Nothing Like Blood (3 page)

Then there is Steve Lawson. Why he should choose to live in this place I cannot imagine. He is believed to be rich, idle and under forty. He drives a Jaguar and there was some vague reference this evening to one of his horses which had run, or not run, somewhere. He is just what one would expect, fleshy but handsome, with one of those rich plummy voices which sound as though they are lubricated with fine old brandy.

There was only one thing in the general conversation this evening which seemed at all significant. A pianist, I think, or a violinist—I could not gather details because I was being boomed at by the bishop—is coming to give a concert at Belstock and is going to play somebody's ‘Third'; an artist, I imagine, of great eminence and popularity.

Mallister, the widower, said in a perfectly even voice with no suggestion of morbidity: “How Lydia would have enjoyed that! “An ordinary remark, one would have said, of no more interest than the rest of the conversation.

It produced an instant effect. The bishop forgot his missionary efforts and there was, for at least five seconds, complete silence. That may not sound much but the effect was dramatic. Even Jerrison, who was handing some vegetables to Mrs Natterley, looked across at Mallister. Then, as pointedly as it had stopped, conversation was hastily resumed and everyone seemed to think of something
to say. The bishop continued to describe his journey up country—in a canoe, I remember—and Sonia Reid suddenly wanted to know from Steve Lawson whether she should back Lighthouse-keeper on Saturday.

I ought to have explained how the dining-room is arranged. There is one large table, at which Mrs Derosse presides, and two small ones. At the large table the bishop sits on Mrs Derosse's right, I am next to him, then Mallister, Sonia Reid, Steve Lawson, Esmée Welton and ‘Phiz' Grissell. The Natterleys have a table to themselves, so do the Gee-Gees. When Mallister dropped what appears to have been an unconscious bombshell, the Gee-Gees and the Natterleys looked across with as much alarm as the rest. It was quite extraordinary.

I decided to be as innocent as he and deliberately put my foot in it. “Was your wife musical, Mr Mallister? “I asked, during a pause for mastication during the bishop's talk of adventures.

No one else seemed to notice this.

“She was, very,” said Mallister. “Until she became an invalid during the last year of her life she was a fine violinist.” Then he added, in his matter-of-fact way: “She died quite recently, you know.”

“Yes, I had heard that. Was it her heart?”

“Yes, heart. Heart,” he said hurriedly. “She had been under sentence of death for some time. But she had great courage, as the doctors admitted, and insisted on knowing the truth. Dr Cuffley told me she could not live for more than a few weeks, and he had called in two specialists for consultation. Then, unfortunately, I had to go into hospital myself for an operation and I was away from her when the end came. However, it must be thought of as a release. She had suffered a great deal.”

As he talked, the room became silent, not suddenly as before, but as though other conversations slowly lost
interest in competition with this one. Mallister's fellow-guests seemed to wish not to listen but could not help themselves.

“Tragic,” I said politely.

“She was not old, you see,” went on Mallister. I have gathered since that this open confidence was most uncharacteristic of the man, who is apt to be self-effacing. “We had neither of us reached the cross-roads of fifty; but it seems that, once the heart ceases to function normally, medical science is powerless.”

“That's true,” said Bishop Grissell. “I remember one of my ablest men in Mashonaland …” Or was it Matabele? Or Madagascar or Mauritius, Mozambique or Mombasa? It began with M and didn't end at all, at least not for the rest of the meal.

Over coffee in the lounge I waited hopefully for a mention of Bridge. Neither Steve Lawson nor Sonia Reid appeared and after some minutes we heard his Jaguar start up in the drive. The Gee-Gees do beautiful
petit point
and got down to it before the coffee-things were removed. I was sitting near the Natterleys and asked them if they played.

“No, we never play card games,” one of them said, as though I had made an improper suggestion. I might have known what answer I should get. I gather that they have their own sitting-room and only stay in the lounge after dinner for a few moments—‘We don't wish to appear stand-offish.'

