The Dower House Mystery (21 page)

There was some more in the same strain before the scrawled “Agatha” which slanted over half a page in letters about an inch high.

Julian read the last word, and handed the many sheets back to Amabel.

“Well?” she said, still watching his face—she found it very grave indeed.

He put both hands on her shoulders, and looked at her, a long, steady look.

“I want you to do what your sister says. I want you to leave this house at once.”

He felt a little tremor run over her; but her lips were smiling.

“So anxious to get rid of me, Julian?”

He released her, and turned away.

“Yes,” he said.

There was a long pause. At last:

“What do you think it means, Julian?”

“I don't know.” He spoke slowly, consideringly. Then, with a sudden change of manner, “Of course it means that someone is prepared to go to pretty serious lengths to get you out of this. It means that, naturally. But who, or why—there we're all in the dark.”

“And you want me to give in, go away?”

“You must go. I won't have you exposed to all this sort of thing. George and his house may go hang. You've got to go.”

She shook her head, and said,

“No, Julian.”

“My dear girl, you can't stay. It's impossible,”

“No, not impossible. I'm going to see it through.” She dropped into a chair, and looked up at him rather tremulously. “Julian, I've got to see it through. I've taken the money, and I can't go back.”

“If it's only the money,” he began; but she stopped him:

“It's no use. I've taken the money, and I'm going to earn it. Yes, my dear, I know you'd lend it to me—or Mr. Berry would lend it—; but I couldn't take it from either of you. I
can't
borrow money when I know I should never be able to pay it back.”

“You can't have spent it! Give it back, and let me get you out of this to-day.”

Her eyes were full of tears. She looked and spoke with the simplicity of a child:

“It was for Daphne—I can't give it back because it was for Daphne—I had to have it for Daphne.”

Julian restrained a forcible remark about the absent Daphne. Instead, he said quite gently,

“You're a very foolish woman, my dear,—but I suppose you know that.”

“It's for Daphne,” Amabel repeated. “I must stay because of Daphne.”

Julian ceased to tower above her on the hearth. He came and sat down on the fender-stool, and leaning forward, put his hand lightly over one of hers.

“It's not because I'm obstinate, it's because I must,” said Amabel. “You don't think I want to stay, do you, Julian?”

He put a very considerable force on himself.

“Would Daphne let you stay if she knew?” he asked.

“No, no, of course not,” she said quickly. But because of the hurry in her voice and the flicker of fear in her eyes, Julian knew that she was not sure about Daphne. His hand closed on hers, the dark colour rushed into his face.

Amabel pulled her hand away and jumped up. She went to the writing-table and put Agatha's letter into a drawer. Her hands shook, but her voice was tolerably steady.

“No, no, I shall be quite all right. You mustn't worry about me—really.” She turned, leaning on the table, and looked at him, no longer softly, but with defiance. “I'm going to stay,” she said, with a certain hard finality.

Julian was sharply hurt, sharply jealous of Daphne. Twenty years ago he had seen just that look upon Amabel's face when she sent him away—just that transition from the tearful softness, which in any other woman would have meant yielding, to an iron determination against which a man might beat himself in vain—the same look and almost the same words: “I
must
do it,” and behind that “must,” the puritan conscience, unmoved, inflexible. Julian as a boy had stormed from her presence in a rage. Julian the man had rather more self-control; he cared rather more for her and rather less for himself than in the old days. After a short pause he spoke in an altered voice:

“Very well then, you stay. But you must let me take steps to ensure your safety. You really mustn't be here alone.”

“There is Miss Miller,” Amabel ventured, relaxing.

He waved Miss Miller away, some of his pent up feeling in the gesture.

“Impossible! She must go to-day. Look here, I suppose you can go away on a visit. You're not obliged to spend every moment of the six months here, are you?”

“I can be away for forty-eight hours.”

“That will do. You can go to your sister or the Berkeleys, whilst I run up to town and make arrangements.”

“What arrangements?”

