The Shadow In The House

by Maxwell March

  CHAPTER XVIII

  Conference

  “YES, YES, very unfortunate. Very unfortunate indeed. But not your fault, Edith. Don’t get hysterical.”

  The brusqueness of Lord Tollesbury’s tone belied his words, and Mrs Mortimer, sitting in one of the leather armchairs in the office in which Mary had had her interview with him only a few days before, wiped her eyes.

  “It happened in a flash,” she said. “I saw her going through the booking hall with a man in chauffeur’s uniform. When I shouted she didn’t hear me, and I reached the pavement in time to see him push her into a car, which drove off at great speed. Before I could catch up with him through the crush he had disappeared. There were so many men in chauffeur’s uniform,” she added lamely.

  Lord Tollesbury passed his hand over his sparse grey hair and glanced across the room to where Peter, pale and expressionless, stood with his hands in his pockets looking helplessly at the woman.

  With his chief’s eyes upon him the young man appeared to make a violent effort to grasp the details of the situation.

  “When you say ‘thrust’ …” he said. “Did she go unwillingly?”

  “Oh yes. I’m sure of it.” Mrs Mortimer blinked at him. “It was most extraordinary. When I saw her in the booking hall she was talking earnestly to the man. She looked worried and sort of excited, and he was grave too. But when they reached the car he seemed to gather up his strength and push her in, if you see what I mean. There was no pause for conversation or anything like that, but the door slammed behind her and the car moved off at once. It looked almost like a kidnapping.”

  There was a long silence after she had spoken, and after a pause she tried to amplify her story.

  “I didn’t like to go to the police. I didn’t know what to do. So I came straight to you.”

  “Yes yes, quite right, Edith, quite right.” Lord Tollesbury spoke absently, but his cadaverous face wore an expression of acute anxiety. “Did you get the number of the car?”

  The woman looked at him pathetically. “No, it was wet, and I couldn’t really see. There was mud all over it. It was GG something, I think.”

  “That’s Scotland. That doesn’t help us much. Oh well, all right, Edith. You go along home and wait. I’m sorry your trip has been postponed like this but——”

  “Oh, Miles, I’m so sorry!” Her voice broke, and he went over to her, putting his arm round her and leading her gently towards the door.

  “There there, my dear,” he said. “There there. It can’t he helped.” He patted her hand, allowed her to peck his cheek and dismissed her.

  When she had gone he closed the door and sighed heavily.

  “Well, Muir-David,” he said, “any ideas?”

  Peter seemed to force himself to speak.

  “If she was kidnapped,” he said, “and by the De Lianes, it would look——”

  “If! If! There’re too many ifs.” The words broke from the older man.

  “I never thought she was a liar,” said Peter doggedly, “and if——”

  Lord Tollesbury met his eyes. “There’s something in that,” he said. “You mean her story may be true?”

  He touched a bell under his desk and spoke abruptly to the secretary who answered it.

  “Send Lissen.”

  George Lissen, stolid as ever, came into the room and stood looking at his master woodenly.

  “Can you remember that girl’s story? You know what I’m talking about.”

  Mr Lissen bowed his head in courteous acquiescence.

  “I can remember some of it, my lord.”

  “What was it?”

  The two men pieced together the fragments of Mary’s confession that Lissen could remember. Peter listened to the revelations, his round eyes hard and startled.

  “Married to a dying man … Impersonation of absent cousin … Forced to become a crook …”

  Lord Tollesbury threw up his hands. “It sounds like the ravings of a lunatic. We’re doing no good, Peter. We’re doing no good at all.”

  The young man was silent. There were beads of sweat upon his forehead.

  “If it were true,” he said half under his breath, “if it were true …”

  Lord Tollesbury looked at him sharply. “A case against them, you mean? That’s almost too much to hope for. That De Liane woman has always managed to keep just on the right side of the law. She’d hardly fall down in her old age unless——”

  He broke off.

