Vanishing Point (19 page)

Lydia Crewe made her way back by the winding path which threaded the two shrubberies. She had no need of a torch. Her feet had taken this way so often—by sunlight, twilight, moonlight, and in the dead of the night as now. She knew every turn, every bush that brushed her shoulder, every bough to which her head must stoop, every jutting root. She had walked it when hope was high and the illusion of youth still lingered. She had trodden it when hope was gone and her formidable will drove her along another path from which there was no turning back. She passed through the gap which separated the two gardens, and beyond it under overarching trees to the gravel sweep before the house. The door by which she would gain admittance was here, but Rosamond’s and Jenny’s rooms and her own were on the farther side. She crossed the front of the house, walking quickly and with no special precaution. All these front rooms were empty, where they had once been filled with sons and daughters, guests, and up in the attics the maids and men who served them. No need to walk softly for the ghosts of a bygone splendour.

She turned the corner and came to the barred windows on the ground floor—her own, Jenny’s, Rosamond’s. Her own were shut, Jenny’s and Rosamond’s open. She stood by Jenny’s window and listened. There was no sound at all. There had been time enough for her to cry away her temper and fall asleep. It was from this window that Jenny had thrown the blue Venetian bead. She switched on her torch and sent the beam travelling.

Immediately under the window a border set with wallflower and tulips against the spring. The bead wouldn’t be there— Jenny had thrown it with all her might. Nor would it be on the gravel path which continued round the house. But beyond the path where the rock garden opened out, that was the place to search. The beam went to and fro over moss which carpeted the stones amongst neglected lavender, overgrown rosemary, tangled rock rose, campanula and thyme. It crossed the pool in the centre of the garden, the water too clouded, too muddy to see whether the bead lay there or not. She thought it would hardly have come so far, but these things were incalculable. If it was in the pool it would be safe enough.

She came back from the garden slowly, letting the light go to and fro. Tomorrow by daylight there would be a better chance, and at least if she couldn’t find it, no one else would be likely to—there was always that. She switched off the torch and heard a long sigh come out of the dark. She said sharply, “Who’s there?” and it was a dead woman’s voice that answered her.

“You won’t find it. It’s mine—you won’t find it.”

It was so faint that she could tell herself afterwards that she hadn’t heard it. But whether she heard it or not, she knew the voice and she knew what it said. She found herself pressed up against Jenny’s window, holding to the bars, her heart shaking her. There was a rushing noise in her ears. If the voice had spoken again she would not have heard it. But it did not speak again.

Inside the room Jenny lay with her back to the window and a corner of the pillow stuffed into her mouth to stifle the laughter which bubbled up in her. She had done it really well. She had very nearly frightened Aunt Lydia into a fit. Poor old Holiday was easy enough to do, with her genteel accent and her whiny piny voice. Jenny thought she would very nearly have had a fit herself if she had heard it like that in the dark when she was looking for something which had belonged to a poor dead thing.

All at once she was frightened. The beam of the torch came into the room. It struck the wall beyond her and caught the glass of a picture, and then the shiny round disc at the end of it came dancing to and fro about the bed. It was really horrid, but the worst part of it was that she had begun to be frightened before the beam came in. It might have been her own trick, or it might have been Aunt Lydia hating her out there beyond the bars. But she was frightened before there was even the faintest shimmer from the torch. She had been laughing, but the laughter was gone. There was a choking sob in her throat, and tears were running down into the pillow and soaking it.

The torch went away. Aunt Lydia’s footsteps went away. Everything was nice and dark and quiet again. And then all of a sudden the darkness and the quietness stopped being nice and began to terrify her. She slipped out of bed and ran to the door, quickly in case there was something that might be going to pounce—a black bat with ragged wings like Aunt Lydia hating her, or Miss Holiday all white and wet come back to find her blue Venetian bead.

And the door was locked. It was the most dreadful moment in Jenny’s life. Worse than the one just before the accident, when she knew it was going to happen. Worse than coming round in the hospital and feeling all smashed up. Because with Jenny the things that happened in her mind would always be worse than anything that could happen to her body. She stood flat against the door and made herself stiff, so as not to beat upon it with her hands and scream for Rosamond. If she did that, Aunt Lydia would come, and she would know that it was Jenny who had tricked her.

