordinated to that of hearing.

  For a moment which seemed ten times its length he heard nothing, and then there came again that shuffled scraping, with it the murmur of a voice whose low pitch did not disguise its tensity.

  Anthony, in two strides, was at the door of the house’s mistress. He put his fingers to the handle and twisted. At the same instant he smote the door with his shoulder, all his weight behind the thrust. But the door was unlocked. Almost he fell, but recovered in two staggering steps which brought him well within the room.

  There was a group in the recess of the room’s bay window. Two women. Mistress and servant. Selma Bronson and the girl Annie. And the throat of Annie was between the hands of Annie’s mistress, who towered over the girl like a Norn. And Annie, the uppers of whose shoes were their only parts to touch the floor, would have sunk to a huddled heap had it not been for those hands about her throat.

  Anthony, even as he jumped towards them, heard Selma Bronson’s voice. She was saying, in a dull yet dreadful whisper:

  ‘Tell. Tell. Tell! You shall tell! Tell.’

  She had not heard him. That crash of the door as it had hit the wall, his stagger as he had saved himself, no sound had penetrated to her consciousness.

  The feet of Annie beat out, once more, that little scraping tattoo.

  Anthony’s hand came down, heavy yet gentle, upon the shoulder of Bronson’s wife. Over the shoulder came his other hand, to loose the clutch upon the girl’s throat.

  He had expected resistance. But none came. At the touch her grip loosened. She stood utterly still. She did not even turn her head. The limpness of Annie slid to the floor with a rustle, ending with a soft bump.

  Anthony, his hand still upon the shoulder which might, save for its warmth and softness, have been marble, turned his head. He had heard a sound behind him. He saw his wife. She was pale and her breast rose to hurried breathing and her dark eyes were wide. But she was calm and herself. Anthony looked at her, then at the woman who stood so still. To Lucia he said:

  ‘Stay with her. I’ll come back.’

  Lucia came close. She stood where Anthony had stood. She laid a gentle hand upon Selma Bronson’s arm.

  Anthony bent over the huddled girl. She was breathing fast and jerkily, and over her doll’s-eyes was a glaze of terror. One hand rubbed gently at her throat. Anthony looked up at his wife. He said:

  ‘Fright’s the most of the damage.’ He bent down and lifted the girl like a child. He went from the room, carrying her against his chest. To Lucia his voice came back from the passage.

  ‘Shut the door,’ it said.

  Lucia shut the door. By it she stood for a moment. She heard her husband’s footsteps going along the corridor towards their room; then a pause; the opening of a door and another pause; the door closing. She turned and went back to the window. The woman still stood, motionless, where she had been. It was as if she had been deprived of the power of movement.

  Lucia shivered. She went past that statue and sat herself upon the curtained window-seat. She looked up at the statue. She said, in a low soft voice:

  ‘Sit down. Sit here.’ She patted the seat beside her. ‘You poor, poor dear!’ she said.

  The statue moved. A tremor shook it. It melted and became a woman. She staggered; it was as if her stance had been a rigor suddenly fluxed. Lucia put out a quick hand. It was clutched. The woman sat. All rigidity had gone from her now. She shook. Lucia could feel the shaking of her though their bodies did not touch.

  There was silence. Such silence that Lucia fancied, once or twice, that she could hear the murmur of Anthony’s voice though two rooms separated them. She did not speak; the woman beside her did not speak.

  Lucia laid her hand, firm and strong and healing upon an arm that quivered without its owner’s volition. There was no word; no change in attitude; but there seemed to be born into the room a warmth. Presently the woman’s head drooped, drooped … Lucia, imperceptibly, moved nearer, an inch at a time. She kept her hand upon the arm. The quivering, though it did not cease, grew less and lesser. Presently Selma Bronson’s head was resting, almost without knowing that there come to rest it had, upon Lucia’s shoulder.

  When Anthony came back, they were still like this, only Lucia’s right arm was about the shoulders that still quivered and Lucia’s cheek was resting against that smooth hair whose real colour no man might tell, so level was its balance between the palest gold and the warmest silver.

  He came in softly, and softly closed the door behind him. As he crossed the room towards them, Selma Bronson stirred; she was mak
ing effort to sit erect—perhaps to stand. But the arm about her shoulders tightened.

  ‘Lie still, dear!’ Lucia said. ‘Lie still.’

  She looked up at her husband. There was anxiety in her glance, but no more. She waited.

