The Dower House Mystery Read online

  She took the orange envelope with a little feeling of dismay. What could it be? Then with sudden relief she read, “Marmaduke has turned up here. Shall I keep him?” It was signed “Lee.”

  “Any answer, ma’am?”

  “Yes,” said Amabel. “Oh, yes.”

  She wrote, “Please keep Marmaduke,” and watched the boy out of sight with a frowning gaze that did not really see him at all.

  Marmaduke had turned up at the cottage which she had let to Miss Lee. Little Middle-bury was forty miles away! Marmaduke who lay down and growled if a walk lasted for more than half an hour!

  She went back into the house, and sat with her head in her hands, thinking, thinking, thinking.

  Chapter IX

  “Lady Susan Berkeley,” said Jenny at the door; and Amabel jumped up with a quick smile and her hands out. Lady Susan caught them in her own and pressed them warmly.

  “Julian told me it was you—came in last night on purpose. My dear, how nice of you not to be a fat old lady. I don’t know why we thought you were going to be, but we did; and I was simply groaning at having to call. Let me look at you. I asked Julian if you’d changed, and he said ‘Go and see for yourself.’”

  “What did he mean by that?” said Amabel, laughing.

  “Couldn’t say, I’m sure. I should have known you, anyhow. Personally, I don’t think it’s any compliment to a woman to say she looks the same at forty as she did at twenty It’s either a downright lie, or else it means she’s got the sort of face that don’t show anything, chiefly because there isn’t anything to show—no heart, no feelings, nothing of that sort. You’re just as nice looking as you were; but you’ve grown.”

  “Well, yes, I suppose I have,” said Amabel.

  They fell to talking about old times; and in the end Lady Susan carried Amabel back to tea with her.

  “Edward wants to see you,” she said. “And Julian’s coming in. He can take you home afterwards.”

  As they came out upon the road, two women passed with a large Airedale.

  “The Bronson girl and her governess,” said Lady Susan quickly. “I’d better introduce you.”

  She called “Angela!” The other two turned, waiting, and she put her hand on the girl’s arm.

  “I want you to meet Mrs. Grey—Mademoiselle Lemoine, Miss Bronson.”

  Angela Bronson was certainly too tall. In ten years’ time she would be handsome, perhaps beautiful. She stood now, the picture of awkward embarrassment, obviously uncertain as to whether she ought to shake hands or not.

  Mademoiselle Lemoine presented a very complete contrast. Wings of smooth black hair under a close black hat; a delicate fair skin; eyes between grey and green. Without being beautiful, she certainly put the handsome heiress in the shade; pose and manner were distinguished and assured. She acknowledged the introduction smilingly, and laid a hand on the Airedale’s head as he pressed against her grey tweed skirt.

  “You do not introduce Forester,” she said, “and yet he is so much the most important of us three.”

  Amabel thought that she had never heard a Frenchwoman speak such good English—just the faintest suspicion of an accent and no more.

  “Forester is last year’s Crystal Palace Champion,” said Lady Susan. They walked on, talking of dogs, until they came to the corner where their ways parted.

  Later on, at tea, Lady Susan turned to Julian and said gravely, “I suppose you know that the name of Forsham has become famous. No, don’t begin to look modest, because it’s nothing to do with you.” She gave her deep chuckle—“It’s the Bronson girl’s dogs—she breeds prize Airedales, and they’re all Forsham something or other. Amabel and I met her with Forester just now. He’s last year’s Champion. And then there’s Forsham Favourite, and Forsham Fantasy, and goodness knows how many more besides.”

  “Why not Bronson’s Bloomer?” inquired Julian. “Why drag in the Forshams?”

  Susan Berkeley chuckled again.

  “I’ll ask Angela, if you like,” she said. “She’s not a bad child really—just a little lacking in perception perhaps, but no vice. And, in case you know of anyone who wants a real good watch-dog, she’s got two she wants to sell just short of show form and going cheap. I’ve seen one of them about with her—quite a nice dog. He is Forsham Fearless,” she added with a twinkle.

