“These long, dark nights—most favourable of course—I really do feel very tempted. Joanna, I think, would be interested. Well, well, I must see if I can manage it. And meanwhile just leave it open, Miss Marlowe—it must depend on circumstances.”
Sarah left it open in the most tactful manner. When she had read the letters over to Wilson and he had signed them, he said in an embarrassed voice,
“Er—Miss Marlowe—you will be free to do anything you like tomorrow morning. I am—er—going away. I shall not be returning till lunch-time tomorrow. The fact is, my—er—brother is dining here. He will spend the night. My sister is attached to him, but—well, it is best to be candid—he and I are better apart.” He ran his hands through his hair, a gesture which appeared to relieve his feelings, and began to walk up and down in the room. “Family ties only serve to accentuate real incompatibilities. We are twins, and physically we are considered not unlike, but no two characters could be more divergent, more antagonistic. Morgan is everything that I am not. He is a man of violent temper, a sceptic, a flesh-eater. He has an extreme partiality for alcohol. My scientific pursuits excite his contempt. I make this explanation because otherwise you would naturally think it very strange that I should absent myself from a family reunion. I can only assure you that I have found it to be the wisest course. Joanna can then enjoy her brother’s society without being under the constant apprehension of some serious disagreement between us. Since you have been with us Morgan has been abroad, and now that he has returned, Joanna and I consider that the circumstances should be explained to you.”
Sarah really did feel sorry for him—so embarrassed, and trying so hard to appear at his ease. She said in a warmer voice than she had ever used to him before,
“Thank you, Mr. Cattermole. It’s very nice of you to explain, and of course I quite understand.”
If this was, at the time, only a sympathetic form of speech, she had no sooner set eyes on Mr. Morgan Cattermole than it became a reality. She heard him arrive. The door-bell proclaimed him with peal after noisy peal, and as soon as he had been admitted the house was full of him. Doors banged. There was a clatter on the stairs. She heard him call in a yodelling voice, “Jo-a-an-na! Jo-a-an-na!”
The voice was not unlike his brother’s, but imagination boggled at the thought of Wilson Cattermole making such an unholy row. The drawing-room door burst open and banged again.
When, a tactful twenty minutes later, she descended and made her entrance, he was standing on the hearthrug with his back to the fire, holding his sides and laughing uproariously, whilst Joanna gazed fondly up at him from the fender-stool. Sarah looked at him with interest which immediately passed into distaste. Whereas Wilson Cattermole invariably paid his company, and his prunes and hay the compliment of a dinner-jacket, and Joanna wore her sack-like garments of black or purple velvet, their brother Morgan stood there in baggy tweeds, loud of pattern and looking as if they had been worn night and day during the whole time of his absence. He went on laughing in a boorish manner whilst Sarah crossed the room, and only stopped when Joanna put a hand on his arm.
“Oh, Morgan—this is Miss Marlowe.”
He did not offer to shake hands, but gave her first an appraising look, and then a kind of offhand nod.
The gong sounded and they went down to the dining-room, Joanna hanging on her brother’s arm. She was in purple tonight, with a draggled bunch of violets at her breast, fastened with a brooch containing several fine diamonds in a dirty setting.
If Morgan Cattermole was addicted to the flesh-pots, Mrs. Perkins gave him no cause for complaint. He did complain however, and loudly, when he discovered that a small bottle of grocer’s claret was the only drink the house afforded.
“I’d as soon drink ink and water,” he announced. Then, banging the table, “Oh, take it away, take it away, can’t you! I’ll bring my own tipple next time, and you can tell Wilson I said so—the damned skinflint teetotaller!”
And then all in a moment he was telling a gross, vulgar story and laughing at it as he rolled about in his chair. Extraordinary that he should be Wilson’s twin brother.
