Jane looked modestly at the carpet, which was of a lively shade of crimson.
“I’m afraid I don’t,” she said, in a very small voice.
An unbecoming flush mounted to Daphne’s cheeks.
“I don’t know how you’ve got the face,” she said.
Much to Jane’s relief, she withdrew from her to the farthest corner of the sofa, and then glared.
“Poor Arnold! Aunt Ethel always did say you were sly. She always said she wouldn’t trust you a yard.” She paused, sniffed, and then added, in what was meant for a tone of great dignity:
“And please, whom has Arnold married?”
“Her—her name is Jane, I believe,” said Jane, with a tremor.
At this moment she became aware that Lady Heritage had risen to her feet. Mrs. Cottingham’s voice clamoured for attention.
“Oh, Lady Heritage, not without your tea! It won’t be a moment. Indeed, I couldn’t dream of letting you go like this. Just a cup of tea, you know, so refreshing. Indeed, it would distress me to think of your facing that long drive without your tea.”
Raymond stood perfectly still, her face weary and unresponsive.
“I am afraid my time is not my own,” she said, and crossed the room to where the two girls were sitting. They both rose, Daphne with a jerk that dislodged a photograph frame.
“I am afraid I must interrupt your talk,” said Lady Heritage. “Were you living school triumphs over again? I suppose you swept off all the prizes between you?”
If there was irony in the indifferent voice, Miss Todhunter was unaware of it. She laughed rather loudly, and said:
“Renata never won a prize in her life.”
“Oh!” said Raymond, with a lift of the brows. “I am surprised. I pictured her always at the head of her class, and winning everything.”
Daphne laughed again. She was still angry.
“I’m afraid she’s been putting on side,” she said.
“Why, Miss Basing would have fainted with surprise if she had found Renata anywhere near the top of anything. Or me either,” she added, with reluctant honesty.
“Miss Molloy,” said Raymond, “ask Mrs. Cottingham if she will let Lewis know that we are ready;” and as Jane moved away, she continued, “I should have thought her languages now…”
Daphne’s mouth fell open.
“Oh, my goodness,” she said, “she must have been piling it on. Why, her languages were rotten, absolutely rotten. Why, Mademoiselle said that I was enough to break her heart, but when it came to Renata it was just, ‘Mon dieu!’ the whole time; and then there were rows because Miss Basing thought it was profane. Only, somehow it seems different in French—don’t you think?”
Lady Heritage looked at Daphne as though she had some difficulty in thinking about her at all.
“I see,” she said gravely, and then Mrs. Cottingham bore down upon them.
“Tea should have been ready if I had known,” she said. Her colour had risen, and her voice shook a little. “If I could persuade you… I’m sure it won’t be more than a moment. But, of course, if you must… but if I had only known. You see, I thought to myself we would have our talk first, and then enjoy our tea comfortably, and indeed it is just coming in—but, of course, if you are obliged to go…”
“Thank you very much; I am obliged to go. Good-bye, Mrs. Cottingham. You’ll write to Masterson and let me know what the answer is? I think I hear the car.”
Miss Todhunter, who had embraced her friend so warmly half an hour before, parted from her with a tepid handshake; but if neither Daphne nor Mrs. Cottingham considered the visit a success, Lady Heritage seemed to derive some satisfaction from it, and Jane told herself that not only had a danger been averted, but a distinct advantage had been gained.
Chapter Fourteen
Jane ran straight up to her room when they got back, but she was no sooner there than it came into her mind to wonder whether she had put away the files which she had been working on just before she went into the garden. Think as she would, she could not be sure.
She ran down again and went quickly along the corridor to the library. The door was unlatched. She touched the handle, pushed it a little, and stood hesitating. Lady Heritage was speaking.
“It’s a satisfaction to know just where one is. Sometimes I’ve been convinced she was a fool, and then again… well, I’ve wondered. I wondered this afternoon in the garden. That man on the headland gives one to think furiously. Who on earth could it have been?”
