Sleeping Murder (2 page)

I

A
month had passed and Gwenda had moved into Hillside. Giles's aunt's furniture had come out of store and was arranged round the house. It was good quality old-fashioned stuff. One or two over-large wardrobes Gwenda had sold, but the rest fitted in nicely and was in harmony with the house. There were small gay papiermâché tables in the drawing room, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and painted with castles and roses. There was a prim little worktable with a gathered sack underneath of pure silk, there was a rosewood bureau and a mahogany sofa table.

The so-called easy chairs Gwenda had relegated to various bedrooms and had bought two large squashy wells of comfort for herself and Giles to stand each side of the fireplace. The large chesterfield sofa was placed near the windows. For curtains Gwenda had chosen
old-fashioned chintz of pale eggshell blue with prim urns of roses and yellow birds on them. The room, she now considered, was exactly right.

She was hardly settled yet, since she had workmen in the house still. They should have been out by now, but Gwenda rightly estimated that until she herself came into residence, they would not go.

The kitchen alterations were finished, the new bathrooms nearly so. For further decorating Gwenda was going to wait a while. She wanted time to savour her new home and decide on the exact colour schemes she wanted for the bedrooms. The house was really in very good order and there was no need to do everything at once.

In the kitchen a Mrs. Cocker was now installed, a lady of condescending graciousness, inclined to repulse Gwenda's over-democratic friendliness, but who, once Gwenda had been satisfactorily put in her place, was willing to unbend.

On this particular morning, Mrs. Cocker deposited a breakfast tray on Gwenda's knees, as she sat up in bed.

“When there's no gentleman in the house,” Mrs. Cocker affirmed, “a lady prefers her breakfast in bed.” And Gwenda had bowed to this supposedly English enactment.

“Scrambled this morning,” Mrs. Cocker observed, referring to the eggs. “You said something about finnan haddock, but you wouldn't like it in the bedroom. It leaves a smell. I'm giving it to you for your supper, creamed on toast.”

“Oh, thank you, Mrs. Cocker.”

Mrs. Cocker smiled graciously and prepared to withdraw.

Gwenda was not occupying the big double bedroom. That could wait until Giles returned. She had chosen instead the end
room, the one with the rounded walls and the bow window. She felt thoroughly at home in it and happy.

Looking round her now, she exclaimed impulsively: “I do like this room.”

Mrs. Cocker looked round indulgently.

“It is quaite a naice room, madam, though small. By the bars on the window I should say it had been the nursery at one time.”

“I never thought of that. Perhaps it has.”

“Ah, well,” said Mrs. Cocker, with implication in her voice, and withdrew.

“Once we have a gentleman in the house,” she seemed to be saying, “who knows? A nursery
may
be needed.”

Gwenda blushed. She looked round the room. A nursery? Yes, it would be a nice nursery. She began furnishing it in her mind. A big dolls' house there against the wall. And low cupboards with toys in them. A fire burning cheerfully in the grate and a tall guard round it with things airing on the rail. But not this hideous mustard wall. No, she would have a gay wallpaper. Something bright and cheerful. Little bunches of poppies alternating with bunches of cornflowers … Yes, that would be lovely. She'd try and find a wallpaper like that. She felt sure she had seen one somewhere.

One didn't need much furniture in the room. There were two built-in cupboards, but one of them, a corner one, was locked and the key lost. Indeed the whole thing had been painted over, so that it could not have been opened for many years. She must get the men to open it up before they left. As it was, she hadn't got room for all her clothes.

She felt more at home every day in Hillside. Hearing a throat being ponderously cleared and a short dry cough through the open
window, she hurried over her breakfast. Foster, the temperamental jobbing gardener, who was not always reliable in his promises, must be here today as he had said he would be.

Gwenda bathed, dressed, put on a tweed skirt and a sweater and hurried out into the garden. Foster was at work outside the drawing room window. Gwenda's first action had been to get a path made down through the rockery at this point. Foster had been recalcitrant, pointing out that the forsythia would have to go and the weigela, and them there lilacs, but Gwenda had been adamant, and he was now almost enthusiastic about his task.

He greeted her with a chuckle.