Sarah sat there aloof and slim in a full-skirted dress of dark red silk. The tight bodice, square neck, and long sleeves gave her the formal air of another century. She felt at least as far as that from Morgan Cattermole and his vulgarities. From her distance she regarded him. How strange for twins to be so alike, and so different—the same features, the same slender hands, and every mental characteristic at opposite poles. Morgan was a little the broader of the two—or was it only the baggy clothes? His skin was deeply tanned where Wilson’s had the scholar’s pallor. And Wilson had the scholar’s stoop, the scholar’s peering sight. Obvious at a glance that Morgan would never waste the midnight oil over a book. His hair was darker than his brother’s, or perhaps it merely seemed so because he had sleeked it down with some horrible pomade, the smell of which filled the room.
Sarah had got as far as this, when his voice broke in, jovial and familiar.
“Well, Miss Sarah—think I’m like my brother? We’re twins, you know. Would you know us apart?”
She turned her eyes on him in a steady look.
“You are alike—but of course I should know you apart.”
He laughed.
“And I’ll bet you wouldn’t if I took the trouble to dress up a bit. I see myself doing it!” He gave a kind of guffaw. “Fancy me minding my step and picking my way like a hen on a muddy road!” He slapped his thigh noisily. “Yoicks! That’s it! That’s Wilson to the life—isn’t it, Jo? A damned faddy old hen, scratching for maggots on a rubbish heap!”
Joanna put in a feeble protest.
“Morgan—dear!”
“Well, isn’t he? Now, Miss Sarah, let’s have your frank opinion.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t got one.”
“Oh, come—you must have.”
“None that you would care about, Mr. Cattermole.”
Miss Joanna said, “My dear!” and Morgan laughed boisterously.
“Snubbed!” he said. “Well and truly snubbed! Done like a duchess too! But you can’t take me down that way. Indiarubber—that’s what I am. You ask Jo—she’ll tell you. The harder I’m hit, the higher I bounce. Well, well, we won’t spoil our food by quarrelling over Wilson. I’ll say this for him, he’s got a damned good cook.”
Whatever he might say, Sarah considered that her snub had not been without its effect. He appeared to have reached and passed the peak of his insufferable behaviour. Ill-bred and noisy as he continued to show himself, the offence was now more in voice and manner than in any actual word. Joanna, weighing out her vitamins, watched him with what actually appeared to be admiration. Her eyes had brightened and her cheeks were flushed with excitement. As they went upstairs again, she slipped a hand inside Sarah’s arm and whispered,
“Dear Morgan—he always has such high spirits. It quite does one good.”
CHAPTER VI
When coffee had been served and Thompson the elderly parlourmaid had closed the door behind her, Morgan began a long, boastful yarn about an encounter with brigands in the Balkans. He had, Sarah noticed, one trait at least in common with his twin, the faculty for entangling the simplest narrative in a mass of irrelevant and uninteresting detail. Wilson’s spooks and Morgan’s bandits were alike in this, that no one could possibly get up any interest in their doings. Even Joanna’s attention appeared to wander. Her eyes strayed to the small baize-covered table on which, as always, paper and pencil, and a planchette board lay in readiness. When Morgan burst out laughing she turned a pleading look upon him.
“If only you were not such an unbeliever. You know, I’ve always felt that you would be wonderfully successful, and just now it would be especially interesting, because I have been having some really wonderful communications—no, don’t laugh—if you would only just try for yourself. His name is Nat Garland—short for Nathaniel. A smuggler, Morgan, and he passed over just before the battle of Wate
rloo. That does bring it so home to one, doesn’t it?” She clasped her hands about his arm and stood looking up into his face, her eyes fever-bright.
Sarah thought that he was rather startled. He said,
“Hullo! What’s all this about smugglers? You’ll be getting yourself run in if you don’t take care.”
“Oh, no!” Joanna’s voice went high and sharp. “Oh, Morgan—if you would! They told us about him down at Ryland Bay—a most charming little inn. And that night I had an experience—but I won’t tell you about it in case you might scoff, and I don’t think I could bear it—I really don’t. And then when we came back here he began to come through—automatic writing, you know—most, most enthralling, but just a little bit disconnected, so I thought perhaps some other method. And if you and I and Sarah were to sit together and try with planchette, I do believe we should get results. Oh, Morgan—if you would!”
