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- Herausgeber: Musaicum Books
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
Ethel Lina White's 'Some Must Watch' is a classic British murder mystery filled with suspense and intriguing plot twists. Set in a remote English mansion, the novel follows the story of a young nurse who becomes entangled in a series of chilling events leading to a spine-tingling climax. White's writing style is characterized by its atmospheric descriptions and carefully crafted suspense, keeping readers on the edge of their seats until the very end. This novel is a masterpiece of the Golden Age of detective fiction, showcasing White's talent for creating a gripping narrative with a truly surprising conclusion. 'Some Must Watch' stands as a testament to White's skill in crafting intricate and riveting mysteries that have stood the test of time. Ethel Lina White's deep understanding of human nature and her ability to weave together a complex web of deceit make 'Some Must Watch' a must-read for fans of the genre and anyone looking for a captivating mystery novel that continues to thrill readers to this day.
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Some Must Watch
(British Murder Mystery)
Published by
Books
Table of Contents
"For Some must watch, while some must sleep: So runs the world away."
CHAPTER I. THE TREE
Helen realised that she had walked too far just as day-light was beginning to fade.
As she looked around her, she was struck by the desolation of the country. During her long walk, she had met no one, and had passed no cottage. The high-banked lanes, which blocked her view, were little better than steep mudslides. On either side of her rose the hills—barren sepia mounds, blurred by a fine spit of rain.
Over all hung a heavy sense of expectancy, as though the valley awaited some disaster. In the distance—too far away to be even a threat—rumbled faint, lumpy sounds of thunder.
Fortunately Helen was a realist, used to facing hard economic facts, and not prone to self-pity. Of soaring spirit, yet possessed of sound common sense, she believed that those thinly-veiled pitfalls over hell—heaviness of body and darkness of spirit—could be explained away by liver or atmosphere.
Small and pale as a slip of crescent moon, she was only redeemed from insignificance by her bush of light-red springy hair. But, in spite of her unostentatious appearance, she throbbed with a passion for life, expressed in an expectancy of the future, which made her welcome each fresh day, and shred its interest from every hour and minute.
As a child, she pestered strangers to tell her the time, not from a mere dull wish to know whether it were early or late, but from a specialised curiosity to see their watches. This habit persisted when she had to earn her own living under the roofs of fortunate people who possessed houses of their own.
Her one dread was being out of work. She could estimate, therefore, the scores of replies which had probably been received as a result of the advertisement for a lady-help at Professor Warren's country house; and, as soon as she arrived at the Summit, she realised that its very loneliness had helped to remove her from the ranks of the unemployed.
It was tucked away in a corner, somewhere at the union of three counties, on the border-line between England and Wales. The nearest town was twenty-two miles away—the nearest village, twelve. No maid would stay at such a forsaken pocket—a pocket with a hole in it—through which dribbled a chronic shrinkage of domestic labour.
Mrs. Oates, who, with her husband, helped to fill the breach, summed up the situation to Helen, when they met, by appointment, at the Ladies Waiting Room, at Hereford.
"I told Miss Warren as she'd have to get a lady. No one else would put up with it."
Helen agreed that ladies were a drug in the market. She had enjoyed some months of enforced leisure, and was only too grateful for the security of any home, after weeks of stringent economy—since "starvation" is a word not found in a lady's vocabulary. Apart from the essential loneliness of the locality, it was an excellent post, for she had not only a nice room and good food, but she took her meals with the family.
The last fact counted, with her, for more than a gesture of consideration, since it gave her the chance to study her employers. She was lucky in being able to project herself into their lives, for she could rarely afford a seat at the Pictures, and had to extract her entertainment from the raw material of life.
The Warren family possessed some of the elements of drama. The Professor, who was a widow, and his sister and housekeeper—Miss Warren—were middle-aged to elderly. Helen classified them as definite types, academic, frigid, and well-bred, but otherwise devoid of the vital human interest.
Their step-mother, however, old Lady Warren—the invalid in the blue room—was of richer mould. Blood and mud had been used in her mixture, and the whole was churned up, thrice daily, by a dose of evil temper. She was the terror of the household; only yesterday, she had flung a basin of gruel at her nurse's head.
