Читать книгу Mystery in White (Musaicum Vintage Mysteries) - J. Jefferson Farjeon - Страница 6

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When David descended to the hall he walked into a fresh surprise. Mr. Edward Maltby, of the Royal Psychical Society, was standing in the doorway looking like a venerable snowman, while behind him was a second snowman less venerable. The second snowman was considerably bulkier than the first, and although David could see little of his face from where he stood at the foot of the stairs, what he saw did not create a favourable impression. He received a disconcerting sensation that a rather pleasant little party was being broken up.

Mr. Maltby, on the other hand, seemed momentarily unaware that any little party existed beyond his own. His eyes were rivetted on the picture above the fireplace, and his interest—thoroughly unreasonable at this instant—seemed to add to the portraits queer significance. For several seconds after David’s appearance no word was spoken. Then the old man lowered his eyes, and smiled.

“So you tried it, too, eh?” he said. “I hope your host has room for two more.”

“We haven’t got a host,” replied Lydia. “At least, we can’t find him.”

“Really?” Mr. Maltby looked thoughtful. “Then how did you get in?”

“The same way that you did. The front door wasn’t locked.”

“I see.” He turned to the man behind him. “Well, do we follow their example?”

“I dunno,” answered the man. “P’raps we ought to move on.”

“The suggestion is excellent but, like many excellent suggestions, impossible,” retorted Mr. Maltby.

He entered the hall as he spoke. The man behind him hesitated, then entered after him. Mr. Maltby stepped back and closed the door.

“I am sorry to see you have had an accident,” he said to Jessie. “I hope it was not a bad one.”

“No, just my foot, I fell down,” exclaimed Jessie. “It’s a funny situation, I don’t know what we’ll all say when they come home.”

“Perhaps they won’t come home,” remarked the old man.

“What makes you think that?” demanded Lydia.

“Did I say I thought it? Yet one might think it—in this weather—if they have been here at all to-day.”

“We told you the door wasn’t locked,” David reminded him.

“So you did,” nodded Mr. Maltby, and turned to the door. “A pity it is not a Yale lock.”

“Why a pity?” asked Lydia. “If it had been a Yale lock we couldn’t have got in.”

“You mean we mightn’t have got in,” Mr. Maltby corrected her. “I agree that would have been a pity. And it is also a pity to let melted snow drip upon somebody else’s carpet.” He removed his coat and placed it carefully over the back of a chair. “But a Yale lock can be fixed open with a catch. This one might have been fixed. Then we should have had stronger evidence that the door had been deliberately left as we found it. Still, one sometimes, through careless oversight, forgets such things, or even to lock a door with an ordinary key, such as the one we have here.”

“Your idea being,” interposed David, “that the family might have left some while ago, and forgotten to lock up and to take the key with them?”

“But we have a fire to confound the idea,” mused the old man.

“We have more than that, sir. We have a kettle boiling, and tea laid in the drawing-room——”

“And a bread-knife on the floor!” added Thomson, galvanically.

The old man regarded Thomson fixedly for a moment or two, and the clerk wished, without exactly knowing why, that he had not spoken. Then Mr. Maltby looked at each of the others in turn, including his massive, common companion—whose commonness had been proved by the one contribution he had so far made to the conversation—and ending up with the portrait over the mantelpiece.

“All this is very interesting,” he commented. “Yes, extremely interesting. Including that picture. A remarkable old fellow. Yet not so very old, eh? How old? Sixty? A pleasant age, sixty. My own.”

David fought a feeling of annoyance. Mr. Maltby, though a last-comer, had assumed a subtle command of the situation, and there was no reason that David could see, apart from the question of his sixty years, why he should do so. He had not merely changed the pleasant family atmosphere by emphasising the sinisterness of the place, an atmosphere which David had hoped to live down, but he was setting his own tone and his own tempo. “Why are we all hanging on his words like this?” David fretted. “He seems a decent old chap, but I don’t like the way he seems to be wiping the rest of us off the slate! And I don’t like that other fellow, either!”

“Something disturbs you?” queried Mr. Maltby.

David started.