“I… don’t… know.”
“But I don’t believe she saw him. I don’t believe she saw anything or knew why she was frightened. She just got a start… a shock—began to run without knowing why, and ran herself into a blind panic. She looked quite idiotic when I was questioning her.”
“Oh,” thought Jane. “It’s horrible to listen at doors, but what am I to do?”
What she did was to go on listening. She heard Lady Heritage’s rare laugh.
“Then this afternoon—my dear Jeffrey, it would have convinced you or any one. The friend—this Daphne Todhunter—well, only a fool could have made a bosom friend of her, and, as I told you, even she had the lowest opinion of her adored Renata’s brains.”
“I don’t know,” said Ember again. “You say she’s a fool, I say she’s a fool, her friend says she’s a fool, but something, some instinct in me protests.”
“Womanly intuition,” said Lady Heritage, with a mocking note.
There was silence; then:
“These girls—were they alone together?”
“No. They conducted what appeared to be a curiously emotional conversation at the other end of Mrs. Cottingham’s dreadful drawing-room, which always reminds me of a parish jumble sale.”
Ember’s voice sounded suddenly much nearer, as if he had crossed the room.
“Emotional? What do you mean?” he said quickly. Lady Heritage laughed again.
“Mean?” she said. “Does that sort of thing mean anything?”
“What sort of thing? Please, it’s important.”
“Oh, hand-holding, and a tearful embrace or two. The usual accompaniments of schoolgirl schwarmerei.”
Jane could hear that Ember was moving restlessly. Her own heart was beating. She knew very well that in Ember’s mind there was just one thought—“Suppose she has told Daphne Todhunter.”
“Which of them cried?” said Ember sharply.
“I think they both did—Miss Todhunter most.”
“And you couldn’t hear what they were saying?”
“Not a word.”
“I must know. Will you send for her and find out? It’s of the first importance.”
“You think…”
“She may have told this girl what we’ve been trying to get out of her. I must know. Look here, I’ll take a book and sit down over there. She won’t notice me! Send for her and begin about other things, then ask her why her friend was so distressed.…”
Jane heard Ember move again and knew that this time it was towards the bell. She turned and ran back along the way by which she had come. Five minutes later she was entering the library to find Lady Heritage at her table and Ember at the far end of the room buried in a book.
“I want the unanswered-letter file.” Lady Heritage’s voice was very businesslike.
Jane brought it over and waited whilst Raymond turned over the letters, frowning.
“I don’t see Lady Manning’s letter.”
“You answered it yesterday.”
“So I did. Miss Molloy—why did your friend cry this afternoon?”
“Daphne?”
“Yes, Daphne. Why did she cry?”
“Oh, she does, you know.”
“But I suppose not entirely without some cause.”
“She was angry with me,” said Jane very low.
“Yes? I noticed that she did not kiss you when you went away.”
“No, she’s angry. You see”—Jane hung her head—“you see, she thinks—
I’m afraid she thinks that I didn’t treat her brother very well.”
“Her brother?”
“Yes. She wanted me to be engaged to him, but he’s married some one else, so I think it’s rather silly of her to be cross with me, don’t you?”
“I really don’t know.”
Out of the tail of her eye Jane saw Mr. Ember nod his head just perceptibly. Lady Heritage must have seen it too, for she pushed the letter file over to Jane.
“Put this away. No, I don’t want anything more at present.”
Tea came in as she spoke.
Afterwards in her own room Jane sat down on the broad window ledge with her hands in her lap, looking out over the sea. The lovely day was drawing slowly to a lovelier close, the sun-drenched air absolutely still, absolutely clear. The tide was low, the sea one sheet of unbroken blue, except where the black rocks, more visible than Jane had ever seen them, pierced the surface.
Jane did not quite know what had happened to her. Her moment of exhilaration was gone. She was not afraid, but she felt a sense of horror which she had not known before. She had thought of this adventure as her adventure, her own risk. Somehow she had never really related it to other people. For the first time, she began to see Formula “A,” not as something which threatened her, but as something that menaced the world. It was ridiculous that it was Mrs. Cottingham and Daphne Todhunter who had caused this change.
