The Stoat E-Book

Lynn Brock

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

We meet a man named Margesson, who suffers from a mentally ill wife and two harmful children. Unfortunately, Margesson will soon not only die, but also his offspring. Traveling to Ireland – the author was Irish – plays a decisive role in understanding the strange sequence of events that are deeply rooted in the past. The darkness of Brock’s books is more fashionable these days than when they were written, but his sometimes dense, sometimes elliptical style confronts him.

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

As little Dr. Brownrigg drove yawning homeward through the twisting, deserted streets of Cullerton, the surly old clock of St. Mary’s squat tower chimed two. The end-of-September night had turned damply chill; he had had, as usual, a long, busy day of it; and only once in the three years for which they had lived in the neighbourhood had the Margessons employed him professionally. None the less, when he found awaiting him on his hall table the message, “Please ring up Colonel Margesson tonight,” he complied at once with this request. For beneath her message his wife had written and underlined twice the word “Urgent.”

“Colonel Margesson? Brownrigg this end. Sorry I’m so late ringing up. Been detained by a troublesome hæmorrhage. Anything I can do for you?”

“I hope so,” replied a pleasant, sonorous voice. “Can you possibly come out here to Cullerside tonight. I hate bothering you at such an hour. But–”

“Not at all,” replied the doctor briskly. “I’ll go along right now.”

The authentic route from the town to the Margessons’ very secluded residence involved two uphill miles along the main road crossing the moor to eastward and then a further mile and a half down a very gloomy, rough, narrow private road running through the dense belt of woodland between the moor and the River Culler. But, as he started up his long-suffering car once more, Dr. Brownrigg decided to cut a long mile off his journey to Cullerside by taking the road running northward to Ockenford, up the narrow valley at the southern foot of which Cullerton lay astride the river. He could park his car in the grounds of the Grammar School, he reflected, cross the river by the Margessons’ private footbridge almost directly opposite the school’s gates, and so reach the house at the cost of a short walk through the grounds.

A dark and devious footpath, he knew, zigzagged up from the footbridge steeply–for the slope on which Cullerside stood rose sharply from the riverside–and disappeared into the trees. Dr. Brownrigg, like many other people in Cullerton, couldn’t for the life of him understand why when the Margessons had built their big house a couple of years ago, they hadn’t made a decent and rational approach to it from the Ockenford road–the route by which, obviously, it could most easily and speedily be reached from the town–instead of the roundabout way they had chosen. Bad as it was, that private road of theirs up there–formerly a mere cart-track–must have cost them a pretty penny.

For that matter, he couldn’t for the life of him understand why anyone should want to spend a lot of money on building a house in such an out-of-the-way, depressing spot as they had selected–hidden away among all those confounded trees–hanging right over the river with its flies and mosquitoes in summer and its damp mists all the rest of the year. However, like most people in the neighbourhood, he had by this time accepted Mrs. Margesson’s marked desire for seclusion (it was Mrs. Margesson who had the money, he understood, and who had built the house) as a normal feature of the Cullerton scene. If people liked to cut themselves off from other people and sun and air, that was their own affair. So he contented himself with assuring himself preliminarily of the reliability of the battery in his pocket-torch.

Colonel Margesson himself admitted the visitor. A largely built, handsome man of fifty or so, growing a bit heavy now, his sunburnt face–obviously one accustomed to placid cheerfulness and good nature–wore tonight, without attempt at concealment, an expression of frowning perturbation. He led the way to his own particular sanctum, ensconced the doctor in a big armchair, persuaded him to a modest drink, and then, himself similarly equipped, came, as was his habit, to the point without delay and with a frankness that was engagingly boyish in its simplicity.

“I’m frightfully worried about my wife, Dr. Brownrigg,” he began. “Been worried about her for a long time back. You haven’t seen her for a very considerable time–”

“Not since she had that poisoned hand. That was–that was almost exactly two years ago. As a matter of fact I don’t believe I have even set eyes on your wife since then....”

“Probably not,” agreed Margesson gravely. “Yes. That was in the October of ’36. Well... it was about that time that I first noticed–seriously–an extraordinary change coming over her.... A change in–well, in her habits, her interests, her outlook on things generally–in her whole disposition and character, in fact.”

“What age is your wife?” asked the doctor bluntly.

“Forty-two.”

“Um. Often a difficult sort of age for women, you know. Two children, isn’t it? How old are they now?”

“The boy–Leonard–is nineteen. The girl, a year younger.”

