The Spiral Staircase (10 page)

“She was waiting for me,” she thought. “There’s something very queer about that woman. I wouldn’t like to be alone with her, in the house. She’d let you down.”

As her instinct was always to explore the unfamiliar, she turned in the direction of the blue room. Nurse Barker saw that her ambush was discovered, and she opened the door.

“What d’you want?” she asked ungraciously.

“I want to warn you,” replied Helen.

She broke off, conscious that Nurse Barker was looking at her neck with hungry gloating eyes.

“How white your skin is,” she said. “Red hair,” explained Helen shortly.

As a rule, she was sorry that she did not attract general attention; now, for the first time in her life, she shrank from admiration.

“Did you say you wanted to warn me?” asked Nurse Barker.

“Yes,” whispered Helen. “Don’t play Lady Warren too low.”

“What d’you mean?”

“She’s hiding something.”

“What?”

“If you’re as clever as she is, you’ll find out,” replied Helen, turning away.

“Come back,” demanded Nurse Barker. “You’ve either said too much, or not enough.”

Helen smiled as she shook her head.

“Ask Miss Warren,” she advised. “I told her, and got nicely snubbed for my pains. But I felt I ought to put you on your guard.”

She started at the rumble of a deep bass voice from in side the blue room.

“Is that the girl?”

“Yes, my lady,” replied Nurse Barker. “Do you want to see her?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.” Helen spoke quickly. “I can’t stop now. I’ve got to help with the dinner.”

Nurse Barker’s eyes glittered with a sense of power.

“Why are you so afraid of her?” she sneered.

“You’d be afraid, too, if you knew as much as I do,” hinted Helen..

Nurse Barker grasped her by the wrist, while her nostrils quivered.

“The dinner can wait,” she said. “Miss Warren’s instructions are that Lady Warren must be humored. Come in.”

Helen entered the blue room with a sinking heart. Lady Warren lay in bed, propped up with pillows. She wore a fleecy white bed-jacket. Her shock of grey hair was neatly parted in the middle, and secured with pink bows. It had obviously been Nurse Barker’s first job to deck her patient out, like sacrificial lamb. Helen knew that some grim sense of humor had made the old lady submit to the indignity. She was luring on the nurse to a sense of false security, only to make the subsequent disillusionment the harsher.

“Come here,” she said, in a hoarse whisper. “I want to tell you something.’”

Helen felt herself gripped and drawn downwards, so that Lady Warren’s hot breath played on her bare neck..

“A girl was murdered in this house,” said Lady Warren.

“Yes, I know.” Helen spoke in a soothing tone. “But why do you think about it? It happened so long ago.”

“How do you know?” rapped out Lady Warren.

“Mrs. Oates told me.”

“Did she tell you that the girl was thrown down the well?”

Helen remembered that in Mrs. Oates’ version, a more gory method was employed. The well figured in the suicide incident. It struck her that Mrs. Oates had exaggerated the truth, in order to achieve the sensational interest of a murder.

“Perhaps it was an accident,” she said aloud.

Lady Warren lost her temper at the attempt to calm her.

“No,” she bellowed, “it was murder. I saw it. Upstairs, from a window. It was nearly dark, and I thought it was only a tree in the garden. Then—the girl came, and it moved, and threw her in … I was too late. I couldn’t find a rope… . .Listen.”

She drew down Helen’s head almost on to the pillow.

“You are that girl,” she whispered.

Helen felt as though she were listening to a forecast of her own fate; but she caught Nurse Barker’s eye in an attempt to delude her that she was humoring the invalid, in professional style.

“Am I?” she said lightly. “Well, I’ll have to be very careful.”

“You little fool,” panted the old woman. “I’m warning you. Girls get murdered in this house. But you sleep with me. I’ll take care of you.”

Suddenly Helen thought she might trap her to reveal the hiding-place of the revolver. “How will you do it?” she asked,

“I’ll shoot him.”

“Fine. But where’s your gun?”

Lady Warren looked at Helen with a gleam of crocodile cunning in her eyes.

“I haven’t a gun,” she whined. “I had one once, but they took it away. I’m only a poor old woman. Nurse, she says I have a gun. Have I?”