“Detectives,” said Julian briefly—then, “I'm going to get to the bottom of this for all our sakes. I'll get down a man and a woman; they can come in as butler and parlourmaid. And when I've got them, you can come back, but not before.”

He saw the growing dismay in her face as he spoke.

“No, Julian, you mustn't. It was one of the conditions—no detectives or police, or I forfeit everything.”

Julian's temper broke bounds. The expressions he permitted himself to use about his brother would have surprised George Forsham.

Amabel's spirits rose. It was rather nice to have Julian so angry on her account. When he had finished all that he had to say about George, she put her hand on his arm and said softly,

“That was very nice of you. I've really often felt like that myself.” Her laughing look met his frowning one, and she added seriously, “Now let's stop being angry, and make a plan. I've been thinking—I really don't feel as if I could sleep in that room again—”

“You're not going to. If you stay here, I want you to get out of the old part of the house. I suppose Miss Miller will have to stay for tonight at least, or I shan't be able to stay myself. You'd better both move into the bedrooms up the passage—the two over the dining-room and drawing-room. I'll take a turn at sleeping in the room you've been in; and we'll just see what happens.”

“I'd have moved out of it long ago if it hadn't been for the telephone.” Her voice dropped a little. “Julian, you're not angry? We're friends?”

His look softened, kindled.

“Are we?”

Amabel stepped back just in time. The door opened, and Anne Miller came in.

Chapter XXVII

Julian went down to the cottage in the afternoon, and wrote letters. One of the letters was to Sir Julian Le Mesurier, Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department. It was not a very formal document. It ran:

“D
EAR
P
IGGY
,

“Could you put one of your bright young men on to finding out as much as possible about a medium called Mrs. Thompson—address, 13, Earnshaw Villas, Halkindale Road, N.W.? I would like particularly to know whether in the last few days she asked for, or received, any trunk call from this part of the world. I'll run up to town to-morrow and look in on you. More then. Love to Isobel and the piglets.

“Yours, J
ULIAN
.

“
P.S
. How's the forged note business doing? I hope you're not resigning till after to-morrow, anyhow!”

Quite impossible to leave the matter of Mrs. Thompson where Agatha Moreland had left it. He would go and see Piggy and talk to him in confidence about the whole thing. Something must be done; but it must be done with the utmost discretion, What with Amabel and her conscience, and the two hundred pounds which she might conceive herself obliged to hand back to George, and the possibility of Annie Brown being somewhere mixed up in the business, it behoved him to walk very delicately indeed. Amabel must have her two hundred pounds; and at all costs poor old Brownie must be shielded from any fresh shock or sorrow on Annie's account. So it was Anita King who had sent Agatha Moreland to this tame medium of hers. His mind misgave him a good deal about Anita King.

He wrote three or four more letters. In the middle of the last one he had to get up and turn on the lights, it was growing so dark. He glanced out of the window, and saw that half the sky was black with piled up clouds. He finished his last letter to the sound of the rising wind.

It was a little later, when he was sorting and tearing up some papers, that he heard the sound of footsteps and a hurried knocking at the door. In the dusk he did not at first recognize the woman who stood there. Then she spoke his name, “Mr. Forsham”—just like that. It was by her voice and the trilled “r” that he recognized Miss Lemoine.

“Mr. Forsham—I beg your pardon—I am disturbing you.” She spoke as if she had been running, and with the last word she put one hand up to her throat.

“No, I had just finished my letters and was going to the post with them.”

Miss Lemoine leaned against the half-open door.

“That makes me a little bolder,” she said. “I have been down into the village, and I was delayed. And now I think there is a storm coming—and I am
so
stupid about storms.”

Julian frowned. If she wanted to come in and shelter from this possible storm, she might be here for hours.

“Can I take you home?” he said. “If we hurry, I expect you'll get in ahead of the rain, and I can post my letters on the way back.”

