Читать книгу The Tall House Mystery - A. Fielding - Страница 7

Table of Contents

THAT night Moy was awakened by the last sound that the young solicitor ever expected to hear in a house—the sound of a shot. With it came a loud cry and then a thud.

Still rigid with bewilderment, he heard a sort of sobbing falsetto:

"Where's the light? God, where's the switch?" The voice seemed that of a stranger and yet there was something about it which reminded him of Gilmour.

Moy came to life and sprang out of bed. He rushed into the passage. Bright moonlight flooded it. Just in front of him was the big main passage leading down to Gilmour's room, the door of which faced him across the landing at the farther end. Halfway down the passage was Ingram's room and it was in front of that room that something bulky and white was lying.

Coming towards Moy and towards the heap on the ground, staggering as though he were drunk, and clawing at the wall with his left hand, was a man in pajamas. The right hand was outstretched and held something small that glittered in the cold, white light; glittered all the more because it wavered and swung to and fro, as though the arm were a broken signpost in a gale of wind. In the moonlight the man's face showed so blanched, so distorted with its protruding eyeballs and open mouth that Moy thought it was a stranger's for a moment. Then he saw it was Gilmour. Just by the white heap on the floor both almost collided with each other. Their hands met and closed on a switch. At the same instant other voices, men's voices, called out to know what was wrong, and lights blazed out in the cross passages.

Moy and Gilmour were both on their knees beside that motionless heap on the ground. It was heavy, and seemed to be wrapped in sheeting, but at last Moy got hold of a loose end of the stuff and flung it back—to show the dead face of Ingram, with a small red hole in the exact center of the forehead. He was still warm, still flexible. Moy stared down at him in horror. Yet there was nothing horrifying in the face itself. On the contrary it was beautiful in its own marble way, with a certain grand air of peace, profound and real.

"A doctor! A doctor!" Gilmour almost sobbed. "It's some awful mistake—it can't be! It was loaded with blank!"

Moy heard a sort of shocked cluck over his shoulder. It was Haliburton who was now bending down beside him.

"He can't be dead! The cartridges were blanks, I tell you. Where's a doctor? One hears of people being resuscitated after hours—" Gilmour was all but inarticulate, and was shaking violently. The revolver dropped from his grip as he spoke, and he pushed it to one side while he tried to raise Ingram's head and turn it to the light.

"A doctor will be fetched at once," Moy spoke in a whisper. This was a most dreadful affair. "But how did it happen? Where was Ingram? I mean, when you fired?"

The solicitor in Moy was seeking data, but Haliburton touched him on the shoulder.

"We must get a doctor here at once!"

They were in front of Ingram's own room. It had a telephone in it. Gilmour caught it up with shaking fingers. Then he turned his face to the others. He looked like a man living in a nightmare.

"I—I can't remember the name of any doctor. Quick! Who knows one? And what his number is?"

Moy reached for the directory. The shock had driven his own doctor's number out of his mind too, but Haliburton, with a sympathetic glance at Gilmour, took the receiver from him and in a steady firm tone gave the Mayfair number of his father's physician.

Moy laid down the directory. As he did so, he saw Tark just inside the door which he was holding open. But a Tark with all his usual air of sardonic detachment shed. This was Tark with the lid off, Moy decided, and the inside of the man seemed to be a seething cauldron. Neither then nor afterwards could Moy name the emotions that he saw frothing up together. In almost the same instant Tark stepped back, shutting the door noiselessly behind him, but not before Moy saw, on the stairs behind, hanging as it were like a moon in the darkness, a girl's white face and recognized it as Alfreda Longstaff.

"Look here," Moy said again while Haliburton was trying to rouse the household of the great man in Harley Street, "how did it happen, Gilmour?"

"I fired at a ghost, a blank cartridge, and then I heard it cry out, and—" Gilmour stopped and sank into a chair, covering his face with his hands.

"Where's the revolver?" Moy urged. It was partly kindness. He thought that anything was better than letting Gilmour live over in memory what had just happened. Gilmour did not lift his head. Moy, on the instant that he spoke, remembered the little glittering thing dropping beside Ingram's body, and, opening the door, now stepped into the passage again. He almost trod on Miss Longstaff, who, the revolver in her hands, was turning away from the body on the carpet. On her face was the last look that Moy expected to see, a look as unexpected as the shot had been, for it had in it a sort of vindictive satisfaction; a sort of excited gloating, he called it to himself afterwards.

"Hand me that revolver, please," he said sharply. "Is it yours?" she asked.

"I represent the absent owner of the house. And I represent Ingram's relatives. Hand me that weapon, please."

She let him have it, though reluctantly.

He broke it open. All five remaining cartridges seemed to be blank.

"How did it happen? Who shot him?" she asked, and again there was that suggestion of eagerness about her that was so ghoulish at such a moment.

"Do go back to your room," Moy urged. "This is no place for a girl. As you can see, there's been an awful accident, and Ingram's been shot." Suddenly he stopped. He noticed now that Ingram's body now lay covered by a sheet. He eyed Miss Longstaff inquiringly.

