Chapter 13

[Admin]

JANE could only look at her in shocked wonder.

"He was mixed up in an unpleasant case." Marjorie seemed to find a malicious joy in relating the history of this disreputable incident in Donald's life. "There was an inquest and nearly a police prosecution; and then Donald found his rich patient! No, it wasn't dear, deranged Peter---don't wince, darling, I'm only being sardonic---it was a mysterious Mr. Looker, or some other name, who was a hypochondriac and had faith in Donald. Hence the glory and splendours of Harley Street and our magnificent entry into society. We had a four-roomed flat in Nunhead over the surgery, which was a converted shop. I am not saying that Donald isn't clever: in some ways he's brilliant. He's more a conversationalist than a pathologist, and after all that is what you want in a West End practice. The old ladies of Bayswater swear by him, and really his methods are admirable. He sends all old gentlemen to Torquay and all old ladies to Bath. He used to send some of them to Wiesbaden, but those wretched German doctors got hold of them and cured them and we lost our patients. Donald never sends them abroad nowadays."

"Is he a nerve specialist?" asked Jane, with a growing sense of dismay. It was as though one of the props of life were sagging.

"A nerve specialist? I suppose so. Who isn't? He's plausible, and, as I say, he can talk, and with mental cases a convincing talker has got the British Pharmacopœia skinned to death! I'm weakening your faith in Donald, aren't I?" She smiled quickly up into the girl's face. "But----"

They both heard the sound; they would have been deaf if they had not---a shrill squeal of fear, a howl such as a tortured beast might make. Marjorie sprang to her feet, her face convulsed with terror.

"What was that? What was that?" she whispered.

Jane was moving towards the window when the other woman clutched her by the arm.

"No, no, no!" She almost whined the entreaty. "Put out the light first."

In the presence of that undisciplined terror Jane was calm. She went to the bed, turned the switch and ran to the window, pulling back the heavy curtains. Rain had been falling earlier in the evening, but now the stars were shining. There was no sound but the rustling of leaves, and far away the faint sound of a locomotive's whistle.

"What was it?" Marjorie was clinging to her arm.

"An owl probably," said Jane.

She pulled the curtains, and half led, half supported the woman to the bed. When she turned on the light Marjorie was lying full face down with her head buried in the clothes, and the bed was shaking with the violence of her sobs. Jane got her water from the carafe. It was half an hour before the woman was calm. Once, as Jane sat on the edge of the bed, trying to soothe her, she thought she heard the creak of a floor-board on the landing outside, and, creeping to the door, she listened. There was no further sound and she went back to her patient.

"I'm a fool---God! what a fool I am!" said Marjorie Wells huskily. "I've been living so long on the edge of things that I must have gone a little crazy myself. What do you think it was, Jane?"

Before the hesitating Jane could invent, she went on:

"It wasn't an owl, it was a madman! Donald took me the rounds of an asylum once." She shuddered and screwed her eyes tight. "I saw things, heard things---it was ghastly! One man was making a noise just like that."

For a moment Jane thought that she would break down again, but she mastered herself.

"I am getting hysterical---what was that?"

She clung to Jane like a frightened child.

"Somebody on the landing; I'll see who it is."

"No, no, don't open the door, please!"

They listened, but the creak of floor-board was not repeated. They did not hear any other noise.

An hour later Jane walked to the window and peeped out. It was morning, and the park was bathed in the grey, eerie light of dawn. By this time Mrs. Wells had recovered some of her old manner, and that glimpse of daylight was sufficient to restore her almost to normal.

"I've ruined your night's rest and I'm terribly sorry. I wouldn't sleep in this house again for all the money in the world. When are you coming back to town?"

Jane hesitated.

"To-day, I think," she said. "Peter has got a suite at the Ritz."

Marjorie looked past her, her lips pursed thoughtfully.

"I want a long talk with you, but we shall have to arrange our meeting like conspirators---Donald has the greatest objection to my making friends with you, or we should have seen much more of one another. I think I'll go now---will you come with me to the door of my room?"

"Are you as frightened as that?" smiled Jane in spite of herself.

The other nodded.

"You don't know just how frightened I am," she said in a serious tone.

Jane went back to her room with no thought of going to bed. She was thoroughly awake now, and had quite enough to occupy her mind before the house would begin to stir. Marjorie Wells had shown Donald in a new light. All his dignity, his quiet yet pretentious wisdom fell from him like a beautiful cloak, leaving exposed the skeleton of a fakir. It was not a pleasant thought that Peter's health was in the hands of such a man. And that cry---it was not nice to remember---the cry of a madman, Marjorie had said. Peter? She grew sick at the thought, and then dismissed it contemptuously. Peter would be in bed.