  “Unless——?” repeated Peter enquiringly.

  “Unless the price was a very great one indeed,” said the older man slowly. “Think, Lissen, think! Did Miss Coleridge tell you the name of the girl she’s supposed to be impersonating?”

  George Lissen made an effort to cast his mind back over the interview he had had with the girl in the tea shop.

  “I didn’t pay much attention to it,” he murmured apologetically. “It seemed such a wild story. I think she did mention a name. Would it be Mason? Marie-Elizabeth Mason?”

  “It’s hardly a name you’d invent,” said his employer, and, pressing the bell again, he summoned a sallow young man in horn-rimmed spectacles. “Denver,” he said, “I want you to check up on something for me. Is there an heiress, a woman of considerable fortune, called Mason?”

  Leslie Denver, who was one of those invaluable human encyclopedias who are often employed in big City offices solely because of their remarkable powers of assimiliating facts, blinked behind his spectacles.

  “Yes, I think there is, sir,” he said. “I read something about her in the unofficial financial sheet only the other day. I fancy I made a note of it—in fact I’m certain of it. I’ll just go and look it up, sir.”

  He hurried out of the room, and Tollesbury looked after him, a faint smile upon his thin lips.

  “Denver has a nose for money,” he said. “It’s a peculiar gift. Ought to get him somewhere.”

  The young man was back again within a minute or two. Lord Tollesbury answered his discreet knock irritably.

  “Well?” he demanded.

  “Miss Marie-Elizabeth Mason inherits three hundred thousand pounds, mostly invested in——”

  “You can skip that. Who is she?”

  Mr Denver looked hurt. “The money was her mother’s, and the girl remained in Australia until her majority. She has now come over here and is staying with her guardian, who until now has had full control of the interest from the fortune.”

  “Who is that? What’s the name, man? Don’t beat about the bush. …”

  “Her aunt, a certain Mrs Eva de Liane, living at Heronhoe in Bedfordshire. Latcher is the solicitor.”

  There was a long silence. Lord Tollesbury took a deep breath.

  “Thank you. You may go, Denver. And you too, Lissen. I want to talk to Sir Peter.”

  As the door closed behind the two men Peter came forward shakily.

  “Then it’s true,” he said huskily. “It’s true. My God, what that kid must have suffered!”

  He stopped abruptly before the cold expression in the other man’s eyes.

  “Many mistakes have been made, my dear Peter, by people jumping to conclusions,” Lord Tollesbury remarked coldly. “This story needs very careful verification. But if it’s true …”

  He did not finish the sentence. Instead he strode down the room, his hands clasping and unclasping behind him.

  “If it’s true?” said Peter hoarsely.

  “If it’s true we’ll get the whole lot of them in jail. Safest place for them, from our point of view. This may be the biggest stroke of luck we’ve ever had in our lives. Eva de Liane and her son in jail! There’s a husband too. I believe he’ll be in it.”

  “And the girl?” Peter demanded.

  “Oh, the girl as well. Her most of all. She’s the person we have to fear.”

  “But if she’s innocent?” Peter’s voice had an agonized appeal in it which he could not hide.

  Lord Tollesbury looked at him steadily, his fine brows
arching over his sunken eyes.

  “My dear Peter,” he said, “no young woman who impersonates an heiress worth three hundred thousand pounds can hope to be considered innocent.”

  CHAPTER XIX

  Blackmail

  “STILL NO SIGN of Richard?”

  Edmund Beron stood by the fireplace in his mother’s magnificent Chinese bedroom at Baron’s Tye.

  Old Mrs de Liane was sitting up in bed, a pile of reference books and a portfolio of papers spread out on the counterpane in front of her. She looked very charming in her lace shawl, a lace bonnet over her soft white hair.

  “No, not yet.”

  “But how amazing to walk out of the house like that on the very night the girl disappeared, and then not to return!”