It had been her natural and ladylike protest against this substitute for the rare steak, which she preferred, but was unable to chew. As her aim was excellent, it had achieved the desired result; that morning Oates had driven the departing nurse into the town, and was coming back, in the evening, with a fresh target.
Helen, who had not yet been brought into contact with the old lady, rather admired her spirit. The household was waiting for her to die, but she still called the tune. Every morning, Death knocked politely on the door of the blue room; and Lady Warren saluted him in her customary fashion, with a thumb to her nose.
Besides this low-comedy relief, Helen suspected the triangle situation, as represented by the Professor's son, his daughter-in-law, and the resident pupil, whom the Professor was coaching for the Indian Civil Service. The son—a clever, ugly youth—was violently and aggressively in love with his wife, Simone. She was an unusually attractive girl, with money of her own, and a wanton streak in her composition.
To put it mildly, she was an experimentalist with men. At present, she was plainly trying to make sentimental history with the pupil, Stephen Rice—a good-looking casual young sprig, rejected of Oxford. Helen liked him instinctively, and hoped he would continue to resist the lady.
Although her curiosity hovered around the Summit and its inmates, her duties were her chief interest. The reminder that she had a new job to hold down made her pull a face as she glanced at her watch.
Already the first shadows were beginning to stir, as prelude to the short interlude between the lights. Very soon it would be dark.
A long walk stretched between her and the Summit. She could see it, in the distance, blocked with solid assurance, against the background of shrouded hills. But, dividing them, yawned a bowl of empty country, which dipped down for about a mile, into a tree-lined hollow, before it climbed up a corresponding slope, to the young plantation on its crest.
In spite of her stoicism, Helen's heart sank faintly at the prospect of re-passing through that choked dell. Since she had come to the Summit, she had been struck by the density of the surrounding undergrowth. When she looked out of the windows, at twilight, the evergreen shrubs on the lawn seemed actually to move and advance closer to the walls, as though they were pioneers in a creeping invasion.
Feeling secure as in a fortress, she enjoyed the contrast between the witched garden and the solid house, cheerful with lights and voices. She was inside and safe. But now, she was outside, and nearly two miles away.
"Idiot" she told herself, "it's not late. It's only dark. Scram."
As she was denied the employer's privilege of abuse, she got even by saying exactly what she liked to herself. She whipped up her courage by calling herself a choice collection of names, as she began to run cautiously, slipping on the slimy camber of the lane, since the rutted middle was too stony for safety.
She kept her eyes fixed on her goal, which seemed to be sinking gradually into the ground, as she dipped lower and lower. Just before she lost sight of it, a light gleamed out in the window of the blue room.
It seemed to her a signal, calling her back to a special duty. Every evening, at twilight, she had to go around the house, locking the doors and putting the shutters over the windows. Hitherto, she had derided the job as the limit of precaution; but, here, in the tenebrous solitude, it assumed an unpleasant significance.
There was a connection between it and a certain atmosphere of tension—excitement in the kitchen, whispers in the drawing-room—which emanated from a background of murder.
Murder. Helen shied instinctively at the word. Her mind was too healthy to regard crime other than fiction, which turned newspapers into the sensational kind of reading-matter, which is sold on Railway Station bookstalls. It was impossible to believe that these tragedies happened to real people.
She forced herself to think of a safer subject.
"Suppose I won the Irish Sweep."
But, as the lane dropped deeper, its steep banks shutting out the light, she discovered that she had a mind above mere supposititious wealth. Simple pleasures appealed to her more at that moment—the safety of the kitchen at the Summit, with Mrs. Oates and the ginger cat for company, and dripping-toast for tea.
She made another start.
"Suppose I won the Irish Sweep. Someone's got to win. Out of all the millions of people in the world, a few people are marked out to win fortunes. Staggering."
Unfortunately, the thought introduced another equally stupendous.
"Yes. And out of all the millions of people who die in their beds, a few are marked out to be murdered."
She switched off the current of her thoughts, for before her, crouched the black mouth of the hollow.
When she had crossed it, earlier in the afternoon, she had been chiefly concerned in picking out a fairly dry passage over the rich black mould formed by leaf-deposits. She had only marked it down as a sheltered spot in which to search for early primroses.
But the promise of spring was now only a mockery. As she advanced, the place seemed an area of desolation and decay, with wind-falls for crops. In this melancholy trough—choked with seasonal litter—sound was reduced to furtive rustles; light was shrunken to a dark miasma, through which trees loomed with the semblance of men.
