The Spiral Staircase (7 page)

Her glance towards the door was a hint of dismissal, and Helen turned to go; but her head was humming with confused suspicions which fought for utterance. Although experience had taught her that interference is usually resented, she felt that she must warn Miss Warren.

“I think there is something you ought to know,” she said, lowering her voice. “Lady Warren asked me to get her something from the little cupboard above the wardrobe mirror.”

“Why do you consider that important?” asked Miss Warren.

“Because it was a revolver.” Helen achieved her effect. Miss Warren looked directly at her, with a startled expression.

“Where is it now?” she asked.

“On, that table.”

Miss Warren swooped down upon the small parcel with the avidity of some bird of prey. Her long white fingers loosened a fold of the silk wrapping. Then she held it out, so that Helen might see it.

It was a large spectacle case.

As she stared at it, Helen was swept off her feet by the tidal wave of an exciting possibility.

“That is not the same shape,” she declared. “I felt the other. It had jutting-out bits.”

“What exactly are you hinting at?”

“I think that, when I went to fetch you, Lady Warren hid the revolver and put this in its place.”

“And are you aware that my mother has heart-disease, and has been unable to move, for months?”

All hope of conviction died, as Helen looked at Miss Warren’s skeptical face. Its fluid lines seemed to have been suddenly arrested by a sharp frost.

“I’m sorry if I’ve made a mistake,” she faltered. “Only, I thought I ought to keep nothing back.”

“I am sure you were trying to be helpful,” Miss ‘Warren told her. “But it only hinders to imagine stupid impossibilities.” She added, with a grim smile, “I suppose, like all girls, you go to the Pictures.”

In the circumstances, her reproach was almost painful irony. She seemed to be divided from Helen, not only by space, but by time. “She’s pre-historic,” thought the girl. Her small figure appeared’ actually shrunken as she went out of the blue room.

Besides being cheated out of the recognition, which was her due, she did not feel satisfied with Miss Warren’s acceptance of the revolver incident.

“The customer is always right,” she reminded herself, as she walked down the stairs. “But there’s one comfort. Now that Lady Warren’s soured on me, there will be no more talk about sleeping in her room.”

Luckily, in spite of her discouragement, her sense of duty remained unimpaired. As Oates was late, she decided to take on his job of laying the dinner-table.

At the sound of footsteps, the drawingroom door was opened, and Simone looked out-her eyes parched with longing. Instantly, her husband’s head reared itself over her shoulder, like a serpent.

Simone showed no signs of discomfiture. She merely shrugged and smiled. “So faithful,” she murmured, as she closed the door.

Braced by this glimpse of the clash of human passions, Helen went into the dining-room. For the first time, she felt a certain degree of sympathy with Simone.

“It would get on my nerves to be followed about, like that” she thought.

It was evident that Newton’s jealousy was working up to saturation-point; with Stephen’s departure, he would probably become normal again, Meantime, he plainly meant to give his wife no opportunity of a final interview with the pupil.

In Helen’s eyes, his obsession amounted almost to mania, as she considered the stolid indifference with which Stephen, opposed Simone’s passion, He did not run from her pursuit; he merely shoved her away. Even then, he was in the kitchen, helping Mrs, Oates. He had been offered romance—and he chose onions.

The dining-room was the finest room in the Summit, with an elaborate ceiling of dark carved wood, and a massive fireplace and overmantel, to correspond.

The great windows were screened with thick crimson curtains, while dark red paper covered the walls.

Helen crossed to the walnut sideboard, where the glass and silver was kept, and took a table-cloth from one of the drawers.

From years of practice, Helen could lay a table in her sleep. As she mechanically sorted out spoons and forks, her mind was busy in speculation, Although she was denied the privilege of argument with an employer, she was positive that, during her absence, there had been some monkey-work in the blue room..

“I’m sure Mrs. Oates is right,” she thought. “Lady Warren is not bedridden. She got up, and then she tried to cover her traces by tidying the bed. Well, she overdid it… I’d like to talk it over with Dr. Parry,”

Dr. Parry was clever, young and unconventional. The first time he met Helen, he had shown a direct interest in her welfare, which she had accepted on a medical basis. He asked her personal questions, and seemed apprehensive of the influence of her surroundings on her youth.

