In the Teeth of the Evidence (19 page)

    She was still bending, hot and flushed, over the stove, when she heard footsteps coming up the stair. She dashed to the typewriter and began to pound nervously at the keys. A hand shook the door-handle.

    ‘Hell!’ said the voice of Humphrey Podd. Then came the noise of a key entering the lock. ‘Damn the girl – she’s still out.’

    Mr Podd walked in.

    ‘You’re here!’ he said, astonished. ‘What the devil are you doing with the door locked? Look here, here’s a dashed nuisance! That ass, Ramp, has gone and blown his brains out, if he ever had any, and all our advance publicity has been wasted. We’ll have to start all over again.’

    ‘Oh, Mr Podd!’ cried Miss Robbins. ‘I’m so thankful you’re here. When I saw the policeman I was afraid he’d catch you, and I didn’t know where you were, to warn you –’

    ‘No wonder Ramp looked white about the gills,’ pursued Mr Podd, unheeding. ‘His wife’s been carrying on with some man or other. Ramp got wind of it through some anonymous letters from a discharged servant, and there was a frightful bust-up last night and his wife’s bolted. And now the fool’s gone and shot himself. I got hold of that infuriating chap, Gamble, and wrung the whole thing out of him. He might have told me earlier, blast him! It’s no good sending anything there now. I hope you didn’t post that manuscript. If you did, we must get it back and try it on Sloop – What on earth’s the matter with you, Miss Robbins?’

    ‘Oh, Mr Podd!’ cried Miss Robbins. ‘We can’t – we – I thought – oh, Mr Podd, I’ve burnt the manuscripts!’

Police-constable E999 withdrew his wistful gaze from the lighted area. Somebody in the basement was stewing tripe, and the smell came up comfortingly. He hoped there would be something equally good waiting for him at home. As he ambled along the pavement, he heard a crash and tinkle of glass, and a typewriter came hurtling out of an upper window, just missing his helmet.

    ‘Hullo!’ said PC E999.

    A loud shriek followed. Then a shrill female voice cried, ‘Help! help! murder!’

    ‘Gor lumme!’ said the constable. ‘They
would
go and start something just when I was getting away to my supper.’

    He climbed the steps and knocked thunderously upon the door.

SCRAWNS

The gate, on whose peeled and faded surface the name SCRAWNS was just legible in the dim light, fell to with a clap that shook the rotten gate-post and scattered a shower of drops from the drenched laurels. Susan Tabbit set down the heavy suit-case which had made her arm ache, and peered through the drizzle, towards the little house.

    It was a curious, lop-sided, hunch-shouldered building, seeming not so much to preside over its patch of wintry garden as to be eavesdropping behind its own hedges. Against a streak of watery light in the west, its chimney-stacks – one at either end – suggested pricked ears, intensely aware; the more so, that its face was blind.

    Susan shivered a little, and thought regretfully of the cheerful bus that she had left at the bottom of the hill. The conductor had seemed just as much surprised as the station porter had been when she mentioned her destination. He had opened his mouth as though about to make some comment, but had thought better of it. She wished she had had the courage to ask him what sort of place she was coming to. Scrawns. It was a queer name; she had thought so when she had first seen it on Mrs Wispell’s notepaper. Susan Tabbit, care of Mrs Wispell, Scrawns, Roman Way, Dedcaster.

    Her married sister had pursed up her lips when Susan gave her the address, reading it aloud with an air of disapproval. ‘What’s she like, this Mrs Wispell of Scrawns?’ Susan had to confess that she did not know; she had taken the situation without an interview.

    Now the house faced her, aloof, indifferent, but on the watch. No house should look so. She had been a fool to come; but it had been so evident that her sister was anxious to get her out of the house. There was no room for her, with all her brother-in-law’s family coming. And she was short of money. She had thought it might be pleasant at Scrawns. House-parlourmaid, to work with married couple; that had sounded all right. Three in family; that was all right, too. In her last job there had been only herself and eight in family; she had looked forward to a light place and a lively kitchen.

    ‘And what am I thinking about?’ said Susan, picking up the suit-case. ‘The family’ll be out, as like as not, at a party or something of that. There’ll be a light in the kitchen all right, I’ll be bound.’