  Mrs de Liane’s blue eyes clouded. “Yes, it is a little unusual,” she said. “But then Richard was always impulsive. I don’t think any harm has come to him. And,” she went on, looking at her elder son sharply, “I don’t think he has done anything rash.”

  Edmund Beron was silent for some moments, his heavy, handsome face dark and thoughtful.

  “You don’t think he’d double-cross us for this girl?” he said with sudden frankness.

  Mrs de Liane considered. “Men are strange about women,” she said. “But I don’t think you understand Richard. Richard is not the sort of man to fall in love with any woman, unless there was some definite material gain to himself.”

  “I wonder …” said Beron.

  “I think so,” said Mrs de Liane. “He might forget himself in a moment of passion, but in the end, in the long run, his thought would be entirely for himself. I imagine he’s amusing himself quietly somewhere until he sees which way the cat is going to jump. Richard wouldn’t even risk my anger for that girl. You won’t see him back until things are going smoothly again.”

  “Young skunk,” said Beron bitterly. “I never liked him.”

  “No, you didn’t,” said Mrs de Liane complacently, and the telephone bell began to ring.

  She took the white receiver from its place by the side of her bed, and as she recognized the voice on the other end of the wire a certain hardness crept into her expression.

  “Oh, hallo Ted,” she said, more for Beron’s benefit than her communicant’s. “I hope you’re ringing from a call box. You are? It’s very late. Oh, I see—from a hotel. Yes, we have our little daughter back. No, my dear, you can’t come home. Not yet. I particularly want you to stay on at Merton House for a day or two. Make all the enquiries you can about a young man called Peter Muir. He left there about the same time that Mary did. Find out what he was, where he worked and how long he stayed there. No, don’t bother about where he’s gone. We know that. Good night. Good-bye.”

  She rang off.

  Beron stared at her. “What are you playing at?”

  Mrs de Liane leant back among her cushions and switched off the reading lamp by her bed.

  “A very interesting little game,” she said. “Very interesting indeed. I am enjoying it. And now, my dear, I should go to bed.”

  “All right. What about the girl? You’re sure she’s safe in her room?”

  “Oh, perfectly. I showed her the dogs from the window. I’m afraid they caught sight of her. They’re very ferocious. She seemed quite alarmed. She won’t try to get out of the house by the window, and her door is locked. Do go to bed and get some sleep, Edmund. Your nerves are beginning to worry me.”

  The man moved towards the doorway and looked back at her enviously.

  “I wish I had your secret,” he said. “I wish I knew how to sleep.”

  “It’s your conscience,” said Mrs de Liane, yawning.

  He laughed bitterly. “You haven’t any, I suppose?”

  Mrs de Liane turned over. “None at all,” she said contentedly.

  Meanwhile, in the room which had been assigned to her on her first arrival at Baron’s Tye, Mary sat up in the great bed and shivered. The little lamp in the canopy above cast an oasis of light on the blue coverlet amid the surrounding shadows.

  Outside she could hear the rain falling steadily, drenchingly, upon the dead leaves. She was back again, back in this terrible old house whose very mellowness had now a sinister quality which sank into her bones and made her heart turn painfully in her side at every untoward sound.

  This time there was no escape. She knew it instinctively. As soon as she had seen from the window the four great mastiffs picking their way over the rough grass at the back of the house she had known she would never attempt to step out on the balcony and climb down into the grounds. Even if the dogs had not been there she did not think she would have gone. When she had escaped in London Mrs de Liane had recaptured her, so what possible chance would she have here in the open country, with every passer-by willing to give information about the presence of a stranger?

  If Baron’s Tye had been terrible before, now there was a new horror about it. The whole household was her enemy, all openly against her: Louise, Beron and old Mrs de Liane. The two who had shown her at least verbal kindness had gone. There was no sign of the woman in grey, and Richard had disappeared.

