The Circular Staircase, Mary Roberts Rinehart [best time to read books .txt] 📗

That day was destined to be an eventful one, for when I entered the house and found Eliza ensconced in the upper hall on a chair, with Mary Anne doing her best to stifle her with household ammonia, and Liddy rubbing her wrists—whatever good that is supposed to do—I knew that the ghost had been walking again, and this time in daylight.

Eliza was in a frenzy of fear. She clutched at my sleeve when I went close to her, and refused to let go until she had told her story. Coming just after the fire, the household was demoralized, and it was no surprise to me to find Alex and the under-gardener struggling downstairs with a heavy trunk between them.

“I didn’t want to do it, Miss Innes,” Alex said. “But she was so excited, I was afraid she would do as she said—drag it down herself, and scratch the staircase.”

I was trying to get my bonnet off and to keep the maids quiet at the same time. “Now, Eliza, when you have washed your face and stopped bawling,” I said, “come into my sitting-room and tell me what has happened.”

Liddy put away my things without speaking. The very set of her shoulders expressed disapproval.

“Well,” I said, when the silence became uncomfortable, “things seem to be warming up.”

Silence from Liddy, and a long sigh.

“If Eliza goes, I don’t know where to look for another cook.” More silence.

“Rosie is probably a good cook.” Sniff.

“Liddy,” I said at last, “don’t dare to deny that you are having the time of your life. You positively gloat in this excitement. You never looked better. It’s my opinion all this running around, and getting jolted out of a rut, has stirred up that torpid liver of yours.”

“It’s not myself I’m thinking about,” she said, goaded into speech. “Maybe my liver was torpid, and maybe it wasn’t; but I know this: I’ve got some feelings left, and to see you standing at the foot of that staircase shootin’ through the door—I’ll never be the same woman again.”

“Well, I’m glad of that—anything for a change,” I said. And in came Eliza, flanked by Rosie and Mary Anne.

Her story, broken with sobs and corrections from the other two, was this: At two o’clock (two-fifteen, Rosie insisted) she had gone upstairs to get a picture from her room to show Mary Anne. (A picture of a LADY, Mary Anne interposed.) She went up the servants’ staircase and along the corridor to her room, which lay between the trunk-room and the unfinished ball-room. She heard a sound as she went down the corridor, like some one moving furniture, but she was not nervous. She thought it might be men examining the house after the fire the night before, but she looked in the trunk-room and saw nobody.

She went into her room quietly. The noise had ceased, and everything was quiet. Then she sat down on the side of her bed, and, feeling faint—she was subject to spells—(“I told you that when I came, didn’t I, Rosie?” “Yes’m, indeed she did!”)—she put her head down on her pillow and—

“Took a nap. All right!” I said. “Go on.”

“When I came to, Miss Innes, sure as I’m sittin’ here, I thought I’d die. Somethin’ hit me on the face, and I set up, sudden. And then I seen the plaster drop, droppin’ from a little hole in the wall. And the first thing I knew, an iron bar that long” (fully two yards by her measure) “shot through that hole and tumbled on the bed. If I’d been still sleeping” (“Fainting,” corrected Rosie) “I’d ‘a’ been hit on the head and killed!”

“I wisht you’d heard her scream,” put in Mary Anne. “And her face as white as a pillow-slip when she tumbled down the stairs.”

“No doubt there is some natural explanation for it, Eliza,” I said. “You may have dreamed it, in your `fainting’ attack. But if it is true, the metal rod and the hole in the wall will show it.”

Eliza looked a little bit sheepish.

“The hole’s there all right, Miss Innes,” she said. “But the bar was gone when Mary Anne and Rosie went up to pack my trunk.”

“That wasn’t all,” Liddy’s voice came funereally from a corner. “Eliza said that from the hole in the wall a burning eye looked down at her!”

“The wall must be at least six inches thick,” I said with asperity. “Unless the person who drilled the hole carried his eyes on the ends of a stick, Eliza couldn’t possibly have seen them.”

But the fact remained, and a visit to Eliza’s room proved it. I might jeer all I wished: some one had drilled a hole in the unfinished wall of the ball-room, passing between the bricks of the partition, and shooting through the unresisting plaster of Eliza’s room with such force as to send the rod flying on to her bed. I had gone upstairs alone, and I confess the thing puzzled me: in two or three places in the wall small apertures had been made, none of them of any depth. Not the least mysterious thing was the disappearance of the iron implement that had been used.

I remembered a story I read once about an impish dwarf that lived in the spaces between the double walls of an ancient castle. I wondered vaguely if my original idea of a secret entrance to a hidden chamber could be right, after all, and if we were housing some erratic guest, who played pranks on us in the dark, and destroyed the walls that he might listen, hidden safely away, to our amazed investigations.

Mary Anne and Eliza left that afternoon, but Rosie decided to stay. It was about five o’clock when the hack came from the station to get them, and, to my amazement, it had an occupant. Matthew Geist, the driver, asked for me, and explained his errand with pride.

“I’ve brought you a cook, Miss Innes,” he said. “When the message came to come up for two girls and their trunks, I supposed there was something doing, and as this here woman had been looking for work in the village, I thought I’d bring her along.”

Already I had acquired the true suburbanite ability to take servants on faith; I no longer demanded written and unimpeachable references. I, Rachel Innes, have learned not to mind if the cook sits down comfortably in my sitting-room when she is taking the orders for the day, and I am grateful if the silver is not cleaned with scouring soap. And so that day I merely told Liddy to send the new applicant in. When she came, however, I could hardly restrain a gasp of surprise. It was the woman with the pitted face.

She stood somewhat awkwardly just inside the door, and she had an air of self-confidence that was inspiring. Yes, she could cook; was not a fancy cook, but could make good soups and desserts if there was any one to take charge of the salads. And so, in the end, I took her. As Halsey said, when we told him, it didn’t matter much about the cook’s face, if it was clean.

I have spoken of Halsey’s restlessness. On that day it seemed to be more than ever a resistless impulse that kept him out until after luncheon. I think he hoped constantly that he might meet Louise driving over the hills in her runabout: possibly he did meet her occasionally, but from his continued gloom I felt sure the situation between them was unchanged.

Part of the afternoon I believe he read—Gertrude and I were out, as I have said, and at dinner we both noticed that something had occurred to distract him. He was disagreeable, which is unlike him, nervous, looking at his watch every few minutes, and he ate almost nothing. He asked twice during the meal on what train Mr. Jamieson and the other detective were coming, and had long periods of abstraction during which he dug his fork into my damask cloth and did not hear when he was spoken to. He refused dessert, and left the table early, excusing himself on the ground that he wanted to see Alex.

Alex, however, was not to be found. It was after eight when Halsey ordered the car, and started down the hill at a pace that, even for him, was unusually reckless. Shortly after, Alex reported that he was ready to go over the house, preparatory to closing it for the night. Sam Bohannon came at a quarter before nine, and began his patrol of the grounds, and with the arrival of the two detectives to look forward to, I was not especially apprehensive.

At half-past nine I heard the sound of a horse driven furiously up the drive. It came to a stop in front of the house, and immediately after there were hurried steps on the veranda. Our nerves were not what they should have been, and Gertrude, always apprehensive lately, was at the door almost instantly. A moment later Louise had burst into the room and stood there bareheaded and breathing hard!

“Where is Halsey?” she demanded. Above her plain black gown her eyes looked big and somber, and