The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith: A Golden Age Mystery

by Patricia Wentworth

  Almost as the sound reached her she had blown her candle out and was pinching the glow from the wick. For a moment the darkness was full of phantom tongue-shaped flames; then she stopped seeing them and saw instead a faint glow coming from the direction in which she herself had come on her way to the laboratory. Somebody was coming along the passage. If she had gone back by the same way that she had come, she would have met this somebody. As it was, she might escape notice. If the person were going to the laboratory, he would have to take a sharp turn to the left, a right-angled turn. The passage in which she was ran off at an acute angle, and the person approaching would have his back to her as he passed.

  The glow became a beam. Next moment Ember passed without turning his head. Jane saw the back of his shoulder dark against the light from his torch, and caught a fleeting glimpse of his profile, just enough for recognition and no more. Indeed, it was the fur coat that she recognised as much as the man. She stood quite still whilst he switched on the electric light and passed into the laboratory, then she turned and walked away as quickly as she dared, feeling her way by the wall till a turn in the passage gave her enough courage to light her candle. She put the spent match in her pocket, looked ahead, and drew a sharp, almost agonised, breath.

  About two feet from where she stood, and exactly in her path, was the black mouth of an uncovered well. Jane looked at it, and quite suddenly, she had no idea how, found herself sitting on the floor with hot wax running down her hand from the guttering candle. It seemed to be quite a little time before she could make sure of walking steadily enough to skirt the well. She went by it at last with averted head and fingers that, regardless of slime, clung to the wall.

  As she had expected, the passage ran suddenly into the main corridor. She passed the headland exit, and once more was on unknown ground. The passage swung round to the right and began to slope downhill. Jane held her candle high and looked at every step; but there were no more traps. She quickened her pace almost to a run as the dreadful thought came to her that Ember might follow Molloy. The passage sloped more and more. Finally there were steps, smooth, worn, and damp, that went down, and down, and down. At the bottom of the steps a yard or two of peculiarly slimy passage, and then a blank stone wall. Obviously Jane had arrived.

  She looked at the stone wall, and the stone wall presented a front of uncompromising blankness. She looked up and she looked down, she looked to the left and she looked to the right, she gazed at the ceiling and she gazed at the floor. Nowhere was there any sign of a catch, a knob, a spring, or a lever. There must be one, but where was it? She tapped the wall and stamped on the floor, but with no result. The door in the panelling opened from inside with an ordinary handle. She had not been close enough to Lady Heritage to see what she did to pivot the stone behind the bench on the headland. In any case, this exit might have been quite differently planned.

  A most dreadful sense of discouragement came over her. To have got so far, to have been, as it were, halfway to safety and Henry, and to have to turn back again! Then for the first time it occurred to her that, even if she had got out and got away, she had no money and no hat. She looked down at the maroon slippers, and pictured herself descending ticketless upon a London platform in bedroom slippers whose original colour was almost obscured by green slime.

  Jane wanted to laugh, and she wanted to cry. She did not know which she wanted most, but presently she found that the tears were running down her face. She kept winking them away, because it is not at all easy to climb slippery stone steps by the light of a guttering candle if your eyes keep filling with tears. The tears magnified the candle flame, and sometimes made it look like two or three little flames, which was dreadfully confusing. Jane stood still, wiped her eyes with determined energy, and then climbed up more steps and back along the way that she had come.

  At the headland exit she stood still, taking breath and thought. Nothing would induce her to pass that well again. She would keep to the main passage, and, horrid thought, she would have to put out her light in case Ember should suddenly emerge from the side passage.

  “Thinking about things makes them worse, not better,” said Jane to herself. “It’s perfectly beastly; but then it’s all perfectly beastly.”

  She blew out the candle and moved slowly forward.