He stood looking down at her with a comical, half-laughing face.
“Well, well, well—what a to-do! Why, Jo, you needn’t look at me like that. Bring out your hocus-pocus and we’ll have a stab at it. But I warn you I’m no good. Wilson—now I expect Wilson’s a dab at all this jiggery-pokery.”
Joanna was all smiles.
“Oh, no, he despises it, and the pencil won’t write at all when he is in the room. But you—oh, I have always felt that you would be marvellous! Sarah dear, you will join us, won’t you?”
When they were seated round the table, Morgan looked doubtfully at the little heart-shaped board.
“What do we do with it?”
“Put our hands on it. No, no, only the finger-tips. And you mustn’t push or guide it at all—just sit quite still and wait to see what happens.”
He frowned.
“What does happen—what does it do?”
“Sometimes nothing at all. But you see, it runs on wheels and there is a pencil underneath. It writes if there’s a message coming through.”
Sarah sat back in her chair.
“Do you know, I think I’ll just watch. It’s really only meant for two people.”
She had all at once a great distaste for the whole thing. Their hands would be so close together. She could imagine Morgan taking advantage of that. “A cockroach,” she thought—” that’s what he is—cockroach to Wilson’s ant. Revolting!”
Rather to her surprise, neither of the Cattermoles made any demur. They leaned towards each other across the green-topped table, Joanna brittle and eager, Morgan uneasy. His boisterous joviality seemed to have fallen away. He took a hand from the board to fumble for a handkerchief and wipe a shiny forehead.
“It gives me the jitters,” he said. “Sure it doesn’t bite, Jo?”
“Morgan—dear!” She pulled his hand back to the board. “Now keep perfectly still, and remember not to press, or push, or anything like that. Just keep still and relax, and wait to see if a message comes through.”
Silence fell upon the room. Sarah, her chair pushed back, watched it and them—an L-shaped London room with two tall windows looking to the street and one to a narrow strip of ground behind. All three were curtained with a velvet so dark that only the line of the folds disclosed a shade of sombre green. The carpet stretched drearily from wall to wall with an endless pattern of blue and green and brown, all the colours dimmed and lost in a general effect of gloom. As in every other room in the house, there was too much furniture. Chairs, couches, small occasional tables, jostled one another for floor space. Pictures and engravings crowded together upon the walls. A profusion of small ornaments littered every table. An entire tea-set was displayed upon the mantelpiece. A dismal room, made more dismal by the new chair-covers of which Miss Joanna was so proud. Sarah shuddered as she looked at them. Joanna must have searched London to find anything so ugly, and as she said, the stuff would never wear out—a mustard and brown damask, practically indestructible.
Her focus narrowed to the faces of the two at the table—Morgan’s still half scared, Joanna’s vacant. She looked down at the hands stretched out to the heart-shaped board. Startlingly alike, those two pairs of hands—and so like Wilson’s too. Unexpected for Morgan to share those thin, nervous hands which belonged of right to Wilson and Joanna. His should have been coarser—stronger—blunt-fingered and insensitive.
Just as she thought that, the board began to move. She leaned forward, watching intently. It was hardly a movement. There was a quivering. She thought, “One of them is pushing it—” and then, “No—it’s pushing them.” And even as the words came into her mind, the thing really was moving, with the up and down, to and fro motion of a clumsily handled pencil. The hands went with it—they did not appear to guide it. The pencil attachment ran off the edge of the paper and stopped. Morgan Cattermole dropped his hands from the board as if they found it hot.
“Look here, I don’t like this. But you were pushing it, Jo—you were, weren’t you?”
She looked up, flustered and scandalized.
“Oh, no—of course not! Morgan, dear—that would be cheating!”
“You didn’t push it? Honest injun?”
“Oh, no.”
“Well, that’s a queer start. If it was anyone else, I’d say you were having me on.”
The tears came into Joanna’s eyes. She flushed painfully.
“Morgan—dear!”
He laughed and patted her hand.
“Don’t be silly, old dear. You’re O.K.—I know that. I only said if it was anyone else.”