It took every bit of her strength, but she did it. And then all of a sudden the key turned, and the handle, and the door began to move. She had been pressed against it, but at the very first sound she went back inch by inch on her bare feet, her hands at her throat to stop the scream which was there. The door went on moving, and suddenly, blessedly, there was Rosamond in her white nightgown with the passage light behind her. She saw Jenny, her hair standing up in a rumpled halo and her eyes staring. When she held out her arms Jenny ran into them, gasping for breath and all at once a dead weight to be carried to the bed and laid down there.

When Rosamond had shut the door she came back to kneel down and listen first to a wordless sobbing, and then to half-stifled words. Some of them were to come back to her afterwards. At the time she could only think of Jenny’s clinging hands and the trembling of her body. They were there together in the dark. A movement to put on the light had brought a more agonized shuddering than before, and a gasp of “No—she’ll come!”

When the sobbing died away Rosamond’s almost inarticulate words of comfort began to take form.

“Jenny, listen!… Yes, you can if you try. Something lovely is going to happen, and I’m going to tell you about it. There isn’t anything to be frightened of. We are going away.” Jenny gave a rending sniff. “Wait till I get a handkerchief and I’ll tell you all about it.”

She made her way to the chest of drawers, came back again, and sat on the bed.

“Here you are. And don’t cry any more, or you won’t be able to listen.”

“I’m not crying—I’m blowing my nose.” Then after an interval, with no more than a catch in her breath, “Where are we going?”

“We are going away with Craig. I’m going to marry him.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow—no, I expect by this time it’s today.”

“I’m coming too?”

“Of course! Oh, Jenny, I wouldn’t leave you!”

Jenny said, “I should think not!” And then, “Aunt Lydia locked me in.”

“I know, darling. Nobody shall again. Only you mustn’t go out at night—you’ll promise, won’t you?”

“Who said I went out at night?”

“Aunt Lydia saw you. And Craig did too. You mustn’t, darling—it isn’t safe.”

Jenny’s voice went stiff.

“I don’t want to any more.” Then, with sudden energy, “Rosamond—”

“What is it?”

“Suppose she comes back!”

“Aunt Lydia?”

Jenny was gripping her wrist.

“Yes—yes! She was out there! She came and looked in and shone a torch!”

“Was that what frightened you! I thought I heard someone in the garden—someone talking. Was that Aunt Lydia?”

“The talking part wasn’t. Rosamond, she shone her torch to see if I was awake. Suppose she comes along the passage and tries the door!”

“Why should she?”

“She might. Let’s go into your room. We can lock this room again and she’ll think I’m here, and we can lock ourselves into yours. And then we’ll run away tomorrow and marry Craig and live happy ever after.”

Lydia Crewe went back to her room and put on all the lights— not only the big chandelier with its many-faceted lustres, but the gilt and crystal sconces on either side of the chimney-breast and between the windows, until every inch of the crowded room sprang into view. The curtains hung across the windows in the dark straight folds, but this was the only darkness which remained. There was no place for shadows under the blaze of those unsparing lights. She sat down in her chair, stiffly upright, rigidly controlled. Her heart still beat more heavily than it should have done. She set her will to steady it. The dark garden was shut away from her by a barrier of walls, a barrier of lights. If it was nerves which had played her a trick, they should learn that she was their mistress. If it was Jenny—

She held her anger in a leash and would not let it go. Jenny could wait. This was no time to take an extra risk. It was Lucy who was the danger, not Jenny, playing with a blue Venetian bead which no one would ever see again. It was gone, and tomorrow Jenny would be gone to the school which Millicent Westerham had described as “a bit rough and ready, but the discipline is excellent and the fees really low.” Jenny wasn’t going to like the excellent discipline of Miss Simmington’s school. It might perhaps be left to deal with her, at any rate for the present.

She came back to Lucy Cunningham, who was the real danger.