“Looks like you're going back to old times, miss.” (He persisted in calling Gwenda “miss.”)

“Old times? How?”

Foster tapped with his spade.

“I come on the old steps—see, that's where they went—just as you want 'em now. Then someone planted them over and covered them up.”

“It was very stupid of them,” said Gwenda. “You want a vista down to the lawn and the sea from the drawing room window.”

Foster was somewhat hazy about a vista—but he gave a cautious and grudging assent.

“I don't say, mind you, that it won't be an improvement … Gives you a view—and them shrubs made it dark in the drawing room. Still they was growing a treat—never seen a healthier lot of forsythia. Lilacs isn't much, but them wiglers costs money—and mind you—they're too old to replant.”

“Oh, I know. But this is much, much nicer.”

“Well.” Foster scratched his head. “Maybe it is.”

“It's
right,
” said Gwenda, nodding her head. She asked suddenly, “Who lived here before the Hengraves? They weren't here very long, were they?”

“Matter of six years or so. Didn't belong. Afore them? The Miss Elworthys. Very churchy folk. Low church. Missions to the heathen. Once had a black clergyman staying here, they did. Four of 'em there was, and their brother—but he didn't get much of a look-in with all those women. Before them—now let me see, it was Mrs. Findeyson—ah! she was the real gentry, she was. She belonged. Was living here afore I was born.”

“Did she die here?” asked Gwenda.

“Died out in Egypt or some such place. But they brought her home. She's buried up to churchyard. She planted that magnolia and those labiurnams. And those pittispores. Fond of shrubs, she was.”

Foster continued: “Weren't none of those new houses built up along the hill then. Countrified, it was. No cinema then. And none of them new shops. Or that there parade on the front!” His tone held the disapproval of the aged for all innovations. “Changes,” he said with a snort. “Nothing but changes.”

“I suppose things are bound to change,” said Gwenda. “And after all there are lots of improvements nowadays, aren't there?”

“So they say. I ain't noticed them. Changes!” He gestured towards the macrocarpa hedge on the left through which the gleam of a building showed. “Used to be the cottage hospital, that used,” he said. “Nice place and handy. Then they goes and builds a great place near to a mile out of town. Twenty minutes' walk if you want to get there on a visiting day—or threepence on the bus.” He gestured once more towards the hedge … “It's a girls' school now. Moved in
ten years ago. Changes all the time. People takes a house nowadays and lives in it ten or twelve years and then off they goes. Restless. What's the good of that? You can't do any proper planting unless you can look well ahead.”

Gwenda looked affectionately at the magnolia.

“Like Mrs. Findeyson,” she said.

“Ah. She was the proper kind. Come here as a bride, she did. Brought up her children and married them, buried her husband, had her grandchildren down in the summers, and took off in the end when she was nigh on eighty.”

Foster's tone held warm approval.

Gwenda went back into the house smiling a little.

She interviewed the workmen, and then returned to the drawing room where she sat down at the desk and wrote some letters. Amongst the correspondence that remained to be answered was a letter from some cousins of Giles who lived in London. Anytime she wanted to come to London they begged her to come and stay with them at their house in Chelsea.

Raymond West was a well-known (rather than popular) novelist and his wife Joan, Gwenda knew, was a painter. It would be fun to go and stay with them, though probably they would think she was a most terrible Philistine. Neither Giles nor I are a bit highbrow, reflected Gwenda.

A sonorous gong boomed pontifically from the hall. Surrounded by a great deal of carved and tortured black wood, the gong had been one of Giles's aunt's prized possessions. Mrs. Cocker herself appeared to derive distinct pleasure from sounding it and always gave full measure. Gwenda put her hands to her ears and got up.

She walked quickly across the drawing room to the wall by the far window and then brought herself up short with an exclamation of annoyance. It was the third time she'd done that. She always seemed to expect to be able to walk through solid wall into the dining room next door.

She went back across the room and out into the front hall and then round the angle of the drawing room wall and so along to the dining room. It was a long way round, and it would be annoying in winter, for the front hall was draughty and the only central heating was in the drawing room and dining room and two bedrooms upstairs.