Suddenly, murder ceased to be a special fiction of the Press. It became real—a menace and a monstrosity.
Helen could no longer control her thoughts, as she remembered what Mrs. Oates had told her about the crimes. There were four of them—credibly the work of some maniac, whose chosen victims were girls.
The first two murders were committed in the town, which was too far away from the Summit for the inmates to worry. The third took place in a village, but still comfortably remote. The last girl was strangled in a lonely country-house, within a five-mile radius of Professor Warren's residence.
It was an uncomfortable reminder that the maniac was growing bolder with success. Each time he penetrated closer into the privacy of his victim.
"The first time, it was just a street-murder," thought Helen. "Then, he hid in a garden. After that, he went inside a house. And then—right upstairs. You ought to feel safe there."
Although she was determined not to yield to panic, and run, she ceased to pick her way between cart-ruts tilled with water, but plunged recklessly into muddy patches, whose suction glugged at the soles of her shoes. She had reached the densest part of the grove, where the trees intergrew in stunting overcrowding.
To her imagination, the place was suggestive of evil. Tattered leaves still hung to bare boughs, unpleasantly suggestive of rags of decaying flesh fluttering from a gibbet. A sluggish stream was clogged with dead leaves. Derelict litter of broken boots and rusty tins cropped out of a rank growth of docks and nettles, to mark a tramp's camping-place.
Again Helen thought of the murders.
"It's coming nearer—and nearer. Nearer to us."
Suddenly, she wondered if she were being followed. As she stopped to listen, the hollow seemed to be murmurous with faint sounds—the whisper of shrivelled leaves, the snapping of twigs, the chuckles of dripping water.
It was possible to fancy anything. Although she knew that, if she ran, her imagination would gallop away with her, she rushed across the soft ground, collecting poultices of mud on the soles of her boots.
Her heart was pounding when the opposite lane reared itself in front of her, like the wall of a house. The steepness however proved deceptive, for, around the first bend, it doubled, like a crooked arm, to relieve the steepness of the gradient.
Once more, Helen's normal courage returned, for her watch told her that she had won her race against time. The precious new job was safe. Her legs ached as she toiled upwards, but she cheered herself by the reminders that a merry heart goes all the way—that the longest lane has a turning—that every step was bringing her nearer home. Presently she reached the top of the rise, and entered the plantation, which was thinly planted with young firs and larches, and carpeted with fallen needles. At its thickest part, she could see through it, and, suddenly, she caught sight of the Summit.
It was no longer a distant silhouette, but was so close that she could distinguish the colour of the window-curtains in the blue room. The vegetable garden sloped down to the wall which bounded the plantation, and a coil of rising smoke, together with a cheerful whistle told her that the gardener was on the other side, making a bonfire.
At the sight of her goal, Helen slackened her pace. Now that it was over, her escapade seemed an adventure, so that she felt reluctant to return to dull routine. Very soon, she would be going round, locking up in readiness for Curfew. It sounded dull, for she had forgotten that, in the darkness of the hollow, she realised the significance of a barred bedroom window.
The rising wind spattered her face with rain, and increased her sense of rebellion against four walls and a roof. She told herself that it was blowing up for a dirty night, as she walked towards the front gate.
At its end, the plantation thinned down to a single avenue of trees, through which she could see the stone posts of the entrance to the Summit, and the laurels of the drive. As she watched, fresh lights glowed through the drawing-room windows.
It was the promise of tea—calling her home. She was on the point of breaking into a run, when her heart gave a sudden leap.
She was positive that the furthest tree had moved.
She stopped and looked at it more closely, only to conclude that her fancy had tricked her. It was lifeless and motionless, like the rest. Yet there was something about its shape—some slight distortion of the trunk—which filled her with vague distrust.
It was not a question of logic—she only knew that she did not want to pass that special tree.
As she lingered, in hesitation, her early training asserted itself. She began to earn her living, at the age of fourteen, by exercising the dogs of the wealthy. As these rich dogs were better-fed, and stronger than herself, they often tried to control a situation, so she was used to making quick decisions.
In this instance, her instinct dictated a short way home, which involved a diagonal cut across boggy ground, through a patch of briars, and over the garden wall.
