Weekend with Death Read online

  The handkerchief should have been right on the top, but it wasn’t. Instead her fingers touched something quite unfamiliar—something smooth, cold, and glithery. She touched it, and instantly recoiled. It was rather like touching a snake. As the thought rushed through her mind, Sarah pringled all over. She shut the bag in a hurry and sat there. It couldn’t be a snake. It felt like one. “How do you know what a snake feels like? You’ve never touched one, thank goodness! You don’t need to touch a snake to tell what it feels like—smooth, and cold, and glithery. How could there possibly be a snake inside my bag? Well, there’s something there that doesn’t belong.” And all in a blinding flash she thought of Miss Emily Case.

  Miss Case saying, “He pushed it into my hand.”

  Miss Case saying, “I don’t know what to do about it.”

  Miss Case all perked up and saying, “It will be all right now.”

  All right now, because whatever the smooth, cold, glithery thing was, Miss Case had put it in Sarah’s bag. She had got rid of it by planting it in Sarah’s bag when Sarah was putting her hat straight in front of that revolting glass. “That was the only single moment I ever turned my back on her. And she must have been as quick as lightning. Who would have thought she had it in her? It only shows you can’t go by what people look like.”

  And now what?

  Sarah kept firm hold of the clasp of her bag. Smut or no smut, she wasn’t going to open it again until she was alone and could see what she was doing. She sat on the edge of the seat because the large man was now slumbering over most of her share of the back of it and thought bitterly of Miss Emily Case.

  It was at this moment that Miss Case, alone in a third-class carriage about seven miles from Ledlington, heard the sound of the wheels on the track become suddenly louder. They were louder because the left-hand door was opening. Even in the semi-darkness she could see that it was swinging in. And not of itself. Someone was climbing into the compartment. She saw a black shape rise, and she opened her mouth to scream.

  Nobody heard her.

  CHAPTER III

  The cattermoles lived in chelsea. A tall, narrow house, so near the embankment that Sarah could just see the river from her attic if she craned dangerously far out from the left-hand window.

  The fog, capricious as fogs can be, was actually less thick in London than it had been in the country.

  Sarah let herself in with her latchkey, felt her way across the hall—Mr. Cattermole had personally removed the electric light bulb on the day that war was declared—and ascended to the next floor, where a very faint blue light was permitted.

  The drawing-room door opened as she went by. Joanna Cattermole in black velvet, her pale hair frizzing wildly out all round her small head, stood there beckoning. A thin, dry hand caught at her wrist.

  “Marvellous results whilst you’ve been away—really marvellous! My smuggler, you know—quite a long message. He has been longing to come through.”

  Sarah spoke soothingly.

  “I’ll be down in a minute. It’s not frightfully early, so I’d better change, hadn’t I?”

  She escaped, ran up two more flights in a hurry, and arrived at her attic. She had called it ghastly, but that was merely the irritation of feeling how nice it might have been if the Cattermoles hadn’t spoiled it. She liked being at the top of the house with a bathroom next door, and she liked the feeling that she could see the river if she didn’t mind risking her neck. The trouble was that the Cattermoles had put all the furniture they didn’t want into this large attic room, and there was so much of it that there was not a great deal of room for Sarah Marlowe.

  She came in now, switched on the light, and crossed over to the dressing-table, a massive Victorian structure with a two-tiered mahogany mirror planted squarely upon it. There were three chests of drawers, two of them full of hoarded rubbish—Cattermole rubbish—two wardrobes, one mahogany and the other yellow maple, a swing-mirror, and a big brass bedstead. There were black velveteen curtains at the two windows, a black velveteen bedspread exactly like a pall, and three armchairs upholstered in faded crimson damask. The walls were covered with one of those papers on which an elaborate pattern contends with the smoke and grime of years. A lovely bonfire of all the furniture and a pot of whitewash were visions with which Sarah sometimes cheered herself.