  “Thanks,” said Julian, “one may want a dog; one never knows. Were you thinking of my lonely and unprotected state?” He turned to Amabel. “I meant to ask you before. Have you heard anything of your dog?”

  Amabel did not look at him; she was cutting a piece of cake into little bits. Her manner was abstracted as she said:

  “Oh, yes, he went home. I heard from Miss Lee this morning.”

  “Home!” said Julian. The word escaped him as a sharp exclamation.

  Amabel did not raise her eyes.

  “Yes,” she said; and there was a little pause which Susan Berkeley filled with a question as to Julian’s plans for the winter.

  Presently, when they were walking home together, Julian broke the silence that had succeeded their good-byes with an abrupt, “What’s the matter with you? You look horribly tired.”

  “Well, we didn’t have a very good night,” said Amabel.

  “I knew that as soon as I saw you. What’s been happening?” His shoulder just touched hers in the darkness. His voice sounded angry.

  The heaviness at Amabel’s heart lifted a little. Julian was angry for her. She felt warmed and cheered.

  “Well, it’s been rather horrid,” she said. “Ellen and I had a dreadful night, and I’ve had to send her away. She couldn’t have stood any more.”

  “What happened?” said Julian.

  “There was that banging sound again at the front door, and a sort of whining. And I thought it might be Marmaduke, hurt in some trap, poor old boy. And I went down, though Ellen didn’t want me to. She—she’d had a fright earlier in the evening, and she was very nervous, but she followed me down. And when I opened the door something rushed between us, and all the lights went out, and Ellen fainted.” Amabel was a little breathless; the words came low and fast.

  Julian slipped his hand through her arm, and felt it quiver.

  “I don’t know how I got her upstairs. It was pitch dark, and there was that horrible mewing which seemed to come from everywhere at once. Ellen could only just walk, and she kept crying and moaning. Julian, it was horrid.”

  “I’m sure it was. But—you say something rushed in when you opened the door. It must have been some stray cat.”

  “It—it wasn’t a cat,” said Amabel. “It touched my shoulder as it passed.”

  “It might have jumped.”

  “My shoulder and my knee, like a person brushing past. And the lights—Julian, what made the lights go out?”

  Electric lights do not go out in the draught from an open door. This thought was in both their minds; but neither spoke.

  At last Julian said, “Ellen’s gone, you say?”

  “Yes, I packed her off this afternoon. She didn’t want to go, poor thing, but she couldn’t have stood any more.”

  Julian’s hand tightened on her arm.

  “And you?”

  Amabel laughed a little shakily.

  “Oh, I’m all right. Telling you about it has done me good.”

  “It’s not fit for you to be there by yourself. Let me take you back to the Berkeleys. Susan will put you up for the night.”

  “I’ve got to earn my two hundred pounds,” said Amabel. “You forget that.”

  “Well, will you let me come up and camp out in the drawing-room? I should be within call, and—er, all that.”

  “I’m afraid it wouldn’t do,’ said Amabel regretfully.

  “Why?”

  “Well, Mrs. Grundy—”

  “I thought Mrs. Grundy was dead.”

  “No, only left town for the country. I haven’t lived in a village for fifteen years without acquiring a very high respect for her. You’ve no id
ea of how a village can talk.”

  “Why should anyone know?”

  Amabel’s head lifted a little. He felt the movement, and understood. He said, “Damn Mrs. Grundy!” under his breath, and they walked on in silence.

  The air was still and heavy with damp, the lane wet and slippery under foot. On either side high banks made a black wall. After a while, Julian, who had been looking straight in front of him, turned a little.

  “Are you going to have your dog back?” he asked.

  Amabel hesitated.

  “I don’t think so. No, I don’t think I shall have him back.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” But she used the tone which means, “I don’t think I want to say why.”

  “Why not?” said Julian again. “You ought to have a dog.”

  Amabel was silent. Julian’s thought grew angrier. How obstinate women were, and how incalculable—floods of talk when they ought to hold their tongues, and this capacity for gentle, impenetrable silence when you wanted them to talk.

