Читать книгу Moss Rose - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 15

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Daisy Arrow had been taken to St. Pancras mortuary. Belle, from behind the dirty muslin curtain on the slack string, watched her go in the twilight of the Christmas afternoon. It was a journey that she had thought to have taken herself, and about at this time.

Yesterday, when she had sat over the food she could not eat, in the dingy dressing-room under the stage of the Cambridge, she had considered just such a scene—the parish undertaker's men, the poor hearse, the knot of curious gazers, ragged boys, lounging men, slatternly women, the swathes of yellow fog, darkening in the winter sky of the brief daylight—all a rough, fairly clean-made pattern. But she had pictured herself, Belle, inside the hearse, with that same necklet about her throat, with that same unmeaning stare in her eyes, with that same locking of secrets behind a rigid mouth.

Yes, but there was one particular in the tragedy that was changed—not only were the women different, not only was it Daisy Arrow instead of Belle Adair, but the manner of the creature's death was murder, not as Belle had thought it would be—suicide.

When she had handled the clasp-knife which had been brought to her to cut some dry bread, she had wondered if its blade would be spoiled by the vinegar stain. That would make a task, already to be dreaded, even more difficult. She considered how the same knife would look afterwards, when there were other stains upon it. But she had never considered this—that it might find a victim in Daisy Arrow, instead of in herself, and that a man's, not a woman's hand might guide it skilfully, swiftly, with that firmness and decision which she had prayed for, but not been able to achieve, on the task of sending misery to corrupt in the London clay.

Belle was upheld and even stimulated by the tragedy and by her part in it. Here was what she had longed for and needed—action, suspense, excitement. She had purposely put off an examination of the little German Bible, not only because she was afraid to take this out of the carpet bag while the police were in the house, but because she liked to postpone a pleasure and tantalise herself with the thought of an entrancing interest in the near future.

When she had, by sheer force of mind, overcome her physical sickness, she was cool and calm, for her emotions had not been touched. She had always disliked Daisy Arrow as being, in a way, a caricature of herself, of her sex, her age, her chances and her downfall, even, in a part, of her arts and graces. The murdered woman had also possessed a shapely figure, straight features, smooth hands, a genteel manner, and a certain air of irony and intelligence which set her apart from creatures like Minnie Palmer, Mrs. Bulke, or any other of the girls and women among whom Belle Adair, for several months now, had moved.

Well, there went the last of Daisy Arrow.

Belle opened the window cautiously and peered out into the fog, watching the hearse proceeding with indecorous haste into the yellow mist. The crowd in the street was too occupied with the drama of Daisy Arrow to notice the cool curiosity of the woman, who, with her elbows on the sooty sill, was watching the long black box of a carriage and the rusty black limbs of the horse disappear into the obscurity of darkness and mist.

The loiterers did not immediately disperse, but lingered by the broken area railing, expressing among themselves regret and sympathy for the sordid event of the night before.

Belle Adair withdrew silently from her window, but continued to peer into the street from above the broken pane that was patched with brown paper. The crowd, mostly bleared, bloated or drunken-eyed, began to stare with bleak curiosity at the drab front of the house which had been for so long elegant and respectable, and for even longer, miserable and degraded. Pressing to the railings, they peered down at the basement window where the wreath of paper roses, put up in celebration of Christmas, still hung behind the fly-blown pane, and where a child's wooden horse, dabbed with splashes of black paint, could be seen flung on top of a workbasket full of discoloured cottons and cards of faded wool.

Christmas Day, thought Belle, and things going on just the same. People at the mortuary ready to bring round the hearse, doctors and policemen on duty, and all that crowd of idlers in the Street, with nothing better to do than just stare at the house where a stupid woman, for whom nobody cared, was murdered last night.

She moved about the room with her quick, light step. She was thinking deeply. A fire, the first she had had that winter, burned in the grate with a pure green-gold flame.

Taking advantage of the distraction of the other lodgers and the overthrow of Mrs. Bulke, she had been down to the coal-cellar herself, and, unobserved by anyone, brought up coal and wood and newspaper, and lit the cheerful fire. Still unobserved by anyone, she had fetched fresh water and a good piece of coarse soap from the kitchen, washed her hands and face, and then cooked herself a breakfast from the bacon and eggs, carefully stored at the back of the cupboard, that Mrs. Bulke reserved for her own consumption. Then warmed, fed and bathed, and acting, as it seemed to herself, under the stimulus of a considerable pleasure and excitement, Belle Adair tidied her room and rearranged her dress, stitching up the torn, fallen flounces of her skirt, refastening the burst buttons of the bodice, and taking away needless frills of dirty lace at wrists and neck. She had then brushed and combed her curiously-coloured hair into a plain knot at the nape of her neck. She knew, when this leisurely toilet was finished, that she looked quite different from any of the other women in that house—quite different indeed from any other woman in that street. Without a trace of make-up or a scrap of finery, not as much as a string of glass beads or a silver brooch, and her face quite colourless and composed, she appeared a gentlewoman, shabby and forlorn indeed, but dignified and cultured, one who was enduring with patient fortitude an ill-deserved poverty.

