The Shivering Sands (50 page)

“Help me, Alice,” I pleaded. “What have I ever done to harm you?”

“You are too inquisitive, and you came here to find out, didn’t you? That was very sly to pretend it was only to teach us music when all the time you were
her
sister. I knew that as soon as Mr. Wilmot came. He gave it away, didn’t he? I used to follow you and hear you talking. I knew I’d have to kill you, but another disappearance seemed too many so I lured you to the cottage and that would have been an end of you but for that old gardener.”

She was smiling—diabolically, so delighted with her cleverness, so anxious that I should realize how skillful she was.

“He saw me and I thought I might be suspected so I saved you instead. I saved your life…well, now I’m taking it away. I’m a goddess with power over life and death.”

“You’re mad,” I cried.

“Don’t say that,” she cried angrily.

“Alice, what has happened to you?”

“Nothing. It’s all very easy to understand. You should have become engaged to Mr. Wilmot and stopped thinking about
us
. But you wouldn’t would you? You wanted to marry Napier and it would have been the same as Edith. She had to go away because she was going to have a baby and I wasn’t going to let there be another heir. So I brought her here and she went where you’re going now. I will drive Napier away because Sir William loved Beau and Napier killed him and Beau will haunt the house until Napier goes away. I shall see to that. Then Sir William will recognize his own daughter and all this will be mine. You always thought I was a
good
little girl, didn’t you? You didn’t know me really, although I told you when you came here that we should take you by surprise. You had a hint and you didn’t take it. Now you’re caught. You meddled. You found the pattern in the mosaic didn’t you and you went to the British Museum. There was a man there who knew you—but I knew already who you were. But after that it had to happen quickly because you’d found out about a pattern…and that pattern was my shivering sands.”

“Help me,” I said and my voice echoed in the cave.

“No one can hear and the deeper you sink the greater the grip it gets on you.”

I thought: This is the end. Oh Roma, what did you feel in those moments before the sands swallowed you? Poor Roma! The discovery of the paintings in the cave would have been the greatest adventure of her life—and she had died here as they were revealed to her.

And Edith. What had Edith felt?

“Alice,” I cried. “You’re mad…mad…”

“Don’t say that. Don’t dare say it.”

I felt numb with fear. This was the second time in a very short period that I had faced horrible death. I could feel the cold sand above my ankles now and in vain did I try to extricate my feet. I tried not to see that demure, diabolical figure standing there on the edge of the quicksand holding the candle high above her head. I tried to think what I could do.

“Help me! Help me!” I sobbed.

And I could feel the implacable sand drawing me slowly and surely down.

There was someone else in the cave. I heard a voice cry: “Good God!” And it was Godfrey’s voice. “Caroline! Caroline!”

“Don’t come near,” I shouted, “I’m sinking…sinking in the sand.”

Alice said coldly: “Please go away. This is my cave.”

Godfrey stepped forward. I screamed: “No. Don’t set foot on the sand. Stay…stay where she is…”

“We need a rope.” He turned to Alice. “Go and get one…quickly.”

She stood there not speaking. I cried out: “She has a rope there. It’s for…exquisite torture. She’s a murderess. She murdered Roma…and Edith.”

Then Napier was there and in his hands he was holding the rope.

The nightmare of that cave lives with me still. The drawings on the walls, the pictures, the knowledge that hundreds of years ago men had been brought there to die…And Alice…strange Alice…had brought her enemies to die in the same way. Roma…Edith…myself.

I caught at the rope. They were shouting to me to tie it about my waist. They would save me…these two men together who both loved me.

I heard Alice’s voice—strange, mad, chanting. “Hurry, my shivering sands. Take her…take her as you took the others.”

I kept my eyes on those two men.

“We’ll do it,” I heard Napier say.

And I knew they would.

I lay in bed, nightmare haunted. I kept starting out of my unconsciousness to feel the soft implacable grip about my knees. It was only the bed clothes. I was haunted by the memory of a nightmare figure holding a candle…a face revealed to me in all its horror which was even greater because of the guileless mask with which I had become familiar.

Napier was at my bedside; so was Godfrey.

“Try to rest,” said Napier; and the pressure of his hand on my wrist reassured me. It shut out the nightmare and brought me back to reality.

“Everything is all right now,” said Godfrey.

Then I was able to sleep.

I had been fortunate on that day. What luck for me that Godfrey should have been coming over to Lovat Stacy to show me pictures of Roman mosaics in a book he had found in a secondhand bookshop in Dover.

He had seen me descending the cliff with Alice. She had been right to fear that we were being followed.

As for Napier, he believed that I would marry Godfrey and in a jealous mood, believing that Godfrey was going to meet me, he had followed him. A set of circumstances which had brought them both into the cave when the strength of two men was needed for my rescue.

Yes, I was undoubtedly fortunate on that day.

I lay in bed thinking of it and I kept telling myself: the barriers are down now. The way ahead is clear for us.

And Alice? Why had this strange girl behaved as she had? What canker had eaten into her soul?

The girls were questioned…they who had lived so much closer to her than any of us and who knew so much of her.

Allegra said: “She made us do what she wanted. It started long ago. She used to find out things we’d done and make us do what she commanded…to show she had power over us. We had to pretend that she was a sort of goddess and we were ordinary mortals. At first it was little things like making a face at Miss Elgin when her back was turned or breaking the handle off a cup or picking roses in the garden when we weren’t supposed to, or going to Beau’s room and making fun of his picture. Then it was bigger things. We had to haunt the chapel. Sometimes with candles, sometimes with a lantern. It was to pretend Beau didn’t want Napier here and was haunting it. And one day I set fire to the altar cloth and it all blazed up. I ran away and the fire started. After that I had to do everything she said because if I didn’t she would have told what I’d done. I was afraid Grandfather would send me away. So we haunted the chapel in turns…and when Mrs. Verlaine suspected one of us the other had to do it, while Mrs. Verlaine was with the one she had suspected. And then when she thought that Napier was getting too fond of Mrs. Verlaine we pretended we had seen him digging a hole in the copse…”

Sylvia said: “I had to do the haunting, too. I was always hungry and used to take things from the pantry at home. She said she would tell my mother that I was a thief. And she knew that Edith was meeting Jeremy Brown and so Edith had to do what she was told. Then Jeremy went away and Edith said she wouldn’t do anything more and that she was going to stop Alice’s blackmailing…which was what she called it. And so…she disappeared.”

It was small wonder that we asked what canker of madness was working in that youthful mind.

And what should be done with Alice?

When she had been brought back from the caves she had resumed her docile demeanor. I was deeply sorry for Mrs. Lincroft who had become like a woman who walked in her sleep.

Strangely enough it was to me that she told her story. I was in my room, for the doctor had said I should rest for the whole of that day and the next for I had sustained a great shock, and it was when I was lying in my room that this strange woman glided in and sat by my bed.

“Mrs. Verlaine,” she said, “what can I say to you? My daughter tried to kill you…twice.”

I said: “Don’t distress yourself, Mrs. Lincroft. I’m safe now.”

“But I am to blame,” she insisted. “I only am to blame. What will they do with my little Alice? They will not punish her. It is not her fault. I and I only am the one to blame.”