After that interview with Henry it would be safer to wait, but she couldn’t risk it. And in a way it would be all to the good, because he would be able to say in the most truthful and convincing manner that poor Lucy had been in an extremely nervous state and had complained about not being able to sleep. Only of course he must stick to that and not go beyond it. He had neither the nerve nor the clarity of mind to lie convincingly.

Well it must be done tonight. More people than Henry would have noticed that Lucy hadn’t been herself all day. When she was found in the morning, it would be just one more case of an elderly woman who couldn’t sleep and had gone beyond the safety line in the matter of a drug. Her mind began to busy itself with the details. Henry and Nicholas must be asleep. Lucy had often complained that nothing woke either of them once they were off. They must have time to be so profoundly asleep that no one would ever know that she had returned to the Dower House. No one except Lucy, and Lucy would not be in a position to tell what she had known. It would have passed with her into the silence from which there is no coming back.

The voice which she had heard in the garden whispered at the edge of consciousness and was refused. The dead could not return. They had no power to harm. You were safe from them. When Lucy was dead she would be safe from her… Time went by.

When at last she rose to her feet she was steady and resolved. Her bedroom lay beyond with a connecting door. She went through to the bathroom on the other side, a converted room with some of the furniture which had belonged to it still taking up what should have been clean, clear space. She went to the small bureau in the corner and lifted the flap. There were a number of pigeonholes behind it, all stuffed with papers—old bills, old correspondence, things she had never troubled herself to deal with. When she had cleared the second hole from the left she felt for the spring which disclosed a small inner compartment. It was empty except for just one thing—a glass bottle very nearly full of white tablets.

She put everything else back, tipped a number of the tablets into the palm of her hand, and contemplated them. They were more than twenty years old—nearer thirty. Old Dr. Lester had prescribed them for her father in his last illness. One, or at the outside two if the pain became severe. On no account more. She wondered if the drug would have kept its strength. She had never heard anything to the contrary, and she would just have to chance it. Better make the dose a stiff one—say ten tablets. She counted them out and put them into a tumbler to dissolve with a little hot water. She would need a small bottle for the liquid. After some deliberation she selected from a cupboard a three-parts empty bottle of ipecacuanha wine, washed it out carefully, and when the tablets were fully dissolved corked them up in it.

She stepped out into the passage, resolved and confident, and enough at her ease to walk back as far as Jenny’s room and try the door. If it had been open, she would have locked it again and taken the key. She had not been at all satisfied with Rosamond’s response when the matter was discussed, and she did not intend to be flouted. But the key was turned and the door fast. She passed down the passage and across the hall. And so by the side door and the dark familiar path to the Dower House.

Craig Lester kept his watch. After some reconnoitring he decided on a vantage point where an old apple tree rose among the shrubs which lay between the side of the house and the gap by which the garden could be entered from next door. In the darkness and still bare of leaf he could not know what kind of a tree it was, but Lucy Cunningham could have told him that it would have a wealth of rosy blossom in May and be weighed down with rosy apples in September.

Lydia Crewe could have told him more than that. For two hundred years there had been an orchard tree here between the houses. Then the taste in gardening changed, became more formal. Shrubs took the place of pear and cherry, apple and mulberry and quince, to suit the whim of Sophia Crewe who had brought a fortune into the family’s already depleted coffers. She was beautiful, stubborn, and extremely well dowered, and Jonathan Crewe had let her have her way. But he would not part with the tree which provided his breakfast apple for ten months in the year. He had boasted about it for too long, and his middle-aged foot came down and stayed that way. He had been gone for a long time now—and Sophia and her dowry—but the apple tree remained. It had low spreading boughs. When Craig was tired of standing he could sit comfortably enough, and when he was tired of sitting he could stand again. What he could not do was to walk about. He found it remarkably like old times.

He began to think about Rosamond. He could not believe, he would not let himself believe, that anything could go wrong now. Whatever happened or didn’t happen tonight, they must be married as he had planned. He hoped with all his heart that nothing would happen. He supposed Miss Silver was bound to ring up the police, but somehow he didn’t see the country people rushing over in the middle of the night to arrest Henry Cunningham on the word of an elderly spinster. There would have to be a search warrant, and a search warrant meant recourse to a higher authority. Higher authority didn’t take kindly to being knocked up in the small hours. He considered there would be some weight behind the argument that if the Melbury rubies were in Henry Cunningham’s drawer they could very well stay there for a few hours longer. As to Miss Cunningham being in any danger, he felt that a good deal of scepticism could be expected.