  It seemed ages before she came past the opening where she had run into Henry to the foot of the steps. She went up three steps, raised her foot to take the fourth, and felt a hardly perceptible check. Instantly she drew back a shade, set her foot down beside the other, and put out a tentative, groping hand. There was a thread of cotton stretched from wall to wall at the level of her waist. If her movements had been less gentle she would have brushed through it without noticing. Then, as she stood there thinking, the thread between her fingers, something else came to her. The last yard of passage just at the stair foot had felt different—dry, gritty.

  Jane descended the three steps backwards, and, crouching on the bottom one, put down her hand and felt the floor of the passage. There was sand on it, dry sand which had not been there when she came down, and in the dry sand her footprints would be clearly marked. Obviously Mr. Ember had his suspicions and his methods of verifying them: “Though what on earth he’d make of cork soles I don’t know,” said Jane. She decided not to worry him with this problem.

  It was horribly dangerous, but she must have a light. She set her candle end on the step above her and struck a match. It made a noise like a squib and went out. She struck another and got the candle lighted.

  The sand was yellow sand off the beach, but nice and dry. Two and a half of her footprints showed plainly on its smooth surface. Jane leaned forward and smoothed them out. Then she blew out her candle and felt safer. Feeling for the thread of cotton, she crawled beneath it, then very, very slowly up the rest of the steps, her hand before her all the way till she came to the door in the panelling. She opened it and slipped through into the hall.

  The grey, uncertain light was filtering into it. Everything looked strange and cold. Jane closed the door, and never knew that a loose strand of cotton had fallen as she passed. Neither did she know that at that very moment Jeffrey Ember was standing by the open well mouth, the ray from his powerful electric torch focused upon a little patch of candle grease.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Anthony Luttrell caught a slow local train at Withstead—the sort of train that serves little country places all over England. It dawdled slowly from station to station, sometimes taking what appeared to be an unnecessary rest at a signal box as well. It finally reached Maxton ten minutes late, thereby missing the London express and leaving Anthony Luttrell with a two hours’ wait.

  Waiting just at present was about as congenial an occupation as being racked. He walked up and down with a dragging, restless step, and tried unsuccessfully to shut off his torturing thoughts behind a safety curtain. The time dragged intolerably. Presently he left the platform and went up on to the bridge which ran from one side of the station to the other. Here he began his pacing again, stopping every now and then to watch a train come in or a train go out. From the bridge one could see all the platforms.

  When an express rushed through, the whole structure shook and clouds of white steam blotted out everything. It was when the steam was clearing away, and the roar of the receding train was dying down, that Anthony noticed another local running in to the Withstead platform. He bent over the rail and watched the passengers get out—just a handful. There was a young woman with two children, two farmers, three or four nondescript women, and a big man with a suit-case. Anthony looked at the big man and went on looking at him. Something about him seemed vaguely familiar. The man came along the platform and began to mount the steps that led up to the bridge. Half-way up he put down his suit-case, took off his hat for a moment as if to cool himself, and stood there looking up. Then he replaced his hat, shifted the suit-case to the other hand, and came up the rest of the steps. He seemed hot.

  He passed A
nthony and went down the steps on to the London platform. Anthony followed him.

  When the big man stood still and looked up, eight years were suddenly wiped out. Memory is a queer thing, and plays queer tricks. What Anthony’s memory did, was to set him down in the year 1912, in the gallery of a hall in Chicago. There was a packed and rather vociferous audience. There was a big man on the platform, a big man who seemed hot. His speech was, in fact, of a sufficiently inflammatory nature to make any one feel hot. It breathed fire and fury. Its rolling eloquence must have involved a good deal of physical exertion. Suddenly, after a period, the speaker stopped and looked up at the gallery for applause. It came like a veritable cyclone. The meeting was subsequently broken up by the police.

  Anthony remembered that the speaker’s name was Molloy. If Mr. Molloy had come from Withstead, it occurred to Anthony that his destination would probably be of interest.

  The London train was due in ten minutes. When it came in, Molloy got into a third-class carriage, and Anthony followed his example.

