Gaslight

by William Drummond

  It was lonely and she begged Jack to take out a subscription with Mudie’s Library. She had read Mr. Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes with admiration while at Holly Place and she asked him to get her anything by R.L.S. Treasure Island and Kidnapped she read with delight. But when it came to the famous Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, she was filled with a terror which reason could not dispel. The mechanics of Dr. Jekyll’s transformation into Mr. Hyde might be the stuff of melodrama, but the coexistence within one body of a good man and a monster was only thereby underlined by her own predicament, her own fears. Reality was the more horrifying because there was no change in the body to show which spirit was in the ascendant. She threw the book on the floor as far away as she could, and when Nancy brought up her tea, she asked the girl to take it away and tell Mr. Manningham that she did not want any more books from the circulating library. It was too much of a risk. From between the covers of an innocuous looking volume might creep ghosties and ghoulies and the things which unimaginative people did not believe in. Bella, however, knew better; or was it worse to know?

  She had had no news of Great-aunt Annie or Cousin Alfred since she and Jack had left for Mexico seven years before. But she had not forgotten Alfred’s promise at the time of her marriage. She wrote him a noncommittal letter.

  Dear Cousin,

  I have not written to you in all these years, because Mr. Manningham and I have been traveling abroad in the Central and Southern Americas (not to say the West Indies) and there was no occasion of our meeting.

  I have been unwell, and am indeed writing this from bed. But it is nothing catching; so if you would spare the time, I would dearly welcome a visit.

  How is Great-aunt? I do not even know if she is in the land of the living. I often felt I ought to write, but our parting was so bitter, I felt that I could not.

  Your affectionate cousin,

  Bella Manningham

  She showed this letter to Jack for his approval. He sometimes found offense in actions which seemed entirely reasonable to her. At this time, when she depended so completely on his tolerance and understanding, she did not want to lay herself open to reproach.

  He read it and made no comment. “Would you like me to post it for you?”

  “There is no need. I can easily send Nancy.”

  “It is no trouble. I shall be going out shortly.” He put the letter in his breast pocket.

  Three days passed and there was no reply from Cousin Alfred. “You did remember, Jack, to post my letter to Cousin Alfred?”

  “But of course, my dear child,” Jack said. “I am not the forgetful one in this family.”

  Bella took pride in her memory, not merely of poetry which she could quote verbatim after three or four readings, (though after her marriage she refrained from doing so, because it embarrassed Jack), but also of what had been or remained to be done. “But you know you are, Jack,” she said, “I’m always having to remind you of things.”

  Jack consulted his watch. He seemed always to be waiting on appointments these days. “I’m talking comparatively,” he said. “Your famous memory’s gone to pot just recently.”

  “Not recently!” Bella said. “When I was ill all those drugs may have confused me. But not now. I am very clear now.”

  Jack did not contradict her, just raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  Bella was roused. “No, seriously, Jack. When in the last three days, for example, can you say I have forgotten anything?”

  “Goodness gracious!” He raised his hands in deprecation. “They have only been little things, nothing to worry about.”

  “There haven’t been little things,” Bella said. “You ve just invented this to make me worry.”

  “Calm down, my dear child,” he said. “We don’t want you to work yourself up again.”

  But his tranquilizing manner only the more infuriated Bella. “Give me one example!” she shouted, “Just one! And then I’ll believe you.”

  “We are becoming overheated,” he said. “There has been so much during the last few weeks on which I, you too probably, would prefer to draw the veil. I don’t go around with a little notebook, faulting my wife.”

  “I wish you would. I must declare, I do.” The fires of anger blazed healthily up in her, as if, banked down in bed they now were dried out to tinder. “Otherwise I shall think it just another of your inventions, Mr. Manningham.”

  Her husband bowed ironically from the waist. “At your command, Mrs. Manningham, I shall do so. Henceforth! But now you must excuse me. Business calls.”