“Of course not,” said Nurse Barker. “Really, Miss Capel, you’ve no right to irritate the patient.’:

“Then I’ll go,” declared Helen thankfully. She added, in an undertone, “You asked me a question, just now. You’ve had your answer. You know now what to look for.”

At the door, she was arrested by Lady Warren’s bass bellow.

“Come back, tonight.”

“Very well, I will,” she promised.

To her surprise her nerves were quivering from the episode, as she went down into the hall.

“What’s the matter with me?” she wondered. “I believe I shall go goofy if the doctor doesn’t get me out.”

She looked anxiously at the grandfather’s clock. Dr. Parry lived several miles away, so he always paid his last call at the Summit, in order to get back to his dinner.

He had never been so late before. A slight foreboding stole over Helen as she listened to the fury of the storm. When Miss Warren drifted by, like a woman in a dream, she appealed to her.

“The doctor’s late, Miss Warren.”

Miss Warren looked at the clock. She was already dressed for dinner, in her usual mushroom lace gown.

“Perhaps he’s not coming,” she said indifferently.

Helen gave a gasp of dismay. With the egotism of an employer, who never connected a young girl with an independent existence, Miss Warren believed that Helen’s concern was on account of the family.

“My mother’s condition is static,” she explained, “although the end is inevitable. Dr. Parry has given us instructions how to act, in case of sudden failure.” “But why shouldn’t he come tonight?” insisted Helen.

“He always comes.”

“The weather,” murmured Miss Warren.

A rush of wind crashing against the corner of the house illustrated her meaning with perfect timing. Helen’s heart turned to water at the sound.

“He won’t come,” she thought. “I shall have to sleep in the blue room.”

THE TELEPHONE

Helen had to sleep in the blue room. Everyone in the Summit had accepted the situation. Feeling that her ambush in the lobby would be waste of time, since she was certain that Dr. Parry would not come, she walked dejectedly towards the kitchen stairs.

She was intercepted by Newton, who slouched out of the morning-room.

“I hear you’ve made a conquest of my grandmother,” he said. “Congratulations. How is it done?”

The interest in Newton’s eyes invigorated Helen and made her feel mistress of a difficult situation.

“I haven’t got to tell you,” she replied.

“You mean I’m her white-headed boy,” said Newton.

“That may be. But it doesn’t take me far when financial interests are at stake. I can’t live on sugar.” Hitherto, Helen had been somewhat in awe of Newton, who completely ignored her as a social entity. She was there merely to do a job, and he supposed, that she—like all the other girls-would go at the end of the month, if she lasted as long.

The novelty of his attention stimulated her confidence.

“Do you mean the will?” she asked boldly.

He nodded.

“Will she—or won’t she?”

“We talked about it,” said Helen, inflated with her own importance. “I advised her not to keep putting it off.” Newton gave a shout of excitement. “Aunt Blanche. Come here.”,

Miss Warren was wafted by some terrestrial wind out of the drawingroom, in obedience to her nephew’s call. For some inexplicable reason, the shambling short-sighted youth seemed to sway the affection of his own womankind, even if he failed to hold his wife.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Epic news,” Newton told her. “Miss Capel has worked faster in five minutes than the rest of us in five years. She’s got Gran to talk about her will.”

“Not exactly that,” explained Helen. “But she said she couldn’t die, because she had a job to do-an unpleasant job, which everyone puts off.”

“Good enough,” nodded Newton. “Well, Miss Capel, I only hope you will go on with the good work, if she’s wakeful, tonight.”

Even Miss Warren seemed impressed by the fresh development, for she looked, more or less directly, at Helen.

“Extraordinary,” she murmured. “You seem to have more .influence over her than anyone else.”

Helen walked away, conscious that she had been betrayed by her impulse to play to the gallery. Now that the family had a direct personal interest in her relations with Lady Warren, she could only expect their opposition, if she appealed to them against the verdict of the blue room.

But she continued to hold her head high, as though sustained by popular support on her way to execution, even while she shrank from her first glimpse of the scaffold. In her last minute, she would be alone.

When she reached the kitchen, she was instantly aware that Mrs. Oates was in no mood for gossip, while Oates kept out of his wife’s way, in a significant manner. Regardless of Helen’s finery, Mrs. Oates pointed to a steaming basin, on the table.

“Just blanch these for the tipsy-cake,” she said. “I’m behind with my dinner. And Oates keeps dodging under my feet, until I don’t know if I’m up in the air, or down a coal-mine.”