The early hours of the day had been very ugly indeed, but she had weathered them as a stout mariner might weather a black storm which, at times, had threatened to engulf him utterly in darkness. Fighting against her strong impulse to scream or faint, or rouse the house, she had held herself mute in bed, clasping her chin to stop the rattling of her teeth, counting the faded leaves in the greenish-coloured wallpaper, reciting to herself moral poems learned at school, listening to the church bells outside, and then, to a street singer brawling a carol, watching the murky, yellowish light of the London day brighten and then fade again as the fog came up with the rising of the sun. All this skilful employment of her faculties was to prevent her from thinking of what lay in the next room—from anticipating the moment when what lay in the next room must be discovered, and she herself involved in a tumult of horror which claimed an explanation.

As the hours had worn on, and the house was yet still, her mind, refusing to be diverted by the ingenuous employment she had given it, fell to considering the practical issue of the case. The police would be called in. She would be asked questions. More than that she did not know. As yet she had escaped the activities of Scotland Yard. She tried to recall cases that might have been related to her or that she might have glanced at in the paper.

What exactly happened?

On a sudden fear that her room might be searched, she rose from bed, and, putting her shawl over her nightgown, removed the mount of vivid pink plumes from the drawer and put them in the carpet bag with the small German Bible. The stain on the breast of the humming bird was now dry. It was quite a little stain after all, and no one, unless they examined it very carefully, would even suspect what it was. Besides, she might have a tale for that—a scratched finger. She checked herself. "I mustn't be too cunning, too ingenuous. I had better not tell any more lies than I need." She looked anxiously at her ewer. Was it in the least marked? It might have been. She had set it down by that other ewer, by the wash-hand-stand on which was a basin of polluted water. But, no, there were no marks on the crock, beyond smudges of soot and outlines of dirty water. The floor, the clothes she had worn—any mark or stain whatever? It had been a half-light, and she hardly conscious of her actions; and yet that was not true either. She had been most careful. From the first second that she had suspected, she had taken the sheet between her finger and thumb and drawn it down as delicately as if she had been uncovering the tender limbs of a sleeping baby. There had been nothing, either on her clothes or on the floor. Of that fact she had made herself quite certain. She was comfortable in her mind, too, about the plume of feathers. She had a simple story ready to account for that if Mrs. Bulke, or one of the other women, should question how it came to be in her possession when Daisy Arrow had been seen late last night twirling it in her unsteady hand. She had repeated this story over and over to herself. She would always find it useful, and, resolving to tell a lie, she must first persuade herself that it was true.

"I went upstairs and Daisy was still awake and restless. She bounced out on the landing and thrust the feathers into my hand, and I, not wishing to have any more conversation with her, took them to stop further argument, went into my room and shut the door."

That was most likely and nobody would be able to contradict such a tale.

The key. She pulled aside the drugget and went down on her knees beside the gaping hole where a knot had fallen out of the worn boards. Nothing to be seen. She prodded down with a pin that fastened her bodice and could feel with the end of the steel the solid substance of the key lying on a thick bed of dust. Nobody would think of looking there, surely. Yet she felt a little uneasy. Still, what else could she do with it?

She was a little sorry about her impulsive action. It would have been better to have kept it. She could have taken it downstairs when she had cooked her breakfast and fetched her water, and thrown it into the area. That would have been a very likely place for a murderer to have cast a key.

She was glad, however, she had locked the door, because it had happened as she had supposed it might, for, as she had lain in the bed with her knees drawn up and her hands still clasped under her chin, her teeth still slightly chattering as if the convulsions which had seized her were only just passing away, she had heard a child's footsteps outside, and a child's feeble knock on Daisy Arrow's door, and a child's voice shrilling away in weary, careless tones that "it was nearly twelve o'clock, and Mother said Daisy had better come down if she wanted a bit of breakfast."

Belle had not been able to resist sitting up in bed and listening alertly for the silence which she knew must follow any summons on Daisy Arrow's door.

The child had knocked, and knocked again. Belle had heard a repeated shouting, and then there was a pause. Perhaps he was spying through the keyhole. She had not thought of that. But even if he did, what would he see to alarm him?

She thought of springing from bed, pulling open her own door, yawning on the landing, and saying, "Why, Tommy, what's the matter? Can't you leave poor Daisy alone? She's tired. It is Christmas Day; besides, is it so late?"

Though this action and these words had flowed so smoothly in her mind, she had not brought herself to put them into practice. She had remained there sitting on the edge of her bed listening until the child ceased chattering and ran away.

There had been another long pause in the sluggish household—at least an hour, she supposed. She thought of the murderer. He had had a good start over any possible pursuers.

Then had come a heavier step on the stairs, and with it the panting breaths of a stout woman, a hoarse voice calling on Daisy Arrow and asking why she did not get up?—why she had locked herself in?—and why she did not answer? at first lazily and indifferently, and then, to the relief of the tension of the young woman who listened so keenly in the front room, a sudden panic—shouting, screaming.

"I can't pretend not to have heard that," thought Belle.

