Some Must Watch - Ethel Lina White (best book club books .TXT) 📗
- Author: Ethel Lina White
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was frightened of a poor old woman?”
Helen shrivelled, instantly, at the memory.
“I want to thank you for that,” she said. “You were a real sport…
She’s different. There’s something unnatural about her… But I
think that everyone should do all the things they shouldn’t do—and
then, they won’t.”
Dr. Parry laughed as he rose reluctantly from the old creaking
basket-chair.’
“It takes a doctor to disentangle that,” he said. “But I imagine you
refer to moral inoculation.” “Yes,” nodded Helen. “Like being vaccinated
against small-pox.”
“And would you like to have an injection of your own vaccine?” he asked.
“Get drunk? Sniff snow? Have a week-end in Brighton?”
“Oh no,” objected Helen. “Of course, I didn’t mean myself. I’m always
out of things.”
As Dr. Parry looked at her, the meaning in his eyes underlined his
words.
“I think, before long, you’ll find yourself very much in the picture.
Perhaps Welshmen are more impetuous than Englishmen. In fact, I’m ready
to bet that, within six months, you’ll be Mrs. Jones, or Hughes,
or—Parry.”
Helen purposely reversed the order of the names, as she smiled back at
him.
“Taken,” she told him. “If I’m not Mrs. Parry, or Jones, or the other,
I’ll collect off you.”
“Done,” said the doctor. “You’ll lose. But now that I’ve got outside
your coffee I must go.”
“No, wait,” said Helen, arrested by a sudden memory. “I want to tell you
something first.”
In a few words she gave him a skeleton outline of her adventure with the
tree. There was no need to color any details, to get her effect this
time; Dr. Parry’s eyes were fierce and his lips set in a rigid line, in
his attempt to hide his concern.
“I take back that bit about the bomb,” he said. “Thank Heaven, you’ve
still got a scrap of precious sense of danger.”
“Then you don’t think me a fool for running away?”
“I think it was probably the wisest thing you’ve done in your life.”
Helen became thoughtful.
“It’s a pity I didn’t really see him,” she remarked. “I mean, when he
turned to a man. Do you think it is a local person, as he was waiting in
the plantation?”
Dr. Parry shook his head.
“No. This is obviously the fifth murder in a series of connected crimes.
As the first two were committed in town, it is probable that the
criminal lives there. What the Police should do is to get acquainted
with the time-table of some respected citizen, and find out if a handful
of fringe is torn from his white silk scarf.”
“Do you mean there’s a clue?” asked Helen.
“Yes. I found a hank of it inside Ceridwen’s mouth. She must have torn
at it, with her teeth, when they were struggling. She didn’t make it
easy for him—or he for her… Come with me, to let me out, and see
that every bolt is shot.”
Helen obeyed, although she hated to see him go into the streaming
darkness. The dripping laurels of the drive, and the clipped evergreens
on the lawn, shook in the gale, as though straining at their roots.
She banged the door, hearing the click of the spring lock with a
definite sense of security. The hall seemed calm as a millpond after the
howls of the wind. There was serenity in the soft glow of its
lighting-comfort and warmth in the thick pile of the peacock-blue
carpet.
As the hall was empty, Helen ran downstairs to her own room, where Dr.
Parry’s presence still seemed to linger. But she had barely seated
herself before the fire when Mrs. Oates’ head appeared around the door.
“I’m warning you,” she said, in a hoarse whisper. “There’s something
queer about that new nurse.”
SAFETY FIRST
Helen stared at Mrs. Oates, with vague misgiving. There was something
unfamiliar in the woman’s appearance which eluded her: Her face, still
flushed from the heat of the fire, wore its usual expression of
goodnatured surliness, so that Helen was puzzled to account for the
change.
“The nurse?” she repeated. “She’s rather a brute—but what’s queer about
her?”
“Things,” Mrs. Oates nodded mysteriously. “I’ve noticed them, but taken
no notice. They come back after, and then I wonder what they were.”
“What things?” insisted Helen.
“Little things,” was the vague reply. “I’d like a word with Oates. He
could tell me.”
As her voice thickened, Helen suddenly traced the difference in her to
its source. Something had gone out of her face; her lips hung loosely,
so that her jaw had lost its suggestion of a bulldog grip.
She felt vaguely uneasy. One of her special guards was gone—and the
other had changed. She had no longer the comforting assurance of Mrs.
Oates’ protection.
A thread of meaning, however, ran through Mrs. Oates’ talk, and Helen
found her attention gripped.
“I want’ to see Oates,” declared the woman, “and ask him just where he
picked up that nurse. A baby could diddle Oates. If someone cut off his
head, and stuck OR a cabbage, he’d never notice the difference, and no
more would you.”
“But I’m sure he told us he took her from the Nursing Home,” Helen
reminded her.
“Yes—and how? I know Oates. He’d drive up, and then, because he hadn’t
me to hop out and ring the bell for him, he’d just sound the hooter, and
wait for things to happen. The first body in a cloak and veil, what
hopped inside the car, would be good enough for him.”
