Authors: Gladys Mitchell
‘Oh, I had far rather not trouble you,’ Dorothy hastily began, but the older woman cut her short.
‘I will see to it,’ she said promptly. ‘It will not be any trouble. Only, you must not tell anyone that you are coming. Do you understand?’
‘Not even Garde?’ asked Dorothy. ‘The fact is,
Mrs Bradley, that ever since the—the murder, I don’t feel that I am safe in this house with anyone except Garde. You don’t mind my saying this, do you? I don’t mean to be personal or—or anything, and, of course, I am
certain
you were not the—the dreadful person—although one could say that about everybody, couldn’t one? It has puzzled me ever so much. The only person who had any reason, you see, was the most unlikely of any of us to do such an awful thing. I mean, she is so quiet and sort of—sort of prim, isn’t she?’
‘Who?’ asked Mrs Bradley keenly.
‘Why, Eleanor,’ whispered Dorothy, with troubled eyes. ‘But I’m sure she couldn’t have done it.’
‘What made you say she had a reason?’ asked Mrs Bradley quietly.
‘Oh, I don’t know. She was engaged to Mr—no, Miss Mountjoy, wasn’t she? And I know she wasn’t altogether happy about it, because she came into my room weeping most terribly, and all she could say was, “Oh, Dorothy, Dorothy! What shall I do about it? What shall I do about it?”
‘And I said, “Do about what, Eleanor?”
‘And she said, “Mountjoy! Mountjoy! I don’t know how to bear it! I don’t know what to do!”
‘I didn’t really know what she was talking about, but I felt compelled to say something, so I said:
‘“If you feel unhappy about your engagement, Eleanor, I think you ought to break it off, before it is publicly announced.”
‘And she said, “But the shame of it, Dorothy! Think of the shame of it! Oh, no! I shall have to
go through with it now! But how hateful! Oh, how more than hateful my situation is!”
‘Of course, Mrs Bradley, you can guess what I thought she meant, although even then I could scarcely imagine the fastidious, prudish Eleanor getting herself into
that
sort of a muddle, but now I know she couldn’t have meant that. Instead she must have——’
‘Yes?’ prompted Mrs Bradley, her eyes gleaming hard.
‘Well, I think she must have found out about Everard Mountjoy’s sex,’ said Dorothy quietly. ‘So really it was a blessing he—no, she—
was
drowned before the engagement was made public, wasn’t it, from Eleanor’s point of view.’
‘Yes. I expect that
was
Eleanor’s point of view,’ said Mrs Bradley dryly. ‘But there is more in the thing yet than meets your innocent eye.
Will
you sleep in my room tonight?’
‘If I must,’ said Dorothy, laughing unwillingly.
‘Good!’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘And you are going to tell Garde Bing what we are going to do? Nobody else, mind, or my experiment will not work.’
‘But what are you trying to prove?’ asked Dorothy curiously.
‘Never you mind! Let little girls be seen and not heard,’ said Mrs Bradley, with her ghoulish chuckle. ‘Now, listen while I tell you what to do.’
‘All right, Celestine,’ said Mrs Bradley to her maid. ‘That will do.’
‘How sweet of you to come and bid me good
night, Dorothy dear,’ she added, for the maid’s hearing, as the latter, with a quiet: ‘
Bien, madame. Bonne nuit. Bonne nuit, mademoiselle
,’ prepared to quit the room.
‘I must not stay long, though,’ Dorothy replied, as they had arranged she should.
The maid’s footsteps died away.
‘Now, my angel,’ said Mrs Bradley softly, but in an authoritative voice, ‘you must go to your own room and undress. Get quite ready for bed, and be sure to put on a nightdress of which you have a duplicate. Understand?’
Dorothy drew a deep breath.
‘I’m scared to death,’ she whispered. ‘Can’t you tell me what is going to happen?’
‘I don’t know what is going to happen, I am thankful to say,’ Mrs Bradley truthfully replied. ‘I have not been cursed with the gift of second sight. Well, are you going?’
‘I suppose so,’ her fellow-conspirator answered half-heartedly. ‘I must just go and say good night to Eleanor first, though.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Mrs Bradley promptly. ‘I almost wish it were the custom for us to go and say good night to the young men also. I should like to be certain that everybody fully intends to go to bed tonight.’
Dorothy raised her eyebrows, but, as Mrs Bradley did not intend, apparently, to satisfy her curiosity, she shrugged her slim shoulders, plucked up her courage, and sallied forth. To Eleanor’s bedroom they went, but, as the room was in darkness and
the door wide open, they correctly assumed that the occupant was not there, so Mrs Bradley departed again, and Dorothy, whistling gaily to keep up her spirits, walked along the landing to her own room.
The house was built in four storeys, the lowest of which contained the dining-room, drawing-room, library, morning-room, Alastair Bing’s study, and, at the back, the kitchen and servants’ hall.
On the first floor were the bedrooms allotted to Dorothy, Mrs Bradley, Eleanor herself, and the ill-fated Mountjoy, the last of which had remained unoccupied since the fatal day of her death. Adjoining, but not opening into, Dorothy’s room, was the bathroom where the crime had taken place. This bathroom had been studiously avoided for the first few hours of the day succeeding the discovery of the corpse, but first Mrs Bradley, then Eleanor, and finally Dorothy, had put aside their superstitious repugnance to the room, and had gone on using it for the sake of convenience.
Dorothy switched on all the lights she could possibly pretend she needed, and, having locked the door, prepared for bed. Then, following Mrs Bradley’s explicit instructions, she chose a pair of pyjamas like the pair she had donned, stuffed several pairs of stockings into each leg of the trousers, filled out the rest of the garment with a woollen sports coat, hung the coat upon a coat-hanger, filled the sleeves with her bathing-costume and a towel, buttoned the coat round a pillow, and, laying the
whole dummy outfit in the bed, tenderly tucked it in. Then she drew from its hiding-place under a pile of folded silk underclothing a cunningly fashioned head, made out of a Guy Fawkes mask, a stuffed sponge-bag, and a quantity of dark brown darning-wool fixed on to represent hair.
Swiftly and cleverly, Dorothy arranged this monstrosity with the face half-hidden in the bedclothes, and the dark hair well showing. Then she stepped across the room, switched off the lights, and, greatly daring, unlocked the door, walked back to the bedside, and gazed down upon her effigy. The fitful, deceptive moonlight, shining down upon the lay figure, made her shudder. There was something horribly human about that half-screened face, that dark bobbed head.
Softly Dorothy tiptoed to the door. Barefooted, for, to complete the illusion, she had been warned to leave her bedroom slippers in their usual place, and, feeling uncomfortably naked, for, in obedience to the same decree, she had left her dressing-gown hanging over a chair, and her silk pyjamas were thin, she ventured into the darkness of the passage.
Then a thought struck her. These sinister preparations might as well be as complete as human thought and foresight could make them.
She tiptoed back again, pulling the door close behind her. She went across to the dressing-chest, and, aided by the greenish, eerie gleams of the moon, searched the top drawer. Her fingers encountered what she sought. Closing the drawer,
she walked steadily across to the bed, clenched her teeth, and adjusted on the dark head of what her brain would terrifyingly insist upon calling ‘The Corpse’ a rose-pink shingle-cap!
Then she ran noiselessly to Mrs Bradley’s door, and, without knocking, admitted herself.
Mrs Bradley, even less attractive in bed than she appeared out of it, was propped among her pillows. She held a volume of modern poetry in her claw-like right hand, and with her left was in the act of turning a page as Dorothy entered. She signalled to the girl to approach the bed.
Dorothy, closing the door quietly, came near. Mrs Bradley motioned to her to bend down. Then she breathed into her ear:
‘Finished everything?’
‘Yes, everything,’ Dorothy whispered, ‘and I’m—I’m cold.’
‘No, scared,’ said Mrs Bradley, grinning fiendishly. ‘Never mind. You look charming. But get into bed now. Wait a minute. I’ll turn over with a loud creaking noise. Oh,
I
shan’t creak; it will be the bed. While it is creaking you must get into your bed and lie down, under cover of the noise I make. Do you understand? It is tremendously important that no one shall know you are here. If they do know, my experiment may be useless. Good night, my dear. I’ve drawn the beds very close together, so that if you feel lonely you have only to stretch out an arm and I’ll wake up. But, whatever you do, don’t say anything in your ordinary voice. Nobody is to suspect that you are here.’
‘Very well,’ whispered Dorothy, trembling with feverish excitement mixed with fear.
Mrs Bradley put an arm like a steel band round her shoulders and gave her a heartening little squeeze.
‘Bed,’ she breathed, releasing her.
Dorothy touched the clever, cynical face with slim, soft fingers.
‘Good night,’ she whispered; and glided round to the farther side of the other bed. With a creak and a groan, Mrs Bradley’s mattress bore eloquent testimony to the way in which it was being ill-treated. Under cover of the noise, Dorothy insinuated her young graceful body between the sheets, gave a long, delicious wriggle under the clothes, and turned on to her side.
Then there was silence, save for the insistent ticking of Mrs Bradley’s watch. To Dorothy’s troubled mind the ticking seemed to grow louder and louder. The watch seemed to be two watches, each ticking at a slightly different interval. A bass note joined in, and the three sets of ticking seemed to hammer on to her brain. Then she slept.
It seemed to her that she wandered in and out of the vast rooms of a house. Suddenly she entered one that was empty save for a black and ivory throne placed at the far end of it. She tried to reach this throne, but always it seemed exactly the same distance away. Sometimes there was somebody seated on the throne; sometimes it was vacant. With all her powers she tried to reach it, but in vain.
Suddenly, her dream flashed and broke into a
thousand pieces. From somewhere in the house there burst an agonizing scream. It jerked her into sweating, shivering wakefulness, and clove the air with liquid fire. Brilliant green and blue lights flashed through her brain.
Regardless—indeed, totally forgetful—of Mrs Bradley’s injunction, she sat up in bed, switched on the electric light, and, grasping that calm but fully awake guardian-angel by the shoulder, cried hoarsely:
‘What was that?’
‘That,’ Mrs Bradley meticulously replied, raising herself on one elbow, and grinning broadly, ‘was a scream. What did you think it was?’
‘I—I—I know,’ stammered Dorothy. ‘You don’t think—I mean—it isn’t—you know what I mean!’
‘Lie down again,’ said Mrs Bradley.
‘I can’t! Oh, isn’t it horrible?’ said Dorothy, shuddering.
‘Yes, it is,’ Mrs Bradley coolly replied. ‘Never mind. It might have been worse, I dare say.’
‘What—what do you mean? Aren’t we—aren’t we going to—to—to do anything?’
‘By all means, if it will give you any satisfaction, my dear. Incidentally, I think I may say that my experiment has been entirely successful.’
Mrs Bradley leapt lightly from her bed, pushed her feet into slippers, hustled her body into a dressing-gown of a surprising mustard hue, and ran a comb through her hair.
Dorothy crawled shiveringly out of bed, then
darted swiftly up to Mrs Bradley and clutched her by the arm.
‘I’m not going to stay here alone,’ she quavered.
‘Well, you can’t join in the fun looking like that,’ Mrs Bradley pointed out, eyeing Dorothy’s silk pyjamas with admiration. ‘Here, wrap yourself in the eiderdown. Keep the ends from trailing or you’ll get tripped up.’
The landing, which during the last few seconds had sounded like the meeting-place of armies, presented an unusual sight. Dozens of persons, in all stages of undress, from the ludicrous (in the case of Alastair Bing and the cook) to the semi-classic (in the case of Garde), the musical-comedy (in the case of Eleanor and Dorothy) and the sheerly pantomimic (in the case of Mrs Bradley and the butler) presented themselves to one another’s startled gaze.
‘What’s happened?’ said everybody to everybody else.
‘Oh, it wasn’t you screaming, then,’ said Garde to Dorothy.
Mrs Bradley pushed her way through the hordes to where Carstairs, soberly clad in a dark brown dressing-gown and leather slippers, was interrogating Eleanor Bing.
Eleanor’s usual calm had forsaken her.
She gesticulated wildly as she talked. Her voice seemed to shoot up two or three octaves now and again, as a boy’s does when it is breaking.
‘Now, calm yourself, Eleanor! Do please calm
yourself, and speak coherently,’ said Alastair Bing, himself hopping about on the fringe of the crowd like a demented hen. ‘Silence, please, all of you! Silence! And will the domestic staff please withdraw.’
The domestic staff moved back a few paces, and then stood huddled together at the top of the stairs. They seemed badly scared, and were inclined to look suddenly and shudderingly behind them.
‘Now, then,’ said Alastair, ‘tell us what has happened.’
‘I had neuralgia,’ Eleanor said, trying hard to steady her voice, ‘and I thought Dorothy might have some aspirin, so I went into her room to ask for it—and—and—well, go and see for yourselves! Oh, it is horrible! Too, too horrible!’
She covered her face with her hands and shuddered and shuddered.
Mrs Bradley beckoned to Garde.
‘Don’t leave Dorothy’s side until I come back,’ she whispered. Then she grasped Eleanor firmly by the arm.
‘Come along,’ she said, with quiet urgency. ‘Come with me.’
Half guiding, half compelling Eleanor’s faltering footsteps, she took her back to her bedroom, and caused her to lie down. There she left her for a minute, and returned shortly with a potent sleeping-draught.