"He looked so dreadful staring up," she said, and for the first time there was a hint of confusion in her voice.

Ingram had not looked dreadful. This covered mound was much more horrible.

"No one should touch him," Moy said with the same sternness in his voice as when he had asked her for the revolver.

"Why? Was it murder?" She drew a deep breath and looked at him with that odd, unreadable stare of hers. "Who shot him?" she persisted.

"I did," came a dull voice from behind them. "I did, Freda." Gilmour had come out into the corridor again.

"Oh, please don't call me Freda, Mr. Gilmour," came the instant reply. "There's no question of any future engagement between us—after this. Of course, you realize that too."

Gilmour looked as though she had struck him. His white face went even whiter.

"You don't mean it! It's not possible! You can't—" he began in a strangled voice, taking an imploring step towards her. Her answer was to turn her back on him and walk away. As she did so there came the swift rush of feet down the stairs. Miss Pratt, looking a dream in a floating gown the color of sweet peas, ran towards Gilmour, her two hands outstretched.

"Mr. Tark tells me—oh Lawrence, I'm so sorry! So sorry! For you!" She thrust her little white hands into Gilmour's fists, who dropped the white fingers after the most perfunctory touch and took a step after the other slender figure, the one fully dressed, with the short straight dark hair brushed smoothly back like a boy's from the hard but vivid face.

"Alfreda! Miss Longstaff!" he began again. She turned, and standing still, bent on him again that inscrutable stare of hers, and something in it was so inimical that he stepped back and stood staring at her. As she turned a corner, he at last looked at Winnie.

"You shouldn't be here. Your mother wouldn't like it." He spoke as though his thoughts were quite elsewhere.

Alfreda had gone straight to Mrs. Pratt's rooms. She knocked at the bedroom door and called through the panels. "It's me, Mrs. Pratt, Alfreda Longstaff. Something has happened. Your daughter needs you." There came a muffled sort of squeak from within, but the door was not opened for quite a long minute.

Then Mrs. Pratt stepped out. "What's that about Winnie? Where is she? What on earth has happened?" Her face looked oddly blotched as though some strapping or top dressing had been roughly pulled off.

"Mr. Gilmour has killed Mr. Ingram, and your daughter is telling him how sorry she is for him." The tone was dry.

There was nothing muffled about Mrs. Pratt's squeak this time. "Winnie, where are you? Wait for me! Wait!" And as though a performance were about to begin which she would not miss for worlds, she scurried in the direction of Alfreda's pointing hand. In front of Ingram's bedroom she stopped in horror. For once she had nothing to say for a full minute. Then she turned to Winnie.

"Come, dearest, we're only in the way here. We must get Yates up, and see to our packing. The kindest thing we can do for everyone is to get away as soon as possible. Come, Winnie!"

"I won't leave now—like this." Winnie spoke indignantly.

Mrs. Pratt turned to Moy. Her eyes asked her questions.

"Ingram played the part of a ghost and Gilmour fired at him a blank cartridge, as he thought—which must have been loaded. He's dead," he murmured, his eyes on the white mound to whom the "he" referred.

Mrs. Pratt turned to Gilmour with what looked like genuine emotion.

"Oh, you poor boy! You poor, poor boy! And, and—how awful!" She did not try to put the rest of her feelings into words.

Winnie let her mother lead her away. They found Alfreda pacing their little sitting-room.

"I suppose you're leaving, too?" she asked, as Winnie hurried on to her own room with her lips pressed together.

Mrs. Pratt closed the door. "I'm so sorry for you, my dear girl," she began gently, "and so shocked—so indescribably shocked for that poor boy!"

"We're not going to be engaged, if you refer to Lawrence Gilmour," Alfreda said composedly.

"What?" Mrs. Pratt fairly jumped. "But surely! But this is dreadfully sudden!" she finished lamely.

"His shooting of Mr. Ingram was dreadfully sudden," was the reply.

"But surely, for a time, you'll let things stand over!" Mrs. Pratt was almost pleading. "It will look so dreadfully heartless, to drop him the very instant it happened."

"I have no intention, now or ever, of getting engaged to Mr. Gilmour. I think you ought to know."

The door opened. Winnie came in. She could not stay in any one place for long.

"You're acting horribly!" she began.

"I'm not acting at all." There was meaning in the look the elder girl gave the younger. Winnie seemed to pay no attention to it.

"He needs you!" she protested instead.

Mrs. Pratt nodded her head emphatically. Alfreda shot the mother a glance openly mocking. But she said nothing.

"I'd go through anything with the man I loved!" came passionately from Winnie.

"Supposing he loved you," the other girl finished dryly. "Perhaps it's just as well for you that Mr. Gilmour doesn't seem to fill that condition."

Winnie's cheeks flamed.

"A girl would have to have a perfect passion for notoriety to marry him after this," Alfreda went on.

