Weekend with Death

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Weekend with Death

Patricia Wentworth

CHAPTER I

It was very cold in the waiting-room. Sarah Marlowe pulled her fur coat up round her ears. There was no more that she could do. Skirts being what they were, her admirably shaped legs in their thin silk stockings had just to bear the arctic temperature without making a fuss. The stockings were of a deep tan colour, the shoes on the slender feet dark brown and noticeably well cut. The fur coat was brown too, and so was the small round pill-box hat tilted to exactly the right angle at the side of Miss Marlowe's head. When she moved to pull up the collar of her coat the other occupant of the waiting-room could see that the hair under the pill-box was of a dark bright brown. After breaking into two neatly rolled curls it swept smoothly down to a coil on the nape of the neck. Lashes a shade darker than the hair set off a pair of eyes which were generally considered to be Miss Marlowe's best feature. Sarah herself had even got a little tired of hearing about them. They had been used so often by candid relations to disparage a charmingly irregular nose and a widely humorous mouth. “If it were not for Sarah's eyes she would be positively plain”—Great-aunt Louisa when she was twelve. “The child certainly has fine eyes. Pity her nose turns up”—old Cousin Tom Courtney at the top of a powerful voice on the occasion of his daughter Winifred's marriage. Sarah had been a bridesmaid, and all the way up the aisle, instead of looking at the bride, she was trying to see her own nose sideways on and wondering just how badly it did turn up.

Miss Emily Case, on the opposite bench, permitted herself to shiver. She thought the girl in brown looked very warm and comfortable. Her own coat of black serge with its small collar of grey opossum was not really thick enough for the weather, and of course, coming from Italy, one was bound to feel the cold. It was some years since she had wintered in England, and she was afraid that she was going to find it extremely trying. She leaned forward and addressed her fellow traveller.

“I really do feel that there should be a fire in a waiting-room in weather like this.”

Sarah Marlowe smiled.

“Well, there is a war on.”

Miss Case looked abashed.

“Oh, yes—one should not grumble—you are quite right. It would not matter at all if the trains were not running so late. And then of course the fog—such a peculiarly penetrating sort of cold. But I seem to remember that the waiting-rooms on this line were always very insufficiently warmed.”

Sarah nodded.

“Waiting-rooms always are,” she said. “Funny how they all have the same smell—a kind of deadly cold stuffiness, and every time anyone opens the door you get an icy draught all mixed up with smoke and engine oil. Post offices are pretty bad, but they don't have as many draughts as waiting-rooms, and you get gum instead of oil.”

Miss Case was not listening. She did not wish to listen, she wished to talk. She glanced in the direction of the waiting-room door and shivered.

“I have had a very uncomfortable journey, and now—it is so cold—after being abroad—”

Sarah began to wish that she had not responded. This was obviously a person with a grievance, and people with grievances can be such terrible bores. She looked at Miss Case, and did not feel any great desire to continue the conversation. A neat, shabby little woman with a pale, plump face and pale blue eyes—one of those people you always seem to meet when you are travelling. Impossible to imagine them with a life of their own, impossible to imagine that anything of the slightest interest has ever happened or can ever be going to happen to them. A passing wonder as to what this rather shabby elderly woman had been doing abroad and why she was now returning to England just touched the surface of her mind. It deepened a little when Miss Case said,

“I've been in Italy for five years. It isn't much of a welcome coming home like this, with the war on and getting held up by a fog at an inconvenient station with nobody knows how long to wait for a train.”

Henry Templar had once told Sarah that she had a heart like a hot mutton pie, grateful and comforting. Sarah, revolted, at once flung the nearest book at his head. “And what's more,” Henry had declaimed from half way up the stairs, “it'll land you in a mess one of these days—you just see if it doesn't!” It was this fatally warm heart which now caused her to say in a sympathetic voice,

“It sounds horrid—but perhaps we shan't have very long to wait. Are you going to London?”

Miss Case shook her head. A rather limp-looking black felt hat slipped down over one ear. A hand in a shabby glove came up and pulled it straight again.

“Oh, no. I have come from London, or I should say, through London—after landing at Folkestone, you know. I am going to stay with a married sister at Ledstock—it is quite a small village. And then I shall have to try and find another post. I was five years with Lady Richards. She made her home in Italy—the climate, you know—so delightful. But she died in November, and so of course I shall have to think about another post.”