    She plodded over the sodden gravel, between two squares of lawn, flanked by empty beds and backed by a huddle of shrubbery; then turned along a path to the right, following the front of the house with its blank unwelcoming windows. The side-walk was as dark as the front. She made out the outline of a french window, opening upon the path and, to her right, a wide herbaceous border, where tin labels, attached to canes, flapped forlornly. Beyond this there seemed to be a lawn, but the tall trees which surrounded it on all three sides drowned it in blackness and made its shape and extent a mystery. The path led on, through a half-open door that creaked as she pushed it back, and she found herself in a small, paved courtyard, across which the light streamed in a narrow beam from a small, lighted window.

    She tried to look in at this window, but a net curtain veiled its lower half. She could only see the ceiling, low, with black rafters, from one of which there hung a paraffin lamp. Passing the window she found a door and knocked.

    With the first fall of the old-fashioned iron knocker, a dog began to bark, loudly, incessantly, and furiously. She waited, her heart hammering, but nobody came. After a little, she summoned up resolution to knock afresh. This time she thought she could distinguish, through the clamour, a movement within. The barking ceased, she heard a key turn and bolts withdrawn, and the door opened.

    The light within came from a doorway on the left, and outlined against it, she was only aware of an enormous bulk and a dim triangle of whiteness, blocking her entrance to the house.

    ‘Who is it?’

    The voice was unlike any she had ever heard; curiously harsh and husky and sexless, like the voice of something strangled.

    ‘My name’s Tabbit – Susan Tabbit.’

    ‘Oh, you’re the new girl!’ There was a pause, as though the speaker were trying, in the uncertain dusk, to sum her up and reckon out her possibilities.

    ‘Come in.’

    The looming bulk retreated, and Susan again lifted her suitcase and carried it inside.

    ‘Mrs Wispell got my letter, saying I was coming?’

    ‘Yes; she got it. But one can’t be too careful. It’s a lonely place. You can leave your bag for Jarrock. This way.’

    Susan stepped into the kitchen. It was a low room, not very large but appearing larger than it was because of the shadows thrown into the far corners by the wide shade of the hanging lamp. There was a good fire, which Susan was glad to see, and over the mantelpiece an array of polished copper pans winked reassuringly. Behind her she again heard the jarring of shot bolts and turned key. Then her jailer – why did that word leap uncalled into her mind? – came back and stepped for the first time into the light.

    As before, her first overwhelming impression was of enormous height and size. The flat, white, wide face, the billowing breasts, the enormous girth of white-aproned haunch seemed to fill the room and swim above her. Then she forgot everything else in the shock of realising that the huge woman was cross-eyed.

    It was no mere cast; not even an ordinary squint. The left eye was swivelled so horribly far inward that half the iris was invisible, giving to that side of the face a look of blind and cunning malignity. The other eye was bright and dark and small, and fixed itself acutely on Susan’s face.

    ‘I’m Mrs Jarrock,’ said the woman in her odd, hoarse voice.

    It was incredible to Susan that any man who was not blind and deaf should have married a woman so hideously disfigured and with such a raven croak. She said: ‘How do you do?’ and extended a reluctant hand, which Mrs Jarrock’s vast palm engulfed in a grasp unexpectedly hard and masculine.

    ‘You’ll like a cup of tea before you change,’ said Mrs Jarrock. ‘You can wait at table, I suppose?’

    ‘Oh, yes, I’m used to that.’

    ‘Then you’d better begin tonight. Jarrock’s got his hands full with Mr Alistair. It’s one of his bad days. We was both upstairs, that’s why you had to wait.’ She again glanced sharply at the girl, and the swivel eye rolled unpleasantly and uncontrollably in its socket. She turned and bent to lift the kettle from the range, and Susan could not rid herself of the notion that the left eye was still squinting at her from its ambush behind the cook’s flat nose.

    ‘Is it a good place?’ asked Susan.

