A Caribbean Mystery

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It sounds such rot. Mrs Haworth said: “I shouldn’t go in if I were you . . .”’ He paused. ‘It frightened me, you know. It frightened me badly. That’s why I told you about the dream . . . Because, you see, she said it just the same way – quietly, as though she knew something I didn’t. It wasn’t just a pretty woman who wanted to keep me out in the garden with her. Her voice was just kind – and very sorry. Almost as though she knew what was to come . . . I suppose it was rude, but I turned and left her – almost ran to the house. It seemed like safety. I knew then that I’d been afraid of her from the first. It was a relief to see old Lawes. Esther was there beside him . . .’ He hesitated a minute and then muttered rather obscurely: ‘There was no question – the moment I saw her. I knew I’d got it in the neck.’

  Macfarlane’s mind flew swiftly to Esther Lawes. He had once heard her summed up as ‘Six foot one of Jewish perfection.’ A shrewd portrait, he thought, as he remembered her unusual height and the long slender-

  ness of her, the marble whiteness of her face with its delicate down-drooping nose, and the black splendour of hair and eyes. Yes, he did not wonder that the boyish simplicity of Dickie had capitulated. Esther could never have made his own pulses beat one jot faster, but he admitted her magnificence.

  ‘And then,’ continued Dickie, ‘we got engaged.’

  ‘At once?’

  ‘Well, after about a week. It took her about a fortnight after that to find out that she didn’t care after all . . .’ He gave a short bitter laugh.

  ‘It was the last evening before I went back to the old ship. I was coming back from the village through the woods – and then I saw her – Mrs Haworth, I mean. She had on a red tam-o’-shanter, and – just for a minute, you know – it made me jump! I’ve told you about my dream, so you’ll understand . . . Then we walked along a bit. Not that there was a word Esther couldn’t have heard, you know . . .’

  ‘No?’ Macfarlane looked at his friend curiously. Strange how people told you things of which they themselves were unconscious!

  ‘And then, when I was turning to go back to the house, she stopped me. She said: “You’ll be home soon enough. I shouldn’t go back too soon if I were you . . .” And then I knew – that there was something beastly waiting for me . . . and . . . as soon as I got back Esther met me, and told me – that she’d found out she didn’t really care . . .’

  Macfarlane grunted sympathetically.

  ‘And Mrs Haworth?’ he asked. ‘I never saw her again – until tonight.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘Yes. At the doctor johnny’s nursing home. They had a look at my leg, the one that got messed up in that torpedo business. It’s worried me a bit lately. The old chap advised an operation – it’ll be quite a simple thing. Then as I left the place, I ran into a girl in a red jumper over her nurse’s things, and she said: “I wouldn’t have that operation, if I were you . . .” Then I saw it was Mrs Haworth. She passed on so quickly I couldn’t stop her. I met another nurse, and asked about her. But she said there wasn’t anyone of that name in the home . . . Queer . . .’

  ‘Sure it was her?’

  ‘Oh! yes, you see – she’s very beautiful . . .’ He paused, and then added: ‘I shall have the old op, of course – but – but in case my number should be up –’

  ‘Rot!’

  ‘Of course it’s rot. But all the same I’m glad I told you about this gipsy business . . . You know, there’s more of it if only I could remember . . .’

  * * *

  Macfarlane walked up the steep moorland road. He turned in at the gate of the house near the crest of the hill. Setting his jaw squarely, he pulled the bell.

  ‘Is Mrs Haworth in?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’ll tell her.’ The maid left him in a low long room, with windows that gave on the wildness of the moorland. He frowned a little. Was he making a colossal ass of himself?

  Then he started. A low voice was singing overhead:

  ‘The gipsy woman

  Lives on the moor –’

  The voice broke off. Macfarlane’s heart beat a shade faster. The door opened.

  The bewildering, almost Scandinavian fairness of her came as a shock. In spite of Dickie’s description, he had imagined her gipsy dark . . . And he suddenly remembered Dickie’s words, and the peculiar tone of them. ‘You see, she’s very beautiful . . .’ Perfect unquestionable beauty is rare, and perfect unquestionable beauty was what Alistair Haworth possessed.