In a chastened mood, Helen sat down and gingerly popped almonds out of their shrivelled brown skins. She had accepted the fact of the doctor’s absence so completely that she ignored the sound of a bell ringing in the basement hall.

It was Mrs. Oates who glanced at the indicator.

“Front door,” she snapped. “That’ll be the doctor.”

Helen sprang to her feet and rushed to the door.

“I’ll let him in,” she cried.

“Thank you, miss,” said Oates gratefully. “I haven’t my trousers on.”

“Disgraceful,” laughed Helen, who knew he referred to the fact that he put on his best trousers and a linen jacket, in order to carry in the dinner.

Again hope soared, as she flew up the stairs and opened the front door, letting in a sheet of torrential rain, driven before the gale, as well as the doctor.

He was strongly-built, and inclined to be stocky, with short blunt clean-shaven features. Helen beamed her wel come, while he—in turn—looked at her with approval.

“Is this Gala Night?” he asked.

His gaze held none of the uncomfortable suction of the nurse’s eyes, so that Helen rejoiced in her new evening frock. But Dr. Parry was more concerned by the hollows in her neck than struck by the whiteness of her skin.

“Odd that you are not better developed,” he frowned, “with all the housework you do,”

“I’ve not been doing any lately,” explained Helen.

“I see,” muttered Dr. Parry, as he wondered why voluntary starvation, in the case of a slimming patient should fail to affect him, since the result was the same.

“Like milk?” he asked. “But, of course, you don’t.”

“Don’t I? I’d be a peril, if I worked in a dairy.”

“You ought to drink a lot. I’ll speak to Mrs. Oates.”

The doctor drew off his leather motoring coat and flung it on the chair.

“Dirty weather,” he said. “It made me late. The roads are like broth. How is Lady Warren tonight?”

“Just the same; she wants me to sleep with her.”

“Well, if I know anything about you, you’ll enjoy doing that,” grinned the doctor. “Something new.” “But I’m dreading it,” wailed Helen. “I’m just. hanging on you to tell them I’m not—not competent.”

“Jim-jams? Has the house got you, too? Are you finding it too lonely here?”

“Oh, no, it’s not just nerves. I’ve got a reason for being afraid.”

Contrary to her former experience, Helen held the doc tor’s attention, while she told him the story of the revolver.

“It’s a rum yarn,” he said. “But I’d believe anything of that old surprise-packet. I’ll see if I can find out where she’s hidden it.”

“And you’ll say I’m not to sleep with her?” insisted Helen.

But things were not so simple as that, for Dr. Parry rubbed his chin doubtfully.

“I can’t promise. I must see the nurse first. She may really need a good night, if she’s come straight off duty… . I’d better be going up.”

He swung open the doors leading to the hall. As they crossed it, he spoke to her in an undertone.

“Buck up, old lady. It won’t be loaded. In any case; her eye will be out, after all these years.”

“She hit the nurse,” Helen reminded him.

“Sheer fluke. Remember, she’s an old woman. Don’t bother to come up.”

“No, I’d better introduce you formally to the nurse,” insisted Helen, who was anxious not to infringe professional etiquette.

But the glare in Nurse Barker’s eye, when she opened the door, in answer to Helen’s knock, told her that she had blundered again.”

“I’ve brought up Dr. ‘Parry,” said Helen.

Nurse Barker .inclined her head in a stately bow.

“How long have you been here, doctor?” she asked.

“Oh, five minutes or so,” he replied.

“In future, doctor, will you, please, come straight to the bedroom?” asked the nurse. “Lady Warren has been worried, because you were late.”

“Certainly, nurse, if it’s like that,” said the doctor.

Helen turned away with a sinking heart. The woman seemed to dominate the young doctor with her will even as she appeared to tower over him—an optical illusion, due to the white overall.

Simone—in all the glory of her sensational gown—swept past her in the hall. Even in the midst of her own problem, Helen noticed that she was literally drenched with emotion. Her eyes sparkled with tears, her lips trembled, her hands were clenched.

She was in the grip of frustrate desire, which converted her into a storm-centre of rage. She was angry with Newton—because he was an obstacle; angry with Stephen—because he was unresponsive; angry with herself—because she had lost her grip.