Weekend with Death Read online

  “But you are not expecting Mr. Cattermole for breakfast?”

  Joanna was mixing a tea-spoonful of something that looked exactly like bone-meal with an equal quantity of cold water from a little glass jug. She said in an absent voice.

  “Oh, yes, he is coming back. That is why Morgan has gone. It does seem so unnatural, doesn’t it? She stopped stirring and looked vaguely at Sarah. “I begged him to wait, but he wouldn’t. I sometimes feel if they could only meet—but neither of them will hear of it. So unnatural, when you think that they are twins.”

  Sarah really couldn’t bring herself to agree that a desire to avoid Mr. Morgan Cattermole had anything unnatural about it. Her own relief was intense. She ate her bacon and egg with a good appetite, and managed to refrain from making a face over the health tea. It had a horrid flavour of cabbage-water. One point about Wilson’s and Joanna’s diets was that their bacon coupons were available for the rest of the household, and that meant bacon three times a week instead of only twice.

  Sarah was considering this in a spirit of cheerfulness, when the door opened and Wilson Cattermole walked in. It was really surprising how glad she was to see him. He might be a fussy old maid and the most tedious of bores, but in contrast with Morgan he was an angel of light. As she rang for his cereal and poured him out a pallid cup of health tea she really felt quite affectionately towards him.

  “I hope,” he said, looking at Joanna and lowering his voice, “I hope, my dear, that Morgan has left?”

  Joanna threw him a glance of reproach.

  “Half an hour ago,” she said—“and with only a boiled egg and a slice of toast.”

  Wilson Cattermole looked down his nose.

  “Neither you nor I require as much. I fail to see why Morgan should be commiserated on that account.”

  “I begged him to stay,” she said in an agitated voice—“I really begged him.”

  “I am thankful to find that he has enough sense to refuse so ill-judged a request.” Wilson’s tone was such an acid one that Thompson’s entrance at this moment appeared opportune.

  By the time that she had laid out a packet of cereal and supplied him with a soup-plate and a dessert-spoon he had thrown off his ill temper. As the door closed, he said almost eagerly,

  “Pray do not let us talk about Morgan. My dear, I beg your pardon—I was wrong. But as you know, the subject is one which is better not discussed between us. Let us speak of other things. I have had a most interesting time—a really most interesting time. And you will never guess whom I have met. No, no—you really will never guess, but I will give you each three guesses all the same. Now, Miss Sarah, you shall begin. What do you say?”

  Without knowing in the least why she did so, Sarah took the first name that came into her head. It was a toss-up between Joseph Cassidy and Peter Brown, and the Reverend Peter won.

  She said, “Mr. Brown,” and saw quite an excited colour come up into Wilson’s face.

  He stared at her incredulously.

  “Why, so it was! But how in the world did you guess? Come, come, Miss Sarah, you will have to tell me that.”

  Sarah laughed. She was feeling all easy and relaxed again.

  “I expect it was the letters, and your ringing up about them last night. The name just came into my mind—I don’t really know why.”

  “Sarah is psychic,” said Joanna in a far-away voice. “I have always said so.”

  “Well, she is quite right. Really, Joanna, it was a most remarkable thing. After posting his letter to me he felt impelled to come up to town. You see, the manifestations have begun again, and he is sure that if we were to go down there at once we should get some very remarkable results, so he decided to follow up his letter in person, and actually arrived at the corner of this road as I was leaving the house. It was our first meeting, but seeing me come out of number twelve, he addressed me and enquired if I was Mr. Wilson Cattermole. A very interesting coincidence. Or perhaps not a coincidence—I hardly know.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose and frowned in a dubious manner.

  Sarah set down her empty cup.

  “Mr. Cattermole, why did you ring up and ask whether I had posted Mr. Brown’s letter—I mean, if you had already met him, it hardly seemed worth while.”

  The dubious expression disappeared. Mr. Cattermole smiled brightly.