He began to feel a good deal of scepticism himself. If he had not stood behind the panel and heard Lydia Crewe say, “Lucy knows too much,” the scepticism might have been complete. As it was, the words stuck in his throat—“Lucy knows too much.” And how did it go on—“She knows enough to ruin us.” He could tell himself that she was putting a case to Henry Cunningham, and that anyhow people said a lot of things they didn’t really mean. But the words stuck, and the voice that carried them. It occurred to him quite suddenly that he had never disliked any one as much as he disliked Lydia Crewe.

If his ears had not been trained to listen, he might not have heard her when she came. The path ran close beside his tree. If he had taken one step and stretched out a hand he could have touched her, but she went past with what was hardly a sound. The air moved, something went by. Since he knew where she must be going, he did not hurry to follow her. He had unlaced his shoes, now he slipped them off and left them hanging on the tree. He came in his stocking feet to the edge of the little courtyard as she slipped behind the bush which screened the secret door. The key turned, the door swung in, and she was gone. He could neither see nor hear these things, but he knew that they were happening.

And then Miss Silver was saying, “She has just gone in, has she not?”

“Yes.”

“She must be followed, and at once.”

The tall figure of Frank Abbott loomed up. He said in the almost soundless voice which the others were using,

“There’s a delay about the search warrant. It may be some time before it gets here.”

Miss Silver was already on her way towards the house. Frank followed her.

“My dear ma’am, we can’t just go in!”

He considers that her reply exhibits the Victorian tradition at the point where the sublime transcends the ridiculous. It is not so easy to achieve dignity without emphasis, but she achieved it.

“My dear Frank, I am on visiting terms with Miss Cunningham, and I feel no difficulty about entering her house. You and Mr. Lester will, of course, do what you feel to be right.” With which pronouncement she too stepped behind the bush and entered the passage.

Standing for a moment to listen, she could hear nothing. There was need for haste, but there was also a need for caution.

Lydia Crewe passed through the study, leaving the panel open. A small light burned in the hall. After some consideration she left it as it was and went up to the bedroom floor. If she had to make a sudden retreat it would be useful to be able to see her way. Lucy Cunningham’s door was the first on the right at the top of the stairs—Henry opposite on the left, and Nicholas at the back of the landing. She had no fear that they would wake, but if either of them did, Henry had alarmed her about Lucy and she had slipped over to see that all was well.

She tried the handle of the door and found it fast. Her brows met in a frown. She lifted her hand and knocked. After a moment a voice said,

“Who’s there?”

She would hardly have known it for Lucy’s voice, it was so hoarse and strained. She made her own voice smooth.

“It’s Lydia, my dear. Henry was concerned about you. He said you were not well. He was concerned enough to ring me up.”

Lucy Cunningham was startled right out of her fear.

“Henry rang you up!”

“Yes. You can tell how worried he must have been. Let me in—we can’t talk like this.”

She heard Lucy come up to the door and turn the key. A triumphant sense of power took hold of her as she stepped into the room and pushed the door to behind her. She did not stop to latch it. She would not be here for long. What she had to do could be done without delay. She looked at Lucy, still in her afternoon dress, and said in a shocked tone,

“But, my dear, you are not undressed. Do you know how late it is?”

Lucy shook her head.

“It doesn’t matter—I can’t sleep. Did you say Henry rang you up?”

Lydia Crewe nodded.

“He’s terribly worried. I told him I would come over and bring you a sleeping-draught.”

“Henry rang you up?” Incredulity struggled through the flat fatigue of her voice.

“That is what I said.”

“Henry?”

“Would you be glad to know that we have made it up again?”

“Glad? Oh, Lydia!”

The tears began to run down her face. She put out her hands gropingly. Lydia Crewe took them, guided her to the bed, and sat there beside her, speaking to her soothingly.