“A lot disturbs me,” he retorted, quickly concealing the real momentary cause. “I think we’re all disturbed. Quite apart from the odd situation we’re in, we’ve all got destinations to go to, and how are we going to them? How are we going to get away from here at all?”

“From my experiences in the last ten minutes,” answered Mr. Maltby, “I am perfectly convinced that for awhile there will be no possible method of getting away from here at all. Therefore, let us be grateful that Fate has at least deposited us under a roof. And a roof beneath which there appear to be many comforts. A fire——”

“Several fires,” interrupted Lydia.

“Indeed? The odd situation grows more and more intriguing. Several fires. And tea laid, too. If no one returns in, say, the course of the next three months, we might perhaps——?”

“We’re jolly well going to perhaps!” smiled Lydia. “Tea’s made, and we were just about to have it!”

“So that was not really worrying you?” inquired the old man, turning to David again.

“Oh! What was?” returned David.

“It was my question. Surely, not the bread-knife? By the way, I do not see it on the floor.”

“It was on the kitchen floor.”

“Was?”

“It still is,” interposed Thomson again, boldly trying once more to impress his negligible personality on the company. “We didn’t touch it. We left it there.”

“That was most surprisingly wise. I take it, you did not wish to destroy the murderer’s fingerprints?”

Jessie gave a little gasp. The cockney made his second contribution to the conversation.

“Wot’s the idea?” he demanded, frowning.

“Come, come! A bread-knife on the floor!” exclaimed Mr. Maltby, insisting on his cynical humour. “Would not that convict anybody?”

“Not unless you found the corpse,” replied Thomson, making an effort to keep up with him.

“Don’t disappoint me? Don’t tell me you cannot supply the corpse? A bread-knife on a floor, a boiling kettle, tea laid, an unlocked front door—and no corpse! Well, well, I suppose we must be satisfied, so let us be grateful and have tea. I am sure we all need it, and if the absent host manages to fight his way back through the snow and finds us making free with his larder and his crockery, I will deal with him. If he does not return, then we can leave behind us the price of the damage, and a note of gratitude. Eh? Personally, though you may not realise it, I am shivering.”

“Oh, you must be!” cried Jessie. “Do come near the fire! Yes, that’s a splendid idea, we’ll leave a note and pay for it, and then I should think it would be all right. I mean, if it were the other way round and this were our house, wouldn’t we think so?”

“I’m sure we would,” answered Lydia, jumping up. “Come on, let’s bring it here! It’s cosier than the drawing-room.”

The tight atmosphere suddenly loosened. A small table was found in a corner of the hall and was placed before the fire; the tea things were transplanted from the drawing-room; and under the influence of the warm, comforting liquid and bread-and-butter—some had been cut, and more was added, but not with the bread-knife—their predicament assumed a happier aspect. Lydia, with one eye on Jessie, who was pluckily recovering faster than nature intended, had decided that there must be no more talk of corpses and fingerprints, and she kept the conversation lively with a racy account of their journey through the snow.

“Of course, we were all perfect idiots,” she concluded, as she poured out second cups of tea, “and we’re in a funny mess, but in my opinion we’re luckier than we deserve, not excluding you, Mr. Maltby,” she added admonishingly, “and so I vote we make the best of it!”

“Aren’t we?” asked Jessie.

“We are,” nodded Lydia, “and we’re going on as we’ve begun! Nobody’s going to spoil my Christmas!”

“Hear, hear!” murmured Thomson.

Watching two attractive women out of the corner of his eye, and comparing them with his usual company at meals—and with the company he was going to—he had no present complaints. In fact, provided his nervous system could stand it—of that he was not quite sure, for his head was aching badly, but the tea and the fire gave him optimism—he believed he might welcome the eventual unearthing of a corpse, so that he could impress new stirring qualities upon these Venuses. “In any case,” he decided, with the deliberate daring of his fevered thoughts, “I’ll think of them to-night.” Yes, it should be a bigger aeroplane that crashed in his nocturnal fancies. An aeroplane for two. And a slightly larger cottage. Or what about a house-boat on the Broads? The aeroplane could crash near the house-boat, where he would have been spending a lonely holiday, studying birds, say, and he would bring them there, and give them his room, and sit heroically outside all night.... Atchoo!