“We used to play at one time,” Mallister told me. “Lydia liked a game. But lately, somehow, there has never been a four. We must see what we can do. Mrs Derosse plays excellently.”

Conversation grew desultory after that. The bishop attacked the crossword in an evening paper, while Phiz read a book—by a man, I presumed.

It was a warm evening and I decided to take a stroll. I went up to my room for a coat and on the way met a large woman, the first happy-looking person I had seen at Cat's Cradle.

“I'm Mrs Jerrison, the housekeeper,” she told me. “Let me know if there's anything you want, won't you?”

She had a round, red face and looked countrified and comfortable. I liked her at once. I felt, too, rather mischievously, that here would probably be the source of gossip from whom I should learn all.

“Thank you,” I said. “I'm sure everything is quite all right.”

I meant my room, of course, but as I made this silly remark I wondered whether she would see any
double entendre.
She did not appear to, though she hesitated for a moment before wishing me good night.

As there was only one other small incident this, evening which could be described as significant, it may seem that I am ‘seeing things' after all. I can only say that there is no question in my mind. Something very unpleasant has happened or is about to happen in this house, and all these people were aware of it. It hangs about the place like a mist. Perhaps I was wrong in using the word ‘fear'. Mrs Derosse is afraid of something, but it may only be a threat to her business. The rest of them are … on edge, apprehensive perhaps, or perhaps only curious. Whatever it is, it seems to be connected with the late Lydia Mallister. I shall try to ask no questions and in time, I feel, I shall know a great deal more. I do not deny for a moment that my curiosity is roused.

The incident I mentioned was scarcely an incident at all, yet it surprised me. On my way back from my walk I saw two people coming rather fast from the house. They were in the light of an overhead electric bulb and were visible to me before they saw me, I think, for they were
talking with some animation and suddenly became silent as they approached. There was nothing furtive about them, for they had come from the front door which they slammed behind them.

They paused to speak to me—James Mallister and Esmée Welton. Been for a stroll? That sort of thing.

“We take a constitutional to the top of the cliff,” said Mallister casually.

“Every evening?”I asked.

“Most evenings,” said Esmée, “unless it's pouring.”

“I'd like to come with you another evening,” I told them.

They accepted this with just a little more enthusiasm than was natural in the circumstances, particularly if there
are
any circumstances.

So I came up to bed. It occurred to me to look up ‘Cat's Cradle' in Brewer's
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.
I shall surely be thought imaginative when I say that the definition suggested to me, in an obscure way, something rather sinister. ‘A game played with a piece of twine by two children,' it reads.

O
N
this my second day at Cat's Cradle I have learned a great deal more about my fellow guests and am delighted to find that the impression I had of an unusual atmosphere in the place is not my own fancy.

I decided to go into Belstock by bus this afternoon and just as the bus was about to leave its starting point near the house I saw Mrs Jerrison hurrying towards it. I turned
round and greeted her and asked her to sit with me, which she did. She was out of breath at first, for she is a biggish woman and had hurried over the last hundred yards, but she soon recovered herself and to my secret pleasure she began without hesitation to talk about the household.

All I needed to do was to put in every now and again a ‘Really?' or ‘How extraordinary! ‘and since a good deal of what she told me
was
extraordinary, this was easy.

I started her off by saying it seemed that Mrs Mallister's death had made a difference to Cat's Cradle since my friends were there last year.

“It's not so much her
death
made a difference,” said Mrs Jerrison. “It was how it happened and the money.”

I had been wondering when we should come to a mention of money and spoke my first “Really? “in an interested, almost incredulous, gasping sort of way.

“Yes. You see we all knew it was her had the money. She never made any secret of it, and you can always tell. But we never knew it was that amount.”

I longed to ask ‘What amount? ‘but resisted it.

