The Golden Ball and Other Stories

  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. Ha-worth?" he asked.

  "I never saw

  her again--until tonight."

  "Tonight?"

  "Yes. At

  that

  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:

  '/wouldn't have that operation, ill 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 "

  Il

  in

  at the gate of a house

  near

  the

  crest of the hill. Setting

  his jaw squarely, he pulled the bell.

  "Is Mrs.

  HawoCd 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:

  150

  Agatha Christie

  "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?"

  m£ cm,s¥

  151

  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. You look as though

  you'd got it, too "

  "Got

  whatT'

  "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 sun-worshippers 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. Cristine 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

  bre
adth.., but to be divided by time is the worst way of

  all .... "She fell into a long brooding silence.

  152

  Agatha Christie

  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 Goodbye."

  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 ....

  III

  "Good

  Lord, my nerves are in a rotten state," muttered

  Macfarlane,

  as he awoke the following morning. He re

  viewed

  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 dan

  gerous

  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 hearth rug. Nothing

  in

  it all! Nothing at all--but for her words, and that deep

  unacknowledged

  certainty in his heart that she knew ....

  He

  flung off the 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.

  153

  "Is Mrs. 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.

  IV

  "There's

  a

  lady to see you, sir."

  "EhT' 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

  154

  Agatha Christie

  not walked for many a long day now."

  "No? I wonder if--perhaps--they will again now "

  "Lot'! 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 rash 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.

  The Lamp

  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 as 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.

  "Er--er--some time," he remarked blandly.

  "So I should think," said Mrs. Lancaster dryly.

  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 t
all,

  with much dark brown hair just tinged with grey and rather

  cold blue eyes.

  155

  156 Agatha Christie

  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."

  "l--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'smonly

  a child."

  "A child?"

  "I don't know the story exactly," he continued reluctantly. "Of course, there are all kinds of different versions,

  but I believe that about thirty years ago a man going by the

  name of Williams took Number Nineteen. Nothing was

  known of him; he kept no servants; he had no friends; he

  seldom went out in the daytime. 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