  As soon as he left, Bella got out of bed and rang the bell. She felt rather groggy and had to climb back again to await its answer.

  After some minutes Nancy knocked on the door and came in. She was slouching slightly. Bella said nothing but as she sat up in bed she jerked her shoulders back and her head up. Nancy grinned and thrust head and shoulders back. “Yes? Madam!”

  “Splendid!” Bella said, “But don’t collapse the moment you’ve said it. Can you or Elizabeth work that gas bath?”

  “We do it together,” Nancy said, “because of the pop.”

  “Then do it together!” Bella said. “And tell me when it is ready.”

  Nancy’s deportment was deflated. “Oh, did you ought, ma’am?”

  Bella waved an admonishing finger. “You should say, ‘Are you sure that you should, madam?’ Say it!”

  Nancy said it.

  “Then I say, ‘Yes, Nancy, I am quite sure. So you and Elizabeth run the gas bath and let me know when it is ready.’ And you say ‘Certainly, madam. I can see you are quite well now.’ Then you go out, head high and shoulders back, and run the bath.”

  It did not happen quite like that. Nancy made a splendid exit. But a few minutes later Elizabeth came up. “Is it wise, madam? You have been in bed for over three weeks. Anybody who has lain up for that time has lost strength. And think of the doctor’s instructions. ‘Mrs. Manningham’s not to get up.’ Do you want to get us the sack, madam?”

  The anxiety in that plum duff face, thought Bella, was not entirely fear of losing her job. It showed Elizabeth’s concern for her mistress. By that time Bella’s anger had ebbed and fear was flooding back. “I am sorry,” she said. “It was silly.” She closed her eyes, partly from fatigue, partly to think in peace. She could not trust either of the maids not to tell her husband or the doctor what she did. This idea of taking a bath had been a mistake. She would have collapsed possibly. Certainly they would be told what she had done. “Thank you,” she said and turned over as if to go to sleep.

  Bella waited for some time after Elizabeth left. Then she got out of bed. Her slippers were beside the bed, because by now she was allowed to use the commode. Her dressing gown was across the end of the bed. She put it on, crossed to the door, using, as she had done earlier, the support of furniture, for she had no walking sticks, and pushed that precious bolt to.

  She was very weak and clinging to the door knob she improvised exercises to bring back into play the muscles of arms, body and legs which had been wasting on the sick bed. She did not do it for long, because she could soon feel the strain. Then she slipped back the bolt, replaced her dressing gown and slippers and climbed back into bed.

  The tone of Bella’s body improved so perceptibly that Dr. Frost urged her to get up. She protested that she would prefer to take her time. She allowed herself to be bullied by the doctor to leave her bed and in the presence of others sat listlessly in a chair. But when she was left alone, she bolted the door and started to exercise. She was like a boxer who had to persuade his trainer that he was unfit to fight in order to become fighting fit. She knew that the moment she ventured beyond her room there would be a series of attacks. While she remained in the sickroom there was always the possibility of a retreat to bed. She watched from the window to see her husband’s departures and arrivals. By the time that he mounted to her bedroom, the bolt was drawn back and she was languishing in bed.

  Mrs. J
ameson would not have approved of her conduct. Bella was not concerned with the saving of Jack Manningham’s soul. In the middle of a war one is concerned more with one’s own survival. Certainly Bella was. Jack’s charge of forgetfulness was one which she suspected he would not use until later. His tactics were those of a man who shouts “Look, right!” to attack from the left.

  So though she had to be alert for this later onslaught, she knew that there would be at least one from an entirely different quarter.

  “Well, my girl,” said Jack one morning, adjusting in his buttonhole the silver flask containing a carnation, which was his new fancy. “I think it’s high time that you became the lady of the manor. Wouldn’t you say, eh, wouldn’t you?”

  “I’m not supposed to know,” Bella said. “Wouldn’t it be better to ask Dr. Frost?”