“When it came out it was quite a shock. Nothing for him, though he had all the life insurance which, by what I can hear, is a good many thousand pounds. She couldn't leave that away from him because it was in his name all along, but all the rest she did. Even that Miss Grissell, being an old friend of hers—well, school-friends they were—got I don't know how many thousands, and she didn't forget Jerrison and me. Not by a nice sum, she didn't. That's what's caused a lot of the talk.

“He's never said a word out of place, though. Mr Mallister, I mean.' It was Lydia's money,' he told Mrs Derosse, ‘and it was for her to decide what she wanted to do with it. She knew I was amply provided for by the insurance on her life, for which we had been paying an enormous premium.' No, he's never said a word against her, from
what I've been told. But I thought her will was spiteful. Really I did. She only made it a month or two before she died.”

I was assimilating all this so eagerly that I had not noticed we were coming into the outskirts of Belstock.

“You know what it was, don't you? “A rhetorical question, I thought, if ever there was one. “It was him going about with that Esmée Welton. That's what put her back up. I don't know whether they thought she didn't know, or what, but they were running off together morning, noon and night …”

“Night?” I questioned bravely.

“Well, quite late enough, it was. He works in a bank in Belstock and she's manageress of a shop I'll show you presently, so it's ten to one they used to meet here every day. And she must have got to hear. I shouldn't be surprised if it wasn't that Sonia told her, because she and Mrs Mallister got very thick towards the end. Oh, very thick, they got. Sonia was up in her room at all hours. Well, here we are at the bus stop and I don't suppose you want to hear all this. Only you did ask whether things hadn't changed since your friends were here and I had to tell you.”

“Of course I want to hear, Mrs Jerrison. It's all most interesting. I wonder whether perhaps you'd have tea with me, if there's somewhere nice? Then you can tell me all about it.”

“To tell you the truth, it's a relief to, because my husband won't talk about it, and there are times when I have to say something or bust with what's going on, and there's no one up there I feel like talking to about it. Yes, there's a nice café on the front. The Sunnyside, it's called. Not two minutes from here. What I was going to say is that Sonia very likely put a spoke in, hoping for something herself, I daresay, though, if so, she was disappointed
. It turned out this last will was made before she got so thick with Mrs Mallister, else there might have been.”

“But, Mrs Jerrison,” I managed to interpolate, “Mrs Mallister died quite naturally …”

“If you
call
that natural,” conceded Mrs Jerrison. “It was her heart, they said, and the doctor gave a certificate straight away. Well, so it may have been her heart, but that's not to say someone didn't do something to help things on a little, is it? This is the Sunnyside. Nice, isn't it? It's kept by three ladies and they make ever such nice cakes and that. I mean there are heart attacks and heart attacks, aren't there? And no one knew about this new will, from what I've been told.”

“Are you really suggesting that Mrs Mallister was murdered?”

“I wouldn't go as far as to say that. Not in S
Q
many words. But I'd like to know what
is
going on in that house if something didn't happen. I mean you can see for yourself the way they carry on. All looking at one another as though they didn't know what to think. And the whispering and that. Poor Mrs Derosse is nearly out of her mind, that I do know. I was glad when I saw you yesterday because I could tell at once you weren't the sort to get in a fluster about it. I make Jerrison lock our doors at night, that's one thing. We're nearly always the last up—neither of us liking to go to bed early. Still even then I lock the door. I wouldn't stay if it wasn't for his lungs. The doctors have told him, you know, and this place just suits him. But it's not nice and I can't help wondering what's going to happen next.”

“If you seriously think someone caused Mrs Mallister's death, you must have some idea who it was?”

“Well, it wasn't Mr Mallister, that's a sure thing, because he was in hospital at the time having an operation.
Jerrison had only been to see him that afternoon and took him some books. More than two weeks he'd been there when it happened and he couldn't come to the funeral or anything. It was another ten days before he was back. He didn't seem to say much at the time, but lately he's taken to talking about her whenever he gets a chance. I think he was fond of her in his way, only he's quiet, you know.”

“Then who …?”