Weekend with Death Read online

  “I see Cyrus Hoxton is dead. A very contentious fellow. Did I ever tell you, Miss Marlowe, how I was able to set him right on the date of the Ankerton affair—a particularly interesting series of phenomena with which he should have been conversant? I put him right—he was at least a dozen years out—and I do not think he ever forgave me.”

  Sarah responded mechanically. His voice flowed on. He was telling her without the omission of a single word just what he had said to Cyrus Hoxton, and what Cyrus Hoxton had said to him, and what they had written to each other, and how they had both resigned their membership of some society which she had never heard about.

  And under all this, like a dark current moving against the tide, her thoughts surged in fear, in horror, in a kind of obstinate scepticism. It wasn’t Emily Case.… The papers said it was.… But why should anyone murder Emily Case? Because—Sarah cut across that sharply. She didn’t believe it. She didn’t believe a word of Emily Case’s story. She didn’t believe she had been murdered for the sake of a package done up in dark green oiled silk. The package was upstairs inside Sarah’s bag, in Sarah’s middle drawer under a pile of pyjamas. Emily Case hadn’t got it. Why should anyone murder Emily Case for something she hadn’t got?

  The telephone bell rang. She got up and went into the study to answer it. Wilson Cattermole called after her.

  “One moment, Miss Marlowe—if it is a man called Smith, I will speak to him myself. A really interesting case of haunting in Essex. I wrote to him whilst you were away, and I am rather expecting him to ring me up.”

  She went on across the hall to the back room where she wrote letters and listened to monologues and earned her four guineas a week. Sometimes when the monologues were very long she didn’t feel she was earning it any too easily.

  The telephone bell rang again as she came in. She put the receiver to her ear and wondered what Mr. Smith’s voice was going to be like. And then it wasn’t Mr. Smith at all. It was Henry Templar saying,

  “Hullo! That you, Sarah?”

  She said, “It will be in a minute,” and went over to shut the door.

  When she came back Henry sounded indignant.

  “Why did you go away? Don’t you know that people who drop telephones in the middle of conversations are the off-scourings of the human race?”

  “All right—I’m an off-scouring. Next time I shall leave the door open and the Cattermoles can listen in. Anyhow it wasn’t the middle of a conversation, because we hadn’t begun. I suppose you didn’t just ring me up in order to tell me that you mustn’t be interrupted?”

  “It would have been quite a good idea. Actually, I rang up to ask you to lunch.”

  “I thought you went on doing Economic Warfare all day long.”

  “Not as unremitting as that—an hour for lunch isn’t frowned upon. The economic army also marches on its stomach. Well then—the Green Tree at one?”

  “I don’t know about one—”

  “I shall hope,” said Henry, and rang off.

  All through the morning Sarah was wondering about Henry. She had known him since she was fifteen, but she wasn’t sure whether she was going to tell him about Emily Case. They were very good friends, and every now and then the friendship strayed in the direction of something a little warmer, a little more romantic. Since Henry had acquired his new job with its really substantial rise in salary there had been moments when she suspected him of serious intentions. That was Tinkler’s expression, “But, my dearest child, has he any serious intentions?” Until a month ago she had always been able to laugh and say, “Not an intention, darling—and nor have I.” There was something frightfully stuffy about linking your romantic feelings to a rise of salary.

  Sarah said, “Yes, Mr. Cattermole,” and went on taking down a long, dull, pompous letter to a man in Australia about the ghost of a donkey.

  She hadn’t made up her mind when she set out at a quarter to one. The brown bag was under her arm, but the oiled-silk packet still reposed beneath the pyjamas. Because if she took it out to lunch with Henry, he was perfectly capable of marching her round to Scotland Yard, and she wasn’t at all sure about getting mixed up with the police. The thing she was quite sure about was that she mustn’t get mixed up with the murder of Emily Case. If it came to inquests, and snapshots, and paragraphs in the paper, and a murder trial, she was going to lose her job with Wilson Cattermole.