“I say, you are getting a cold!” exclaimed Lydia. “What about another log? And adding twopence to the bill?”

David, squatting on a stool by the couch, carefully avoided Jessie’s bandaged foot as he bent forward and added a fresh log to the fire. The bandaged foot was a few inches from his nose. With the annoyance of an independent nature, he was trying hard not to notice it.

“What about your story, sir?” he asked Mr. Maltby. “We’ve not heard that. How did you find this place?”

“Yes, you left before we did, didn’t you?” said Jessie. “Do tell us what happened? We tried to catch you up, you know, but then the snow covered your footsteps; we really felt quite anxious about you!”

“Please don’t tell me yours was a search party!” exclaimed the old man, “and that I have led you into this?”

“Oh, no! We’d have gone anyway. Wouldn’t we?” She appealed to the others. “Don’t you remember, we were all talking about it. I think I was the one to start it, wasn’t it, or wasn’t I, I’ve forgotten? And then you suddenly jumped up as if you’d seen some one, and we thought we did for a moment, and we said perhaps it was Charles the First! Oh!” She turned to the cockney. “Was it you?”

“Me? No!” exclaimed the common man. “I wasn’t on that train!”

He spoke with startling vehemence. Mr. Maltby broke a short silence by remarking:

“I came upon our friend—upon Mr.——?”

He paused invitingly.

“Eh?” jerked the man.

“Some of us have exchanged names,” said the old man. “Mine is Maltby. May we know yours?”

“Why not? Smith.”

“Thank you. Now we shall know what to write on our Christmas cards. I came upon Mr. Smith just outside here. In fact, we almost fell into each others arms. I did think at first that he might be the person I saw leaving the train, but apparently I was wrong. How did you get caught in this terrible weather, Mr. Smith?”

“Well, it ain’t pertickerly interestin’,” replied the cockney.

“But we are interested,” insisted the old man.

“Well, I was jest walkin’,” said Smith.

“Yes.”

“From one place to another, and the snow come on, and I got caught, like yerselves.”

“Where were you walking to?”

“Eh?”

“We were trying to find another station,” said Jessie.

“That’s right, so was I,” answered Smith.

“Another?” murmured Mr. Maltby.

“Wotcher mean?” demanded Smith. “I can try and find a stashun if I want to, can’t I, without arskin’ nobody’s permishun——”

“I apologise,” interrupted Mr. Maltby. “I was merely wondering, since you weren’t on our train, why you should be searching for another station——”

“I never said another! She did!” He jerked his head towards Jessie.

“I apologise again. Which station were you looking for?”

“Eh?”

“I wonder whether it was the same as ours.”

“Wot was yours?”

“Hammersby,” said Jessie.

“That’s right, ’Ammersby,” nodded Smith.

The old man frowned slightly.

“Strictly speaking, Hemmersby,” he murmured.

The atmosphere was growing tight again. All at once Smith turned on Mr. Maltby and exclaimed:

“Well, now you’ve ’eard abart me, wot abart you? I told yer I ’adn’t nothin’ interestin’ to say, but p’raps you ’ave?”

“Yes, I have,” replied Mr. Maltby. “Quite interesting. When I left the train...”

Then he paused. His eyes wandered from Smith to Jessie, and from Jessie to Lydia.

“You know, I haven’t had my second cup of tea,” he said.

“You haven’t passed your cup,” answered Lydia. “Thank you. Yes? When you left the train?”

“I’ve changed my mind,” he responded. “This isn’t the moment for ghost stories.”

“When is the moment?”

“Perhaps this evening, if we are still here, and if we are in the mood.”

The cockney rose abruptly.

“Well, I won’t be ’ere, and I ain’t in the mood,” he exclaimed. “So long, and thanks, miss, fer the tea.”

He walked to the front door.

“Just a moment,” Mr. Maltby called after him, “you’ve dropped your ticket.” Smith paused, as he held it out. “Euston to Manchester.”

“That ain’t mine,” growled the man.

He completed his way to the front door and pulled it open. Snow poured in on him from the choked dusk. Something else came in, too. The echo of a muffled shout.

“Hey! Help!”

The man darted out, with David after him.