  “Why don’t you have him back?” he repeated, and felt her pull her arm away with a little jerk.

  “I don’t know. Julian, there’s something most awfully queer about the whole thing.”

  “About your dog?”

  “About Marmaduke. To start with, his going off like that—it worried me a lot. Why, he never leaves me at all. He hates the cold and the wet, and adores a fire; but if I’m gardening, for instance, he won’t leave me, however horrible the weather is. He hates it like poison, but he won’t go in. I wish he would, because he whines all the time, and it’s most distracting; but he won’t leave me. Yet—”

  “Yes?”

  “Yet he left me and a fire, and went off on a most horribly cold, wet day all by himself. And—and, Julian, my cottage is forty miles from here. I simply can’t understand it. He couldn’t have done it, he couldn’t really.”

  “And why won’t you have him back?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t get it into words. I feel as if—as if something might happen; and it’s all very well for me, but it doesn’t seem quite fair to drag my poor old Marmaduke into it.”

  “You ought to have a dog,” said Julian stubbornly.

  They walked in silence till they came to the house.

  “May I come in?” he said. “I want to look at something, if you don’t mind.”

  She let herself in, and he followed her upstairs. When they were in the sitting-room and he had shut the door, he said,

  “There used to be a telephone to the cottage; it was put in a year or two before my aunts died. Brownie’s husband was the gardener then, and they liked to feel that they could send him off for the doctor or call Brownie up here if they weren’t quite the thing. There were only women in the house.”

  “I haven’t seen a telephone,” said Amabel.

  “It was working all right when George and I were here three years ago. It’s just a private line to the cottage, you know. It used to be in the room opposite to this.”

  “I haven’t seen it,” said Amabel again.

  She led the way across the passage to the room that she was occupying.

  “It was there, by the window,” said Julian. “They’ve moved the bureau in front of it.” He crossed the room, shifted the bureau, and disclosed a speaking tube fixed in the wall, the receiver hanging limply from a cord. “Here you are,” he said. “Now do you mind holding on here whilst I run down to the cottage? We’ll just see if it’s in working order. I expect the battery wants gingering up a bit. That’s down my end, I know. Brownie used always to think it was going to blow up. She simply hated having it in her kitchen.”

  Amabel sat down to wait. It had cost her a good deal to refuse Julian’s offer of camping out in the drawing-room. Dread of the night had been gathering about her steadily as the day wore on. If the telephone would work, it would be the next best thing to having Julian in the house; to feel that he was within call, to know that she could, at a moment’s notice, come into touch with him, would be most extraordinarily assuaging and supporting. Her thoughts drifted as she sat and waited. Behind their changing flow there was still the pressure of an unchanging necessity. She had to earn George Forsham’s two hundred pounds. Whatever happened, she had to stay on at the Dower House.

  The telephone bell rang, suddenly, sharply. She started up, held the receiver to her ear, and heard Julian’s voice say, “That you?” Her answer shook a little:

  “Yes.”

  “It’s working all right? You can hear me?”

  “Yes, perfectly.”

  “All right. You’ve only to ring, and I can be with you in two minutes. Look here, I’ve got a job I want to do; and then, if I may, I’ll just look in and see you for a moment. Mrs. Grundy won’t mind that?”

  Amabel laughed.

  “Mrs. Grundy must be reasonable,” she said.

  Chapter X

  About an hour later the front door bell rang. Amabel heard Jenny pass through the hall; and then a step on the stairs that was not Jenny’s.

  She was prepared for Julian, but not for his companion. Julian wore an air of triumph. He had with him, on a lead, one of the largest Airedales that Amabel had ever seen.

  “Forsham Fearless,” he said. “Warranted free from vice, house-trained, and a perfect watch-dog. He’s an out-size, isn’t he? Too big for the show ring, I gather, but rather a nice beast.”

  “Julian, you haven’t bought him!”

  “She looks the gift-dog in the mouth. As a matter of fact, he’s on approval.” He touched the Airedale on the shoulder, and dropped the lead. “Go and speak to the lady.”