  It was at seven-thirty on Sunday morning that Mrs. March’s cook, who was sweeping the hall, was given what she afterwards described as a turn by the arrival of an odd-looking man who would give no name and insisted on seeing her master.

  “Awful he looked with that ’orrid scar and his ’air that wild, and not giving me a chance to shut the door in his face, for he pushes in the moment I got it open—that’s what give me the worst turn of all—and walks into the dining-room as bold as brass, and says, ‘I want to see Captain March—and be quick, please.’”

  When Henry came into the dining-room he shut the door behind him very quickly and looked as if he also had had a turn.

  “Good Lord, Tony, what’s happened?” he said.

  “Nothing,” said Anthony, with nonchalance.

  “Then in Heaven’s name, why are you here?”

  “I’m through, that’s all. You can’t say I didn’t give notice.”

  “It’s not a question of what I say, it’s what Piggy’ll say.”

  “Oh, I’ve got a sop for Piggy. I’ve been doing the faithful sleuth. I’ve trailed a man from Withstead to a highly genteel boarding-house in South Kensington; and as I last saw the gentleman addressing an I. W. W. meeting in Chicago, I imagine Piggy might be interested.”

  “Who was it?” said Henry quickly.

  “Molloy.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Good man. You’re in luck. Molloy, under the interesting alias of Bernier, has just been selling the Government Formula ‘A.’ He was trailed over here with the swag and then lost sight of. For a dead cert he’s been to Luttrell Marches by the back way and seen Ember.”

  Anthony turned away.

  “There’s the devil to pay down there,” he said.… “No, no, the girl’s all right.… This is something I ought to have told you when you were down. I ought to have told you the whole thing. I couldn’t bring myself to.”

  “Sit down, Tony. What is it?”

  “No, I can’t sit.” He walked to the window and stood there, looking out. His hands made restless movements. He spoke, keeping his back to Henry: “You didn’t go through all the passages?”

  “No, I was going to to-night.”

  “I ought to have told you. The big place under the terrace, you know—they’ve turned it into a laboratory. Molloy may have been working there, for all I know; he had the name of an expert chemist.”

  “Yes, go on.”

  “You’d have found it yourself to-night, but I couldn’t let you go blundering in unwarned. Ember might be there—any one might be there. It’s damn-able, Henry, but I believe she’s up to her neck in it.” Henry was silent. There seemed to be nothing to say. He also believed that Raymond Heritage was up to her neck in whatever secret enterprise was being developed at Luttrell Marches. He remembered the passion in her voice when she said, “I should like to smash it all,” and he remembered how she had sung, “Would we not shatter it to bits, and then re-mould it nearer to the heart’s desire?” Whatever the thing was, he believed she was in it up to her neck. So he was silent, and Anthony was grateful for his silence.

  The silence was broken by a tapping, and a rustling, and the turning of a handle. The door opened very abruptly, and Mrs. de Luttrelle March made a precipitous entrance. She wore a pink silk negligee and a boudoir cap embroidered in forget-me-nots, also an expression of extreme terror—the cook’s description of their early visitor having prepared her to find Henry’s corpse stretched upon the hearth-rug. When a living and annoyed Henry confronted her, she clung to his arm and gazed round-eyed at the long, thin man who had swung round at her entrance. Uncertainty succeeded fear. Henry was saying, “Do go back to your room, Mother,” but it is doubtful whether she heard him.

  Gradually her grasp of his arm relaxed. She walked slowly across the room, and stared with horrified amazement at Anthony.

  He looked over her head at Henry, shrugged his shoulders just perceptibly, and made as if to turn back to the window again. Either that shrug, or the faintly sarcastic lift of the eyebrows that accompanied it, brought a sort of broken gasp to Mrs. March’s lips. She put out her hand, touched his coat sleeve with her finger-tips, and said:

  “Anthony—it’s Anthony—oh, Henry, it’s Anthony!”

  She backed a little at each repetition of the name, looked wildly round, and sinking on to the nearest chair, burst into tears.