  “Ah, but you are forgetting Mr. Joseph Cassidy. My enquiry concerned his letter as well as that addressed to Mr. Brown. You must not forget Joseph Cassidy. And besides, I will let you into a secret. Mr. Brown was—well, quite doubting my assurance in the matter. When I told him that I had already replied to his somewhat voluminous letter he hesitated to believe me, maintaining that it could not have been done in the time. ‘Very well then’, I said, ‘you shall hear me ring up the very efficient young lady who is my secretary. I will ask her whether she posted a letter to you, and you shall hear her reply.’ So I asked my question and handed him the receiver so that he could listen to your answer—and I will do him the justice to say that he made me a very handsome apology. A delightful man, and with the true scientific spirit. And now we must discuss our arrangements. I thought as it is so cold that we should make a point of getting the journey over before lunch.”

  Joanna Cattermole leaned forward and said, “We?”

  “My dear, I felt sure that you would be interested. Mr. Brown has very kindly invited us to be his guests. I am most anxious to have the fullest possible notes of any phenomena we may witness. Mr. Brown extended a most pressing invitation to yourself and to Miss Sarah. Indeed, as I said to him, ‘Miss Marlowe’s presence is not only necessary from a secretarial point of view, but she will also be quite an invaluable witness, since she is, I believe, rather a sceptic about psychic phenomena and I am always hoping to convert her.’”

  “Do you mean that we are to go down to Morden Edge this morning?” Sarah tried to keep a tone of dismay out of her voice. She was not certain if she had succeeded, but Wilson continued to smile.

  “I have ordered the car,” he said, “and I will give you half an hour to get ready. The distance must be about forty miles. Fortunately we have used practically no petrol this month, so we have plenty in hand. I have communicated with Wickham, and he informs me that the tank is quite full.

  “I thought Wickham was ill,” said Joanna, a little fretfully.

  Wilson turned his smile upon her.

  “My dear, he is a healthy young man, and healthy young men do not remain ill indefinitely—they recover. Wickham has most fortunately recovered, and he will be here with the car in half an hour’s time, so I suggest that you inform the maids and set about your preparations. Miss Sarah will, I am sure, assist you.” He turned to Sarah. “My sister is always rather upset at the idea of a journey, but I am sure she will find herself more than repaid by a most interesting experience. I would suggest taking plenty of warm garments, as sitting up in an empty house is likely to be a chilly business. I should perhaps have said an empty wing, since Mr. Brown inhabits the modern part of the house himself and he assures me that it is provided with every comfort. Still, warm rugs, warm wraps—these I should certainly recommend, but otherwise you need not trouble about dress. Our host is a bachelor and devoted to the simple life.”

  Joanna got up. There was a vague, distressed look upon her face.

  “Such very short notice,” she said, and put a hand to her head. “How long shall we be away?”

  “Oh, no more than a day or two, I suppose,” said Wilson Cattermole.

  CHAPTER XI

  Getting Joanna ready to start on a journey was a task to absorb all Sarah’s energies. Previous experience had left her no illusions on this score. The procedure was always the same. Miss Cattermole drifted aimlessly about the room, pulling things out of drawers and cupboards. When the bed, the chairs, the couch, and even the floor was littered, she would begin to wring her hands and declare that she could not possibly get packed in time. By dint of tact, hard work, firmness, and the will to win, Sarah an
d Thompson managed to separate the necessary from the superfluous, pack the former, and restore the latter to cupboard, drawer, and shelf. By the time the process was complete Joanna was tearfully certain that everything she most required had been left behind.

  “Planchette—I must have my planchette!”

  “It’s at the bottom of your case, miss.”

  “Oh, Thompson, are you sure?”

  “I put it there, miss.”

  “Oh, Sarah—my little black spencer!”

  “You said you would wear it, Miss Cattermole—under your fur coat.”

  “Oh dear—so I did! But my mother’s sapphire ring—I can’t go without that—I never go anywhere without that! And I know I had it on last night.”

  “You’ve got it on now, miss,” said Thompson in a restrained voice.

  “Oh, so I have! And I had better take the blue rug, because blue is the right colour for the next three days—colours are so important. And my lapis lazuli chain, and the blue slippers, and that very warm scarf I got in the sales—”

  “You go and pack, Miss Marlowe—I’ll finish her.” Thompson spoke in an undertone. “You haven’t above five minutes.”