  Fearless came forward, his peat-brown eyes fixed gravely on Amabel. She said “Well, Fearless?”—and he snuffed her outstretched hand, and then slid his head under it with a funny sort of jerk.

  “You are approved. Is he?” said Julian, smiling.

  Amabel looked at him, her hand on the dog’s head, a little mist before her eyes.

  “Oh, Julian, he’s a beauty! But you shouldn’t—you really shouldn’t.”

  Julian came forward.

  “What does that mean? You wouldn’t have me, so I was bound to find you a substitute.”

  “It means ‘Thank you,’” said Amabel.

  “I should keep him on the lead, you know—for the present, at any rate. And don’t go a step without him. The Bronson girl says she’s had him in her room, and he’s no trouble—sleeps like a baby. Look here, what about your supper? Have you arranged with Jenny to bring it up, now Ellen’s gone?”

  “Oh, I’ll get it myself. Jenny won’t come up again once she’s cleared the tea.”

  “Let me talk to her,” said Julian grimly.

  “No, don’t. Please—I’d rather not. Besides she won’t—she’s frightened.”

  “And you?” His tone was rough.

  “Oh, I’m frightened too; but then, you see, it’s my supper.”

  It ended in their leaving Fearless shut into the sitting-room whilst they went down together into the kitchen, where they scrambled eggs, fried bacon, and made coffee. It was very pleasant and gay; and so was the informal meal upstairs which followed. Mrs. Grundy or no Mrs. Grundy, it is impossible to deny one’s fellow-cook his supper. Fearless lay with his nose between his paws, and seemed to slumber; but the instant that Julian moved from his chair a brown eye opened and an ear twitched.

  They carried down the tray, and Julian took his leave unwillingly.

  “Keep Fearless with you, and call me up if you want me,” he said as they parted at the front door.

  Amabel nodded. He saw her face change.

  “What is it?” he asked quickly.

  She tried to smile.

  “I’m stupid. It was the thought of last night. We were standing just like this, Ellen and I, when the door blew back on us and the lights went out.”

  “How do you mean the door blew back on you?”

  “I’ll show you.” She put one hand on the catch,
the other on the handle, and opened the door a bare three inches. “I meant just to see if it was Marmaduke, but the door was pushed back—I don’t know how to describe it—I couldn’t hold it.”

  “And the lights went out?”

  “The lights went out.” She was leaning against the wall now, looking at him with a serious, troubled gaze.

  “You said Ellen had had a fright before. What was it?”

  Amabel grew a little paler.

  “She said something followed her up the stairs,” she whispered, and then grew paler still. It came to her that she would have to lock the door on Julian and go up those stairs alone.

  Julian’s hand was on her arm.

  “My dear girl, don’t look like that. Go and get the dog. I’ll wait here.”

  The quickness with which he had read her thought startled her. It was as if one of those many veils which separate us from our fellows had been torn away. She felt his eyes on her face, and could not meet them; they saw too much. And, if she looked, it might happen that she, too, would see something that she was not ready to see. The colour rose to the roots of her hair, and without a word she turned and ran upstairs. When she came back with Fearless, the veil was between them again; the intimate moment had passed.

  They shook hands and said good-night. Then Amabel locked and bolted the door, and went back to the sitting-room, Fearless walking beside her in the most sedate and comfortable fashion.

  At ten she went down again to take him for a run. The hall had lost its terrors. It was raining a little, but not cold. As they came in, she saw Jenny at the far end of the passage leading to the kitchen, and called out a cheerful good-night. Then she and Fearless went up to bed. Before putting out her light she surveyed the room. The great, dark press that filled the whole wall opposite the door gave it a gloomy look. Amabel remembered paying a visit as a child and being put to sleep in a room with just such another cupboard in it; it had haunted her childish dreams for years. If this room were really hers, she thought she would have bright-coloured curtains, yellow or orange, and a warm brown carpet instead of the cold washed-out chintzes and grey Axminster of Miss Harriet’s bequeathing. To spend money in imagination is one of the harmless dissipations of the poor, and one which had often given Amabel a good deal of pleasure.