  “Henry—oh, please somebody speak,” she sobbed.

  “It’s all right, Aunt Rosa. I’m not a ghost,” said Anthony in his driest voice.

  Henry experienced a cold dread of what his mother would say next. She had talked so much and thought so incessantly of Luttrell Marches. Latterly she had been so sure of Henry’s ownership, and so proud of it. What would she say now—as she dropped her hands from her face and gazed with streaming eyes at Anthony, who regarded her quizzically?

  “Tony, you’re so dreadfully changed. That fearful scar—oh, my dear, where have you been all this time? We thought you were dead. I don’t know how I recognised you. And you were such a pretty little boy, my dear. I used to be jealous because you had longer eyelashes than Henry, but you haven’t now.”

  “Haven’t I?” said Anthony, with perfect gravity. He took his aunt’s plump white hand and gave it a squeeze and a pat. “It’s very nice of you to welcome me, Aunt Rosa. The scar isn’t as bad as it looks, and Henry’s going to lend me a razor and some clothes.”

  It was later, when Anthony could be heard splashing in the bathroom, that Mrs. March beckoned Henry into her room, flung her arms round his neck, and burst into tears all over again.

  “My poor boy,” she sobbed, “it’s so hard on you —about Luttrell Marches, I mean—do you mind dreadfully?”

  “Not an atom. Besides, I knew Tony was alive; I always told you he would turn up.”

  “I couldn’t think of any one but him at first,” said Mrs. March, sniffing gently. “Then afterwards it came over me Henry won’t have the place—and I couldn’t help crying because, of course, one does get to count on a thing, with every one saying to me as they did, ‘Of course your son comes into Luttrell Marches, such a beautiful place,’—and so it is, and I did think it was yours, and what I felt about it was, if I feel badly about it, what must Henry feel? You see, don’t you?”

  Henry endeavoured to disengage himself.

  “Yes, Mother, but you needn’t worry—you really needn’t. Look here, you dress and don’t cry any more. I’ve got to telephone.”

  Mrs. March clasped her hands about his arm.

  “Henry, wait, just a minute,” she said. “That Miss Smith—you’re not still thinking about her, are you?”

  Henry laughed.

  “I am,” he said.

  “Well—” said Mrs. March. She fidgeted with Henry’s coat sleeve, bridled a little, and looked down at her mauve satin slippers. “Well—you know, my dear boy, I didn’t want to be unkind, but I simply could
n’t picture her at Luttrell Marches—as its mistress, I mean—and I’m sure you did think me unkind about it; but now that it’s all different—Tony coming back like this does make a difference, of course, and what I was going to say about it is this. If you really do care for her and it would make up to you for the disappointment, I wouldn’t hold out about it, not if you really wanted it, my dear, and really cared for her, only of course you’d have to be quite sure, because once you’re married you’re married, and there’s no way out of it except divorce, and, whether it’s the fashion now or not, I always have said and always will say, that it’s not respectable, it really isn’t, and it’s not a thing we’ve ever had in our family—not on either side,” added Mrs. March thoughtfully, after a slight pause for breath.

  “I really do care for her, and I really am sure,” said Henry. He kissed his mother affectionately, and once more attempted to detach himself from her hold.

  Mrs. March let go with one hand in order to dab her eyes with a scrap of pink-and-white chiffon. Then she looked up at her son fondly.

  “Your eyelashes are much the longest,” she said.

  Henry made an abrupt departure.

  “Piggy’ll see you as soon as you can get there,” he told Anthony five minutes later—“at his house. I’m off to Luttrell Marches. I was going down anyhow to-night, but, things being as they are, I think I’ll get a move on. Piggy’s sending some one to the address you gave, to keep an eye on Molloy. He doesn’t want him arrested yet, as he’s in hopes that Belcovitch will roll up—that’s the other man concerned in the actual sale of the formula. He went to Vienna, but was in Paris yesterday. Good Lord, Tony, I’m glad you’ve got rid of that beastly beard!”