  The right sort of publicity—yes. “Mr. Cattermole, president of the New Psychical Society”—“Mr. Wilson Cattermole, speaking to our correspondent, maintained yesterday …”—“‘Ghosts I have known’, by J. Wilson Cattermole.” This sort of publicity by all means, and as much and as often as you please—an academic publicity, a literary publicity, a scientific publicity. But not the sordid publicity of crime, and coroner’s courts, and a limelighted, headlined murder trial, with his secretary telling a fantastic tale in the witness-box. No—long before that could happen Sarah Marlowe would have ceased to be his secretary. Sarah Marlowe would be out of a job, because nobody wanted to get mixed up in a murder trial. And what about Tinkler’s rent?

  By the time she reached the Green Tree her mind was quite made up on one point—whatever Henry said or Henry did, she wasn’t going to risk her job. For the rest—well, wait and see.

  The minute she saw Henry it came over her that they were going to quarrel. He had that sort of look about him. “Totalitarian”, said Sarah to herself. Her eyes brightened, but she smiled her wide, delicious smile.

  “Hullo, Henry!”

  Henry gloomed and said, “You’re late.”

  “Darling, I told you I would be.”

  “It leaves us so little time.”

  Sarah sat down and began to take off her gloves. Henry gloomed more deeply.

  “I don’t make pretty speeches.”

  Too, too true. Sarah had sometimes sighed over this. But you can’t have everything. Henry making pretty speeches wouldn’t have been Henry, and on the whole she liked him as he was. A tall young man with a good pair of shoulders and a certain air of forcefulness about him. Quite ordinary features, quite ordinary hair of a nondescript shade of brown, but rather good dark grey eyes and noticeably well shaped hands.

  He gave his order to the waiter and gazed moodily at Sarah.

  “I don’t know what you call a week-end. You’ve been away four days.”

  A becoming colour mounted to Miss Marlowe’s cheek. So that was what it was. Gratifying of course, but if Henry Templar thought he could come it over her like that he would have to learn to think again. She said sweetly,

  “I had Mr. Cattermole’s leave. I didn’t know I had to have yours too.”

  “Look here, Sarah—”

  They were certainly going to quarrel.

  “Look here, Sarah—”

  “Darling, there isn’t anything to look at—I only wish there were. I’m most frightfully hungry. What did you order? Soup? I could do with really boiling soup.”

  The soup arrived, and the quarrel was for the moment averted. You cannot quarrel and eat very hot mulligatawny soup at the same time. There was a short armistice, during which Sarah prattled about Joanna and her smuggler. This, however, was not at all a safe subject. As soon as he had finished his soup Henry said in an exasperated voice,

  “She’s quite mad—they’re both mad. I don’t like your being there at all, and I wish to goodness you’d leave.”

  “Oh, there are worse jobs. They’re awfully kind, and anyhow—”

  The waiter took away their plates. When he had gone Henry said with subdued violence,

  “You’ve no business to be with people like that!”

  “Nonsense!”

  He looked past her, frowning.

  “I suppose it’s not my business.”

  “I was just wondering when that would strike you.”

  He pushed that away with an odd impatience.

  “You haven’t got anyone else.”

  Sarah looked at him with exasperated affection. />
  “Darling, a whole family of parents, brothers, uncles, aunts, and cousins all put together wouldn’t fuss worse than you do. Besides, I’ve got Tinkler.” Her voice changed. “Henry, I do wish you wouldn’t quarrel, and I do wish you’d be reasonable. There’s Tink. You—you know what she’s done for me, or perhaps you don’t. I don’t think I’ve ever told you in so many words, but I didn’t know all of it myself till the other day. Anyhow when the smash came and my father and mother died—well, I was twelve. There weren’t any near relations left, only an odd cousin or two, and they made the foulest suggestions—institutions and things like that. And then Tink bobbed up. She’d been my mother’s governess. They’d always kept up, and she used to come and stay, and of course I loved her awfully, but there wasn’t any reason in the world why she should have bothered about me or taken a hand, but she did. She was just going to retire—she’d got her savings all ready to put into an annuity. She had been governessing for forty-five years, and she’d managed to save quite a piece. And then I came along without one single claim on her, and instead of buying her annuity she used her savings to bring me up and put me out in the world. Do you think I mind who I work for or what I do as long as I can keep her going? She has hardly got anything left, because she spent it all on me. Don’t you see I’ve got to have a job that will keep her going?”

  When Sarah looked at him like that Henry experienced emotions of a conflicting nature. He wanted to be alone on a desert island with Sarah. He would have eliminated the rest of the human race without a qualm. Let them go and have their stupid wars and blow each other off the face of the earth—he didn’t give a damn for any of them. He wanted to drag Sarah by the hair, and beat her over the head, and kiss away the tears that were shining in her eyes. He had a moment of pure savage exultation.

  And then the waiter thrust between them with hot plates and something in a casserole. It might have been indiarubber for all that he knew, but Sarah commended it highly. She was a little ashamed of having got all worked up about Tinkler. As a sedative to the emotions there is nothing like really good food. The thing in the casserole was superlatively good. There was chicken in it, or perhaps pheasant—it was too sublimated to be easily identifiable—and there were certainly mushrooms, and very small, very succulent sausages. In the midst of her warm appreciation the bit of her mind which had not been quite made up set as firm and hard as cement. Not for anything on earth would she tell Henry about Emily Case and the oiled-silk packet.

  She wouldn’t tell him, but on the other hand it would be amusing to fish for probable reactions. She cut a minute sausage in half, pinned it to a mushroom, and ate it thoughtfully. Her expression was womanly and charming in the extreme. Henry Templar thought so, and his mood softened. If he had been alone with Sarah on a desert island at this moment he would have relinquished the more violent points of his original programme.

  Sarah looked sweetly at him and said,

  “Suppose you were in a lift and someone put something in your pocket and got out, and the lift went on, and then you heard a shot and you found someone had committed suicide—”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “A hypothetical case. You know—one of those what-should-A-do sort of things. Well, in this particular case, what should A do? The person who put the thing in the pocket is dead—”

  Henry bent a severe frown upon her.

  “Sarah, what on earth are you talking about?”

  She was brightly flushed and animated.

  “You haven’t been listening. I’ll say it all over again. Just concentrate. It’s quite easy really.”

  She said it all over again.

  “But what’s it all about?”

  “What should A do?” said Sarah.

  Henry’s mind appeared to grapple with the problem.

  “It would depend what was in the packet.”

  “Oh, they wouldn’t know that.”

  Henry stared.

  “Who are they?”

  “The person whose pocket the packet was put into.”

  He held his head.

  “Then it isn’t they.”

  Sarah waved this aside.

  “It’s what everyone says.”

  “You’d better stick to A,” said Henry. “What’s inside the packet?”

  Sarah said, “A doesn’t know,” in a complacent voice.

  “Then A had better find out.”

  Sarah began to draw a pattern on the table-cloth with the point of her fork.

  “They mightn’t want to.”

  “A,” said Henry—“A!”

  “Well, then, A mightn’t want to.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, they mightn’t want to know.”

  “I do wish you would stick to A!”

  “It’s so difficult,” said Sarah.

  “You’re not trying.”

  She looked up with a sparkle between her lashes.

  “Why should I? It’s only a hypothetical case anyhow, and if I like to make it part of the case that A doesn’t want to know what is in the packet, well, I can, can’t I?”

  The sparkle did something to Henry. In the four days that Sarah had been away he had been struggling with feelings which he didn’t want, didn’t like, and thoroughly resented. He was a great deal too busy to fall in love. He had known Sarah for eight years, during the whole of which time he had successfully avoided being in love with her, yet during a four days’ absence something had blown their relationship to blazes—nothing that either of them had said or done, just a bomb from a clear sky. For a month or two he had been thinking quite calmly and dispassionately that if and when he married, Sarah would suit him very well. His heart contracted with rage when he remembered how thoughtlessly, how fatuously he had dallied with the idea. Suit him! She had smashed him up!

  It was in this pleasant frame of mind that he had played the host. She might, and probably did, think him an ill-tempered boor, but like a more famous person he was astonished at his own moderation.

  When she looked up at him, however, something happened. Their eyes met. He experienced a sudden release. The tormenting struggle within him ceased. There flowed in quiet, and an assuaging calm. He was able for the first time really to give his mind to what they had been saying. His expression, from being ferocious, became intelligent. He said in a voice that alarmed Sarah very much,

  “Look here, what is all this about? Hypothetical case my foot! What have you been up to? Has anyone been putting things in your pocket?”

  Sarah answered the easiest of these demands.

  “Of course they haven’t! Why should they?”

  “I don’t know. The point is, did anyone put anything in your pocket?”

  “Oh, no.”

  A bag is not a pocket.

  “It really was a hypothetical case?”

  “Of course it was!” Sarah said this without a blush. The lift, the pocket, and the suicide were most purely hypothetical. She sustained a searching glance with perfect calm.

  “Then I call it damned silly,” said Henry. Everything in him relaxed. He felt superior. He felt happy. He was assuaged. “Why are we wasting time on hypothetical cases?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sarah. “They’re interesting. One has to talk about something, and you were looking like a jungle gorilla getting ready to bash my head in with a stone.” She now desired to lead him as far from the dangerous subject as possible.

  “I felt like it.” His tone was complacent.

  Sarah gurgled.

  “I should hate to be a headline in the papers—Victim of Economic Warfare.”

  The danger-point was past. They recovered their old footing. Lunch went smoothly on. But when the hour was up and they were saying goodbye under the green tree from which the restaurant took its name Henry bent on her a disconcerting look and said rather hurriedly,

  “If any of that case wasn’t hypothetical, A ought to go to the police, you know.”

  CHAPTER V
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br />   Sarah walked home briskly. She was pleased with herself, and not too pleased with Henry. After a most inauspicious beginning lunch had gone off well. They hadn’t quarrelled. She hadn’t told Henry anything to matter, and the food had been very, very good. She appreciated the absence of hay, prunes, vitamins, and the scales with which Joanna weighed out her scanty food. Agreeable to see people enjoying a hearty meal.

  And then all at once something happened. No, it didn’t quite happen, but it very nearly did. There was a little crowd round a bus stop. Someone jostled Sarah rather roughly—a big man in a heavy coat. But it wasn’t he who tried to snatch her bag, because he had pushed past her and the snatch came from behind—she was quite sure about that. The bag was under her arm so as to leave her hands empty. It jerked against her side and very nearly jerked free. There was a second tug just as she got her hand to it. By the time she managed to turn round there was no possibility of identifying the snatcher. It might have been the weedy youth with the loud scarf, or the draggled elderly woman with the antique feather boa, or the girl with the magenta lipstick, or any one of half a dozen others.

  Sarah kept hold of the bag and told herself that anyone might tempt a bag-snatcher in a London crowd. Nonsense to suppose that the attempt had anything to do with Emily Case and the oiled-silk packet.

  All the same it set her wondering what she was going to do with the thing. It couldn’t just go on lurking under her pyjamas. The answer to that was, “Why not?” She stuck her chin in the air and laughed.

  After tea she wrote letters for Wilson Cattermole. Two of them were awfully dull letters, haggling about dates and data. Was a certain person in a certain place at a certain time, or was it somebody else? Could the appearance of Mr. Edward Ranelagh at a public house in the Mile End Road at 7.54 on the evening of February 25th in the year 1901 be considered a genuine phantasm of the living? Or, unlikely as this might seem, was Mr. Ranelagh corporeally present on that occasion? One Joseph Cassidy maintained that he was, whilst the Reverend Peter Brown contended with asperity that he was not. Sarah didn’t care a snap of her fingers about Edward Ranelagh or Peter Brown. She considered the whole thing dull and tedious to the last possible degree. There was a long letter to Mr. Cassidy, and an interminable one to the Reverend Peter, with whom there had also been some correspondence about rather a promising haunted house. Mr. Brown was most anxious to induce Mr. Cattermole to make a personal investigation. Mr. Cattermole was toying with the idea.