  At this moment however she wasn’t thinking about the ghastliness of the attic. She wasn’t even noticing it. She flung off her hat and coat, ran back to the door, and locked it. Then she sat down on the edge of the bed and opened her handbag. Her heart beat a little faster. Of course she had had to open her bag to get out her purse and her latchkey, but they were on one side; whatever it was that Miss Case had wished on her was on the other. Between the two lay a centre compartment for handkerchief and compact. She opened the bag as wide as it would go and saw what it was that she had touched in the train, a small package about four inches by three, very neatly sewn up in dark green oiled silk.

  Oiled silk.… Of course—that was what her fingers had touched in the dark, slipping from the clasp to its cold glitheriness. No wonder she had thought about snakes. Nothing except a snake could feel so like one as oiled silk. She picked the little parcel up. It weighed lightly. If there had been thoughts in her mind about jewels, they were gone before she had time to consider them. Paper was more like it. She felt the thing gingerly. Yes, paper—or should one say papers. Sheets torn out of a notebook, sewn up in oiled silk, and passed from a dying man to Emily Case, and from Emily Case to Sarah Marlowe.

  Fantastic, ridiculous, incredible story. And the vagueness of it! “If I’d known she was going to plant it on me, there are simply heaps of things I could have asked about. The young man who was stabbed on the train.—Well, Emily was coming from Italy, but she didn’t say where it happened, or what station they ran into. And she didn’t say if the young man was English. She only said that was what he had said to her—‘You’re English’.”

  Life with the Cattermoles had developed in Sarah a strong resistance to what she termed boloney. You either had to become a credulous fanatic or develop a healthy scepticism. With all the healthy scepticism at her command Sarah Marlowe now stigmatized Miss Case’s story as boloney.

  But the package in dark green oiled silk was a present and concrete fact. What was she going to do about it?

  After a few moments’ thought she dropped it back into her bag and pushed the bag under a pile of pyjamas in the middle drawer of her own chest of drawers. She then proceeded to interpret her remark to Joanna rather liberally by spending half an hour in a deep hot bath.

  Dinner was at eight o’clock. Wilson Cattermole partook of stewed fruit, nuts, and a cereal which resembled chopped hay. At their first meeting he had reminded Sarah irresistibly of an ant. So earnest, so busy about what did not really seem to matter very much. His arms and legs too, brittle and tenuous. And then the thin neck, the bulging forehead, the prominent eyes. Oh, certainly an ant. But such a hairy ant. Wilson was fairly smothered in hair, fine and frizzy like Joanna’s, but brown instead of flaxen. A dreadfully hairy ant, but harmless.

  He sat at one end of the table and consumed stewed prunes, whilst at the other end his sister Joanna manipulated a little pair of scales. So much of Vitamin A, so much of Vitamin B, so much of Vitamin C, so much of Vitamin D, the quantities in each case so microscopic that Sarah was never able to understand just what terrible consequences might be expected if the scales were to be weighed down a little too far in either direction.

  Sitting half way between the two, Sarah reaped the reward of having made friends with Mrs. Perkins. Mrs. Perkins was the cook, a majestic yet human autocrat. She regarded Wilson and Joanna with something between pity and contempt, and she made it her business to see that Sarah was served with what she termed Christian food. Tonight it was soup—beautifully hot, a mushroom omelet—perfect, and a lemon-curd tart.

  When the tart made its appearance Wilson Cattermole breathed the word “Pastry!” in a horrified
undertone, and averted his eyes. The meal, ceremonious in its service, went on.

  “Tomorrow,” he said, “I propose to go over the notes of the Gossington case. The Society for Psychical Research may say what they like, but I am convinced that the disturbances point to a poltergeist. As you will remember, Miss Marlowe, my disagreement with them over a very similar case was the reason for my resigning from the Society. ‘Credulous’ was the expression Eustace Frayle permitted himself to use. ‘An accusation of that sort, my dear Eustace’, I said, ‘is one that I will not take from anyone, no matter how old a friend he may be. And if, as I have reason to suspect, my ears did not deceive me and the word which they distinctly heard you add was “Fool”, let me tell you,’ I said, ‘that to be abusive in controversy merely exposes the weakness of one’s case, and that I would rather be called a credulous fool than prove myself a purblind and ignorant sceptic.’ Rather well put, I think, Miss Marlowe.”