What appealed to her most was his unprofessional gossip about his patient..

“Her heart’s in a shocking state,” he told her. “Still, hearts are sporting organs, She might climb Snowdon and be all right, and the next time she sneezed it might finish her off… . But—she keeps, me guessing. I sometimes wonder if she is so helpless. To my mind, she is an old surprise-packet.”

Helen remembered his words as she trotted to and fro, between the, table and the sideboard. But her ears still burned whenever she recalled the irony of Miss Warren’s voice.

“Well, I’ve warned her,” she thought. “It’s her pigeon. But I would like to know where that revolver is. You won’t catch me in that, room again, if I can help it.”

Although she tried to listen for the sound of the car, the fury of the storm prevented her from hearing the hum of the engine, It was not until she caught Mrs. Oates’ welcome to her husband, that she realized that the new nurse had come.

She rushed across the room and opened the door, but was too late to see her face, for she was in the act of following her guides through the entry to the kitchen stairs. Her back view, however, was impressive, for she was unusually tall.

Helen felt a burst of confidence.

“She’s not a weak, link, anyway,” she decided. “She’d be an awkward customer for him to tackle.”

As she lingered in the hall, she remembered the loose handle of Miss Warren’s door: She had watched where Oates kept his handful of tools, and discovered that he left them where he had used them, With this clue to guide her, she found the box stuck away in a corner of the boot-closet, in the hall,

As this was not a legitimate job, she crept up the stairs to The first floor landing, and knelt before the door. She had hardly begun her investigations, when a sudden sound made her look up.

As she did so, she was the victim of an illusion. She was sure that the door across the landing, leading from the back-stairs, opened and shut again, giving her a glimpse of the face of a stranger.

It passed, like the dissolving memory of a dream, yet it left a horror in her mind, as though she had received a vision of elemental evil.

Even while she stared in stunned bewilderment, she realized that a door had actually opened and that the Professor was advancing towards her.

“It must have been the Professor,” she thought. “It must. I believe it looked like him. Some trick of light or shadow altered his expression. It’s so dark here.”

Even while she clung to this commonplace explanation, her reason rejected it. At the back of her mind remained a picture of the spiral of the back-stairs. The two staircases of the Summit offered special chances to anyone who wished to hide.

She reminded herself that no one could get in during the daytime. Besides, the house was so full of people that it would be impossible for anyone to escape notice. The intruder would have to know the habits and time-table of all the inmates.

Suddenly she remembered that Mrs. Oates had commented on the supernormal cunning of a criminal maniac.

He would know.

A shiver ran down. her spine, as she wondered if she ought to tell the Professor of her experience. It was her duty, if any unauthorized person was secreted in the house. But, as she opened her lips, the memory of her recent encounter with Miss Warren made her afraid of appearing officious.

Although the Professor’s eyes seemed to reduce her to the usual essential gases, the sight of his conventional dinner clothes acted as a tonic. His shirt-front gleamed, his black tie was formal, his grey hair was brushed back from his intellectual brow..

Although he was rigid where his sister was fluid, he inspired her with the same sense of unhuman companionship.

Suddenly aware that he might suspect her of spying through a bedroom keyhole, she broke into an explanation of the defective door-handle.

“Tell Oates to see to it, please,” he said, with an absent nod.

Toned by the incident, Helen resolved to test her nerve by a descent of the back-stairs. When she opened the landing door, and looked down the spiral, it looked a trap, .corkscrewing down to depths of darkness. But her courage did not desert her until the last flight, which she nearly leaped, at a sudden memory of a seared, distorted face.

THE, NEW NURSE

When Helen entered the kitchen, she was greeted by the explosions of splattering fat. Although the table was crowded. with materials for dinner—in different stages of preparation—while vegetables bubbled on the range, Mrs. Oates fried fish, juggled with her saucepans, and dried her husband’s wet things over the boiler. In spite of the seeming confusion, she took these interludes in her stride, without loss of head, or temper.

Oates, in his grey woollen cardigan, was eating a huge. meal in the corner, which his wife had cleared for him. He was a goodnatured giant of a man, with the build of a prize-fighter.