  He caught himself up, and advanced towards her. ‘I’m afraid you don’t know me from Adam. I got your address from the Lawes. But – I’m a friend of Dickie Carpenter’s.’

  She looked at him closely for a minute or two. Then she said: ‘I was going out. Up on the moor. Will you come too?’

  She pushed open the window, and stepped out on the hillside. He followed her. A heavy, rather foolish-looking man was sitting in a basket-chair smoking.

  ‘My husband! We’re going out on the moor, Maurice. And then Mr Macfarlane will come back to lunch with us. You will, won’t you?’

  ‘Thanks very much.’ He followed her easy stride up the hill, and thought to himself: ‘Why? Why, on God’s earth, marry that?’

  Alistair made her way to some rocks. ‘We’ll sit here. And you shall tell me – what you came to tell me.’

  ‘You knew?’

  ‘I always know when bad things are coming. It is bad, isn’t it? About Dickie?’

  ‘He underwent a slight operation – quite successfully. But his heart must have been weak. He died under the anaesthetic.’

  What he expected to see on her face, he scarcely knew – hardly that look of utter eternal weariness . . . He heard her murmur: ‘Again – to wait – so long – so long . . .’ She looked up: ‘Yes, what were you going to say?’

  ‘Only this. Someone warned him against this operation. A nurse. He thought it was you. Was it?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, it wasn’t me. But I’ve got a cousin who is a nurse. She’s rather like me in a dim light. I dare say that was it.’ She looked up at him again. ‘It doesn’t matter, does it?’ And then suddenly her eyes widened. She drew in her breath. ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Oh! How funny! You don’t understand . . .’

  Macfarlane was puzzled. She was still staring at him. ‘I thought you did . . . You should do. You look as though you’d got it, too . . .’

  ‘Got what?’

  ‘The gift – curse – call it what you like. I believe you have. Look hard at that hollow in the rocks. Don’t think of anything, just look . . . Ah!’ she marked his slight start. ‘Well – you saw something?’

  ‘It must have been imagination. Just for a second I saw it full of blood!’ She nodded. ‘I knew you had it. That’s the place where the old sunworshippers sacrificed victims. I knew that before anyone told me. And there are times when I know just how they felt about it – almost as though I’d been there myself . . . And there’s something about the moor that makes me feel as though I were coming back home . . . Of course it’s natural that I should have the gift. I’m a Ferguesson. There’s second sight in the family. And my mother was a medium until my father married her. Cristing was her name. She was rather celebrated.’

  ‘Do you mean by “the gift” the power of being able to see things before they happen?’

  ‘Yes, forwards or backwards – it’s all the same. For instance, I saw you wondering why I married Maurice – oh! yes, you did! – It’s simply because I’ve always known that there’s something dreadful hanging over him . . . I wanted to save him from it . . . Women are like that. With my gift, I ought to be able to prevent it happening . . . if one ever can . . . I couldn’t help Dickie. And Dickie wouldn’t understand . . . He was afraid. He was very young.’

  ‘Twenty-two.’

  ‘And I’m thirty. But I didn’t mean that. There are so many ways of being divided, length and height and breadth . . . but to be divided by time is the worst way of all . . .’ She fell into a
long brooding silence.

  The low peal of a gong from the house below roused them.

  At lunch, Macfarlane watched Maurice Haworth. He was undoubtedly madly in love with his wife. There was the unquestioning happy fondness of a dog in his eyes. Macfarlane marked also the tenderness of her response, with its hint of maternity. After lunch he took his leave.

  ‘I’m staying down at the inn for a day or so. May I come and see you again? Tomorrow, perhaps?’

  ‘Of course. But –’

  ‘But what –’

  She brushed her hand quickly across her eyes. ‘I don’t know. I – I fancied that we shouldn’t meet again – that’s all . . . Good-bye.’

  He went down the road slowly. In spite of himself, a cold hand seemed tightening round his heart. Nothing in her words, of course, but –

  A motor swept round the corner. He flattened himself against the hedge . . . only just in time. A curious greyish pallor crept across his face . . .

