Some Must Watch, Ethel Lina White [crime books to read txt] 📗
- Author: Ethel Lina White
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“Shut up.”
“No,” muttered the old woman maliciously, “you didn’t hear it. And you
never will.”
She listened again, but the music had ceased. Helen had realized that
her performance might disturb the remnant of the household. She closed
the piano, and opened a novel, only to discover that she could not
concentrate on what she read.
She found that she was listening to the noises of the night, as though
she expected to hear some unfamiliar sound.
Presently she got up and turned on the Wireless, in the vain hope of
hearing the announcer’s voice. But the London Stations had closed down,
and all she got, from the air, was an explosion of atmospherics.
They reminded her of amateur stage effects, and the only time she had
ever appeared in a dramatic performance. It had been a modest business,
at the Prize-giving of the Belgian Convent, where she had received most
of her brief education.
The English pupils had played the Witches’ Scene from Macbeth, and she
had been unhappily cast as Hecate. Not only was she inaudible, through
stage-fright, but she forgot the end of her speech, and rushed from the
stage. The lines swam back, now, to her memory, as an unpleasant and
ill-timed warning.
“And, you all know, security is mortal’s chiefest enemy.”
Helen started, as though the great voice in the chimney were actually
roaring the words. She looked at the old-fashioned comfort of the
room-the white skin rug, the pleated pink silk lamp-shade—which were
mute witnesses, against the violence of murder.
“Of course, I feel safe,” she thought. “I’m not left alone. Nurse Barker
is my ally, even if she’s got a temper. I haven’t got to sleep in the
blue room. Oates will soon be back. And—nothing’s happened.”
Yet, in spite of the reassurance of her review, she real ized that she
was keyed up to a pitch of unnatural expectancy. She was listening so
intently that she believed she could almost catch the high squeak of a
bat.
Something had twanged on her ear, like the vibration of a drawn wire.
She heard it again—slightly louderfaint and wailing as the mew of a
sea-gull.
It was a cry in the night.
THE LION—OR THE TIGER?
Helen raised her head to listen—a great fear at her heart. What she
most dreaded had actually happened—the need to make a perilous
decision.
Yet, the very fact that it had occurred aroused her suspicions. Someone
with a knowledge of her character, was playing a trick on her, in order
to draw her away from the security of the house.
This theatrical element made her tighten her lips in resolution. She had
spoken, in pity, of a child crying out in the darkness and storm. And
here was the child—delivered, according to schedule.
But, as the thin cry was repeated, Helen’s lips parted, in suspense.
Although it was difficult to locate the sound, because of the shrieking
of the wind, it seemed to come from somewhere within the house. A new
dread knocking at her heart, she slowly mounted the stairs.
As she did so, the crying grew more distinct, and like the weak sobbing
of someone very young, or very old.
And it came from the direction of the blue room. Once again the natural
element was shaping the drama—yet the result would be the same. She was
being tempted to abandon her last line of defence.
Nurse Barker was the only person left to keep her company. Helen clung
to her, as a child, terrified of the dark, will hang on to a
bad-tempered nurse. She had aroused her antagonism too often to risk
another quarrel.
Next time, Nurse Barker might carry out her threat to leave her alone.
Helen grew cold at the mere thought of desertion. She had been used to
plenty of company; too much of it, in fact, so that she sometimes craved
for solitude.
At this crisis, her early training left her especially susceptible to
the menace of loneliness and her own imagination. She knew that she
would experience all the heralds of a nervous crash; shadows would
flicker over the wall—footsteps creak up the stairs.
“I must keep my head,” she resolved desperately.
She reminded herself that Lady Warren was not some gentle old soul, at
the mercy of a brute. At her best, she was a cantankerous old bully; at
her worst, she might be a murderess. When she was younger, she had
killed hundreds of small, defenseless creatures, merely for her own
amusement.
Although Helen was careful to paint Lady Warren’s portrait in darkest
hues, she was drawn, imperceptibly, up the staircase, until she stood
outside the blue room.
Presently she heard smothered, hopeless sobbing. It was not assumed for
effect, because it was so low that she could not have known anyone was
crying if she had not strained her ears.
She flinched, as though she had been struck herself, at the sound of a
rough voice.
“Stop that row.”
The sobbing ceased immediately. After a pause, Lady Warren spoke
appealingly.
“Nurse. Please, come to me.”
Helen heard heavy footsteps crossing the room, and
Nurse Barker’s voice raised in a shout.
“If I come to you, I’ll give you what for.”
Helen felt herself grow hot, as she rapped impulsively On the door.
“Is anything the matter?” she called.
“No,” replied Nurse Barker. “But wouldn’t you like me to sit with Lady
Warren for a short time?” persisted Helen.
“No.”
Helen turned away, wiping her face.
“That was a near shave,” she murmured.
At the top of the stairs she was arrested by the sound of a high scream
of mingled pain and rage.
Hot with indignation, she burst into the blue room.