At the sight of his small honest eyes, Helen’s heart leaped in real welcome. Like his wife, he always appeared to her as a tower of strength.

“I’m so glad you’ve come back,” she told him. “You’re as good as three men about the house.”

Oates smiled sheepishly as he tried to return the compliment.

“Thank you for laying my table, miss,” he said. “Is it still raining heavily?” went on Helen.

“Not near so much,” interposed Mrs. Oates’ bitterly. “Oates brought most of it in with him.”

Oates poured Worcester sauce over his fish, and changed the subject.

“Wait till you see what I’ve brought back with me,” he chuckled.

“You mean—the new nurse?” asked Helen.

“Yes, the little piece I picked up at the Nursing Home. By the look of her, she’s as good as another man.”

“Is she nice?”

“As nasty a bit of work as ever I’ve come across. Talks with plums in her mouth, and kept me in my place… . Well, if she’s a lady, I’m Greta Garbo.”

“Where is she?” enquired Helen curiously.

“I put a meal for her in the sitting-room,” replied Mrs. Oates.

“My room?”

Mrs. Oates exchanged a smile with her husband. Helen’s sense of ownership was a perpetual source of amusement to them, because of her small stature.

“Only for tonight,” she said soothingly. “After her wet ride, I thought she’d rather not wait for the regular dinner.”

“I’ll go and welcome her,” decided Helen, even while she knew that “inspect” would be more appropriate.

Her own sanctum-a dingy semi-basement room, on the other side of the kitchen-was originally intended for the servants’ hall, in the days before the domestic drought. Its walls and ceiling had been washed butter-yellow, in an attempt to lighten the gloom, and it was shabbily furnished with the overflow of the rest of the house.

Because it had been assigned to Helen, she clung to it with jealous tenacity. Although she took her meals with the family, in recognition of the fact that her father had done nothing for his living, the corresponding fact, that she, herself, was a worker, cut her off from the privilege of relaxing in the drawingroom.

As she entered her refuge, the nurse looked up from her tray. She was a tall broad-shouldered woman, and was still wearing her outdoor nursing-uniform, of conventional navyblue. Helen noticed that her features were large and reddened, and her eyebrows bushy and set close together.

She had nearly finished her meal and was already smoking, between mouthfuls.

“Are you Nurse Barker?” asked Helen..

“How do you do?” Nurse Barker spoke in a voice of heavy culture, as she laid down her cigarette. “Are you one of the Miss Warrens?”

“No, I’m the help, Miss Capel. Have you everything you want?”

“Yes, thanks.” Nurse Barker began to smoke again. “But I would like to ask a question. Why am I put in the kitchen?”

“It’s not,” explained Helen. “It’s my own sitting-room.”

“Do you take your meals here, too?”

“No. I take them with the family.”

The sudden gleam in the older woman’s deep-set eyes told Helen that she was jealous. Although it was a novelty to be an object of envy, her instinct advised her to smooth Nurse Barker’s ruffled feelings.

“The nurse has her own private sitting-room, on the first floor, which is far superior to the basement,” she said. “Your meals are served there. Of course, the same as us. Only” tonight, we thought you’d rather not wait, as you must be cold and tired.”

“I’m more.” Nurse Barker spoke in tones of tragic intensity. “I’m horrified. This place is off the map. I never expected such a lonely spot.”

“You knew it was in the country.”

“I expected the usual country-house. They told me my patient was Lady Warren, which sounded all right.”

Helen wondered whether she ought to warn Nurse Barker what was in store for her.

“I’m afraid you may find her a bit strong-willed,” she said. “The last nurse was frightened of her.”

Nurse Barker swallowed a mouthful of smoke, in professional style. She won’t frighten me,” Nurse Barker declared.. “She’ll find it won’t pay to try her tricks. I keep my patients in order. Influence of course. I believe in kindness. The Iron hand in the velvet glove.”

“I don’t think an iron hand sounds very kind, remarked Helen. She looked up, with a sense of relief, as Mrs. Oates entered. She had temporarily removed her greasy overall, and was looking forward to gratifying her social instinct.