  ‘Good Lord, my nerves are in a rotten state,’ muttered Macfarlane, as he awoke the following morning. He reviewed the events of the afternoon before dispassionately. The motor, the short-cut to the inn and the sudden mist that had made him lose his way with the knowledge that a dangerous bog was no distance off. Then the chimney pot that had fallen off the inn, and the smell of burning in the night which he had traced to a cinder on his hearthrug. Nothing in it at all! Nothing at all – but for her words, and that deep unacknowledged certainty in his heart that she knew . . .

  He flung off his bedclothes with sudden energy. He must go up and see her first thing. That would break the spell. That is, if he got there safely . . . Lord, what a fool he was!

  He could eat little breakfast. Ten o’clock saw him starting up the road. At ten-thirty his hand was on the bell. Then, and not till then, he permitted himself to draw a long breath of relief.

  ‘Is Mr Haworth in?’

  It was the same elderly woman who had opened the door before. But her face was different – ravaged with grief.

  ‘Oh! sir, oh! sir, you haven’t heard then?’

  ‘Heard what?’

  ‘Miss Alistair, the pretty lamb. It was her tonic. She took it every night. The poor captain is beside himself, he’s nearly mad. He took the wrong bottle off the shelf in the dark . . . They sent for the doctor, but he was too late –’

  And swiftly there recurred to Macfarlane the words: ‘I’ve always known there was something dreadful hanging over him. I ought to be able to prevent it happening – if one ever can –’ Ah! but one couldn’t cheat Fate . . . Strange fatality of vision that had destroyed where it sought to save . . .

  The old servant went on: ‘My pretty lamb! So sweet and gentle she was, and so sorry for anything in trouble. Couldn’t bear anyone to be hurt.’ She hesitated, then added: ‘Would you like to go up and see her, sir? I think, from what she said, that you must have known her long ago. A very long time ago, she said . . .’

  Macfarlane followed the old woman up the stairs, into the room over the drawing-room where he had heard the voice singing the day before. There was stained glass at the top of the windows. It threw a red light on the head of the bed . . . A gipsy with a red handkerchief over her head . . . Nonsense, his nerves were playing tricks again. He took a long last look at Alistair Haworth.

  ‘There’s a lady to see you, sir.’

  ‘Eh?’ Macfarlane looked at the landlady abstractedly. ‘Oh! I beg your pardon, Mrs Rowse, I’ve been seeing ghosts.’

  ‘Not really, sir? There’s queer things to be seen on the moor after nightfall, I know. There’s the white lady, and the Devil’s blacksmith, and the sailor and the gipsy –’

  ‘What’s that? A sailor and a gipsy?’

  ‘So they say, sir. It was quite a tale in my young days. Crossed in love they were, a while back . . . But they’ve not walked for many a long day now.’

  ‘No? I wonder if perhaps – they will again now . . .’

  ‘Lor! sir, what things you do say! About that young lady –’

  ‘What young lady?’

  ‘The one that’s waiting to see you. She’s in the parlour. Miss Lawes, she said her name was.’

  ‘Oh!’

  Rachel! He felt a curious feeling of contraction, a shifting of perspective. He had been peeping through at another world. He had forgotten Rachel, for Rachel belonged to this life only . . . Again that curious shifting of perspective, that slipping back to a world of three dimensions only.

  He opened the parlour door. Rachel – with her honest brown eyes. And suddenly, like a man awakening from a dream, a warm rush of glad reality swept over him. He was alive – alive! He thought: ‘There’s only one life one can be sure about! This one!’

  ‘Rachel!’ he said, and, lifting her chin, he kissed her lips.

  Chapter 44

  The Lamp

  ‘The Lamp’ was first published in the hardback The Hound of Death and Other Stories (Odhams Press, 1933). No previous appearances have been found.

  It was undoubtedly an old house. The whole square was old, with that disapproving dignified old age often met with in a cathedral town. But No. 19 gave the impression of an elder among elders; it had a veritable patriarchal solemnity; it towered greyest of the grey, haughtiest of the haughty, chillest of the chill. Austere, forbidding, and stamped with that particular desolation attaching to all houses that have been long untenanted, it reigned above the other dwellings.