She carried through her programme, in the minimum of time, and with little material damage, but complete loss of dignity. After a safe, but earthy, landing in the cabbage-bed, she walked around to the front door. With her latch key in the lock, she turned, for a last look at the plantation, visible through the gates.
She was just in time to see the last tree split into two, as a man slipped from behind its trunk, and disappeared into the shadow.
CHAPTER II. THE FIRST CRACKS
The surge of Helen's curiosity was stronger than any other emotion. It compelled her to rush down the drive, in an effort to investigate the mystery. But when she reached the gate she could see only lines of trunks, criss-crossing in confusing perspectives.
Forgetful of her duties, she stood gazing into the gloom of the plantation while a first star trembled through a rent in the tattered clouds.
"It was a man," she thought triumphantly, "so I was right. He was hiding."
She knew that the incident admitted the simple explanation of a young man waiting for his sweetheart. Yet she rejected it, partly because she wanted a thrill, and partly because she did not believe it met the case. In her opinion, a lover would naturally pass the time by pacing his beat, or smoking a cigarette.
But the rigid pose, and the lengthy vigil, while the man stood in mimicry of a tree, suggested a tenacious purpose.
It reminded her of the concentrated patience of a crocodile, lurking in the shadow of a river bank, to pounce on its prey.
"Well, whatever he was doing, I'm glad I didn't pass him," she decided as she turned to go back to the house.
It was a tall grey stone building, of late Victorian architecture, and it looked strangely out of keeping with the savage landscape. Built with a flight of eleven stone steps leading up to the front door, and large windows, protected with green jalousies, it was typical of the residential quarter of a prosperous town. It should have been surrounded by an acre of well-kept garden, and situated in a private road, with lamp-posts and a pillar-box.
For all that, it offered a solidly resistant front to the solitude. Its state of excellent repair was evidence that no money was spared to keep it weather-proof. There was no blistered paint, no defective guttering. The whole was somehow suggestive of a house which, at a pinch, could be rendered secure as an armoured car.
It glowed with electric-light, for Oates' principal duty was to work the generating plant. A single wire overhead was also a comfortable reassurance of its link with civilisation.
Helen no longer felt any wish to linger outside. The evening mists were rising so that the evergreen shrubs, which clumped the lawn, appeared to quiver into life. Viewed through a veil of vapour, they looked black and grim, like mourners assisting at a funeral.
"If I don't hurry, they'll get between me and the house, and head me off," Helen told herself, still playing her favourite game of make-believe. She had some excuse for her childishness, since her sole relaxation had been a tramp through muddy blind lanes, instead of three hours at the Pictures.
She ran eagerly up the steps, and, after a guilty glance at her shoes, put in some vigorous foot-work on the huge iron scraper. Her latch-key was still in the lock, where she had left it, before her swoop down the drive. As she turned it, and heard the spring lock snap behind her, shutting her inside, she was aware of a definite sense of shelter.
The house seemed a solid hive of comfort, honey-combed with golden cells, each glowing with light and warmth. It buzzed with voices, it offered company, and protection.
In spite of her appreciation, the interior of the Summit would have appalled a modern decorator. The lobby was floored with black and ginger tiles, on which lay a black fur rug. Its furniture consisted of a chair with carved arms, a terra cotta drain-pipe, to hold umbrellas, and a small palm on a stand of peacock-blue porcelain.
Pushing open the swing-doors, Helen entered the hall, which was entirely carpeted with peacock-blue pile, and dark with massive mahogany. The strains of wireless struggled through the heavy curtain which muffled the drawing-room door, and the humid air was scented with potted primulas, blended with orange-pekoe tea.
Although Helen's movements had been discreet, someone with keen hearing had heard the swing of the lobby doors. The velvet folds of the portiere were pushed aside, and a voice cried out in petulant eagerness.
"Stephen, you. Oh, it's you."
Helen was swift to notice the drop in young Mrs. Warren's voice.
"So you were listening for him, my dear," she deduced. "And dressed up, like a mannequin."
Her glance of respect was reserved for the black-and-white satin tea-frock, which gave the impression that Simone had been imported straight from the London Restaurant, thé dansant, together with the music. She also followed the conventions of fashion in such details as artificial lips and eyebrows superimposed on the original structure. Her glossy black hair was sleeked back into curls, resting on the nape of her neck, and her nails were polished vermilion.