“Joan–I believe is her name. Just left school, hasn’t she? A very pretty girl, I’ve heard. Well–this change you say you’ve noticed in your wife–over a period of two years or so; it has been–progressive?”

“By fits and starts. In the beginning–for the first year or so–there were intervals when she seemed to return to her old self more or less for a while. But then there would be a speeding-up. And each time, when it happened, the speeding-up became more marked–”

“And naturally, more alarming for you. Why didn’t you send for me twelve months ago, then?”

“I wanted to. I suggested time after time that she should see you and have a talk with you about things. But she always refused point-blank to do that. And–well, to be quite candid with you, Doctor, one of the most marked changes in her has been the change in her attitude towards myself. As matters stand now, the mere fact that I make any suggestion to her, is sufficient to cause her to turn it down at once. So–I’ve given up making suggestions to her. For instance, she hasn’t the slightest idea that I’m consulting you this way, preparatorily....”

“I see. Suppose you give me, briefly and explicitly, the other symptoms that make you uneasy about her.”

“To answer that question, it’s necessary to tell you first that, until–well, I had better say three years ago–until then my wife was a very gay, live, sociable, energetic sort of woman. We were living in Surrey at that time, and both of us had a lot of friends living in and around London. She took a tremendous interest in life then–in other people–in clothes, theatres, music, painting–she’s rather clever at water-colour work–in books, in golf and tennis, in world affairs generally, in her house and her garden, her food–even in myself. In the children, of course. But steadily and gradually, one by one, all these interests have died out until, now, not one of them is left–except, in a very modified form, her interest in the children.”

“How does she get on with them?”

“With the boy–Leonard–quite well. She’s almost fanatically devoted to him. And I think he’s very attached to her in his way. He’s rather a queer fish. She’s fond of Joan still, too, I think–in a fussing, fidgetting way. She gets on fairly well with her, however.... I really see so little of either my wife or my children nowadays–”

“Her interest in you, you say, has declined noticeably during these last few years?”

“I regret to say, most noticeably. We’ve been married now for–let me see–nineteen years. And I think I can honestly say that for sixteen of them, at any rate, she and I were the best of pals. Little differences of opinion, of course now and then. My wife is by temperament rather impulsive and quick-tempered naturally. But–”

“I understand, yes. But now–?”

“Now–well, I’m afraid the mere sight of me seems to set her all on edge. Indeed, she carefully avoids being with me–especially being alone with me–when she can possibly manage to do so. And so–naturally–I keep out of her way as far as possible. And yet the curious thing is that she hates me to leave the house–even for a couple of hours, to get a round of golf or a game of bridge. She spends nearly all her time in her own rooms now, you see.”

“How does she occupy herself?”

“She doesn’t. Just sits doing nothing–or lies down. But every half-hour or so she sends her maid downstairs to discover where I am and what I’m doing–or where I’ve gone to and when I’m coming back. That’s a new development, comparatively–since things reached what you might call an acute stage with her, a few months back.”

“An acute stage? Can you be a little more precise?”

“An acute speeding-up–which, this time, hasn’t slackened off. It began about the beginning of July–just after my daughter had come home from school. Not that that had anything to do with it. But it fixes the date for me. Suddenly everything that had made me anxious about her before became much worse. For instance–well, there was that determination of hers not to be left alone with me. Then–well, last year she gave up going out anywhere. I mean, outside the grounds of this house. But now she gave up going out even about the grounds. Her appetite had been poor for a long time. But now it became almost impossible to induce her to eat anything whatever. She stopped sleeping practically altogether–except to doze during the day–didn’t even bother to open the boxes from the Times Book Club–spent the whole day in a dressing-gown or a fur coat huddled on over her sleeping things.”

“All these symptoms of the new phase developed simultaneously?”

“Yes. And quite suddenly. She had been irritable for a long time before that. But now she began to have fits of furious anger. I mean–breaking things–or tearing them–or throwing them about. For no cause whatever that one could discover. We’ve had endless trouble about servants during the past few months. Servants nowadays won’t stand being abused and hectored constantly. I don’t know how her own maid–Georgina–sticks it. My wife bullies her and storms at her from morning to night. Although, as I’ve told you, I think she’s still fond of Joan–whenever Joan goes into her room, she attacks her furiously about some quite trifling thing or other....”

Margesson paused to regard his listener questioningly, his tanned forehead wrinkled in anxiety.