  Anthony turned an armchair to face the window-seat. he dropped into it. Except that he had, to save the chair’s owner from the need of speech, not asked permission for his sitting, his manner was that of a man who ‘drops in for a chat’; he was ordinary-everydayness incarnate. He said:

  ‘The girl’s all right. She’s gone up to her room. But before she went she told me all about it.’

  In spite of their meaning, these words were clothed in a voice which might have been discoursing of weather and watercress. To her husband Lucia flashed a smile so lovely that for a moment he lost all thought of anything save her. He said, after that moment:

  ‘Yes. It turned out almost as I thought, you know, Remember I said I was frightened those potatoes would be very, very small? Well, small they were. Not so small, mark you, as to be worthless. But small. The secret heavy in Annie’s bosom was Dollboys …’

  ‘Dollboys!’ said Lucia, between white teeth. ‘It’s always coming back to Dollboys. Dollboys! The name’d be silly if it weren’t terrible.’

  Anthony glanced at her, a warning glance. ‘Go easy!’ said the glance. Himself he said:

  ‘Dollboys, you see, had fallen for Annie. Some time ago it started. Over six months. Apparently his intentions were most strictly honourable—or, at least, became so after acquaintance with the firm principles of Annie. He wanted to marry Annie; he wanted to marry Annie very badly. Annie kept him dangling; she was only a little between-maid, but oh, how she called the tune. But at last she said yes. That I gather, was about four months back. Having said “yes”, she wanted, naturally, to know roughly the date of the wedding. She was then told that this could not, just immediately, be fixed. Suitor was forced to admit that he was pushed for money. He’d have to tide over a bit; things hadn’t been going well; farming wasn’t what it had been; things would, of course, be delightful after the tide-over, but … Annie, frankly disgruntled, agreed to wait a while before insisting upon a fixed date. Privately, she thought that she would have to wait at least six months. There was every indication of such a period; a longer one wouldn’t have surprised her. But what did surprise her was, that within six weeks or so, Dollboys was telling her that no longer was there any need to hesitate in fixing a date; no longer, even, any need to delay actual wedding. They could—and would she—get married tomorrow …

  ‘But Annie held off. Wouldn’t make herself cheap. Made Dollboys consent to wait two months. And during the two months, she began—being, apparently, shrewder than most would guess—to wonder. For the announcement of the sudden change in the prosperity of Dollboys had taken place almost immediately after’—Anthony nerved himself here for continuation of his even, conversational tone—‘the conviction of Mr Bronson …’

  He broke off. He had to break off. That head was no longer on Lucia’s shoulder. Selma Bronson sat upright; there was in her pose something again of that strange rigidity. She said, in a curiously toneless voice:

  ‘Dollboys had been paid to …’

  Anthony interrupted her. ‘The inference is certainly that he was paid for something—some work or action, or refraining from action—in connection with the murder of Blackatter and the fixing of that on your husband. But all he did or didn’t do we can’t tell. Not yet.’ He paused for a moment, and he smiled at Bronson’s wife and looked steadily into her eyes. ‘But,’ he said, ‘we shall … To finish: Annie didn’t, of course think so clearly as that at first, or even really along those lines. But think she did. And went on thinking. And the more she thought—for in a childish sort of way she is devoted to you, Mrs Bronson—the more she disliked having anything to do with a man whom she didn’t really love anyhow, and whose fortunes seemed, to say the least, to have risen with the downfall of yours … I think that’s as far as she really got until we came down here; she was obeying an instinct, a superstition, more than a reasoned thought. But whatever it was, it was strong enough—perhaps I should say her affection for you was strong enough—to make her throw Dollboys over. She did that—it was as easy for her as she had kept her engagement secret—about a fortnight ago. Dollboys, as you know, went on hanging about here. But he got no change from Annie. And then we arrived, and I suppose, as we took no trouble to hide our intentions, she found out what we were up to. And that put it into her small head that there was “a chance for the Master after all”. And that filled her head with thoughts of how there could be that chance. And she thought: if there’s that chance, it means somebody else did it … And if somebody else did it, there was a plot. And a plot means funny goings-on … and Dollboys’ sudden reversal of fortune was a funny going-on … She thought and thought. Sometimes it seemed silly, and Annie likes no more to be laughed at than any of us. Sometimes it seemed important—terribly important—so that she grew scared of telling in case she might find grave trouble for herself through not having told before … But she decided to tell. She was to speak to me, at her own request, this morning. But somehow …’