But in spite of long slanting lines, painted over shaven arches, and a tiny bow of crimson constricting her natural mouth, she had not advanced far from the cave. Her eyes glowed with primitive fire, and her expression hinted at a passionate nature. She was either a beautiful savage, or the last word in modern civilisation, demanding self-expression.
The result was, the same—a girl who would do exactly as she chose.
As she looked down, from her own superior height, at Helen's small, erect figure, the contrast between them was sharp. The girl was hatless, and wore a shabby tweed coat, which was furred with moisture. She brought back with her the outside elements, mud on her boots, the wind in her cheeks, and glittering drops on her mop of ginger hair.
"Do you know where Mr. Rice is?" demanded Simone.
"He went out of the gate, just before me," replied Helen, who was a born opportunist, and always managed to be present at the important entrances and exits. "And I heard him saying something about 'wishing good-bye.'"
Simone's face clouded at the reminder that the pupil was going home on the morrow. She turned sharply, when her husband peered over her shoulder, like an inquisitive bird. He was tall, with a jagged crest of red hair, and horn-rimmed glasses.
"The tea's growing stewed," he said, in a high-pitched voice. "We're not going to wait any longer for Rice."
"I am," Simone told him.
"But the tea-cake's getting cold."
"I adore cold muffin."
"Well—won't you pour out for me?"
"Sorry, darling. One of the things my mother never taught me."
"I see." Newton shrugged as he turned away. "I hope the noble Rice will appreciate your sacrifice."
Simone pretended not to hear, as she spoke to Helen, who had also feigned deafness.
"When you see Mr. Rice, tell him we're waiting tea for him."
Helen realised that the entertainment was over, or rather, that the scene had been ruthlessly cut, just when she was looking forward to reprisals from Simone.
She walked rather' reluctantly upstairs, until she reached the first landing, where she paused, to listen, outside the blue room. It always challenged her curiosity, because of the formidable old invalid who lay within, invisible, but paragraphed, like some legendary character.
As she could hear the murmur of Miss Warren's voice—for the step-daughter was acting as deputy nurse—she decided to slip into her room, to put it ready for the night.
The Summit was a three-storied house, with two staircases and a semi-basement. A bathroom on each floor and no water during a drought. The family—consisting of old Lady Warren, the Professor, and Miss Warren—slept on the first floor, while the spare-rooms were on the second. The top attics housed the domestic staff—when any—and, at present, was only occupied by the Oates couple.
Newton now counted as a visitor, for he and his wife had the big red room, on the second floor, while his old room, which connected with the bedrooms of Lady Warren and the Professor, was turned into the nurse's sitting-room.
As Helen opened the door of Miss Warren's room, a small incident occurred which was fraught with future significance. The handle slipped round in her grip, so that she had to exert pressure in order to turn the knob.
"A screw's loose," she thought. "Directly I've time I'll get the screwdriver and put it right."
Anyone acquainted with Helen's characteristics would know that she always manufactured leisure for an unfamiliar job, even if she had to neglect some legitimate duty. It was the infusion of novelty into her dull routine which helped to keep undimmed her passionate zest for life.
Miss Warren's room was sombre and bare, with brown wallpaper, curtains, and cretonne. An old-gold cushion supplied the sole touch of colour. It was essentially the sanctum of a student, for books overflowed from the numerous shelves and cases, while the desk was littered with papers.
Helen was rather surprised to find that the shutters were fastened already, while the small green-shaded lamp over the bureau gleamed like a cat's eye.'
As she returned to the landing, Miss Warren came out of the blue room. Like her brother, she was tall and of a commanding figure, but there the resemblance ended. She appeared to Helen as an overbred and superior personality, with dim flickering features, and eyes the hue of rainwater.
In common with the Professor however, she seemed to resent the gaze of a stranger as an outrage on her privacy; yet, while her remote glance sent Helen away on a very long journey, the Professor decimated her out of existence.
"You're late, Miss Capel," she remarked in her toneless voice.
"I'm sorry." Helen looked anxious, as she wondered if her precious job were in peril. "I understood, from Mrs. Oates, that I was free till five. It's my first afternoon off since I came."
"That is not what I meant. Of course, I am not reproaching you for any breach of duty. But it is too late for you to be returning from a walk."