The door slammed behind Winnie. Mrs. Pratt looked half-gratefully, half-indignantly, at her visitor, who gave her one of her odd stares and went out to run lightly down into Ingram's study. She closed the door noiselessly behind her. For a second she stood sniffing the air. It smelled of...yes, of that odd tobacco Mr. Tark liked...but she had not come here to smell tobacco. She slipped over to the bureau, found its top unlocked, stood obviously listening for any sound from outside and, hearing none, opened it and with swift, deft fingers looked through it. Every scrap of paper was glanced at. It was fairly empty. She turned over the drawers. Only blank paper was in them with the exception of the bottom drawer, which was locked. She was pulling at it when she heard steps coming down the back stairs close to the library door. Instantly she slipped out of the door by which she had entered, into the lounge and on up the stairs, along a passage, and up another flight of stairs. Here she let herself into an empty bedroom, and, closing its door to with the utmost caution, sat down at a little bookcase table on which stood a telephone extension. Very quietly she gave a number. It was that of the proprietor of the Morning Wire.

"Hello!" came a man's voice in answer to her ring. It was not the voice that she had heard on the golf links. "What is it?"

"I want to speak to Mr. Warner."

"Who are you? What do you want to speak to him about? I'm one of Mr. Warner's secretaries." The voice was not encouraging.

"Will you tell Mr. Warner that the Miss Longstaff who played a game of golf with him on the links at Bispham is staying in a house at Chelsea with a Mr. Ingram who has just been killed by his friend. The friend claims that it was an accident."

"Ingram...what is his first name, do you know?"

"Charles."

She heard a sound. The secretary had sprung out of bed. A couple of minutes more and Miss Longstaff heard Warner's voice saying sharply:

"What's this about Ingram's death? And who is speaking?"

Miss Longstaff reminded him of the game they had played together. "Now, Mr. Warner, I've really got hold of some interesting news. No other paper has it—yet. You told me that a scoop would get me a position—"

"What is this about Ingram's death? Where did he die? How was he killed?" Warner's tone was that of a man who would hang up unless answered immediately.

"He's been shot by the friend who shares his flat at Harrow, a man named Lawrence Gilmour. He claims it was an accident. He says he fired what he thought was a blank shot at someone pretending to be a ghost, and found that it was Mr. Ingram whom he had killed. The shot was not blank. That's Mr. Gilmour's story."

She heard another voice speaking, the voice of the man to whom her first telephone message had gone. "Yes, Gilmour. Of the Civil Service...That much is all right, sir. But as for the rest—"

"One moment," Warner's voice came again. "Now give me all the facts again, please. But only the ones you are sure of. First of all, where are you? And when exactly did this happen?"

Swiftly, she had that journalistic quality, and briefly, another great gift, and, all things considered, very objectively, she told of what had just happened.

"Now, Mr. Warner," she wound up, "suppose this could be shown to be not an accident...wouldn't it be the scoop which you said would give me a post on your paper?"

Warner had not said quite that. "She's probably just trying it on," was his murmured comment to Ryland, his secretary, "I mean, about its not being an accident...but if there's anything in it...she struck me as being a very resourceful young woman...and unscrupulous as they're made." Warner added this last thought as though it were an added point in her favor.

"Well?" she asked sharply, "have I the promise of a post on the paper if I can prove what I claim? That Mr. Gilmour's story can't be true?"

"If you can prove that, Miss Longstaff, we'll give you a trial."

"I want the offer in writing," came her answer.

Warner, with a faint smile, told Ryland to write a note which would do until the usual contract could be sent. The draft was read her and she graciously deigned to approve.

"It's not often a paper has such a chance offered it," she said.

"Nor an outsider either, Miss Longstaff," Warner barked back.

"Oh, of course. These things have always to be mutual," she murmured as cynically as an old company promoter. "My name mustn't come out, of course. That's to be absolutely guaranteed."

"I'll send one of my men down at once. Name of Courtfield. Give him all the information you can. He'll know how to put it into shape. Be on the look-out for him and let him in yourself, if possible. He's a small man—dark—turned-up nose—cleft in his chin. He'll be wearing a big yellow buttonhole and will loiter about on the pavement opposite The Tall House. You'll have to prove all your assertions."

"I don't know about all," came Miss Longstaff's voice, "but I shall be able to prove the one that matters most."

"You'll have to prove, or be prepared to prove, any we print," Warner said authoritatively. He thought this young woman needed firmness.

"Personally, I shouldn't be surprised if she killed him herself in order to get a chance with us." Warner's hand was over the transmitter. "But Courtfield will soon find out..." He uncovered the instrument. "Who else is staying in the house, Miss Longstaff?"

She told him. He passed it on, again with the transmitter covered.

"Miss Winifred Pratt?" Ryland spelled it with one "t" in his interest, "the Beauty? We have her picture taken the night she was presented..."

"Ah," Warner murmured, "possibly she's the explanation. Well, if so, Courtfield will find out. If the beautiful Miss Pratt is roped in to the affair, so much the more stir. I don't need to tell Courtfield to keep his eye open for libel actions. Though I don't think Miss Longstaff will cross the line. Too clever by half."