‘Your tray is ready in your room, Miss,’ the maid said again.
‘Ah yes. My tray . . . Is Miss Virginia down yet?’
‘I think she’s getting up, Miss. Did you wish to see her?’
‘It doesn’t matter. I shall be seeing her presently. It looks like being another lovely day.’
But an hour later the same maid, going into Miss Croft’s room again, found the breakfast-tray untouched.
‘Virginia!’
It was Agatha’s voice. She was still idling in the lily garden, but through the open library window she had seen Virginia inside.
‘Are you too busy to come out for a moment?’
‘Of course not, darling;’ and Miss Virginia stepped out. She was a pinky little lady, not the best person in the world to take a trouble to, by reason of the very excess of her solicitude and affection. She fussed and petted and comforted when the troubled person would have been better left alone. Agatha was plainly troubled, and Virginia was in a flutter already as she asked her what was the matter.
‘I suppose I may take it that there isn’t anybody about this house addicted to practical joking?’ Agatha demanded without preface.
‘My dear Agatha! What can you mean.’
‘The Trevors? Or those people I haven’t met before?’
‘Darling! Haven’t you slept well? If you haven’t you won’t be fit for tonight. I thought you looked a little run down when you arrived. You are up too early. Let me take you up to your room again.’
Agatha’s eyes went up to the windows of the room she had left, which was immediately above the library. Then she said, ‘Somebody came into my room last night.’
‘My dear!’ Virginia was staring at her. ‘How can that be? Who would come into your room? Not the maids. Surely none of us. Not the Trevors. And as for the Owens, they’re among the nicest people we know!’
‘An armed man came into my room some time during the night,’ said Agatha.
Even in making light of a thing Miss Virginia overdid the laughing off. She gave a high little laugh now, at which Agatha frowned momentarily.
‘I see! I see so plainly! This comes of having dinner late. Or else you’ve been dreaming. Now put yourself in my hands. You shall take ten grains of aspirin and I will tuck you in myself, and put a screen round you, and nobody shall come near you. Or shall I ring up Doctor Benn?’
‘Come up to the room,’ said Agatha, and up in the room she went straight to the head of her bed.
‘I was lying, with my head there, reading,’ she said. ‘There is the book, that little pocket edition. I read till a little after eleven, and then switched the light off. I don’t know what time it was next, but I suddenly sat up wide awake. And that door opened’ – she pointed with an abrupt gesture – ‘and a man came in.’
‘Agatha!’ Miss Virginia shrieked.
‘He stood with his back against the door. He seemed to fit into the curve of it. You would have thought he was bending the door with his back.’
‘Agatha!’
‘And he had a drawn sword in his hand.’
‘Agatha! What are you saying?’
‘I know. I know what it sounds like. That’s why I’m telling you. And of course if it was one of the Mr Owens he knows all about it without telling.’
‘But didn’t you see his face?’
‘No.’
‘And weren’t you terrified?’
‘I was startled for a moment, but I wasn’t terrified. In fact the moment I saw his eyes I wasn’t frightened at all.’
‘Then you did see his eyes?’
‘Yes. They were looking at me – for me – I don’t quite know – he seemed to want something –’
‘And what did he do then?’
Agatha closed her own eyes for a moment. Her lip trembled. Then she opened her eyes again.
‘I don’t know. Except that I wasn’t in the least frightened. I think I may have shut my eyes. When I opened them again he had gone.’
Miss Virginia seemed a little recovered. She put her arm about Agatha. – ‘Darling, I think you closed your eyes for more than a moment,’ she said sweetly. ‘Of course it was all a dream.’
‘Shall I show you I was not dreaming?’
‘It could only have been a dream.’
For answer Agatha crossed the room. She opened the door of the hanging cupboard. From the cupboard she took out a straight bright sword with a chape across its simple basket-hilt.
‘He left that behind him when he went out,’ she said.
3
It was well that the guests were breakfasting in their rooms, for Miss Virginia was not the kind of woman to keep tidings so startling to herself. She stared at the weapon in Agatha’s hand; then she stared at Agatha, as if she wondered whether she had gone suddenly out of her head. She laughed, in pure bewilderment.
‘But Agatha! This is inconceivable! As head of the family James must be told at once!’
‘I’d much rather he were not,’ said Agatha quickly.
‘But he must be told! If somebody is playing a joke –’
‘I don’t know what made me say that. That’s a mistake. Nobody’s playing a joke,’ and she said this slowly.
‘But you thought it might be one of the Mr Owens –’
Agatha shook her head. – ‘I humbly beg the pardon of both the Mr Owens. Of course they wouldn’t dream of such a thing. I can’t imagine what made me say that.’
‘Well, James will know what to do.’
Agatha stared. – ‘How, to do?’
‘I mean his judgment is always so sound.’
Agatha was looking at the sword again, down the length of its blade. – ‘I’m sorry to be such a nuisance,’ she said, and added, looking suddenly up, ‘Tell James if you like. It doesn’t matter. Perhaps I’d better put this away for the present.’