"Oh, thank you, Miss Warren. I did go farther than I intended. But it did not grow dark till the last mile."
Miss Warren looked at Helen, who felt herself slipping away a thousand miles or so.
"A mile is a long way from home," she said. "It is not wise to go far, even by daylight. Surely you get sufficient exercise working about the house?" Why don't you go into the garden to get fresh air?"
"Oh, but Miss Warren," protested. Helen, "that is not the same as a good stretching walk, is it?"
"I understand." Miss Warren smiled faintly. "But I want you, in turn, to understand this. You are a young girl, and I am responsible for your safety."
Even while the warning seemed grotesque on Miss Warren's lips, Helen thrilled to the intangible hint of danger. It seemed to be everywhere—floating in the air—inside the house, as well as outside in the dark, tree-dripping valley.
"Blanche."
A deep bass voice—like that of a man, or an old woman—boomed faintly from the blue room. Instantly, the stately Miss Warren shrank, from a paralysing personality, to a schoolgirl hurrying to obey the summons of her mistress.
"Yes, Mother," she called. "I'm coming."
She crossed the landing, in ungainly strides, and shut the door of the blue room behind her, to Helen's disappointment.
"I'm getting a strange contrast in my types," she thought, as she slowly walked up the stairs, to the next landing. "Mrs. Newton is torrid, and Miss Warren frigid. Hot and cold water, by turns. I wonder what will happen in case of fusion?"
She liked to coin phrases, just as she enjoyed the reflection that she was brought into daily contact with two bachelors and a widower, thus reviving a lost art. Those derided Victorians, who looked upon every man as a potential husband, certainly extracted every ounce of interest from a dull genus.
Yet, while she respected the Professor's intellect, and genuinely looked forward to the visits of the young Welsh doctor, she resolved to go on buying Savings Certificates, for her old age. For she believed in God—but not in Jane Eyre.
She was on the point of entering her room, when she noticed that a light was shining through the glass transom of the bachelor's room. It drew her, as a magnet, to his door.
"Are you inside, Mr. Rice?" she called.
"Come and see for yourself," invited the pupil.
"I only wanted to know if the light was being wasted."
"Well, it's not. Come in."
Helen obeyed the invitation. She was used to two kinds of behavior from men; they either overlooked her altogether, or paid her stressed attentions, in private.
Of the alternatives, she preferred to be insulted; she could always give back as good as she got, while she was braced by any kind of personal experience.
She liked Stephen Rice, because he treated her exactly as he treated other girls—with a casual frankness. He was smoking, as he pitched clothing into an open suitcase, and he made no apology for his state of undress, as his underwear satisfied his own standard of decency. Although he did not appeal to Helen, who liked a man's face to betray some trace of intellect, or spirit, he was generally accepted as unusually handsome, on the evidence of heavy regular features, and thick waving hair, which grew rather too low on his brow.
"Like dogs?" he asked, shaking out a confusion of ties.
"Let me," remarked Helen, taking them from him, with kind firmness. "Of course I like dogs. I've looked after them."
"Then that's a bad mark to you. I loathe women who boss dogs. You set them showing off in Parks. Like the blasted centurion, who said come and he cometh. I always want to bite them, since the dogs are too gentlemanly to do their own job."
"Yes, I know," nodded Helen, who agreed, on principle, when it was possible. "But my dogs used to boss me. They had a secret understanding to all pull at once, in different directions. The wonder is I didn't develop into a starfish."
Stephen shouted with laughter.
"Good for them. Like to see something special in the way of dogs? I bought him, today, from a farmer."
Helen looked around the untidy room.
"Where is he?" she asked. "Under the bed?"
"Is that where you sleep? Inside the bed, you cuckoo."
"Oo. Suppose he has fleas?"
"Suppose he hasn't? Come, Otto."
Stephen raised a corner of the eider-down, and an Alsatian peeped out.
"Bit shy," explained Stephen. "I say, what price old Miss Warren when she sees him? She won't allow a dog inside the house."
"Why?" asked Helen.
"Afraid of them."
Oh, no, she can't be. It's the other way round. People are afraid of her, because she's so formidable."
"That's only her make-up. She's a hollow funk. Put her in a jam, and she'd smash." She's got the wind up now, over this gorilla gent. By the way, are you afraid of him?"