  She sat up in bed shivering, although the night was not cold. She was afraid, so frightened that she could not even bring herself to turn off the light and lie down. The swelling on her lip had gone down, but it still hurt considerably, and there was an ugly bruise on the point of her chin. Her hand hurt her too. She looked down at it, and a little thrill ran through her. The narrow circle of diamonds on her finger had bitten into the flesh, and, as the little stones winked up at her, she realized all over again what they meant. She was married, bound by law to a man she did not know and whom all outside evidence proved to be a criminal and a weakling dominated by a woman whose very personality seemed to be wholly evil.

  The other thing she might escape. Lord Tollesbury, for his own mysterious reasons, might save her from a great many of the dangers. But one thing neither he nor any man could ever alter—she was married.

  While her thoughts were running on she had been listening half unconsciously to the steady beat of the rain. Now there was another sound. She sat forward, crouching in the bed, her eyes wide, her heart thumping so loudly that its beat seemed to fill the room.

  The sound came again, nearer this time. A scream rose in her throat and was stifled there. She was sure of it now: someone was coming softly along the balcony, someone who had braved the presence of the great dogs loose in the grounds.

  There was a moment of silence, and then, as every separate and particular hair seemed to rise up on her head, the window was thrown up from the outside. The long blue curtains billowed out into the room, and a gust of rain-soaked air swept over her as she sat petrified in the bed.

  Once again there was a pause, and then, when it seemed that her heart must burst and her scream choked her, a tall, raincoated figure stepped lightly into the room.

  She saw his face smiling at her in the faint light, a lean brown face flecked with raindrops, two dancing blue eyes peering impudently at her.

  It was the man she had secretly longed and secretly dreaded to see, the man to whom the law gave almost every right over her, the man of whom she was afraid.

  “Hallo, Angel,” said Richard de Liane. “See my advertisement?”

  Mary did not answer. She sat very still, the light hidden in the canopy over the great bed shining down upon the bronze-gold of her hair, and her big, grave eyes wide with apprehension and something which was not altogether alarm.

  The man stood looking at her silently for a moment or two. His smile had vanished, and he hesitated, as though uncertain of his welcome.

  Outside the window the rain still pattered down upon the leaves and the stone of the balcony. There were sounds in the great house too, strange creakings and rustlings in the old corridors and in the curtained fastnesses of other bedrooms. But there was no definite commotion; the effect was rather one of pregnant silence.

  Richard closed the window, and, when
the blue curtains hung once again motionless in their place, he came quietly across the room.

  Mary shrunk back from him involuntarily, and at the movement he stopped dead and remained where he was, standing at the foot of the bed, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his raincoat and the faint gleam from the canopy light catching the folds of the wet garment.

  “Well?” he said.

  She was straining back against the pillows, her shoulders tense, her eyes more frightened now.

  “Well?” she echoed uncertainly and raised her chin on the word.

  The light caught the ugly bruise across her mouth as she moved out of the shadow. Richard de Liane caught his breath.

  “My God!” he said explosively. “Who did that?”

  She put up her hand instinctively to hide the mark, and he strode round the bed and wrenched her wrist away.

  “Let me see,” he commanded. “Who did it?”

  She turned away from him, hiding her face in the pillows, her other elbow raised as though to ward off a blow. The instinctive movement brought an exclamation to his lips. He dropped her arm and stood back, looking down at her, an indefinable expression on his lean brown face.

  “Who did it, Mary?” he said unsteadily. “Who did it?”

  “No one. Nothing. It doesn’t matter.” Her voice was muffled by the pillows, and he stretched out his hand to her as though he would have laid it upon her cheek. She did not see the movement, however, and evidently he thought better of it, for he drew back again and strode down the room with a jauntiness which was not altogether natural.

  “You’re not answering questions, are you, Angel?” he said. “What about my first one? Did you see my advertisement?”

  “In The Times?” Her tone rather than the words made him swing round on his heel with unfeigned eagerness.