She crossed to the wardrobe again and replaced the sword, closing the wardrobe door.
It was in the library that not only James was told, but the assembled brothers also, for in such a matter the family was held to be one and indivisible, and Agatha had hardly said twenty words before Mr James put up his hand and asked her to wait till the others had been sent for. Then she began all over again. With one or two slight corrections from Virginia she repeated her story. She stood just within the library door, to illustrate how the man had stood. Mr James had taken his place at the writing-table, and his finger-tips were joined together. In his earlier days he had read a little law, and there was that in his manner that gave them all confidence in his ability to clear up the matter out of hand.
‘So even the new lock didn’t keep him out?’ he smiled.
‘Even the new lock didn’t keep him out,’ Agatha answered.
‘Well, as everything seems to turn on the sword,’ Mr James observed, ‘suppose that interesting exhibit is produced?’ And they had to wait till Mr Arthur fetched it, carrying it concealed in an old Burberry because of the servants. It was placed on the library table before Mr James, like the mace upon the table in Parliament.
‘And now may I question you, Agatha?’ he asked kindly.
‘Please do.’
‘Won’t you sit down?’
‘I will in a moment.’
There was silence in the library as Mr James began.
‘In the first place you say you did not see this visitor’s face –’
‘Except his eyes –’
‘Except his eyes. How was he dressed?’
Agatha seemed suddenly uncertain. – ‘I hardly know,’ she confessed. ‘I wasn’t thinking of his clothes. They seemed to belong to him as clothes do belong to people. There was a sort of soldier look about him, but I don’t think he was in uniform of any kind.’
Mr
James nodded approval. – ‘Association of ideas with the sword. We will take it that he was not in uniform. If you had described his armour, let us say, your answer would have had far less evidential value.’
‘A mere adumbration of things seen on the stage,’ Mr Arthur put in.
‘The Royal Academy has much to answer for too,’ Mr Henry observed.
‘Next,’ Mr James continued, ‘you tell us you were reading in bed. You switched your light off. By what light did you see this person of the sword?’
At this unexpected question Agatha was suddenly nonplussed. Her fingers went to her lips, her eyes were on the floor. She knitted her brows.
‘You didn’t switch your light on again?’
She looked up for a moment. – ‘I don’t remember doing so.’
‘Was it by ordinary electric light? Romantic moonlight? What sort of light?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘There’s never been a hint of a ghost in this house,’ said Miss Virginia tremulously.
‘Let us put off the unknown till we have thoroughly explored the known,’ said Mr James tolerantly. ‘It is always possible that Agatha switched on the light without knowing it. Let us turn for a moment to the sword. You, Arthur, had once a few stray pieces, I believe. If I remember rightly you exchanged them.’
‘I exchanged them for the rose-pink set,’ Mr Arthur nodded.
‘All of them?’
‘All of them. I can show you the catalogue.’
‘No sword was left over?’
‘That you may take as certain.’
‘And there has never been any other sword in the house?’
‘I don’t think this family makes mistakes about things of that kind,’ said Mr Arthur with a satisfied little laugh.
‘So it comes to this – that we are now in possession of a sword that came mysteriously into the house in the small hours of the morning. We’re agreed that it is a sword?’ he added quizzically, his fingers hovering over it.
‘Perhaps it will vanish again the same way it came.’
‘That of course would simplify our little investigation,’ Mr James agreed.
Suddenly Agatha spoke. She spoke as if out of a deep musing.
‘I’m so sorry, but there’s one thing I forgot to say. He had a brown sort of look, very brown, as if he had been out in all weathers. And his head was of a rather steep and handsome shape.’
Mr James gave her a shrewd glance. – ‘Ah! So he did not wear a hat?’
‘Oh no!’
‘You said dark eyes?’
‘Wonderful eyes, dark and bright.’
‘And a brown weathered face. The gentleman appears to be assembling himself.’
‘But you told me at first you thought it might be one of the Mr Owens!’ said Virginia almost reproachfully. ‘Why, they’re as fair as butter!’
Agatha made no reply.
‘As a King’s Armourer manqué, what date would you give that sword, Arthur?’ Mr James next asked.
Mr Arthur approached the table. Then he crossed the room and reached down the armour book. Agatha’s grey eyes watched his every movement resentfully. She suddenly hated him to touch that sword. She wished she was anywhere else. She wished she had said nothing about it all, even to Virginia. What good had it done? These people were pleasant and well-meaning, but she knew already that they couldn’t help in this. Why wouldn’t they leave the sword alone? . . . Again the faint smile rose to her lips. At any rate there was the sword. But for that they would have said she had been dreaming. Oh, why wouldn’t somebody come in and break up this comic, important little court of inquiry, with its talk of ‘evidential values’ and its probing and futile questions? She wanted to laugh at them all. What did it matter that already there were discrepancies in her tale? If something she surmised was right there might be more discrepancies before long. Why couldn’t they leave the sword alone?
Then somebody laughed for her. It was a voice in the passage beyond the library door.
‘Where is everybody? Is there nobody to say good-morning to?’