  Sarah slipped from the room and ran upstairs. A plaintive wail from Joanna followed her.

  “Oh, but I must have my lapis lazuli chain! It is a talisman.”

  Sarah banged her door and began throwing things into a suit-case. Sponge-bag, slippers, dressing-gown, pyjamas—What am I going to do about the packet?—cami-knickers, bust-bodice, another pair of pyjamas—what am I going to do about Henry?—two pairs of stockings, shoes, brush and comb, hand-glass—what am I going to do about the police?—handkerchiefs and a warm pullover.… The answer to all the questions was, “I don’t know and I haven’t got time to think.”

  Afterwards, of course, she was able to think of quite a number of things she might have done. Whether any of them would have affected the course of events is another matter. What she did do was the best she could set her mind to in the time. She took a sheet of paper and scrawled upon it with a blunt-nosed pencil which was all she could find, “Going ghost-hunting at five seconds’ notice. Telephone out of order. Must see you urgently. Address C/o Rev. Peter Brown, Maltings, Morden Edge. Sarah.”

  As she doubled the paper and stuffed it into an envelope, the gong sounded from the dining-room floor. She wrote Henry’s name and address, found a stamp in her purse, and called down over the banisters, “I’m just coming”. Then she went back and deliberately tidied up her face. Employer or no employer, gong or no gong, she was not going to start out for the day looking as if she had come out of a rag-bag.

  When she had put on her fur coat and the brown pillbox hat which she had worn to travel up from Craylea she looked at herself in the glass with a trace of anxiety. It was so very much a London hat, with a stiff four-inch petersham fitting close about the head like a coronet and the crown filled in with velvet—extravagantly smart, extravagantly becoming, but most emphatically not the right hat for ghost-hunting in a country village. The question was, would that occur to anyone else? She thought not. Joanna was too vague, and as to Wilson Cattermole and the Reverend Peter Brown—well, men just didn’t notice that sort of thing—at least not the kind of men who were members of psychical societies. Curiously enough, she did wonder about Wickham. But it got no farther than that—she was a good deal more concerned with the set of her pill-box. That sort of thing had to be immaculate, and she thought she detected a wrinkle. Well, whatever happened she must wear it. She rummaged for an eye-veil, noted that it made the hat look more unsuitable than ever, and as the gong sounded a second time she collected gloves, handbag and suit-case and ran downstairs.

  It was an enormous relief to find that the gong had been sounding for Joanna as well as for her. Mr. Cattermole was pacing the hall, watch in hand, his own suit-case already disposed of in the boot. He wore an expression of pained restraint, and Sarah thought it best to hurry past him without speaking.

  The hall door stood open. Wickham, a tall, elegantly built young man in a dark chauffeur’s uniform, stood ready at the kerb. As he took her case, she noticed how pale he was.

  “Good-morning, Wickham. Are you all right again? I was so sorry to hear you had been ill.”

  He gave her the briefest of replies.

  “I am quite well again, thank you.”

  And with that Wilson Cattermole had come down the steps.

  “Is my sister nearly ready, do you know, Miss Sarah? I cannot think what is keeping her. Dear me, it is really extremely cold. Are you quite sure, Wickham, that you are sufficiently recovered to drive in such cold weather?”

  The chauffeur’s rather impassive features did not change at all, but there was a faint something which suggested to Miss Marlowe that if he had not been on duty and very conscious of the fact, he might have frowned. She had seen him frown once or twice when he was not aware that she was watching him. For some reason these occasions had pleased and amused her. When a young man who ordinarily presents a particularly blank countenance to the world suddenly lapses into a display of temper, there is undoubtedly something amusing about the exhibition. It had occurred to her to wonder what Wickham was like when he wasn’t on duty. Social contacts were funny things. She and he had been fellow employees for four months, and she knew less about him than she knew about the paperboy, who had given her full particulars about his fight with Bill Hampton from the green-grocer’s round the corner and had also confided a cherished determination to learn the saxophone and graduate into a dance band.

  When Joanna had been collected and they were slipping through the grey streets, Sarah found herself wondering about Wickham’s ambitions. It had occurred to her once or twice that they might have come down in the dust. Something in the way he had looked when the duty mask had slipped. Something Joanna had said—but then Joanna was always so vague.