The sound of this soothing voice reached Miss Silver as she came to the top of the stairs—that and the sound of Lucy Cunningham’s sobs. They made it quite safe to approach the door, which was ajar. Standing there, she heard Miss Crewe say,

“Now, Lucy, there’s nothing to cry about. Henry and I are just where we were, and you ought to be pleased about that. But he is terribly worried about you, so I want you to take this sleeping-draught. What you need is a good night’s rest. Henry can ask Mrs. Hubbard to let you sleep on in the morning, and when you wake up you can tell us how glad you are that we can all be friends again. Of course you and I always were. We never did let anything come between us, did we, and we never will.”

All the time that she was speaking Lucy wept, not loudly, but in an exhausted fashion as if she had come to the end of her strength and could do no more. Lydia and Henry had made it up—Lydia was being kind—there was nothing to worry about any more. But she was too tired to be glad. All she wanted was to lie down and sleep. She was conscious of the removal of Lydia’s arm and of her getting up and going over to the wash-stand. There was the chink of glass against glass.

And then Lydia was back again, standing in front of her and holding out a tumbler.

“Now, Lucy, drink this. And then we’ll get your clothes off and you can go to sleep.”

Miss Silver pushed the door an inch or two wider. Lucy Cunningham was sitting on the side of the bed, her face wet with tears, her eyes blurred. Standing over her with her back to the door was Lydia Crewe. There was a tumbler in her hand half full. She held it out to Lucy and said in a tone of authority,

“Come now—drink it up!”

Lucy gave a last tired sob and said,

“I don’t—want it, Lydia. Now you’ve come—I shall sleep.”

The tone of authority became harsher.

“You will drink it at once and no nonsense about it! What you need is a good long rest!”

Lucy Cunningham put out her hand half way and took the glass. And saw Miss Maud Silver come into the room with her black cloth coat, her fur tippet, her second-best hat, and her warm woolen gloves. It was such a surprising sight that it shocked her broad awake. The impact of Lydia’s will was blunted. Her face changed, she drew back her hand.

Miss Silver gave a slight arresting cough and said,

“I think it is extremely wise of you to resist a sedative, Miss Cunningham. Natural sleep is always to be preferred.”

Lydia Crewe turned stiffly round. She had had one shock already. She had surmounted it. Now there was this. In a moment she would be able to think, to plan, to know what she must do. Just now, in this instant of time, she could only stand there and stare.

With a purely instinctive movement Lucy Cunningham leaned sideways behind Miss Crewe’s back and set the tumbler down upon the bedside table. There was no design in what she did. There was a tumbler in her hand, she set it down. Something had brought Miss Silver into her room in the middle of the night. She got to her feet, passing Lydia, standing away from her, because all at once the room was full of fierce currents. She didn’t understand them, but they were there. Lydia who had been kind was not kind any longer. Her voice shook with a sound which Lucy knew and feared beyond anything else.

“What—do—you—want?”

Miss Silver did not appear to be impressed. She said in her usual composed manner,

“I want you to go home, Miss Crewe. I believe that you had better do so. Miss Cunningham should rest.”

Lydia Crewe made a great effort. She controlled the rage that shook her. She controlled her voice to say,

“I found she had dissolved some tablets for a sleeping-draught—they are some she had by her. I was just waiting to see her take them and help her to bed.”

And what must Lucy say, the babbling fool, but “Lydia, I’ve never had any sleeping-tablets. I don’t like them—I don’t need them. It was you—”

There was a silence. Lydia Crewe gathered her remaining forces. She said,

“Very well, I’ll go. Since you don’t need that draught, we can throw it away.” Then suddenly, sharply, “What have you done with it?… Ah!”

She had not turned in time. Miss Silver had moved between her and the bedside table, and at that her control broke. She made a dreadful sound and reached for Miss Silver’s throat.

Lucy Cunningham screamed at the top of her voice, and in a moment the room was full of people—Frank Abbott, Craig Lester, Nicholas. And at long last Henry Cunningham, his shaking hands to his ears, because now it was Lydia Crewe who was screaming—dreadfully.