It is one thing to think vaguely of civilisation being swept away, and quite another to visualise some concrete, humdrum Tom, Dick, or Harry being swept horribly out of existence. Jane’s imagination suddenly showed her Formula “A”—The Process, whatever they chose to call the horrible thing—in operation; showed it annihilating fussy Mrs. Cottingham, with her overcrowded drawing-room and her overcrowded talk; showed it doing something horrible to fat, common Daphne Todhunter. The romance of adventure fell away, the glamour that sometimes surrounds catastrophe shrivelled and was gone. It was horrible, only horrible.
Jane kept seeing Mrs. Cottingham’s ugly room, and Raymond Heritage standing there, as she had seen her that afternoon, like a statue that had nothing to do with its surroundings. All at once she knew what it was that Lady Heritage reminded her of—not Mercury at all, but Medusa with the lovely, tortured face, stone and yet suffering.
As she looked out over that calm sea she had before her all the time the vision of Medusa, and of hundreds and hundreds of quite ordinary, vulgar, commonplace Mrs. Cottinghams and Daphne Todhunters being turned to stone. A tremor began to shake her. It kept coming again and again. Then, all at once, the tears were running down her face. It was then it came to her that she could not bear to think of Daphne as she had seen her at the last, with that hurt, angry, puzzled look.
“She’s a fat lump, but Arnold is her brother, and Renata is her friend, and she thinks they’ve failed each other and been horrid to her. I can’t bear it.”
At that moment Jane hated herself fiercely because Daphne’s tears had amused her.
“You’ve got a brick instead of a heart, and, if you get eliminated, it’ll serve you right.”
She dabbed her eyes very hard, straightened her hair, and ran downstairs to the library again.
Ember was the sole occupant, and Jane addressed him with diffidence:
“Mr. Ember, do you think I might… do you think Lady Heritage would mind… I mean, may I use the telephone?”
“What for?” said Ember, looking at her over the edge of his paper.
“I thought perhaps I might,” said Jane… “I mean, I wanted to say something to my friend, the one who is staying with Mrs. Cottingham.”
“Ah-—yes, why not?”
“Then I may?”
“Oh yes, certainly. Do you want me to go?”
Jane presented a picture of modest confusion. It was concern for Daphne Todhunter that had brought her downstairs, concern and the prickings of remorse, but at the sight of Ember, she experienced what she would have described as a brain-wave.
“If you wouldn’t mind,” she said. “I’m so sorry to disturb you, but I did rather want to talk privately to her.”
“Oh, by all means.” Ember’s tone was most amiable, his departure most courteously prompt.
Jane would have been prepared to bet the eighteen- pence which constituted her sole worldly fortune to a brass farthing that upon the other side of the door his attentive ear would miss no word of her conversation.
She gave Mrs. Cottingham’s number, and waited in some anxiety.
The voice that said “Hullo!” was unmistakably Miss Todhunter’s, and Jane began at once:
“Oh, Daphne, is that you? I want to speak to you so badly. Are you alone? Good! I’m so glad.” At the other end of the line Daphne was saying grumpily:
“I don’t know what you mean. There are three people in the room. I keep telling you so.”
“Good!” said Jane, with a little more emphasis. “I want to speak to you most particularly. I’ve been awfully unhappy since this afternoon; I really have. And I wanted to say—I mean to ask you not to be upset about Arnold. It’s all for the best, really. Please, please, don’t think badly of him. It’s not his fault, and I know you’ll like his wife very much indeed. He’ll tell you all about it some day, and you’ll think it ever so romantic. So you won’t be unhappy about it, will you? I hate people to be unhappy.”
Without waiting for Miss Todhunter’s reply, Jane hung up the receiver. After a decent interval she opened the door. Mr. Ember was at the far end of the passage, waiting patiently.