"Of course not." Helen laughed. "Perhaps, I might be a bit if I was alone. But no one could feel nervous in a house full of people."
"I don't agree. It all depends on the people. You'll always find a weak link. Miss Warren is one. She'd let you down.
"But there's safety in numbers," persisted Helen. "He wouldn't dare to come here. D' you want any sewing done?"
"No, thank you, my dear. The godly Mrs. Oates has kept me sewn up. In more sense than one, by the way. Now, there's a character, if you like. You can bank on her—if there's not a bottle about."
"Why—does she drink?"
Stephen only laughed in reply.
"Look here, you'd better clear out," he advised, "before Miss Warren raises hell. This is the bachelor's room."
"But I'm not a lady. I'm Staff," explained Helen indignantly. "And they're waiting tea for you."
"You mean, Simone is waiting. Old Newton is wolfing down the tea-cake." Stephen pulled on his coat. "I'll take the pup down with me. Introduce him to the family, and make us two to one, in the muffin handicap."
"Surely you don't call that large thing a pup," cried Helen, as the Alsatian followed his master into the bathroom.
"He's quite young, really." Stephen's voice was positively tender. "I love dogs—and hate women. Reason. Remind me to tell you the story of my life."
Helen felt slightly forlorn when his whistle died away in the distance. She knew she would miss the pupil. But a second glance around the untidy room reminded her that his absence would mean less work, so she resolved to leave all regret to Simone.
Her tea was calling her downstairs to the kitchen. Not stopping to clear away any litter, she hurried to her own room, and took off her coat, and shoes. As the order for closed shutters only included the basement, ground-floor and first-floor, her own casement banged open to the wind.
In spite of her haste, she could not resist the luxury of lingering there, looking out over the valley, just to enjoy the sense of contrast. She could see only a spongy blackness. It seemed to stir and creep before the breath of the breeze. Not a gleam shone from any window of the sparsely sprinkled cottages.
"I wonder where I stood, looking across at the Summit," she wondered. "It seemed such a long way off, then. And now, I'm inside, safe."
She was visited by no prescience to warn her that—since her return—there had been certain trivial incidents which were the first cracks in the walls of her fortress. Once they were started, nothing could stop the process' of disintegration; and each future development would act as a wedge, to force the fissures into ever-widening breaches, letting in the night.
CHAPTER III. A FIRESIDE STORY
Helen went down to the kitchen, by the back way—a spiral of steep steps, broken up into flights at each floor, by a small landing, where a door connected it with the main staircase. It was covered with the original linoleum—brown-and-biscuit, and small-patterned—like an old-fashioned tile, but still in excellent condition.
To Helen, this dingy back way down represented the essence of romance. It was a delicate filament connecting her with the glamour of the past, and revived memories of spacious and leisured days.
She had been brought up in a tiny mansion-flat, with no room to keep a maid, a hat-box, or a cat. The perambulator was housed in the bathroom, and the larder was thoughtfully built in the only spare recess, which happened to be next to the stove.
When Helen reached the basement-hall, she could hear the welcome rattle of china and see the glow of the kitchen fire through the frosted glass panels of the door. Mrs. Oates was drinking tea from her saucer as she made herself another piece of toast.''
She was a tall, strapping woman, broad-shouldered and muscular, with an ugly, underhung face. She did not wear uniform, and her afternoon skirt was protected by an apron of red and black Welsh flannel.
"I heard you running down all them steep steps," she said. "You're free to use the front."
"Yes I know" replied Helen. "But back-stairs remind me of my granny's house. The servants and the children were never allowed to go up the front way, because of wearing out the carpet."
"Go on," remarked Mrs. Oates politely.
"Yes, indeed, and it was the same with the jam. Pots and pots of it, but the strawberry and raspberry were only for the elders. All the children had to eat was rhubarb, or ginger-and-marrow. How cruel we grown-ups were then."
"Not you. You should say 'them grown-ups.'"
"'Them grown-ups,'" repeated Helen meekly, accepting the correction. "I've come to invite myself to tea, as your husband is away."
"And you're welcome." Mrs. Oates rose to get down fresh china from the Welsh dresser. "I see as how you know the tricks of the trade. You want a brown pot to draw the flavour from the leaves. I'll get out the drawing-room cake for you."