“But–as a matter of fact, I’ve no doubt that you’ve heard most of all this already, from other people. You doctors hear all the gossip–Well–I won’t embarrass you–I’ve given you, so far, the new developments of earlier symptoms. But there’s one absolutely new symptom which worries me even more. My wife was always a most courageous–even reckless–sort of person. But now–well, she appears to me to live now in a state of chronic terror–”

“Terror? Of what?”

“No idea. So far as I know, she has not the slightest grounds for even uneasiness about anything on earth–except her own health, if she goes on as she is going. But there it is. It’s my conviction that she lives in a state of appalling terror–unceasing. By night as well as by day. Even in her sleep. I should tell you that lately she has apparently been taking some stuff to make her sleep–I’ll come back to that. But even in her sleep, apparently, this fear of hers, whatever it is, continues. She wakes up screaming quite often–half-crazy with–with terror. I’ve tried, I needn’t tell you, to get her to tell me what it is in her mind that causes this fear of hers. For I’m perfectly convinced that whatever she fears exists only in her own mind. But it’s perfectly useless. I can’t get anything out of her–”

“She has a maid of her own, you tell me. Does the maid sleep near her?”

“In the next room, for several months past. My wife insists on her bedroom lights being left on all through the night, and by her directions the maid looks in at intervals during the night to see how she is getting on. But of course–the way things always happen–these fits of screaming and so on never come on while the maid is in the room with her.”

“How often do they come on–roughly?”

“It varies. Twice a week–three times a week. Sometimes twice in the same night. Afterwards, she’s almost in a state of collapse–faints right off, sometimes. And–well, my God, Doctor–I simply can’t bear to see the expression in her eyes...!”

“You say she’s been taking something. Not under medical advice, I presume?”

“No. My daughter Joan mentioned casually one day some time ago that her mother was using some stuff–sleeping cachets, she said. I let it go at that–foolishly. Like most healthy people, I suppose, I have a horror of drugs. Still, it didn’t occur to me for a moment that my wife could possibly have got hold of anything actually dangerous–until tonight. I changed my mind about that tonight, however–and that’s why I sent out that S.O.S. to you. What do you think these things are? I know nothing about drugs. But–by the merest accident I discovered tonight that my wife is using a hypodermic syringe. I found the syringe in her room–and quite a big supply of these things. I saw one of them partially dissolved in a glass–What are they?”

Dr. Brownrigg examined the two white tabloids handed to him, but, after a sniff or two, laid them aside.

“I can’t tell you–from the outside. Home-made, by the look of them. I’ll take them back with me, if I may, and let you know about them–tomorrow probably. I suppose you have asked your wife what they are–and where she got them? Or have you?”

But Colonel Margesson had judged it prudent merely to purloin a couple of the tabloids and beat a cautious retreat from his wife’s bedroom before her return to it. He explained that–apparently while she had been preparing an injection there–she had been summoned to the telephone, which was downstairs. Nowadays, it seemed, such a summons for her was almost a phenomenon. Quite in ignorance that she had gone downstairs, he had entered her bedroom to give her some illustrated papers which he had brought out from Cullerton for her, and to his startled dismay had caught sight of the hypodermic syringe and the open box of tabloids. The box, which he estimated had originally held about fifty tabloids, had been about half empty.

“I knew quite well that it would be perfectly useless my asking her any questions about them,” he continued ruefully. “I thought the best thing to do was to sneak a couple of samples–and show them to you. You see–thinking back now–I mean, tonight–since this discovery–I’ve begun to–well, it may seem a damn’ queer thing to say–but, honestly, I’ve begun to hope, actually, that these troubles of my wife’s may be due purely and simply to–well–to dope of some sort. I realize I needn’t say, how dangerous any sort of dope is–and how hard it is to break people off it, once they get started. But–compared with the thought that my wife’s mind was going–And that’s the fear that has made my own life a perfect hell for months and months past. What do you think, Doctor? Well, you can’t say, of course, yet.... But if those things turn out to be dope of some sort–why then–willy-nilly, she’s got to be broken off it. You’ll decide how–”

“Very well, Colonel,” Dr. Brownrigg agreed. “That seems as far as we can get for tonight, at any rate. I’ll let you know my results as soon as possible, you may feel quite sure.”

As he rose to his feet, he turned towards the windows of the room in mild surprise. The night stillness had suddenly been disturbed by the sound of a very gusty and very discordant chorus approaching the house spasmodically, feminine voices shrilling with abandon above a bass of masculine howling, equally disdainful of key and tune.

As Colonel Margesson had suggested, his visitor heard most of the gossip of the neighbourhood in the course of his wide-flung ministrations. He listened to the tempestuous revellers with attention for some moments and then turned to his companion again.

“Forgive my curiosity, Colonel–but do those very joyous sounds proceed from your next-door neighbours up the road? I’ve heard that they kick up rather a row at night up there at that bungalow–which is your property, I believe, by the way?”

“Yes. My wife put it up–experimentally. We lived in it, you know, for a year or so, before we definitely decided to settle in this part of the world and build a house. Yes–they’re rather a rowdy lot up there, I’m sorry to say.”

“Shouldn’t have thought you’d have been bothered here though, by their noise–at this distance. What a dreadful din–It sounds as if they were all extremely drunk–They must be in your grounds, surely?”

Colonel Margesson smiled uncomfortably.

“I suppose it strikes you as rather odd, hearing a racket like that at this hour in such a quiet place.... But I’ve grown accustomed to it. It’s merely my son and daughter being seen home through the wood by their friends from the bungalow. No–they’re not drunk. Probably had a cocktail, or two. Very little makes these young people, nowadays, quite silly. But they like to pretend that they’re so very, very gay, and glad that nothing whatever matters in the least. Perhaps you’d prefer to get off before they come along. By the way–let me see you down that confounded path of ours to the bridge, won’t you?”

But before they reached Cullerside’s elaborately-artistic porch, a laughing, breathless group of six young people had arrived in the outskirts of the bay of the drive and greeted their appearance with cheers of lavish wildness and then a chorused,

“Good morning–good morning–A very good morning to you.”

“Do stop that noise, will you,” called out Margesson mildly. “This isn’t Whipsnade, you know.”

A wavering feminine voice supported this protest ironically.

“Shurrup, all of you. You’re making mos’ disgrasheful noise. You know it’s disgrasheful noise. Thish’s a r’shpectable house. An’ that’s my resphectable father all poshed up in his reshpectable glad rags like a good old English gennelman–So shurrup.”

There was another outburst of laughter and applause, but then the party broke up with boisterous good nights and arrangements for re-meeting on the morrow. While their escort disappeared into the blurred darkness of the trees which completely surrounded the house, Joan Margesson came jauntily across the drive, followed unsteadily by her brother. The brilliant light from the porch (Cullerside and the Grammar School had combined for a supply of electricity from the town), illuminated her blonde, insolent prettiness, her slim, still childish figure clad in the thinnest of jumpers and the most revealing of beach trousers, and the heavy, knobbed ash-plant which she twirled airily as she came.

“Hallo, Pater,” she remarked casually. “Not gone to roost yet? Naughty old man.” Her hardy gaze rested on the doctor’s dowdy elderliness for an instant of devastating indifference and then, whistling, she passed on into the house, walking with swaggering carefulness. Essaying a like insouciance, her brother–a slight, pallid youth of supercilious smile–stumbled over the two low steps and fell. When he had risen to his feet again with solemnity, he addressed the doctor affably.

“I don’t think we have met before, have we? But it doesn’t really matter in the least, of course, does it? Not in the least. You look an intelligent person, whoever you are. I like your face. Pathetic. But it appeals to me, somehow. Tell me–do tell me–I should so much like to know. What, do you suppose, is the really fundamental shig–shignificance of hum’n ‘xishtence?”

“That,” replied Dr. Brownrigg dryly, “is rather a big question, young man. We’ll go into it some other time, perhaps....”

“But why sm’other time,” protested young Margesson. “Ashmatter fact, it’s my experiensh that three o’clock in the morning is the hour at which I–”

His father took him by an arm, and urged him onwards towards the hall door. “Don’t make an ass of yourself, Leonard,” he said quietly. “Get in and get off to bed.”

But, to the visitor’s amazement and discomfiture, the weedy Leonard’s affability vanished in a flash, and, wresting himself free from his father’s hand, he slapped him across the face viciously.

“There–” he panted, breathless with anger. “Keep your bloody hands off me, or it will be the worse for you. Do you hear?”

For a moment Colonel Margesson regarded his son in menacing and contemptuous silence. But then he said quietly:

“On second thoughts–don’t go to your room yet. I want to have a talk with you, Leonard. And with Joan. Tell her–will you. And wait for me in my den, both of you.”

“Oh, go to hell!” replied his son. “Boom-boom-boom–! That bloody voice of yours–Boom-boom–! From morning to night. Boom-boom-boom!”

Apparently, as his father had surmised, his ostentatious insobriety had been mere behaviourism. For he strode on truculently into the hall without any trace of unsteadiness, took off the dishevelled raincoat which he had been wearing, and disappeared with a scowling backward glance towards the hall door.

Margesson shrugged his heavy shoulders as he turned to Dr. Brownrigg again.

“Sorry you’ve been bored this way, Doctor,” he apologized, with an attempt at lightness. “I’m afraid I’m not a great success as a father. Do let me see you down to the bridge, won’t you...?”

But Dr. Brownrigg declined escort and went off with a brisk, cheerful “Good night,” which yet contrived to express friendly sympathy with the difficulties of latter-day parents. Margesson stood in the porch for some moments, watching the alternate appearances and disappearances of the flicker of his visitor’s torch as they receded down the steeply sloping path. Dr. Brownrigg was a methodical little man, and he switched his torch on and off with rhythmic regularity. But one eclipse of the little light was noticeably briefer than its predecessors and Margesson had the impression that it had been caused, not by the switch of the torch but by the quick intervention of some moving bulk between him and his departing guest. A tree trunk, probably–his long sight at intermediate ranges was, regrettably, not at all what it had been. And that thought reminded him that he was playing golf with Dicky Broughton over at Budleigh Salterton that day and had to make an early start. He turned and went into the house slowly, his handsome, good-humored face settling into unwilling grimness as once more he faced the troubles that rankled within its artistic and expensive walls.

CHAPTER TWO

Considerably to his surprise, he found that, for once, his injunctions had been obeyed, and that Joan and her brother awaited him in his sanctum, each defiantly asprawl in an easy chair. His confession to Dr. Brownrigg, despite its humorousness, had admitted the truth. He had never been able to do anything with his two children–never been able to understand them–never been able to understand how he could have had two such children. He was old-fashioned if you liked–an anachronism–a regular old stick-in-the-mud. Still, he assured himself, he had some faiths–some ideals–some traditions–some sense of duty–some will and self-control. And, as he had been bred, and as he had gone on for nearly fifty years, so he wished and so intended to go on to the end. Had to go on to the end; for he knew that he couldn’t change anything in himself. Strive as he might–and he had striven honestly always–to be fair and reasonable and just and all the rest of it, he had always come back to the same impasse. He disapproved profoundly of these two human beings whom he called his son and daughter but who had always been and always would be complete strangers to him. Disapproved of them not merely passively, but, despite himself, actively. He even disliked them at times–disliked Leonard, in particular, at times acutely. Incapable of the least subtlety, he was aware that to the much quicker wits of the pair his own feelings towards them had always been as clear as daylight, despite his conscientiously maintained pose of paternal good nature and toleration. And, since both possessed a marked talent for what he called “backchat” of a peculiarly searching and wounding kind, together with a carefully cultivated aplomb of imperturbable amusement, as a rule he carefully avoided open conflict with their always allied adroitness.

But Leonard’s performance in the porch–before a witness who was almost a complete stranger–was an entirely new and startling development, which seemed to him to demand direct and firm protest. As he entered his den, his blue, straightforward gaze rested with severe distaste upon his son’s pale, sensitive face, meagre physique, and careless, untidy garb. Himself a man of great strength and activity, devoted with tranquil passion to all outdoor pursuits and extremely skilful at them, robust of health, and untiring of energy, it exasperated him that this son of his should be a puny, white-faced, narrow-chested little Cissy of a chap, who hated games, found his principal pleasure in life in strumming idiotic modern music on a piano or blithering pretentious tripe about art and literature and psychology and all that sort of stuff–always looked as if he had slept in his clothes and forgotten to wash–always slouched or sprawled–had never done a day’s work in his life–never would do it–never wanted to do it–Joan–Well, her father wasn’t sure whether Joan was really a babbling, squawking, squealing, aimless little nitwit, or merely succeeded always in pretending that she was one. But, in either case, the result was the same. Five minutes of Joan, he considered, was just about as much as any sane human being could stick in one dollop. And now–look at her. Lolling askew in an armchair, with one leg cocked over its arm–a cigarette hanging out of her mouth–a smirk of cheeky amusement on her face–a lipstick in her hand. And those beastly trousers–Like some little shopgirl–

He addressed her first.

“Now, look here, Joan–this has got to stop. I’ve spoken to you several times. I won’t speak to you again. I dislike that chap Radville and his friends extremely. I dislike your spending your whole day, and the greater part of your night, in their company–I dislike your having anything to do with them, in fact. However, you seem unable to make any decent friends for yourself–so I’ll merely say this. In future, if you spend the evening up at the bungalow, you will come home by twelve o’clock at latest. You’ll come home looking and behaving as if you were sober–whether you are or not. And under no circumstances will you bring Mr. Radville or any of his friends into the grounds of this house. You understand? That’s all I wanted to say to you. Except that the alternative will be very unpleasant for both of us. And for God’s sake, get some decent clothes and dress like a gentlewoman. You’re supposed to be one. Good night.”

“By whom,” yawned Joan. And Leonard raised his shadowed, cigarette-bleared eyes to the ceiling in elaborate weariness.

“Boom-boom-boom!” he blew. “Good God–I hear it in my sleep now! It makes me think of loathsome African forests–and horrible oily smelly rivers with furtive crocodiles in them–and fever–and quinine–and wardrums. Ghastly–” He shuddered.

“Oh, don’t exaggerate, Len,” remonstrated his sister, inspecting her scarlet mouth abstractedly. “Pater’s voice is one of his chief pleasures in life, you know. He thinks it’s so rich and mellow and hearty and strong-mannish. He likes to hear it booming, poor dear. Why shouldn’t he boom if he likes? You needn’t listen to it. It doesn’t mean anything–and it makes him feel good, poor darling. After all, he doesn’t scratch himself–or chew gum–”

She writhed to her feet.

“Well, nighty-night, Pater. Oh–who was the funny little old thing with the hairy face? I know, I’ve seen all that hair somewhere before. Don’t glare at me, Pater. Your eyes become so prominent when you glare. Like a Peke’s. Oh... I know now who hairy-face is. That little doctor–what’s his name? I say–what was he doing here at this hour? Did he come to see Mater?”

“No,” replied Margesson curtly. “He came to see me.”

“See you?” repeated Leonard, with a sudden suspicious sharpness. “What about?” He raised his voice when he received no reply. “I say–what did he come here to see you about?”

“Oh, don’t try to look mysterious, Pater,” adjured Joan. “Leave us some shred of self-respect. After all–biologically–you are our father.”

Unwisely, Margesson essayed scathing repartee.

“I find some little difficulty in believing that either of you are capable of–”

“Is,” groaned Leonard, eyes closed in agony. “Is–is–is. Either never are, dear Pater. Never, never are.”

Above the shrill titter which this languid rebuke evoked from his sister, a distant scream from the upper part of the house, followed by two others yet more frantic and prolonged, brought Leonard to his feet and across the room to the door. As he opened it, the three cries were followed by three heavy reports in rapid succession. There was the tinkle of falling glass–hurrying footsteps overhead–another cry–

“Colonel Margesson. Colonel Margesson. Come up! Come up!”

Thrusting his son aside, Margesson rushed up the staircase and along the short corridor at the end of which lay the rooms in which his wife now spent the greater part of her unhappy existence. At one side were her own and her maid’s bedrooms and a dressing-room; at the other, a large room which had been converted into a sitting-room for her. The dressing-room stood in the angle of the house’s north and east walls, with a window in each. And it was in this room that Mrs. Margesson lay, unconscious, crumpled up in her pyjamas on the carpet, one slippered foot resting on a service revolver which her husband at once recognized as his own property. Apparently she had fallen backwards and her white face, frozen in terror, looked up into the unshaded electric lamp (for she had had the shades removed from the lights in all the rooms specially used by her), hanging above the dressing-table. On her knees beside her mistress, the maid, Georgina, knelt endeavouring to restore her with the aid of sal volatile.

Relieved by the discovery that his first apprehensions had been unfounded and that his wife had merely fainted, Margesson picked up the revolver after some moments and examined it–satisfied himself that all three shots had been fired from it–and removed two undischarged cartridges from the cylinder. It was clear to him that the shots had been fired from the spot where his wife had fallen, and that all had been aimed at the window in the north wall, directly behind the dressing-table. For one bullet had broken an upper pane of the window, one had shivered the dressing-table’s mirror and presumably ricochetted backwards and upwards, and the third had splintered one of the window’s shutters, which stood partially ajar, and then lodged in the sashing. The slivers of glass from the mirror with which the carpet about the dressing-table was plentifully besprinkled crunched beneath his feet as he hurried to the window, and, making a shade of his hands, peered out into the darkness. Another caprice of his wife’s had been to have the lower portions of all the windows in her own part of the house permanently fastened down, and trial assured him that the fastenings of this one were intact. The upper portions of the window was open. But another hurried trial proved that it could not be opened sufficiently to permit him to look out through the aperture, and impatiently he renewed his attempt to overcome the reflected light on the panes.