She leapt from the bed, snatched up her shawl, opened her door, and out on the landing, said—almost she felt without her own volition—

"What's the matter, Florrie? It's Christmas Day, and is it so late? Why shouldn't Daisy Arrow sleep if she wants to?"

Florrie had taken no heed of her, but, leaning over the stair rails, had continued to shout up the house.

Mrs. Bulke, and May, and the pale servant, and Tommy, and a young girl who had only been in the house two days and whose name no one seemed to know, all came quickly, readily, keen for any excitement or unusual event. There had been more knockings and shouting and twisting of the handle, and Belle, hastily putting on her clothes, as if she too were disturbed and astonished, had the curious thought: "Supposing Daisy Arrow were to get off her bed and come to open to them with that red hand-print on her face and those two gashes in her throat showing through the bandage?"

It was Mrs. Bulke who had taken charge of the situation.

"I've never known Daisy Arrow lock her door before, and I've never known her lie abed so long," she said, and in sharp words she sent Moll, who had begun to whimper and shiver, to fetch the policeman who would be on beat duty at the corner of the square.

Florrie had been violently against this proceeding and had argued vehemently that—"it was a folly, and a wicked folly, to let the police meddle in your affairs. No. 12 wasn't the sort of place to have the law interfering and constables nosing round, and that no matter what had happened to palsy Arrow they'd best keep it to themselves."

At these words and the bitter and sinister tone in which they were spoken, the nameless girl began to sob and hide her face in her skirt and wish she "were out of it." Even Mrs. Bulke hesitated and wondered if she could force the door herself with a heave of her own stout shoulder.

But Moll, without waiting for counter-orders, had fled down the rickety stairs, a loose shoe flapping on her foot encased in a wrinkled and torn stocking.

It was at this point that Belle had slipped downstairs and cooked her breakfast, fetched her water, and touched up her attire, nobody taking any heed of her at all.

When she had seen the policemen—two fresh-faced fellows who looked, she thought, like countrymen—enter the house, dwarfing it with their massive figures and oilskin capes, she had drawn little Tommy into her own room and shut the door on what was happening outside.

There had been quite a crowd in No. 12 by then. Several people—women cleaning doorsteps, others bustling round the little general shop which was open for a few hours on Christmas morning—seeing Moll flying for the policemen, seeing Moll returning with the policemen, had followed up and tried to slip somehow into the house.

Mrs. MacKinnon was there and the woman from the rag-and-bone shop, and the old bird-fancier, the piebaker from whom Mrs. Bulke, when in a generous and lazy mood, had so often ordered a late and tasty ready-cooked meal.

"Tommy," Belle Adair said, "none of what is happening outside has anything to do with us. See, I have a pack of cards here. Let us have a game. The table is not large enough and is lumbered besides; but I have made the bed and drawn the cover smooth and we can play on that."

The boy, who was always eager for a grown-up person to give him attention, had sat down obediently on the chair with the rushes of the seat sprouting beneath the frame where the bands were broken, and began to play "beggar-my-neighbour."

Belle kept her eyes on the cards—"the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker"—a set of old nursery snap cards she had had a long while. Why had she kept them? Perhaps because they were so worthless. It was a long while since she had looked at them. They had lain in the bottom drawer from which she had just taken them, together with a worn goatskin dice-shaker.

The first game over, they played another, and Tommy was quite content.

Disturbances, sudden emergencies, calls and alarms were not so unusual at No. 12 that he was much interested in them. He had even seen policeman there before, questioning people like they were being questioned now—Mother answering them—sharp but shrewd-like as she was.

Belle had listened while she played her game of snap.

The door had soon broken down. Then there had been heavy tramping feet in the next room, and voices, and, what she had carefully schooled herself to hear, dismal shrieks.

Moll had broken in on the peaceful game of cards, with her face quite greenish and distorted, had flopped on her knees by the bed, had begun to retch and sob together.

Belle had then taken command of the situation; she found a certain pleasure in doing so. She had checked the girl's incoherent lamentation. She had taken Tommy in one hand and Moll in the other, and led them, unresisting, out of the clamour in the house, and round the corner through the increasing throng, to the shop of the little chandler, who was just putting up his shutters.

"Moll," she had said, "don't go back to No. 12. Stay here with Tommy."

She had taken a shilling from her pocket. She remembered that the last coin she had handled had been that other shilling which she had given to the woman in the faded satin, who had been crouching in the pawn-broker's doorway in front of the transparency of red and blue.

The little servant, gaping at her new air of authority, the child wondering but submissive, had given in to her. She had given, in a whisper, a few words of explanation to the ready ear of the chandler's kindly wife. "Something horrible had happened at No. 12 there had been an accident—a bad accident. It seemed a shame to have the child and the little maid in the way—she would tell the police where they were. Meanwhile, perhaps Mrs. Ellet would keep these two and give them a little dinner?" She had handed the boy a packet of sweets from the counter, then she had gone back to the house through the fog, made her way, detached, reserved, through the crowd on the stairs, and so into her own room, where she had waited with an odd fiery patience.