For the first time Sarah came somewhere near liking him, or at any rate to understanding why Joanna liked him. They really did seem fond of one another.
He laughed now and picked up the sheet of paper with its trail of scrawled writing.
“Here—let’s see what we’ve got. String of rubbish it looks like to me—a, b—ab … b, a—ba … like a kid’s spelling-book.… Hullo, here’s a word—‘bark’. Does your smuggler keep a dog, Jo? ‘Bark—beach—tar—boots—sand—’ And that’s where we ran off the paper. It doesn’t turn a corner very pretty. Here, let’s have another go and take the long way of the paper.”
Joanna beamed.
“I knew you would be interested once you made a start! You see, he’s just trying to get through—that’s what makes it rather disjointed. But if we persevere he may come right through, and that would be so marvellous. And bark wouldn’t be anything to do with a dog, dear. It’s just one of those old-fashioned words for a boat—the mariner’s barque, you know.”
The board was set again. This time the movement started at once. With no preliminary tremor, it seemed to run away, reaching the paper’s edge almost as quickly as if the pencil had been driven by a practised hand.
Sarah watched, not the hands, but the faces. Joanna’s blank—eyes fixed, lips parted. Morgan’s interested now, but with a strange look of uneasiness. She thought, “He’s like a schoolboy doing something he knows he oughtn’t to—and rather enjoying it.”
The board stopped. He picked up the paper and read from it:
“‘Night—dark—fog—case—night—fog—’”
Joanna woke up.
“Oh, that’s quite new! He’s trying to tell us about landing the cases of rum—only he’s always called them kegs before. And the fog is new. Do, pray, let us go on!”
Sarah became aware that her feet were cold—icy cold. How wretchedly silly—dark—fog—case.… For a moment she was back in the cold, narrow waiting-room listening to Miss Emily Case whilst the fog thickened the blank window-panes and a man’s footsteps went to and fro outside in the dark. Fog—dark—case—and even as the words were in her thought, Morgan Cattermole had picked up the paper again and was reading them aloud:
“‘Fog—dark—case—’ Hullo! Oh, he’s repeating himself.… No—here’s something new: ‘Where is it—’ And he’s written it twice, only it’s slipped off the edge a bit at the end. Come on—he’s getting going now. What is it, Bogey? Speak up—we’re all attention!”
The finger-tips came
down on the planchette again. Joanna’s trembled slightly, but the movement gave no impetus to the board. It was not until the tremor died that motion began. There was a jerk, a smooth rhythm, another jerk, and so on while the paper lasted.
Sarah found herself watching with strained attention. And yet it was all nonsense—it must be all nonsense. She didn’t believe a word of it. Joanna’s mind was running on her smuggler. She wouldn’t consciously cheat, but somehow these words which called up pictures of a dark beach—a landing in the fog—somehow these were transmitted to the paper. She didn’t know how it was done. She only knew that it must be something like that. Anything else was ludicrous—out of all bounds of possibility.
Morgan pulled his hands away. There was still that effect of a recoil. He read again:
“‘Fog—dark—’ A bit of a harper, isn’t me?… ‘Emily—where is it—’”
Sarah’s heart knocked so hard against her side that it frightened her. Emily—it wasn’t possible. She leaned back and felt the hair damp against her temples. There was an icy chill somewhere. Was it in the room, or in the empty places of thought? She didn’t know. She heard Morgan say, “Getting a bit mixed, aren’t you, Bogey? Who’s Emily? And what’s the betting the last thing ought to read, ‘Where is she—’? ‘Emily—where is it—’ don’t make sense to me. “Let’s have another go and see what we get this time.”
Joanna put up a hand to her light, floating hair.
“I don’t know—” she said in an uncertain voice. “I’m tired. He’s not coming through very well.”
“Jealous because he’s got a lady friend! That’s it—isn’t it, Miss Sarah?” His eyes ran over her with a sly smile in them. Then he turned back to the board. “Come on, old dear—open your mouth and shut your eyes and see what Bogey’ll send you.”
Weekend with Death Page 4