"Shop-cake? Not on your life. I want kitchen dough-cake. You don't know how all this appeals to me, Mrs. Oates. I was thinking of this, about an hour ago, in very different circumstances."
She looked around her with appreciative eyes. The kitchen was a huge room, with an uneven floor, and corners where shadows collected. There was no white enamel, no glass-fronted cabinet, no refrigerator; yet the shabby hearth-rug and broken basket-chairs looked homely and comfortable in the glow from the range.
"What an enormous cavern," said Helen. "It must make a lot of work for you and your husband."
"Oh, it don't worry Oates." Mrs. Oates' voice was bitter.
"All the more places for him to muck up, and me to clean up after him."
"It looks fine. All the same, Miss Warren would have a fit if she saw there were no shutters."
As she spoke, Helen glanced at the small windows, set high up in the walls. They were on a level with the garden, and through the mud-speckled glass, she could see a faint stir of darkness, as the bushes moved in the wind.
"It's only just turned dark," said Mrs. Oates. "They can wait till I've finished my tea."
"But don't you feel nervous, down here all by yourself?"
"D' you mean him?" Mrs. Oates' voice was scornful. "No, miss I've seen too many work-shy men to be scared of anything in trousers. If he tried any of his funny business on me, I'd soon sock him in the jaw."
"But there is a murderer," Helen reminded her.
"He's not likely to trouble us. It's like the Irish Sweep; someone wins it, but it's never you and never me."
They were consoling words and made Helen feel safe and comfortable as she crunched her toast. The grandfather clock ticked pleasantly and the ginger cat purred on the best patch of rug.
Suddenly she felt in the mood for a thrill.
"I wish you would tell me about the murders," she said.
Mrs. Oates stared at her in surprise.
"Why, they was in all the newspapers," she said. "Can't you read?"
"I naturally keep up with all the important things," Helen explained. "But I've never been interested in crime. Only, when it's a local murder, it seems slack to know nothing about it."
"That's right," agreed Mrs. Oates, as she relaxed to gossip. "Well, the first girl was murdered in town. She did a dancing-turn, with no clothes on, at one of the Halls, but she was out of a job. She was in a public, and had one over the eight. They seen her go out of the bar, just before time. When the rest come out, she was lying in the gutter, dead. Her face was as black as that bit of coal."
Helen shuddered.
"The second murder was committed in the town, too, wasn't it?" she asked.
"Yes. She was a housemaid, poor thing. It was her evening out, and when her master came out into the garden, to give the dog its run, he found her all doubled up, on the drive, choked, like the other. And no one heard a whisper, though it was quite close to the drawing-room windows. So she must have been took by surprise."
"I know," nodded Helen. "There were shrubs on the lawn, that looked like people. And suddenly, a shrub leaped on her."
Mrs. Oates stared at her, and then began to count on her fingers.
"Where was I? Let me see. One, two, three. Yes, the third was in a public-house, and it put everyone in a proper scare, because he'd come out into the country. The young lady in the bar had just popped into the kitchen, to swill a few glasses under the tap, and they found her there, two minutes after, choked with her own tea-cloth. There was people in the bar. But no one heard a sound. He must have crept in through the back-door, and jumped on her from behind."
Helen listed with a sense of unreality. She told herself that these things had never really happened. And yet they toned in too well with the damp darkness of the valley, where trees crept up to windows, until it was possible to imagine confused faces peering down into the kitchen. Suddenly she felt sated with secondary horrors.
"Don't tell my any more," she implored.
But Mrs. Oates was wound up to a finish.
"The last," she said, "was five miles from here, as the crow flies. A pure young girl, about your own age. She was a nursery governess in some big family, but she was home for her holiday and she was going to a dance. She was up in her bedroom, and drawing her beautiful party-frock over head, when he finished the job for her. Twisted the lovely satin frock all round her neck, as it ate right into her throat, and wrapped it all over her face, so that she never saw another mortal thing on earth. Looking at herself in the glass, she was, and that was her last sight, which shows these beauty competitions don't get you far."
Helen did her best to resist the surge of her imagination, by picking on the weak spots in the tale.
"If she was looking at herself in the glass, she'd see him too, and be warned. And if her dress was over her head how could she see herself? Besides her arms would protect her throat."