“Oh, that is kind. That is what I would have asked you; but my courage failed. When I saw your light from the road I thought that I would ask you to walk home with me; but when you came to the door I thought, ‘No, he will think it so strange.'”

“Not a bit,” said Julian politely. He took a cap from a peg, shut and locked the cottage door, and turned to the gate. It was very dark for the hour, and the wind came in gusts.

“For a moment,” said Miss Lemoine, “yes, for one moment, I was more afraid of you than I was of the storm.” Then, as a low rumbling sounded behind them, she started, and asked anxiously, “Do you think we shall get in in time? Do you really think so?”

“I don't know,” said Julian. “I think we'd better hurry. This will be the quickest way.” He lifted the latch of a little wicket gate as he spoke. “We always reckoned that this footpath saved at least two minutes.”

They were in the woods which lay all about Forsham Old House, stark beeches for the most part, with the thick, sodden drift of old leaves burying the path. A great gust of wind swept up behind them, and then dropped dead. It was so sudden a thing that it startled even Julian: one minute, the straining rush and roar of it, the creak and grind of the branches overhead; and the next, stillness, and the air as black and heavy as water. Miss Lemoine uttered an exclamation. He felt her brush against him as if she had moved nearer, and he took her by the arm.

“We'd better run for it.”

She said, “Yes, yes,” and they had run perhaps a dozen yards or so when a first, brilliant lightning flash flared and was gone. For an instant every bare branch stood black against a background of pale violet. Then darkness again, and out of the dark the long, deep roll of thunder. With the flash, Miss Lemoine had come to a stand-still. Julian, holding her by the arm, was aware that she had covered her face.

“Come on,” he said. But she stood rigid and did not move. “You can't stay here,” he began—and then the second flash cut across his speech. It was brilliant beyond the first; the woods were white with it.

Miss Lemoine screamed aloud, a long, high, shuddering scream that was lost in cracking thunder. His grasp tightened. He tried to get her to move, and suddenly she was clinging to him, pressing against him, her hands locked on his arm, her voice choked with sobs calling his name:

“Julian! Save me, Julian!” And then again and again his name, always his name:

“Julian—Julian—Julian!”

Twice in twenty-four hours Julian Forsham had had a terrified woman clinging to him in the darkness. But, whereas Amabel had stirred the depths of sympathy and tenderness, Miss Lemoine merely roused in him a sense of helpless exasperation. What in Heaven's name did one do with a woman who went into hysterics over a clap of thunder?

“Miss Lemoine, do for the Lord's sake pull yourself together! I'll get you home in no time if you'll give me a chance. The worst of the storm is over anyhow, I think. It was travelling pretty fast.”

As he spoke, her clasp relaxed a little. She fell back, lifting her head and drawing a quick, choking breath or two. And then the third flash came. It showed him her face; but not the face of Marie Anastasie Lemoine. It was a younger face that he saw by the quick flash of memory—just as white, just as terrified, with the piteous half-open mouth and straining eyes—it was the face of Mary Ann Brown. He said, “Annie!” before he knew that he was going to speak. And then the thunder and the rain came together, and she swayed blindly forward and fell against his shoulder half fainting.

His mind was bewildered in the extreme but the urgency of the situation precluded thought. He lifted her bodily, and had carried her about fifty yards, when he felt her arms round his neck and heard her sob his name:

“Julian! Julian!”

A most poignant sensation of annoyance stabbed right through the confusion of Julian's thoughts. The situation became suddenly clear, and in the strangest manner. All at once this was no longer Miss Lemoine, an hysterical lady with whom he had a slight acquaintance, and who might, or might not, imagine herself to have a tendresse for him, but little Annie Brown who was taking an astonishing liberty with his Christian name.

He set her on her feet, and began to hurry her along, his arm through hers.

“Pull yourself together!” he said sternly.

They came out upon the drive close to the house. Julian got her to the hall door, and found it unfastened. It was with feelings of unbounded relief that he bade her good-night. She was still trembling, but her self-control was coming back.