    ‘It’s all right,’ said Mrs Jarrock, ‘for them as isn’t nervous.
She
don’t trouble herself much, but that’s only to be expected, as things are, and
he’s
quiet enough if you don’t cross him. Mr Alistair won’t trouble you, that’s Jarrock’s job. There’s your tea. Help yourself to milk and sugar. I wonder if Jarrock—’

    She broke off short; set down the teapot and stood with her large head cocked sideways, as though listening to something going on above. Then she moved hastily across the kitchen, with a lightness of step surprising in so unwieldy a woman, and disappeared into the darkness of the passage. Susan, listening anxiously, thought she could hear a sound like moaning and a movement of feet across the raftered ceiling. In a few minutes, Mrs Jarrock came back, took the kettle from the fire and handed it out to some unseen person in the passage. A prolonged whispering followed, after which Mrs Jarrock again returned and, without offering any comment, began to make buttered toast.

    Susan ate without relish. She had been hungry when she left the bus, but the atmosphere of the house disconcerted her. She had just refused a second slice of toast when she became aware that a man had entered the kitchen.

    He was a tall man and powerfully built, but he stood in the doorway as though suspicious or intimidated; she realised that he had probably been standing there for some time before she observed him. Mrs Jarrock, seeing Susan’s head turn and remain arrested, looked round also.

    ‘Oh, there you are, Jarrock. Come and take your tea.’

    The man moved then, skirting the wall with a curious, crablike movement, and so coming by reluctant degrees to the opposite side of the fire, where he stood, his head averted, shooting a glance at Susan from the corner of his eye.

    ‘This here’s Susan,’ said Mrs Jarrock. ‘It’s to be hoped she’ll settle down and be comfortable with us. I’ll be glad to have her to help with the work, as
you
know, with one thing and another.’

    ‘We’ll do our betht to make things eathy for her,’ said the man. He lisped oddly and, though he held out his hand, he still kept his head half averted, like a cat that refuses to take notice. He retreated into an arm-chair, drawn rather far back from the hearth, and sat gazing into the fire. The dog which had barked when Susan knocked had followed him into the room, and now came over and sniffed at the girl’s legs, uttering a menacing growl.

    ‘Be quiet, Crippen,’ said the man. ‘Friends.’

    The dog, a large brindled bull-terrier, was apparently not reassured. He continued to growl, till Jarrock, hauling him back by the collar, gave him a smart cuff on the head and ordered him under the table, where he went, sullenly. In bending to beat the dog, Jarrock for the first time turned his full face upon Susan, and she saw, with horror, that the left side of it, from the cheek-bone downwards, could scarcely be called a face, for it was seamed and puckered by a horrible scar, which had dragged the mouth upwards into the appearance of a ghastly grin, while the left-hand side of the jaw seemed shapeless and boneless, a mere bag of wrinkled flesh.

    ‘Is everybody in this house maimed and abnormal?’ she thought, desperately. As though in answer to her thoughts, Mrs Jarrock spoke to her husband.

    ‘Has he settled down now?’

    ‘Oh, he’s quiet enough,’ replied the man, lisping through his shattered teeth. ‘He’ll do all right.’ He retired again to his corner and began sucking in his buttered toast, making awkward sounds.

    ‘If you’ve finished your tea,’ said Mrs Jarrock, ‘I’d better show you your room. Have you taken Susan’s bag up, Jarrock?’

    The man nodded without speaking, and Susan, in some trepidation, followed the huge woman, who had lit a candle in a brass candlestick.

    ‘You’ll find the stairs awkward at first,’ said the hoarse voice, ‘and you’ll have to mind your head in these passages. Built in the year one, this place was, and by a crazy builder at that, if you ask me.’

    She glided noiselessly along a narrow corridor and out into a square flagged hall, where a small oil-lamp, heavily shaded, seemed to make darkness deeper; then mounted a flight of black oak stairs with twisted banisters of polished oak and shining oak treads, in which the candlelight was reflected on wavering yellow pools.

    ‘There’s only the one staircase,’ said Mrs Jarrock. ‘Unhandy, I calls it, but you’ll have to do your best. You’ll have to wait till he’s shut himself up of a morning before you bring down the slops; he don’t like to see pails about. This here’s their bedroom, and that’s the spare and this is Mr Alistair’s room. Jarrock sleeps in with him, of course, in case –’ She stopped at the door, listening; then led the way up a narrow attic staircase.