  Lucia said swiftly: ‘Oh, that’s all quite simple. Mrs Bronson had seen her hanging about us. And saw her, just now, waiting outside our room. And she wondered and asked her and the silly child got frightened and behaved so extraordinarily that Mrs Bronson, having got her in here, began to think she knew something—had been keeping back something vital. And she—Mrs Bronson—couldn’t bear to wait to know—it came just like that—and then … and then …’

  A harsh, painful sound, somewhere between laugh and sob, came from Selma Bronson’s throat. She said:

  ‘And then I … I … I might have killed.’ She looked at Anthony. ‘But you saved me. I … I … will go to the girl.’ She stood up. She took the half of a step forward and then she crumpled.

  Lucia’s arm was there. Lucia’s arm guided her so that her little fall brought her, sitting again, to the window-seat.

  Selma Bronson sat huddled, rather dreadfully, with her shoulders bowed and her hands squeezed between her knees. She began to laugh; a sound that sent Lucia’s hands, before she could control them, flying for a moment to her ears.

  Anthony stood up. He crossed to the window-seat. Selma Bronson stopped laughing. Her body shook and the flaxen head nodded with jerky nods and quivers. Her teeth chattered together. Through the chattering teeth she forced out words. She said:

  ‘I … I should like … to lie down. I … am … sorry … This is foolish … But I have not … this is not … a happy time …’ She began to laugh again.

  Lucia looked, with eyes of agony, at her husband.

  ‘Ger her on to the bed,’ said Anthony, and was gone.

  Somehow, Lucia obeyed. The bed shook with the shakings of its burden. Anthony came back. In one hand was a flask, in the other a small bottle. He took a tumbler from a table. He unstoppered the bottle and shook out into Lucia’s hands two white tablets. He said:

  ‘Make her swallow them.’

  Lucia made her swallow them. Into the tumbler Anthony poured brandy; added water from a carafe. He sat upon the bed’s edge and slid an arm beneath the shaking head and raised it and put the tumbler to its lips. She drank, her teeth beating out a tattoo against the glass.

  Anthony let the head gently down to the pillow. He stood, looking down at his patient. Lucia, beside him, slipped a hand through his arm and pressed it. They saw the eyes close, the head sink into the pillow, the twitching and shaking grow less and die away save for an occasional tremor of the whole body. Selma Bronson, who had not slept for days and nights which were carved into her mind like decades, slept now.

  They covered her. Anthony nodded at the door. They left upon silent feet.

  VI

  They had reached only the head of the stairs when the maid who was Annie’s understudy came lumbering up to meet them. To Anthony she gasped:
>
  ‘Pleezir, there’s a lady and a gentleman, sir. In the Smoke Room they are, sir. Name of Bricklebrock, sir.’

  ‘Brocklebank?’ Anthony lifted an eyebrow.

  ‘Yezzir, Bricklebonk?’ She turned and lumbered down the stairs again and was lost to sight.

  ‘You come too,’ said Anthony to his wife. ‘If it’s a party call, I’ll leave ’em to you.’

  In the Smoking Room they found Sir Richard Brocklebank and his daughter, both pink-cheeked, heavily-coated and smiling. Miss Brocklebank was urgent. With no pause from her introduction to Lucia she seized upon Lucia’s husband. She said:

  ‘Colonel … sorry, I mean Mr Gethryn: I do hope you won’t think I’m being a perfect little fool of a busybody; but I asked Daddy and he did seem to think it wouldn’t be too ridiculous if I came and anyhow I can’t be doing any worse than wasting two minutes of your time. Only when I heard, I simply had to tell you; because, you know, whatever you didn’t say last night, it was perfectly obvious that you must be interested in the beast, specially as he was so foully rude to you …’

  ‘Lake?’ said Anthony swiftly, planting the word, so to speak, in between the ribs of the girl’s speech.

  She nodded with violence. ‘Yes. Sorry. I’m excited. I was talking too much like a woman. Yes, Lake … Colonel Gethryn: he’s gone.’

  Anthony raised his eyebrows. ‘Has he now?’

  Again Miss Brocklebank’s emphatic nod. ‘And I believe he’s bunked; from you.’

  Sir Richard’s laugh came then, like a low-pitched and musical neigh.

  His daughter flushed. ‘Don’t be a beast, Daddy. You think so too, only you’re such a coward you won’t say anything just in case you’re wrong.’

  Anthony looked at the baronet; found those bright keen eyes were watching him. Anthony said: