The Dower House Mystery Page 5

  But the hours passed, and Marmaduke did not come back.

  Whilst Amabel and Ellen were searching high and low for Marmaduke, Julian Forsham was tramping along the muddy lane between the gardener’s cottage, in which he had that morning installed himself, and Wood End where the Berkeleys lived. He reflected as he walked that if Forsham still held for him a hint of home, it was thanks to Susan and Edward Berkeley.

  He found them in the smoking-room, and felt his welcome, though neither of them offered him any conventional greeting. Edward Berkeley looked up from a treatise on earth-worms and said, “Hullo, Julian!” Lady Susan, sitting cross-legged in front of the fire with six rose catalogues spread out before her and a much corrected list in her hand, merely nodded and said, “You’re just in the nick of time. Come and disentangle this horrible list with me. You needn’t sit on the floor unless you like.”

  “Hullo, Edward!” said Julian. “I don’t believe you’ve moved since I saw you last—three years ago, isn’t it? Susan, not more roses!”

  Susan Berkeley moved two catalogues, and he sat down on the floor beside her.

  “It’s the new sorts,” she said.

  “It’s vice,” said Julian.

  “But I don’t buy any clothes.”

  Julian threw back his head and laughed.

  “My dear Susan, that makes it worse, not better. You ought to buy clothes. A woman who doesn’t buy clothes is a monster of virtue.”

  Lady Susan patted her worn tweed skirt affectionately.

  “Pre-war,” she said. Then, with the chuckle that Julian loved, “You see, if I spend money on roses, there’s beauty—months and months of it,—the sort of thing that makes you say ‘Thank God’ right out loud in front of your gardener; whereas no one’s going to say ‘Thank God’ if they see me in a new dress. It’s all a question of values.”

  Julian looked at the square figure and strong, plain face, and smiled suddenly, charmingly.

  “My dear Susan, I always say ‘Thank God’ when I see you,” he said; and Susan Berkeley actually blushed.

  When they had straightened out the list, Julian took the catalogues and put them firmly away in a drawer.

  “From duty to pleasure,” he said. “Gossip is now the order of the day. As a returned wanderer, I am naturally thirsting to know who is born, and married, and bankrupt. To begin with”—he sat down on the floor again and made himself comfortable with a cushion—“to begin with, I hear George has jockeyed some unfortunate old lady into taking the Dower House.”

  “Susan is going to call on her,” said Edward Berkeley.

  “What Edward really means,” said Lady Susan crossly, “is that I’ve had a letter from George in his most eighteenth-century grand seigneur style, ordering me to go and call on her. She’s a Mrs. Grey, by the by; and she’ll probably have run away from the damp and the general discomfort long before I get the length of calling.”

  Edward Berkeley turned a leaf.

  “Did you know that there were fifty known varieties of British earth-worms, and that in 1865 only eleven had been identified?—Susan will go and call on her to-morrow,” he added.

  “You shall come with me, Julian.”

  “I? Jamais de la vie. To all intents and purposes, my good Susan, I’m not here at all—I’m in Italy.”

  Lady Susan snorted.

  “Don’t you flatter yourself. Do you imagine there’s a single soul in the village that doesn’t know you’re here? When did you come? This morning? Well, old Bell told Mary all about it when he came with the milk at three. So that’s that!”

  Julian ran his hands through his hair.

  “I shall not call,” he said firmly. “No one shall make me. By the way, who’s been building the comic bungalow by the bridge?”

  “People of the name of Miller—brother and sister. He’s an artist—away a good deal. She gardens. I like Anne Miller.”

  “Any other new comers?”

  “There’s Nita King,” said Lady Susan in a gloomy voice.

  “Who is Nita King?”

  “She’s a widow. She says she’s a cousin of Edward’s.”

  Edward lifted his eyes from his pamphlet.

  “My dear,” he said quietly. “Since I had eight great-uncles, and they all had families of fifteen and upwards, why should she not be my cousin? Personally, I see no reason to suppose that she is not a grand-daughter of my Uncle John’s ninth son. I believe his name was Albert.”

  “Well, hers is Nita. She’s a red-haired serpent,” said Lady Susan.

  Julian grinned.

  “I have a passionate adoration for red hair,” he declared.

  “Tell her so. Tell her the first time you meet her. She won’t mind; she’s that sort. Only don’t blame me if you find you’ve got engaged to her without quite knowing how.”

  Edward Berkeley turned another leaf, and spoke without looking up:

  “She has most undeniable ankles.”

  Julian’s eyes danced.

  “Where does this exciting lady live?” he inquired.

  Lady Susan got up, opened the drawer which Julian had shut, extracted all her rose catalogues, and came back with them to the hearth-rug.

  “Mr. Bronson lent her the Lodge for a time. He seemed to think he was obliging Edward. At the moment, I believe, she’s staying up at the Old House.”

  “And the Bronsons?”

  “The girl’s just grown up—a handsome, shy lump at present. Mr. Bronson is just the same. People like him, you know—he’s generous without making too much of a splash. As a matter of fact, he’s a great deal better liked than George ever was. Pity you weren’t the elder brother, Julian.” She opened one of her catalogues, became immersed for a moment, and the ninquired, “Do you know Mabel Morse?”

  “Good Lord, no! How should I? Is she another of Edward’s cousins?”

  “She’s a rose,” said Lady Susan in tones of indignant scorn. “I’m sick of people, and I’m going to talk roses. I give you fair warning. If you don’t like it, go and talk to Edward. He’s just joined a thing called the Incorporated Vermin Repression Society and College of Pestology, and he can’t find anyone who will listen whilst he explains its aims.”

  “I’d rather talk about Mabel,” said Julian hurriedly.

  He dined with the Berkeleys, and came back to his cottage late. The rain had ceased. The moon looked down on rising mist. As he paused at the door for a moment, he heard a woman’s voice calling in the distance, and stood still to listen.

  What queer tricks memory plays us. Years pass. The silted dust of every day gathers upon old thoughts and feelings, and the incidents with which those thoughts and feelings were associated. And then suddenly, after ten years, fifteen, twenty, the past may come alive again at a word, a touch—a who knows what?

  Julian stood, and heard a woman calling; and the sound took him back twenty years. The brief, long buried romance of his boyhood came vividly to his memory. All the romantic side of his nature thrilled to it pleasantly, whilst that other Julian, man of the world—a little tired, a little blasé, a little disillusioned—stood by, as it were, and made sarcastic comment.

  The voice called again, and Julian began to move towards the sound. He remembered a May night, all moonlight and apple-blossom. He remembered Amabel Ferguson, and how desperately he had cared for her then. Moonlight and apple-blossom, and Amabel’s voice calling to the old retriever beloved of his aunts. The memory, robbed of pain, was as pleasant as a dream. Strange how the pain went out of things, leaving just a ghost behind. He came to the very tree where they had kissed—that one unpremeditated kiss which had lain so heavy on Amabel’s conscience. The branches had been weighed down with their drifts of scented blossom then. They were almost leafless now, and the rain dripped from them.

  He wondered a little about Amabel as he stood there. She had married the old professor; but beyond that he knew nothing. Joan Berkeley, who had been her friend, had gone to China, and there was no link. That was as it should be.
One should certainly never meet one’s first love again. Moonlight and apple-blossom are the right setting for romance. The anti-climax of twenty years after is its destruction. He had never had the slightest desire to see Amabel again.

  It was at this moment that he took a step forward and saw her coming down the path towards him.

  Julian stood, shocked into a stillness so absolute that his very breath halted. For one instant it seemed to him that what he saw must be a projection of his own thought; and then, hard upon that, the realization that this was not the girl Amabel whom he had kissed under a May moon, but Amabel, the woman and the stranger. She was bare-headed, and the moonlight showed every feature. It was she past all doubt, and yet not Amabel Ferguson, but this new Amabel of whose very name he was ignorant.

  He made a movement, and she stood still. One hand held a dark cloak about her. She put up the other to push aside a drooping bough, and spoke.

  “Is anyone there?”

  He came forward, still in the shadow of the tree.

  “I hope I didn’t startle you.”

  “Who is it?” said Amabel.

  “I’m afraid I have no business here. I’m living in the gardener’s cottage, and I heard somebody calling.”

  “I was calling to my dog. You haven’t seen him, have you—a dachshund? He has been away for hours, and I’m afraid he may be lost. I am Mrs. Grey,” she added. “I have just come to the Dower House.”

  “Mrs. Grey—George’s old lady—Amabel! Good Lord, what a surprising trick for fate to play them all!”

  Julian came nearer with more than a little reluctance. His incognito must go by the board; and he regretted it frankly. He said,

  “I really must apologize. The fact is, I recognized you at once, but I suppose you will hardly recognize me.”

  He was about to name himself, but a spice of malice made him pause.

  “Who is it?” said Amabel in a bewildered voice.

  He turned to face the light. Her hand dropped slowly from the apple bough. Julian saw her face change. He felt a queer excitement, and still that hint of malice. But Amabel’s discomposure was momentary. She said quite simply,

  “It Julian Forsham, I am sure,” and held out her hand—the pretty, slim hand that he remembered.

  At its touch the sarcasm passed from Julian’s mood. He experienced real pleasure, real emotion, both in a degree which surprised him, and which made speech difficult. He said,

  “Yes.”

  It was she who withdrew her hand.

  “But I thought you were abroad.”

  “Only officially,” said Julian.

  “I thought you were in Italy.”

  “Or you wouldn’t have come here? Quite right. One should always keep one’s old illusions.”

  Amabel gave a little, shaky laugh.

  “I think I would rather keep my old friends,” she said; and Julian’s heart went out to the dignity and simplicity with which she spoke. That was the old Amabel. He said quickly,

  “You’ll find more than one down here—the Berkeleys—”

  “Yes, I know. I want to see them so much.” And then, “Julian, I’m so distressed about Marmaduke. He’s been away for such hours. Does anyone in the neighbourhood set traps?”

  “Not that I know of. He’ll turn up all right. Dogs always do.”

  She turned to go.

  “Ellen will think I’m lost too,” she said with a little laugh. “Will you come and see me?”

  “May I? To-morrow?”

  “Yes, to-morrow. Come to tea.”

  Chapter VII

  It was very late before Amabel slept. The open door between her room and Ellen’s irked her. She would have liked to shut herself in and be alone, really alone. Her hearing, always acute, was to-night distressingly so; every movement that Ellen made fretted it. She felt disturbed and troubled, almost afraid, and the thought of Marmaduke astray and frightened weighed on her continually.

  It was just as she was falling asleep that she heard the sound for the first time. She sat up and listened, switching on the light. Next moment she was out of bed, thrusting her feet into slippers, and pulling her dressing-gown about her. The sound was the unmistakable sound of a dog thudding against the front door. As she came out into the passage and turned on the lights there, it came again—scratch, scratch, rattle, thud. And then thud, thud it came once more.

  She ran down the stairs without troubling about the light in the lower hall, struggled with bolt and chain, and pulled the door open upon an empty porch. The silence, the blackness, the emptiness were like a blank wall. She called, “Duke! Duke! Marmaduke!” and heard the rain drip from the eaves.

  “But he was here—he was here—he was,” she said, speaking aloud to the emptiness; and as she spoke she moved across the threshold out into the porch, and stood there, searching the darkness, listening.

  From the wet darkness in front of her there came a sound, but it was not the sound that she expected to hear. The sound that came was a laugh, shaky and thin. It seemed to come from so near at hand that she stepped back sharply and slammed the door. As she leaned against it, panting a little, she heard behind her a very faint mewing cry. It seemed to come from the foot of the stairs. “It was a cat—it must have been a cat,” she said to herself. But when she crossed the hall and came back to the stairs the sound ceased.

  She was frankly glad to come back into the full light. At her own door she stood for a moment, listening, before turning out the passage light. There was not a sound anywhere. But, as her fingers touched the switch, and the darkness fell, she heard the cat mew again with a long, wailing cry.