I don't see, thought Gwenda to herself as she sat down at the charming Sheration dining table which she had just bought at vast expense in lieu of Aunt Lavender's massive square mahogany one, I don't see why I shouldn't have a doorway made through from the drawing room to the dining room. I'll talk to Mr. Sims about it when he comes this afternoon.

Mr. Sims was the builder and decorator, a persuasive middle-aged man with a husky voice and a little notebook which he always held at the ready, to jot down any expensive idea that might occur to his patrons.

Mr. Sims, when consulted, was keenly appreciative.

“Simplest thing in the world, Mrs. Reed—and a great improvement, if I may say so.”

“Would it be very expensive?” Gwenda was by now a little doubtful of Mr. Sims's assents and enthusiasms. There had been a little unpleasantness over various extras not included in Mr. Sims's original estimate.

“A mere trifle,” said Mr. Sims, his husky voice indulgent and reassuring. Gwenda looked more doubtful than ever. It was Mr. Sims's trifles that she had learnt to distrust. His straightforward estimates were studiously moderate.

“I'll tell you what, Mrs. Reed,” said Mr. Sims coaxingly, “I'll get Taylor to have a look when he's finished with the dressing room this afternoon, and then I can give you an exact idea. Depends what the wall's like.”

Gwenda assented. She wrote to Joan West thanking her for her invitation, but saying that she would not be leaving Dillmouth at present since she wanted to keep an eye on the workmen. Then she went out for a walk along the front and enjoyed the sea breeze. She came back into the drawing room, and Taylor, Mr. Sims's leading workman, straightened up from the corner and greeted her with a grin.

“Won't be no difficulty about this, Mrs. Reed,” he said. “Been a door here before, there has. Somebody as didn't want it has just had it plastered over.”

Gwenda was agreeably surprised. How extraordinary, she thought, that I've always seemed to feel there was a door there. She remembered the confident way she had walked to it at lunchtime. And remembering it, quite suddenly, she felt a tiny shiver of uneasiness. When you came to think of it, it was really rather odd … Why should she have felt so sure that there was a door there? There was no sign of it on the outside wall. How had she guessed—known—that there was a door just there? Of course it would be convenient to have a door through to the dining room, but why had she always gone so unerringly to that one particular spot? Anywhere on the dividing wall would have done equally well, but she had always gone
automatically, thinking of other things, to the one place where a door had actually been.

I hope, thought Gwenda uneasily, that I'm not
clairvoyant
or anything….

There had never been anything in the least psychic about her. She wasn't that kind of person. Or was she? That path outside from the terrace down through the shrubbery to the lawn. Had she in some way known it was there when she was so insistent on having it made in that particular place?

Perhaps I
am
a bit psychic, thought Gwenda uneasily. Or is it something to do with the house?

Why had she asked Mrs. Hengrave that day if the house was haunted?

It wasn't haunted! It was a darling house! There couldn't be anything wrong with the house. Why, Mrs. Hengrave had seemed quite surprised by the idea.

Or had there been a trace of reserve, of wariness, in her manner?

Good Heavens, I'm beginning to imagine things, thought Gwenda.

She brought her mind back with an effort to her discussion with Taylor.

“There's one other thing,” she added. “One of the cupboards in my room upstairs is stuck. I want to get it opened.”

The man came up with her and examined the door.

“It's been painted over more than once,” he said. “I'll get the men to get it open for you tomorrow if that will do.”

Gwenda acquiesced and Taylor went away.

That evening Gwenda felt jumpy and nervous. Sitting in the drawing room and trying to read, she was aware of every creak of
the furniture. Once or twice she looked over her shoulder and shivered. She told herself repeatedly that there was nothing in the incident of the door and the path. They were just coincidences. In any case they were the result of plain common sense.

Without admitting it to herself, she felt nervous of going up to bed. When she finally got up and turned off the lights and opened the door into the hall, she found herself dreading to go up the stairs. She almost ran up them in her haste, hurried along the passage and opened the door of her room. Once inside she at once felt her fears calmed and appeased. She looked round the room affectionately. She felt safe in here, safe and happy. Yes, now she was here, she was safe. (Safe from what, you idiot? she asked herself.) She looked at her pyjamas spread out on the bed and her bedroom slippers below them.