Chapter Fifteen
Jane waked that night, and did not know why she waked. After a moment it came to her that she had been dreaming. In her dream something unpleasant had happened, and she did not know what it was. She sat up in the darkness with her hands pressed over her eyes, trying to remember.
The vague feeling of having passed through some horrifying experience oppressed her far more than definite recollection could have done.
She got up, switched on the light, and began to pace up and down, but she could not shake off that feeling of having left something, she did not know what, just behind her, just out of sight. She looked round for the book she had been reading, but she remembered now that she had left it downstairs. She looked at her watch. It was three o’clock. The house would be absolutely still and empty. It would not take her two minutes to fetch the book from the drawing-room. She slipped on Renata’s dressing-gown, put out her light, and opened the door.
With a little shock of surprise she saw that the corridor was dark. Some one must have put out the light which always burned at the far end. Instead of the usual faintly rosy glow, there was darkness thinning to dusk, and just at the stairhead a vivid splash of moonlight. After a moment’s hesitation Jane slipped out of her room, leaving the door ajar. Somehow she had not reckoned upon having to cross that brightly lighted space. She came slowly to the head of the stairs and looked down into the hall. It was like looking into the blackness and silence of a vast well. She could see nothing—nothing at all. The moon was shining in through the rose window above the great door. There was a shield in the window, a shield with the Luttrell arms, and the light came through the glass in a great beam shot with colour, and struck the portrait of Lady Heritage and the vine leaves and grapes on the newel just below. The window and the portrait were on the same level, and the ray seemed to make a brilliant cleavage between the silvery dusk above and the dense gloom below.
Jane descended the stairs, walking carefully so as to make no noise. At the foot she turned sharply to the left and passed the study door, the fireplace, and the steel gate which shut off the north wing. The door of the Yellow Drawing-Room was straight in front of her. She opened it softly and went in.
The book would be on the little table to the right of the fireplace, because she remembered putting it there when Lady Heritage made an unexpectedly early move. She stood for a moment visualising the arrangement of the chairs, and then walked straight to the right plac
e. The book was where she had left it, put down open, a bad habit for which Jimmy had often rebuked her. She was back at the door with it, and just about to pass the threshold when she heard a sound. Instantly she stood still, listening. The sound came from the other end of the hall, where the shadows lay deepest round the massive oak door.
“But there can’t be any one at the door at this hour,” said Jane—“there can’t, there can’t possibly.”
The sound came again, something between a rustle and a creak, but so faint that no hearing less acute than Jane’s would have caught it.
“It’s on the left of the door, underneath Willoughby Luttrell’s picture.…”
Jane suddenly pressed her hand to her lips and made an involuntary movement backwards, for there was an unmistakable click, and then, slow and faint, a footfall. Jane stood rigid, staring into the darkness of the corner. She thought she heard a sigh, and then the footsteps crossed the hall, coming nearer. At the stair foot they paused, and then began to ascend.
Jane gazed into the deeply shadowed space where the footfall sounded, but nothing—not the slightest glimpse of anything moving—came to her straining sight.
She looked up and saw the level ray of moonlight overhead. Whoever climbed the stair must pass up into the light and be visible, but from where she stood she could only see the side of the stair like a black wall. But she must see—she must. If some one had come out of the darkness where there was no door she must know who it was. Her bare feet made no sound as she moved from the sheltering doorway. Step by step she kept pace with those slow mounting footsteps. She passed the steel gate, and, feeling her way along the wall, came to a standstill by the cold black hearth. Then, with her whole body tense, she turned and looked up. There was a darker shadow among the shadows, a shadow that moved upwards, towards the beam of moonlight. Jane watched, breathless, and from where The Portrait hung, the sombre eyes of Raymond Heritage seemed to watch too. Out of blackness into dusk a something emerged; one step more and the moonlight fell on a dark hood. Up into the light came a cloaked figure, draped from head to foot, shapeless.
The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith: A Golden Age Mystery Page 13