She sat before the replenished fire for a while and then rose uneasily and passed out into the little sitting-room which separated his bedroom from hers. She turned the handle gently and stepped in.

The first thing she noticed was that the window was wide open, the curtains undrawn. Above the sill of the window projected the rough ends of a garden ladder. And then her eyes turned to the bed. It had a high footboard; from where she stood she could only see the head and shoulders of her husband, but at the sight of him she gasped. He was still wearing his dinner jacket, and was lying fully clothed on the top of the bed. She tiptoed towards him and nearly screamed at the horrid spectacle. His white shirt front was splashed and stained with blood; the hand that hung over the side of the bed was smeared red; there was blood on his face, his collar was crumpled and torn from the stud, his black tie hung loose. He still wore his light evening shoes, but they were smothered with mud which was not yet dry, and mud was on the silken counterpane.

She stood, petrified with horror at the sight, holding on to the footboard, and then she saw, on the strip of carpet by the side of the bed, a large hammer, and, stooping mechanically, she picked it up. The foul thing was bloodstained from handle to head. She wanted to drop it; instead, she put it on the bedside table.

"Peter!" she whispered fearfully. "Peter!"

She shook him with all her strength, but he did not wake. He was like a man in a drugged sleep. She wanted to scream, to fly from the room, but a greater instinct held her fast. This man was her husband, tied to her by an intangible bond. She had a duty which seemed grotesque in the face of this grisly evidence. Murder had been done. That cry in the night meant something that she dared not let her mind rest upon.

In that inspired moment she saw him in a new light---his helplessness, his terrible isolation. He had no friends. The woman who had blatantly talked of her love for him would be the first to pull him down. She caught her breath at the thought---every hand was against him, the law, his "friends."

She went to the door and shot home the bolt. Then she came back to renew her attempt to waken him. He groaned as she shook him but did not open his eyes. Soon the servants would be about, and he would stand starkly revealed for what he was. There came over her, in that moment of sickening, shuddering horror and fear, a tremendous perception of her duty.

She loosened the collar, pulled it off, and, setting her teeth, she began with hands that shook to undress him. Switching on the lamp, she made absolutely sure that the stains were confined only to his coat and shirt, and then began a task which was almost Herculean, for he was a heavy man, difficult to move. In a quarter of an hour she had him stripped to the waist, and carried shoes, coat and vest and that hideous shirt into her own room. She heated some water in her tea-making kettle over the fire, returned with a bowl and a sponge and washed his hands clear of this grim evidence of tragedy. Only once did he murmur in his sleep and she bent her head to listen.

"Basil . . . swine . . ." he said, and relapsed again into silence.

She picked up the hammer with a piece of paper, took that also into her room, and, throwing on more kindling, dropped it into the fire and watched the wooden haft burn dully. The clothes, shirt and shoes must be got rid of somehow. Her brain was very active. She had a feeling as if she herself had committed the murder and was planning her own safety and the destruction of the evidence against her. The clothes she could not burn: she made them into a bundle and packed them at the bottom of the trunk. Going back into his room, she opened his wardrobe and took out another dress jacket and shirt. Into this last she fitted the studs and links she had taken from the bloodstained garment in her trunk.

By this time the hammer head was red hot. She raked it out into the hearth, where it might cool, and, remembering the ladder, went back to Peter's room and pushed the ladder head till it fell back on the lawn. Then, half closing the window, she drew the curtains and returned to her own bedroom to wait.

The old woman brought her tea half an hour later.

"Why, ma'am, you're up!" she said in surprise.

Jane forced a smile.

"It would be a sin to stay in bed on a morning like this," she said lightly.

Anna lingered at the door.

"Beg your pardon, ma'am, but did you hear anything in the night?"

Jane's heart was in her mouth but she shook her head.

"What was there to hear?"

"An awful noise. Parsons heard it too---like a big dog howling."

Jane restrained her inclination to shiver at this illustration: a big dog---a mad dog.

"And the gardener heard it. He sleeps down by the lodge."

"It probably was a dog," said Jane steadily.

She was already bathed and dressed when the woman had come to waken her, and now she went downstairs and out into the open air. There was nobody about; even the gardener was out of sight. She made her way leisurely to the front of the house, picked up the garden ladder---it was a considerable weight---and transported it some distance across the lawn. She turned to go back to the house when she heard her name called faintly, and, looking round, saw the gardener running towards her, gesticulating like one demented.

"Oh, ma'am," he almost sobbed in his fear, "I've seen something!"

Jane's heart stood still and she braced herself for what was coming.

"A man---killed---murdered! The red-haired gentleman who was here yesterday---down by the wall---murdered!"

Jane held fast to the door and stared back at the man. Now she knew.

Peter had killed Basil Hale!