  Jack laughed. “You really have a sense of humor,” he said. “Rather sharp! But I appreciate it. Like the lemon with my oysters.”

  “I don’t, Jack,” she answered. “You call in a doctor to say I’m ill. But you decide on your own account to give me a clean bill.”

  “As you wish,” he said. “It was merely that I take a rosier view than Dr. Frost.”

  When he showed no sign of expanding this remark, she asked whether Jack considered himself better qualified than the doctor to treat her case. “I did not think all those drugs were necessary,” he said. “By all means, place yourself entirely in Dr. Frost’s hands.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “there is no need to ask Dr. Frost.”

  “But indeed there is,” he answered. “I must insist that you consult the authority whom you trust more than you do your husband.”

  The whole thing was ridiculous, another storm brewed in a tea-cup. Dr. Frost was delighted at the idea of her resuming life. “You should get out more, dear lady. Take the fresh air in Kensington Gardens. Go to the play or the Albert Hall. An excursion to Hurlingham for the polo.”

  Bella murmured that she lacked a companion. But Dr. Frost turned to Jack. “I am sure Mr. Manningham is not so engrossed that he cannot spare time for the entertainment of his good lady.”

  The very next day Jack did something almost better than that. He brought home a little black and white spaniel puppy: “To be your watchdog,” he explained, placing the soft warm bundle in her arms.

  “Cerberus,” as Bella mockingly called it, had sharp little white teeth which never really hurt and a boundless store of energy which sent him scudding this way and that, in the pursuit of real or imaginary objects. The babyishness of him went straight to Bella’s heart, bringing tears into her eyes as she watched him pursuing a butterfly or barking at the swans on the Serpentine.

  In fact she became so engrossed in her pet that she neglected to take up her household duties. Things had run themselves smoothly enough domestically while she was ill, why should she interfere? She had made the suggestion on the morning before Jack bought the puppy that some of the superfluous furniture which cluttered the drawing room should be stored in the rooms on the top floor.

  “That is out of the question,” Jack said. “That floor is shut off.”

  Bella had already made that discovery. “But you must have the key,” she said.

  “A condition of the tenancy has always been that the top floor should be shut off for the storage of furniture,” he answered. “And the key is kept by the landlord’s agent.”

  “Then it would be easy enough to arrange with the agent to open it up to receive the other unnecessary objects, like the pampas grass,” Bella suggested.

  “Nothing could be easier, if I chose,” her husband answered; and there the matter ended. Or at least it ended there as far as the removal of furniture was concerned.

  It was only the beginning as far as Bella’s curiosity was concerned; because it now occurred to her that during the weeks that she had been ill and was unaware that the top floor of the house was locked up, she had assumed that Elizabeth and Nancy slept on the floor above her. She had quite definitely heard noises of someone moving about in the room overhead.

  But Bella was a woman who let sleeping dogs lie, even when she did not have an adorable puppy to spoil. Those weeks of illness had been so strained and strange that it was possible that it was an illusion. The memory was not so definite that she could have gone into a witness box and given exact testimony of what had happened and when. And bringing the matter up with Jack could be worse than going into the witness box, since Jack would be prosecuting counsel, judge and clerk of the court all rolled into one.

  One evening about a week later, when Jack had gone out, as now was his custom, to a club he had joined, Bella, feeling tired, decided to go to bed early.

  She was sitting at her dressing table brushing her hair. It was a gusty night, the wind whistling in the chimney and lashing the branches of the plane trees outside. There was therefore an undercurrent of noise, like the sound of waves breaking on a distant beach. But the sounds from upstairs were quite different. There was a creak, as of a loose board. This was so sharp that it set her listening. What followed was less distinct, like the muffled sound of stealthy footsteps, perhaps of someone wearing felt slippers. It could even be the product of a fevered imagination. But what followed was too loud and positive to be imaginary. It was a series of muffled thumps. They went in groups of three, changing in tone slightly between the first and last of each group. The sound came as far as she could judge from close to the chimney breast. It was not sharp enough to be a hammer or even a mallet. It was rather like the noise she could produce with the beating of her fist on the arm of her chair above the chair leg, except that her fist couldn’t produce a change of tone.