  Sarah had only to smile and nod. Wilson, once started on the reasons which had led him to resign not only from the Society for Psychical Research but from every other society of the kind, needed no more than sympathetic attention to maintain a steady flow of narrative. He appeared to have formed such associations only to break away from them again, and had now arrived at the proud position of being president and secretary of a society of his own. At present the membership was small, but as he said in his most earnest voice, “It is quality that counts, Miss Marlowe—quality, not quantity. There is, I believe, a Syrian proverb to that effect.” He laid a finger against his forehead and cogitated.—“Ah—let me see—yes, I can give you a rough translation.—‘A crumb of bread is better to the hungry than ten thousand grains of sand.’ You do not know Syriac, I suppose? A pity. It is an interesting language.”

  Miss Joanna looked across her scales at them.

  “Wilson is marvellous at languages, but I was never any good at them. I think it so providential that spirits who want to communicate always seem to know English even if they’ve been Chinese or Red Indians before they passed over. Such a good arrangement, because I’ve never really been able to get on very far even with Esperanto. I find it too confusing, some of the words being real ones and some with bits cut off. It reminds me of a boy cousin when I was quite a little girl. I had three dolls that I was very fond of. He cut their legs, and arms and noses off. I remember I cried dreadfully, and we had a funeral service at the bottom of the garden with shoe-boxes, and I made a wreath of cowslips. But I shall never forget how dreadful they looked, and somehow Esperanto always seems to bring it back.”

  Dinner wore to an end.

  Afterwards, in the drawing-room, there was a sheaf of scribbled sheets to be gone through, the record of Joanna’s interview with her smuggler.

  “Nat Garland—short for Nathaniel—you see how clearly that comes out. Automatic writing is sometimes so very disappointing, but this evening I had hardly sat down, when the pencil began to move. And that is what it wrote: ‘Nat Garland’—just like that. So I said, ‘Who are you?’ and the pencil wrote ‘snug’, so of course I knew it was my smuggler. They often seem to make a mistake like that when they are coming through, and you just have to be clever and guess—and I guessed at once.”

  Joanna gazed at her across the tumbled papers. The sack-like garment which she wore fell away from the thin arms and emaciated neck. Her little face seemed to be all bones, the skin strained over them, chalk-white with powder except where high up on either cheek a ghastly patch of carmine stood alone. The eyes behind their pale lashes burned with an odd fire like a flame trembling in the sunlight. Her hair, fine as thistledown, seemed to hover like a nimbus. “If I wasn’t so sorry for her, she’d make my flesh creep,” Sarah thought. Aloud she said,

  “Don’t you think it would be a good thing to put it all away for tonight?”

  “Oh, no! I must tell you about it! Because I asked for his name, and the pencil began to move at once, and this is what it wrote: ‘Nat Garland’—oh, yes, I told you about that, didn’t I? And then he said he had been longing to come through, and he began to tell me about his smuggling days. My dear—most exciting and romantic. Look—it’s on this piece!”

  Sarah looked at a muddle of disconnected words straggling across the page: dark—kegs—beach—hide—church.…

  Joanna pointed with a long scarlet finger-nail.

  “You have to translate it a little, you know. They landed the kegs on the beach in the dark and rolled them up to the church and hid them in the crypt—that word is really meant for crypt, I am sure.”

  “Yes, Miss Cattermole—they told us all that at the inn when we stayed there. Don’t you remember?”

  The light flame in Joanna’s eyes flickered a little higher.

  “Yes—yes—yes. But to get it all first-hand—to hear his own account of it—that is what is so wonderful! And to know that he wants to tell it to me!” The fire went out of her suddenly. Her eyes were dull and shallow. She put up a claw-like hand and yawned, once, twice, three times. Her nails were as red as the pips on a playing-card.

  Sarah thought, “The five of diamonds—they’re like that—and nearly as pointed—”

  The hand dropped. Joanna said in a fretful voice,

  “It’s gone. And I’m tired—don’t you think a fog makes one feel tired? I’ll just listen to the news, and then I think I’ll go to bed. Wilson is always so late.”

  CHAPTER IV

  Upstairs in her attic, In the dark between sleeping and waking, Sarah slipped from thought to thought easily, dreamily. It was like sliding down a long, smooth slope—no hurry, no check, just a steady, easy glide.