Nurse Barker stood over the bed, shaking Lady Warren furiously. As Helen
entered, she threw her away from her, so that she lay on her face, in a
heaving crumpled heap.
“You great coward,” cried Helen; “Get out of here.”
Like David threatening Goliath, Helen looked up at the towering figure.
“The old devil went for me,” said Nurse Barker.
“You’re a thoroughly bad-tempered woman,” she de clared. “You are not
fit to have control of anyone.”
Nurse Barker’s face grew dark as a storm-cloud.
“Say that again,” she shouted, “and I’ll go out of this room—and not
come back.”
“You’ll certainly go, and you won’t come back,” said Helen, carried away
on a wave of power.
Nurse Barker shrugged her shoulders as she turned away.
“I wish you joy of your bargain,” she sneered. “When you are alone,
with her, remember you asked for it.”
Helen felt the first chill of reaction as the door slammed behind the
woman. There was something ominously definite about the sound.
With a rush of pity, she turned towards the bed. Instead of the
prostrate form, Lady Warren was leaning back against her pillows, a
complacent smile on her lips. Helen experienced the sensation of having
walked into a trap.
“You’d better lie down,” she said, anxious to justify her championship.
“Do you feel weak after that awful shaking?”
“What she gave me was nothing to what I gave her,” remarked Lady Warren.
Helen stared at her—the dawn of an incredulous horror in her eyes, as
she ran her finger over her lower denture.
“I grudged the money for these teeth,” she said. “But they’re very good
teeth. I bit her thumb almost to the bone.”
Helen gave a mirthless laugh.
“Someone told me to bet on you,” she said. “But I didn’t believe him. I
wonder—are you the lion—or the tiger?”
Lady Warren stared at her as though she were an idiot.
“Cigarette,” she snapped. “I want to get the taste of her out of my
mouth. Quick… Haven’t you got any?”
“No.”
“Say, ‘No, my lady.’ Go down to the library and get a box of my nephew’s.”
Helen was only too glad of the excuse to leave the room. Too late, she
realized that she had been tricked, and she wanted to make her peace
with Nurse Barker.
As she reached the door, the familiar bass bellow recalled her.
“I feel sleepy, girl. That nurse held my nose and poured a filthy
draught down my throat. Don’t disturb me, if I drop off.”
When Helen reached the landing, the light shone through the transom
above the bathroom door, while the sound of running water indicated that
Nurse Barker was bathing her thumb.
“Nurse,” she called. “I’m terribly sorry.”
There was no reply. Helen waited, listening to the splashing of water.
After making a second attempt, with no better luck, she went downstairs
to the library.
When she returned, with a box of cigarettes, the blue room was dimly
revealed in the faint glow of the lamp. Lady Warren had switched off her
bedlight, and had composed herself to sleep.
Helen sat down wearily by the fire. It was burning low, for the stock of
snowballs in the scuttle was running out. Every now and again a twig
tapped the window, like a bony finger giving a signal. The clock ticked,
like a leaking tap, and the wind blew down the funnel of the chimney.
“Here I am again,” she said, with a hopeless sense of finality. All the
evening she had been fighting Fate, only to beat the air.
There was one comfort—the night was wearing away. Oates too, would be on
his return journey. But the reminder now brought no prospect of relief.
Nurse Barker would refuse him admission, just as she had shut out Dr.
Parry—or whoever had knocked at the door.
For the first time, Helen realized the possible value of the precaution.
Since she had been tricked by Lady Warren, she felt that she was groping
amid a network of wires and snares.
With newly-awakened suspicion, she glanced at the, dim white form on the
bed. It suddenly struck her that Lady Warren was unnaturally still.
There was no sound of breathing, and not the slightest stir of movement.
She remembered that the old woman had been shaken violently and that her
heart was dangerously weak. Smitten with sudden dread, she rushed over
to the bed.
“She’ll be the next,” she thought. “I shall find her dead.”
Her foreboding was fulfilled in a curious manner. Lady Warren was gone,
indeed, while nothing could have been less animate than the pile of
pillows, covered with the fleecy bed-jacket, which occupied her place in
the bed.
Helen stared at the dummy with the stupefaction of Macbeth when he
beheld the forest marching against him. The incredible fable was true,
and Lady Warren could walk.
As she stood, she became aware of a strong odor of drugs. Turning over
one of the pillows, she noticed that it was sopping wet, and stained a
yellowish-brown.
“She tricked the nurse, too,” thought Helen.
She had a mental picture of the struggling Lady Warren, turned her head,
between every mouthful of the sleeping-draught, and letting it trickle
out from the corner of her mouth. With a new respect for the old woman’s
cunning, she made a brief search of the room, although she was sure it
was but waste of time. As the dressing room, too, was empty, she rushed
out on to the landing.
The light still; shone through the bathroom transom, although the
splashing of water had ceased. In her fright, Helen hammered on the
door.
“Nurse,” she shouted, “Lady Warren’s gone.”
The door
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