  Then there was quite a different noise which if made by an animal would have been a shriek or squeal, but could equally well be made by the forcing of a floorboard, the withdrawal of a rusty nail.

  There was, Bella was as certain of it as of her sanity, somebody in the room above hers. But she must have witnesses. She jerked the bell several times violently.

  Then she opened her bedroom door and went to the locked door of the staircase. She laid her ear to the thin panel hoping that she would be able to hear more through it than through her own ceiling. But there was no sound.

  One thing, however, she did notice. This door blocking the staircase had, unlike the others in the house, been freshly painted and from one or two places in its jamb which had escaped the paintbrush she saw that the wood was fresh. The door had only recently been installed. Yet surely Jack had said that a condition of the tenancy had always been to shut the top floor off. There might, of course, be another door at the head of the stairs, but if so why go to the extra expense of putting up a second?

  There were footsteps on the stairs and she saw Nancy. (It was Elizabeth’s night off, she remembered.) Bella put her finger to her lips and beckoned her. “I want you to come in to my room and listen!” she whispered.

  They tiptoed into the bedroom and Bella motioned the girl to come over to the fireplace.

  There was the gentle flare of the gasmantles in the room and in the chimney the howl of the banshee wind and outside the wild threshing of the plane trees. But from upstairs, not a squeal, not a creak, not a shuffle.

  “What was the noise like, madam?” Nancy said. She seemed scared less by possible noises than by the look on her mistress’ face.

  “It was a knocking,” Bella said, pointing up at the ceiling. “Haven’t you and Elizabeth heard it ever?”

  “Oh them noises!” Nancy said. “You don’t have to worry, Elizabeth says. When it’s not the floorboards cracking with the heat, it’s the people next door poking the fire or something.”

  “This was someone upstairs,” Bella said. “But he’s gone for the moment, it seems.”

  “ ‘Not to worry’ Elizabeth says. It’s always the same in these old terrace ’ouses.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  The next day Bella took Cerberus for a run in Kensington Gardens. She had taken to wearing
the Persephone brooch again. It was a sort of emblem of hope, like the woman in the Swiss weather toys who came swinging out into the sunshine while her man retired indoors with the umbrella. Bella sat on a bench beside the Round Pond, watching the children and grown-ups sailing model yachts and Cerberus scampering, here there and everywhere.

  She took off the brooch to look at the cameo. It was too soft for truly classical feeling, Persephone not triumphant enough at the fullness of the cornucopia nor hinting at the sadness of her imminent return to Hades. But it had a quality of prettiness which she had come to appreciate as mock-classical.

  She had noticed what seemed to be a fault in the pin, an insecurity in the hinge. She examined it now to see how it might be fixed. The curious thing was that there appeared to be nothing broken. The insecurity was built in. She wiggled the pin this way and that, trying to see what purpose there could be in this. Suddenly the cameo opened away from its heavy gold setting to reveal what was a concealed box. Inside there were nine sparkling red stones, which if they had not been so large might almost have been taken for rubies. The brooch had not been made for them, otherwise they would have had a molded seat. As it was, they sat in old cotton wool which had turned rusty brown with age.

  Bella held them in the palm of her hand. Her first impulse was that she would show them to Jack when she returned home. For cut colored crystal they were uncommonly fine and she would have liked them for a necklace or perhaps a bracelet. There might have been a time when Jack would have said, “Of course, my child, I will have them made up for you.” But no longer. He would take them to the nearest jeweler and then place the five pounds or so he sold them for on some horse which would be “pipped at the post,” whatever that meant. She put them in her purse, deciding that she would keep them for the future.

  It was her first act which envisaged the possibility of a future without Jack.

  Inside the gold case, Bella noticed there was an inscription: