Speedy Death (23 page)

Carstairs sighed softly into the darkness at the
conclusion of Bertie’s narrative, and for ten minutes or more neither man spoke.

Suddenly Bertie lifted his head and whispered:

‘What’s that?’

It was a queer shuffling sound, and it was coming along the landing. As suddenly as it had begun it ceased, and, with tense muscles and eyes fixed on the door, the two men waited, straining their ears to catch the next sound. Carstairs laid a restraining hand upon Bertie’s arm in case the younger man should precipitate matters by emerging from his hiding-place too soon.

Still as stone, they waited and watched. Then they detected the sound again, and candlelight gleamed through the crack of the floor.

Again there followed a pause, while Carstairs counted thirty to himself. Then the candlelight moved forward, and the door was pushed slowly and softly open. Carstairs’ fingers closed painfully on Bertie’s arm. The tension was extreme.

Framed in the open doorway and looking the picture of maniacal, avenging fury, stood Eleanor Bing. The candle, whose flickering, uneasy radiance illumined the scene, was held in her left hand. In her right she gripped an enormous carving-knife.

‘Good God!’ said Bertie, between clenched teeth.

Eleanor stopped short, and listened with a kind of ferocious intentness. Gone were her puritanical expression and her prim demeanour; gone her faintly derisive smile and her neat Victorian coiffure. This was Fury incarnate which stood before them;
Fury of the French Revolution; Fury of the Russian famine; Fury of Furies—wild-eyed, streaming-haired Fury loosed from hell!

She laughed; and the blood froze in Carstairs’ veins.

‘She’s mad,’ he whispered, gazing with fascinated repulsion as Eleanor advanced towards the empty bed with the carving-knife raised high in the air.

Quietly he began to worm his way out from behind the bed’s head, and round the walls, keeping carefully outside the circle of fitful candlelight. Bertie, divining his intention, followed his example, but took the opposite side of the room.

‘Now!’ yelled Carstairs suddenly, as, with a shriek of wild-beast rage, Eleanor, beholding the empty bed and knowing herself foiled of her prey, slashed and slashed again at the bedclothes, ripped open the eiderdown, cut and sawed the blankets, and tore the sheets into strips with the knife and her own cruel, strong hands.

Carstairs grasped her round the body, imprisoning her arms, while Bertie snatched the powerful knife from her fingers.

Eleanor fought and struggled, while from the lips which were accustomed to employ the most trite and correct of expressions there poured forth a stream of the most foul and abominable filth which ever disgraced the name of language.

‘For heaven’s sake stop her!’ cried Bertie frantically. He himself tried to place a hand over her foaming mouth, but received a bite for his pains which caused him quickly to desist.

Someone switched on the electric light.

‘Now then!’ said Mrs Bradley’s voice, in accents neither man had heard before.

The fighting, struggling Eleanor gave a little whimpering cry like that of a dog which expects a beating, and attempted to shrink away from the newcomer and to efface herself behind Bertie Philipson.

‘Come, now!’ said Mrs Bradley, in the same tone. ‘What are you thinking of! You’re tired. You want to go back to bed. Come here! This way!’

She advanced towards the demented girl as she spoke, and grasped her firmly by the arm.

‘No nonsense!’ she said. ‘This is very, very foolish! Back to bed at once!’

The two men followed them out of the room and along to Eleanor’s own chamber.

‘Just in case of accidents,’ said Carstairs quietly to Bertie, ‘I think we had better stand by.’

Eleanor, however, seemed to recognise in Mrs Bradley a master mind, and shiveringly but mutely obeyed her commands.

‘No need for you to stay out of bed any longer,’ Mrs Bradley told the two men. ‘I’ll get her into bed, and I’m going to give her a fairly powerful sleeping-draught. I’ll just stay with her while she drinks it, and then I’ll lock her door on the outside when I come away. Good night. Thanks very much for your help.’

A low, distracted moan from the chair on which Eleanor had seated herself cut short her remarks.

‘Yes, yes. All right now. Quite all right now,’ the men heard the older woman murmur.

They waited outside for a minute or two, but, hearing no further sounds except the creaking of Eleanor’s bed, followed by the chink of a glass, they tiptoed away.

‘I expect the dementia spasm, or whatever it is, has passed by now,’ whispered Carstairs. ‘Good night. Your room is next to mine, so if there should be anything else happening and you are needed, 1 will knock three times on the wall.’

‘Right you are. Good night,’ responded Bertie; and they retired to bed.

About five minutes later, Carstairs, who had undressed as far as his shirt and trousers, was startled by hearing an urgent tapping at his bedroom door. He opened it to find Alastair Bing, closely followed by Garde and Dorothy, confronting him.

‘Oh, here you are, Carstairs! Is anything wrong? Awful amount of noise going on in the house. Shocking amount of noise going on in the house,’ cried Alastair, bristling fiercely. ‘I hope there’s no foolishness going on.’

‘Good heavens!’ cried Carstairs. ‘Whatever is that row?’

‘That row, as you call it, is the noise I refer to,’ said Alastair. ‘It comes from my daughter’s bedroom. She says she can’t get out. Why can’t she get out? Why not?
Why
not?’

‘Tell you later,’ replied Carstairs, clutching his dressing-gown from its peg and hastily swarming into it. ‘Send Dorothy back to bed, and you two come with me.’

Outside Eleanor’s door they encountered Mrs Bradley, and a moment later a tousle-haired Bertie descended the stairs to join them.

‘I think I had better go in to her,’ said Mrs Bradley. She produced the key of Eleanor’s bedroom door from her dressing-gown pocket and cried loudly to drown the rattling and banging of the occupant:

‘All right! All right! We are here!’

Eleanor was out of bed and clad only in her night-dress. She fell back against the bed when she saw Mrs Bradley and began to whimper.

‘Get into bed,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Go to sleep. So tired, aren’t you? Yes, ever so tired!’

She assisted Eleanor into bed again, and tucked the bedclothes round her.

‘But what—what—what’s the matter?’ cried Alastair Bing. ‘Is the girl ill?’

‘Bad case of nervous breakdown,’ answered Mrs Bradley, thanking her stars for that polite and modern phrase. ‘You’ll have to call in a specialist tomorrow, I’m afraid.’

‘All these horrors! All these abominations!’ cried Alastair Bing. ‘No wonder the poor girl’s brain is affected! I wonder we are not all gibbering maniacs! To bed! To bed!’ he suddenly broke off, waving his arms at them all as though they were poultry. ‘Get along! Get along!’

At this point, however, Eleanor in a drowsy voice asked for a drink, and Garde volunteered to go downstairs for a cup and saucer, as Mrs Bradley observed that she had some coffee left in her thermos flask.

‘Rather a pity to give her coffee, isn’t it?’ Carstairs ventured to ask. ‘I mean, it is a stimulant, not a sedative. Wouldn’t a little warm milk be better?’

‘This coffee is nearly all milk,’ Mrs Bradley replied. ‘I’ll go and get it.’

She was absent less than ten seconds, and returned with the identical flask from which she had poured her own half-cup of coffee some hour or so earlier.

Garde groped blasphemously in the kitchen to find the electric switch, turned up the light, and soon returned with a large white and gold kitchen cup.

Mrs Bradley poured a generous amount of coffee into it, and Eleanor drank to the dregs.

‘She’ll be all right now,’ said Mrs Bradley contentedly, gazing benignly down upon Eleanor’s still form.

When she appeared to be sleeping soundly, they left her, but again Mrs Bradley took the precaution of locking the bedroom door on the outside.

‘You’d better have the key, as it is your house,’ she said seriously, handing it to Alastair Bing.

‘Do you think we had better get a medical opinion tonight?’ asked Alastair.

‘No. Unnecessary tonight. Besides, she is asleep,’ replied Mrs Bradley. When Alastair had been persuaded to retire, Carstairs crept to Mrs Bradley’s door and tapped softly. She herself opened it.

‘Did you—tell Alastair?’ asked Carstairs.

Mrs Bradley, looking like an exceedingly ruffled eagle, shook her head.

‘I have nothing to tell him. Eleanor is not insane, if that is what you mean.’

‘Not—not insane?’ cried Carstairs. ‘She seemed absolutely like a maniac to me.’

‘I don’t believe a specialist would certify her,’ said Mrs Bradley, shaking her head.

‘But—but damn it!’ cried Carstairs. ‘She’s—she’s dangerous.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Mrs Bradley answered. ‘But she’s only dangerous when anybody takes a liking for Bertie Philipson. Even Mountjoy was safe until Bertie arrived, I fancy, but Eleanor’s motives in that case must have been mixed. She wanted Bertie. She also discovered that Mountjoy was a woman. The two things together may have unbalanced her mind as neither of them separately would have done. Then she attempted Dorothy Clark’s life when she discovered Bertie’s infatuation for Dorothy. Now tonight Bertie addresses this child Pamela in carelessly affectionate terms, therefore Eleanor determines to annihilate Pamela. And so it will go on until she gets herself hanged for murder. It’s an awful—an impossible situation! Still,’ she added, with her horrid cackle, ‘we must hope for the best.’

Carstairs, little comforted by this pious suggestion, retired to bed. His dreams were chaotic, and he awoke feeling tired and unrefreshed.

At a very early hour he heard sounds from the adjoining bedroom indicating that Bertie Philipson was also astir. Carstairs tapped on the wall, and Bertie unlocked the connecting door between their rooms and entered.

‘I say,’ said Bertie, ‘did we really see Eleanor with the carving-knife last night, or did I dream it?’

‘I was inclined to ask you the same thing,’ said Carstairs. ‘The frightful question is, what are we going to do about it? Of course, they’ll call in a doctor today, I’ve no doubt. By the way——’ He hesitated, wondering how best to introduce the subject uppermost in his mind.

‘Yes?’ said Bertie, prompting his hesitating tongue.

‘Well—er—I suppose—that is—— Look here!’ cried Carstairs desperately. ‘Why don’t you take Pamela home this morning and stay with the Storbins for a bit?’

‘I’d thought of it myself,’ Bertie moodily answered, ‘but I don’t suppose this damned inspector will hear of one of us going before he’s completed his beastly case.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Carstairs. ‘He’s got nothing against any of us. Besides, he can always have us watched and shadowed.’

‘I’ll see him after breakfast,’ said Bertie. ‘Meanwhile, I’m for a bath and shave and a nice little walk in the grounds. This nightmare house is beginning to get on my nerves.’

He retired to his own room for his towel and other accessories, and descended the stairs, saying over his shoulder:

‘Even Eleanor can hardly be using the bathroom at the unearthly hour of six-fifteen in the morning.’

That, however, was exactly what Eleanor was
doing, as they discovered an hour later, for Bertie waited and waited, and, at length, impatience overcoming courtesy, hammered and hammered. At last, becoming thoroughly panic-stricken, he ran for Carstairs, and, with him, shouted and shouted until the whole household came running to find out what was the latest terror to fall upon the ill-fated mansion.

They burst the newly repaired door down and found her.

She was lying almost full-length in the bath, and when they lifted her out she was colder than the cold water in which she lay.

THE INQUEST ON
Eleanor Bing’s body was held in the large, pleasant morning-room of Chayning Place, and the sunshine, which appeared the more brilliant in contrast with the gloomy clothes and pale, strained faces of the family and guests, seemed strange and incongruous.

The jury were sworn in, and the medical witnesses went upstairs to make formal examination of the body, although by this time everyone present knew that the verdict of the local doctor had been confirmed by a great London specialist, and that there was no doubt as to the cause of death.

‘Not drowned?’ Alastair Bing had cried. ‘What was it, then, doctor? Heart-failure?’

‘Mr Bing’—the doctor was very grave—‘you will have to know. I am distressed to tell you that I cannot certify the cause of death without an autopsy.’

‘But—but—surely——’ Alastair had begun to stammer.

‘I am sorry,’ the doctor repeated. He hesitated, and then said: ‘And I should like to call in another opinion. The fact is—I hardly know how to—that is, you must prepare yourself for a shock. Mr Bing, I believe your daughter died from the effects of poison!’

The first witness called was Bertie Philipson, who was questioned about the finding of the body.

The medical evidence was then taken. ‘You say that the deceased did not meet her death through drowning? What, in your opinion, was the cause of death?’