  Amabel shut her door. She laid her dressing-gown over the back of a chair, set her slippers ready to put on if she should need them, and was about to get into bed, when she noticed that the door between her room and Ellen’s was shut. After a moment’s hesitation she opened it. She could hear Ellen’s deep, regular breathing; and now she no longer felt worried by it or wished to be shut in by herself. She put out her light, and in ten minutes was asleep.

  Ellen came in at half-past seven with a cup of tea, and a grievance.

  “I’m sure, ma’am, that I’m the last person to wish to impose myself,” she said. “And I’m sure, ma’am, that you need only to ’ave mentioned it and not just took and done it, which I know there’s people that can’t take a hint, but I’m not one of them and never ’ave been, and it’s a thing that I don’t ’old with.”

  Amabel sat up and straightened her pillow.

  “Good gracious, Ellen, what do you mean?” she said.

  Ellen stood rigidly by the bed and sniffed.

  “I’m sure my meaning’s plain enough,” she said. “Seeing I never was one to beat about the bush, and brought up to believe that a double meaning was an abomination to the Lord, I thinks what I says and says what I thinks.”

  Amabel laughed.

  “Well, you’ll have to say it again this time, Ellen. I’m not there—I’m not really.”

  Ellen sniffed again.

  “I’m sure I spoke plain enough,” she said. “And if the door shut is more to your liking, I’d be the last to say a word.”

  “What door?” asked Amabel.

  Ellen pointed to the door between the two rooms.

  “I’m sure I’m more than willing to ’ave it shut,” she repeated.

  Amabel looked surprised.

  “But I don’t want it shut. I opened it in the night.”

  “I left it open when I went to bed,” said Ellen reproachfully.

  Amabel saw the shut door, and herself opening it.

  “Wasn’t it open this morning?” she asked, and tried to make her tone as casual as possible.

  Ellen stood still, looking at her, her face suddenly frightened.

  “Didn’t you shut it? It was shut when I woke up.” Her voice wavered and fell to a whisper. “Who shut it?” she said.

  Julian Forsham came to tea. He was not at all sure that he wished to come; but he ca
me. Last night’s encounter had disturbed him strangely, but he had the feeling that, after all, it fitted well enough into his old romance. What he dreaded was the cold light of common-sense and everyday. To meet an old love in the dusk of a ruined garden is one thing; to confront her over a tea-table by electric light is another. Nevertheless, after the briefest period of mental adjustment, he found himself very glad that he had come.

  Amazing how some women bring to any place that they are in the atmosphere of a home. Julian remembered the few days that he and George had spent in the Dower House three years before. They had used this room, and very dreary and bleak they had found it. Now, after three years of added neglect, the room was suddenly not only tolerable, but homelike. Amabel’s smile and voice; the firelight on her hair; her pretty hands touching the tea things—all these things had their intimate charm.

  They talked, filling in the twenty years’ blank with light touches.

  “I have a daughter, you know—Daphne. She’s just grown up and very modern—not a bit like me. She has gone to Egypt for the winter.”

  “Why do you say ‘not a bit like me’?”

  “Because I’m Victorian. You are, you know, if you’ve lived in a village for fifteen years. Daphne teases me about it.”

  Julian made an impatient movement. Fifteen years in a village smaller than Forsham on next to nothing a year! He said impulsively,

  “Good Lord, how did you stick it?”

  She smiled.

  “I minded at first. But one makes interests. I wasn’t unhappy.”

  Julian felt strangely touched. He had a glimpse of her building her life resolutely. He began to talk about his travels, and presently found himself using her name after the old boy and girl fashion. Her expression changed, and he caught himself up.

  “Ought I to say Mrs. Grey? It’s not easy.”

  Amabel coloured, and laughed.

  “I don’t think I could say Mr. Forsham,” she said. “After all, we are pretty old friends.” He nodded, and she went on speaking. “I’m going to treat you like an old friend if I may. I want to talk to you about the house.”

  “This house?”

  She stretched out her hand for his cup, and as she put in the milk and sugar, she said seriously,