The other guests were astir. The hosts looked at one another. The rest would have to be left to a more convenient time. The court rose.
But Agatha had done one emphatic thing almost before she was aware. Mr Arthur had taken the sword again and was putting it away in a sliding tray where photographs and folios were kept. She could not bear the sight of it in that slight and lace-white hand. She started forward, and on her face was her best smile.
‘May I have my sword?’ she asked.
Mr Arthur turned, also smiling. – ‘Her sword, she says, James!’
‘Well, it certainly isn’t our sword!’
‘Then may our Agatha have it?’
But Agatha had already taken it. Concealing it as well as she was able, half under her arm and half down her thigh, she ran out of the library, up to the room with the rosewood door, and closed the door behind her.
She was breathing quickly, but not with the quick run upstairs. She was excited at what was passing within herself. Downstairs they had baited and bothered her. Twice and thrice they had caught her out. Her tale had varied even at its first repetition, so that Virginia had raised her brows and corrected her. She had first said that she would not know her visitor again – then that she might – and now she knew that she infallibly would. She would know him by his marvellous eyes. She would know him by other things, that seemed to add themselves, one after another, as if out of the shadows into the glad incredible day. She had placed the sword on the quilted bed; she stretched herself beside it. It was The Tempest that she had been reading the night before, and the thin volume was still on her bedside table. She opened it at the lines and read:
‘And like this insubstantial pageant faded Leave not a wrack behind –’
Oh, was Shakespeare always right, and was never a wrack left behind?
‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on –’
Oh, could not our little life, just for once, be rounded, not with a sleep, but with a waking?
She continued to read, the book in her left hand, the fingers of her right hand tapping lightly on the sword’s hilt.
Suddenly she dropped the book and looked round the room. She had slept in it dozens of times, but now she looked at it as if she had never seen it before. Here was the bed, there the wardrobe, there the dressing-table, there the glimpse of the lily-garden below. One thing only was new in it – the rosewood door. She raised herself on her elbow, looking at the door. She slid from the bed and advanced towards it with the sword still in her hand. Softly and richly red the door took the light of the window in its shallow decorated curve. All of a sudden she found herself passionately longing to know where the door had come from.
4
Only the inner ring of the family knew about the sword, but late that afternoon there happened something that filled the whole house-party with an almost awed delight. Miss Virginia was at the hall-telephone, and Henry and both the Owen men ran up as her explosive cry broke from her.
‘No! –’
‘What is it Virginia?’ they cried.
‘Hush! . . . When? . . . Here? Here now? . . . Oh, my dear, I always knew it! I was always sure that God had preserved him!’
‘Virginia! What is it?’ For other of the guests had come up, and Virginia’s pinky face was as if tapers of thankfulness burned behind it.
‘Tonight? Oh, at once! This afternoon! . . . Oh, my dear, my dear!’
Then she turned.
‘Barty!’ she said faintly.
‘What!’
‘He’s alive! He’s home! He’s coming here tonight!’
‘Barty Paton!’
‘Yes . . . Oh, get me some eau-de-Cologne somebody – I feel as if I should fain
t –’
‘Run upstairs for my salts, Sibyl –’
‘No, it doesn’t matter – ’ Miss Virginia was laughing and crying both at once.
‘Who is he? Anything to the other young Paton?’ Charles Owen asked.
‘Yes. Humphrey’s brother. He was four years older than Humphrey. He was posted missing in ’16. They have that place at Wychelm, about a dozen miles away.’
‘By – Jove! What they must have felt!’
‘Since 1916!’
‘The waking of the dead!’
‘By – Jove!’
And the more they thought of it the greater their wonder became. Agatha alone was not there, knew nothing of the resurrection. She was in her room, lying half-undressed under her quilt, in a profound sleep. The tea-gong had not wakened her, Virginia’s push at the door and peep in did not waken her. Softly Virginia closed the door again. She met James on her way down the stairs.
‘Agatha’s fast asleep,’ she whispered.
‘I should let her sleep. That was certainly a most extraordinary circumstance she told us this morning. Is Agatha prone to – er – these experiences?’
‘Most unusual I should say.’
‘In any case she couldn’t look a sword into existence. I confess myself puzzled.’
‘What I’m most puzzled at is the way it seems to get added to as it goes on,’ Miss Virginia opined. ‘She said nothing to me about the man’s being brown, nor having wonderful eyes, nor the shape of his head. And yet she’s the most truthful person.’
‘It is just possible that Arthur is mistaken, and that there has been a sword in the house all the time.’
‘But how did it get into Agatha’s room? She says she picked it up from the floor.’
‘Agatha is truthful, I concur – ’ said Mr James doubtfully.
‘You surely don’t disbelieve her, James! What earthly motive could she have for bringing a sword into the house and making up this story about it?’
‘And I carried her cases up myself,’ mused Mr James.
‘Well, I shall let her sleep till it’s time to dress.’
‘I wish she’d sleep that sword out of existence again,’ Mr James complained, for the thing was beginning to worry him.
The Dead of Night Page 23