  “If she was always as balmy as this, I don’t think I could stick it … Wilson always works late—but he doesn’t expect me to—he really expects very little.… Not a bad ant—hairy, but considerate.… Four guineas a week for a couple of hours’ work a day and putting up with Joanna.… Are letters about haunted houses work?… Sometimes it’s only about half an hour, but putting up with Joanna goes on all the time.… I suppose I really am a companion like Emily Case.… Horrible thought.… Four guineas a week.… I’d like to be an A.T. or a Wren.… They don’t get four guineas a week.… Must have Tinkler’s rent.… Companion—four guineas—Emily Case.…”

  Sarah reached the bottom of the long incline. Dark waters of sleep closed over her.

  She began to dream. She was having a tea-party with Tinkler and Emily Case. Tinkler had on her grey Sunday dress with the blue and white cross-over shawl which Sarah had knitted for her. Her hair was in tight little silver curls all over her head, and her eyes were as bright and as blue as forget-me-nots. It is only old ladies who have eyes that colour—old ladies like Tinkler, who have never had an unkind thought about anyone in all their lives.

  Sarah purred in her dream. Lovely to be with Tinkler—lovely.… And then it wasn’t so good, because Emily Case said in her flat voice, “The blood dripped down from between his fingers,” and that wasn’t at all the thing to say, when you were having tea with Tinkler. And Tinkler said in her darling voice, “Pray let me give you a little more sugar in your tea.” Then something happened. Sarah didn’t know what it was, but she felt it coming up, black like thunder, and all at once John Wickham, who was Mr. Cattermole’s chauffeur, had her by the wrist and they were running for their lives. Anguish of failing strength, failing breath—

  She woke up choked, her face in the pillow.

  When she had beaten the feathers out flat she slept and dreamed again, but nothing that she could remember—incoherences of flight and turning wheels—Wickham calling her—and Joanna turning over an endless pile of scribbled papers.…

  At the breakfast table Wilson Cattermole remarked that she looked pale, a circumstance for which she was presently to be thankful, because it would have been horrid to come down all milkmaid and then turn the colour of a bad cream cheese. No, the fact of her pallor had been well and truly established before she picked up the paper and read the first disturbing h
eadline:

  WOMAN MURDERED IN LEDLINGTON TRAIN

  Joanna asked twice for the salt whilst she gazed at it.

  “I’m so sorry, Miss Cattermole—”

  Sarah passed her the mustard. Her eyes were fixed upon the sharp, black print:

  The deceased has been identified as Miss Emily Case—

  Something in Sarah said, “Oh, no!”

  Joanna’s voice echoed it. “Oh, no—” But this was a plaintive voice, not the violent one which rang through Sarah’s mind. “I don’t ever take mustard. If I might just trouble you for the salt—”

  Sarah passed her the salt. It went down the table and out of sight. Her eyes came back to the paper:

  When the 5.30 down train arrived at Ledlington nearly an an hour late yesterday evening, Mr. A. J. Snagg made a terrible discovery.…

  She skipped the next few lines, because she was not interested in Mr. Snagg, and didn’t want to know how many years he had been a porter at Ledlington, or his reactions to the discovery of what he himself described as a murdered woman. There was, however, no getting away from them. Mr. Albert Snagg and his emotions were inextricably entangled with the narrative. You could have knocked him down with a feather when he opened the carriage door—he said so himself. Never had such a thing happened in any train he’d ever had anything to do with, and he hoped he’d never have anything happen like it again.

  There was the pore thing all of a heap with her head smashed in. Looked regular like one of these motor accidents. And dead as a door-nail, as the saying is. You wouldn’t think anyone would do a thing like that—only a lunatic. But seemingly it was robbery he was after, for there was her bag turned out and her pockets turned out, and everything in the two cases she’d got with her thrown out all over the carriage.

  The print of the paper ran and dazzled before Sarah’s eyes. She had the horrifying thought that she might be going to faint, and she remembered about putting your head down and letting the blood run into it. She let the paper slide on to the floor and stooped down to pick it up. Her head cleared. She heard Wilson Cattermole say,