“Hum,” mused Helen. “Still even if she is an impostor, she couldn’t have
committed the murder, because she was driving with him, in the car, when
it was committed.”
“What murder?” asked Mrs. Oates.
Helen was human enough to relish the importance of announcing tragic
news, which did not touch her personally.
But Mrs. Oates’ reception of Ceridwen’s death was disappointing. Instead
of being thrilled with horror, she accepted it as though it were an item
in the weekly schedule.
“You don’t say,” she muttered. “Well, you mark my words. There’ll be
another murder before we’re one night older, if we’re spared to live as
long.”
“Aren’t you a little ray of sunshine?” exclaimed Helen.
“Well, I don’t trust that nurse. Folks said as how the looney must have
had a woman, what used to talk to the girls, and take off their notice,
so as he could spring.”
“You mean—a decoy?” asked Helen. “I’ll promise you this. If the nurse
invites me to go for a little walk with her, in the garden, tonight, I
won’t go.”
“But she’s not here for that,” said Mrs. Oates. “She’s here to open the
door to him.”
It was a most unpleasant idea, coming on the heels of Dr. Parry’s
revelation. Helen awoke afresh to the loneliness of the storm-bound
house. Even down in the basement, she could hear the fury of the gale,
like a tidal-wave thudding against the shutters of the windows.
“I think I’ll go upstairs and see what the others are doing,” she said,
feeling that she needed a change of company.
The first person she met in the hall was Stephen Rice. He had opened the
door of the closet where the coats were hung, and had just unhooked his
ancient Burberry from its peg.
“You’re never going’ out in this storm,” she cried. “Hush. I’m stealing
off to the Bull. I need the company of my fellow working men to get the
taste of this nasty affair out of my mouth. I might even try the
experiment of a glass of beer. I’m the sort of desperate chap who’d try
anything once.”
“I believe there’s one thing you wouldn’t,” said Helen, who felt strung
up to a reckless pitch.
“Meaning?”
“Running off with another man’s wife.”
Stephen followed Helen’s glance towards the drawingroom.
“You never said a truer thing,” he nodded. “No women for me.” Then he
held out his hand. “Sister, can you spare me a dime?”
Helen couldn’t believe that he was really borrowing money from her,
until he explained.
“I want to settle my score at the Bull. Buying the pup cleaned me out.”
“Where is the pup?” asked Helen.
“Up in my room, asleep on the bed… Sister, what about that dime?”
“I haven’t got it,” faltered Helen. “I don’t get paid until the end of
my month.”
“Tough luck. Another country off the Gold Standard… Sorry I asked.
Nothing for it, now, but to touch Simone. She’s plenty of chink.”
As he spoke Simone sauntered across the hall.
“Where are you going?” she demanded. “First of all, I’m going to you, my
dear, to borrow some cash. Then, I’m going to the Bull, to hand over the
said cash.”
Simone contracted her painted brows.
“You haven’t got to invent any excuse for going to the Bull,” she told
him. “I know the special attraction.” “Whitey?” groaned Stephen. “For
the love of Mike, stop harping on her. She’s a nice little girl. We’re
friends, and that’s all.”
He broke off, as Newton came out of the study.
“Will you all come into the study!” he said. “The Chief has an
announcement to make.”
The Professor was seated at his table, speaking in a low voice, to his
sister. His face wore a look of exhaustion, which was not lost on Helen.
She noticed, too, the glass of water and the small bottle of white
tablets which stood at his elbow.
“I have something to say,” he announced, “which applies to everyone. No
one is to leave this house tonight.”
Simone flashed a look of triumph at Stephen, who began to splutter:
“Oh, but, sir, I have an important appointment.”
“Then you will not keep it,” the Professor informed him. “But I’m not a
baby.”
“Prove it. If you are a man, you will realize that we are faced with a
situation of actual danger and that it is the duty of every male member
of this household to remain at home.”
Stephen continued to protest.
“I’d stay, like a shot, if there was any sense in it. But it’s such
bally rot. Of course, no woman should go out. But they are safe, at
home. The chap wouldn’t come inside the house.”
“Have you forgotten the girl who was murdered inside her bedroom?” broke
in Miss Warren, in a dead voice.
“Her window was left open,” explained Stephen.
“But you heard what the doctor said?” insisted Miss Warren”.
“And you’ve heard what I’ve said,” remarked the Professor sternly. “I’m
master of this house, and I will not have the safety of anyone here
imperilled by disobedience.”
Helen felt his glance hover for one moment over her, and her heart
throbbed with gratitude.
“There is another precaution I wish observed,” went on the Professor.
“No one is to be admitted to the house, tonight. If anyone knocks, or
rings, he—or she—will remain outside. I forbid the doors being unbolted,
on any pretext whatsoever.”
This time objection came from Newton.
“That’s rather drastic, Chief,” he said. “Anyone might come; the police,
or someone with important news.” The Professor took up a paper as though
he were weary of the discussion.
“Those are my orders,” he said. “I am only concerned, tonight, with the
safety of those under my roof. But I warn you this. Anyone
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