Sarah suddenly felt so sorry that she did not know what to do. How devastating to spend five years nursing a possibly grim old woman and then have to start all over again—and again—and again—and again! She said,

“Oh, I do hope you will find someone very nice. Would you like to tell me your name in case I hear of anyone?”

“Miss Case—Miss Emily Case. I'm sure it's very kind of you—”

Kind
.… Sarah felt as if the word had stabbed her. Stray cats, stray dogs, stray people—you were sorry for them, but you weren't kind to them, because you were afraid of being let in for more than you could manage. So you couldn't be kind—you had to look the other way and pretend that they weren't there. Sometimes it was all too much for you and you did bring in the wretched wisp of a kitten which rubbed, purring, against your ankle, or the dreadfully thin mongrel puppy which wagged its stub of a tail and looked at you with brightening eyes. But people—what could you do with people, when you were twenty-three and hadn't a penny in the world except what you earned and that didn't go quite far enough to make its two ends meet? She did not know what to say. A faint apologetic smile touched her lips.

But Miss Case was not looking at her. The same nervous glance as before had gone towards the waiting room door. Sarah turned to see what she was looking at. The upper half of the door was of glass. Beyond it was the platform, a darkness just touched with ghostly blue from the shaded light which was all that was allowed by the black-out regulations. But of this darkness there was to be seen no more than a narrow streak where the blind which screened the glass had slipped aside.

Miss Case turned back.

“Did you see anyone? I thought there was a man.” There was alarm in her voice.

Sarah said as gravely as she could, “Well, it might be a porter or a passenger—”

Miss Case produced a large handkerchief and blew her nose. Her hand was not quite steady.

“He's been walking up and down,” she said in a dismal whisper.

“Why shouldn't he?”

She rolled the handkerchief up into a ball and clasped it in her black gloved hands.

“He makes me feel so nervous,” she said. “I didn't think of it before, but suppose he's been following me—it would be quite easy, wouldn't it?”

Sarah allowed herself to sigh. Henry was perfectly right. That was what was so aggravating about him—he nearly always was. She had let herself in. The poor thing was certainly unhinged. Here she was, let in for a heart-to-heart talk that might last for hours if the trains went on not arriving. Her worst fears were realized when Miss Case leaned forward and said in an earnest voice,

“If you would let me tell you about it, I think it would be a help. You see, I haven't had anyone to talk to since it happened, and I keep wondering if I did the right thing—only I'm sure I don't know what else I could have done. You see, there was no time to think. And then I really was feeling faint—the—the blood, you know—and the poor young man looking just like death—”

Sarah felt as if a drop of cold water was running down her spine. It was the most uncomfortable feeling. She said “Oh!” and Miss Case sniffed.

“That is just what I said. He was holding his handkerchief pressed against his side and the blood quite soaking through it, and he said, gasping all the time poor fellow, ‘They've got me. I've got something they mustn't get.' And then he said, ‘You're English', and he pushed it into my hand and said, ‘Don't let them get it.' And he said ‘Go!' so I went back to my own compartment, and I was just wondering whether I ought to press the bell or not, when I saw the guard coming along—” She stopped and gazed at Sarah. “I do hope you think I did right—”

Mad as a hatter—

Sarah said in a soothing voice,

“I'm sure you did.”

The pale blue eyes looked into hers without blinking.

“He seemed so anxious I should go. And of course I have no idea who he was. I only happened to be passing his compartment. I had been tidying up—and I thought he seemed ill—you quite understand that, don't you?”

“Oh, quite,” said Sarah, who did not understand anything at all.

“And of course,” pursued Miss Case, still gazing—“
of course
I should not have left him if he had not been so very urgent about it, though it would have been most inconvenient and awkward if I had been detained as—as a witness, or even suspected of having injured the poor young man myself. I could not really be expected to take the risk of anything like that, do you think? Actually we were just running into the station, so it was not like leaving him without any help. It was quite certain that someone would find him, and I really could not risk becoming involved in anything so unpleasant as a stabbing case. Fortunately I had been alone in my compartment, and no one saw me either when I left it or when I returned. People were looking out of the windows and getting their luggage down—because we were coming into the station.”