  In any other town it would have been freely labelled ‘haunted,’ but Weyminster was averse from ghosts and considered them hardly respectable except at the appanage of a ‘county family’. So No. 19 was never alluded to as a haunted house; but nevertheless it remained, year after year, To be Let or Sold.

  Mrs Lancaster looked at the house with approval as she drove up with the talkative house agent, who was in an unusually hilarious mood at the idea of getting No. 19 off his books. He inserted the key in the door without ceasing his appreciative comments.

  ‘How long has the house been empty?’ inquired Mrs Lancaster, cutting short his flow of language rather brusquely.

  Mr Raddish (of Raddish and Foplow) became slightly confused. ‘E – er – some time,’ he remarked blandly. ‘So I should think,’ said Mrs Lancaster drily.

  The dimly lighted hall was chill with a sinister chill. A more imaginative woman might have shivered, but this woman happened to be eminently practical. She was tall with much dark brown hair just tinged with grey and rather cold blue eyes.

  She went over the house from attic to cellar, asking a pertinent question from time to time. The inspection over, she came back into one of the front rooms looking out on the square and faced the agent with a resolute mien.

  ‘What is the matter with the house?’

  Mr Raddish was taken by surprise. ‘Of course, an unfurnished house is always a little gloomy,’ he parried feebly.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Mrs Lancaster. ‘The rent is ridiculously low for such a house – purely nominal. There must be some reason for it. I suppose the house is haunted?’

  Mr Raddish gave a nervous little start but said nothing.

  Mrs Lancaster eyed him keenly. After a few moments she spoke again. ‘Of course that is all nonsense, I don’t believe in ghosts or anything of that sort, and personally it is no deterrent to my taking the house; but servants, unfortunately, are very credulous and easily frightened. It would be kind of you to tell me exactly what – what thing is supposed to haunt this place.’

  ‘I – er – really don’t know,’ stammered the house agent. ‘I am sure you must,’ said the lady quietly. ‘I cannot take the house without knowing. What was it? A murder?’

  ‘Oh! no,’ cried Mr Raddish, shocked by the idea of anything so alien to the respectability of the square. ‘It’s – it’s only a child.’

  ‘A child?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t know the story exactly,’ he continued reluctantly. ‘Of course, there are all kinds of different versions, b
ut I believe that about thirty years ago a man going by the name of Williams took No. 19. Nothing was known of him; he kept no servants; he had no friends; he seldom went out in the day time. He had one child, a little boy. After he had been there about two months, he went up to London, and had barely set foot in the metropolis before he was recognized as being a man “wanted” by the police on some charge – exactly what, I do not know. But it must have been a grave one, because, sooner than give himself up he shot himself. Meanwhile, the child lived on here, alone in the house. He had food for a little time, and he waited day after day for his father’s return. Unfortunately, it had been impressed upon him that he was never under any circumstances to go out of the house or speak to anyone. He was a weak, ailing, little creature, and did not dream of disobeying this command. In the night, the neighbours, not knowing that his father had gone away, often heard him sobbing in the awful loneliness and desolation of the empty house.’

  Mr Raddish paused.

  ‘And – er – the child starved to death,’ he concluded, in the same tones as he might have announced that it had just begun to rain.

  ‘And it is the child’s ghost that is supposed to haunt the place?’ asked Mrs Lancaster.

  ‘It is nothing of consequence really,’ Mr Raddish hastened to assure her. ‘There’s nothing seen, not seen, only people say, ridiculous, of course, but they do say they hear – the child – crying, you know.’

  Mrs Lancaster moved towards the front door. ‘I like the house very much,’ she said. ‘I shall get nothing as good for the price. I will think it over and let you know.’

  ‘It really looks very cheerful, doesn’t it, Papa?’

  Mrs Lancaster surveyed her new domain with approval. Gay rugs, well-polished furniture, and many knick-knacks, had quite transformed the gloomy aspect of No. 19.