  She slid her hand into the pocket of her fur coat and felt the edge of the letter she had written to Henry Templar. All that really mattered about Wickham at this moment was that she must get him to post Henry’s letter.

  The car was a Vauxhall limousine, and she was sitting in the comfortable back seat between Wilson and Joanna. She turned a little and said in her sweetest voice,

  “Oh, Mr. Cattermole, would it be a trouble—might we stop at a pillar-box? There’s a letter I would like to have posted.”

  Wilson beamed.

  “But of course, Miss Sarah.” He bent to the speaking tube. “The next pillar-box, Wickham.”

  When they drew up Sarah handed over her letter. They had stopped some ten yards short of the box. She watched Wickham go towards it, and thought, “He’s not hurrying himself.” All at once a seething impatience rose up in her. Here she was, tied down between Wilson and Joanna with a rug across her legs, when she might have been running to push her letter through the slit and hear it fall on the top of all the other safe, posted letters.

  At this moment Wilson gave a smothered exclamation.

  “Dear me—I had quite forgotten I have a letter too! How very stupid!”

  With surprising energy he flung open the door, jumped out, and ran after Wickham, calling him back. Sarah watched them meet and talk for a moment. Wilson’s hand went out. Then he turned and came back to the car, whilst the chauffeur went on to the letter-box. Still with that odd impatience, Sarah saw him pass round to the farther side. Now his hand went up, and now it fell again.

  She sat back with a sigh of relief. Her letter to Henry was in the post, and she had nothing to do but wait and hunt ghosts until he came.

  CHAPTER XII

  “It is getting colder every moment,” said Joanna Cattermole in a complaining voice. “I think it would have been better if we had gone down by train. Wick-ham looks very pale. Do you think he is really fit to drive? Influenza is such a horrid thing.”

  “He assures me that he is. I can do no more than ask him.” Wilson’s tone was rather dry. “I hope I am not such a barbarous employ
er that he would imagine himself bound to prevaricate. And as to his being pale, he never has very much colour. After all, two years in prison would remove the tan from his skin, and as he was only released in September he has not had much opportunity of regaining it.”

  Sarah had not meant to speak, but a painful stab of incredulity and pity brought words to her lips.

  “In prison? Wickham?”

  Wilson shook his head with an effect of self-reproach.

  “Dear me—now I shouldn’t have said that, should I? But I am sure, Miss Sarah, that it will be safe with you. I really had forgotten that I was not alone with my sister. Very wrong of me. Yes, the poor fellow was sent to me by one of those excellent societies which undertake the after care of discharged prisoners. But of course I did not intend that anyone except my sister and myself should be aware of his unfortunate past. He was involved in a bank robbery with violence. I believe he might consider himself lucky to have escaped with so light a sentence. It was either three years or two—I am not really sure which. I fear that he was led away by his unfortunate political opinions. He was, I regret to say, a member of a very extreme group of Communists, but, as I said to the secretary of the society at the time that I engaged him, ‘Every man has a right to his opinions as long as they do not lead him into conflict with the law, and every man has a right to a second chance. I am sure that after his late unhappy experience he will do his best to avail himself of the chance I am prepared to offer him.’”

  Sarah sat there wedged in, and had to listen. There was a great deal more, and she had to listen to all of it—Wilson’s views on the Penal System, on Prison Reform, on Communism, on the Rights of Man—“As you know, I myself am a liberal”—with excursions into Free Trade, Raw Materials, and the Colonial Problem.

  Joanna had fallen asleep, but tedious as Wilson might be, Sarah had never been more wide awake. The glass screen might be soundproof—she hoped with all her heart it was—but she felt a blatant indecency in the discussion of a man on the other side of it. She could see him in profile, the line of brow, cheek and chin. Suppose he could hear what was being said—suppose he had heard. The face should have been a sensitive one—it had a frozen look. She had seen him frown, but she had never seen him smile. Did two—or had it been three—years of prison blunt you so much that you didn’t care, or did they drive thought and feeling inwards to rage and fester there?