The Dower House Mystery (27 page)

It was about ten minutes later that she heard the telephone bell. As she started up it rang again. Amabel felt an unbelievable relief and joy. The telephone bell meant that Julian was back. He must have caught an earlier train and have turned in at the cottage on his way to the house. How dear of him to ring her up from there!

She was across the passage and at the open bedroom door before she felt a momentary recoil. She had left the light on in the room. The door of the press was a little ajar. If only the telephone had been in any other room but this.

It was with a little, cold shiver that she went across and took down the receiver. There was no current running; the line felt dead. Surely Julian couldn't have gone away. Her hesitation had really only lasted for a moment; he couldn't have thought that she had not heard the bell, and just gone away. She shook the receiver slightly, and rang through. Still no sound, no sound on the line—but quite suddenly a sound behind her.

With the most sickening throb of fear which she had ever experienced, Amabel realized that the cupboard door behind her was opening, and that someone was coming through it. She tried to call out, to turn; but before she could draw breath enough for a cry, something heavy and soft fell over her head and shoulders, and she felt herself in a grip so strong that she was utterly powerless to move. She tried to struggle; but she tried in vain. She felt herself lifted—and knew no more.

Amabel's faintness lasted only a very short time, but her first sensations were confused. Darkness; something pressing down on her; a difficulty in breathing; something soft and thick all over her face; jerky movements; and a man's voice speaking. She tried again to get her breath, to cry out, but could not do so. All at once she was set down, and the covering thrown back. She felt the arms of a chair beneath her arms. She drew a long, long, sobbing breath and opened her eyes.

She was in a cellar lit by electric light. That was the extraordinary thing—she was in a large cellar with whitewashed walls and a stone floor, but the whole place was most brilliantly illumined. Three pendant lights showed every object with great distinctness. Amabel looked at these objects, but had no idea what they were. As her mind cleared, she heard a man's voice say, “Put it on the writing-table, right in front, where he can't miss it—and for Heaven's sake take care you're not seen.” There was a laugh, a rustle of skirts, the sound of a closing door. The sounds, the voice came from behind Amabel. She tried to rise, and found that a band of something held her to the chair.

“Better take things quietly.” It was the same voice speaking, the man's voice. It was most, most unbelievably, Mr. Bronson's voice. “Better take things quietly,” it said; and with the last words Mr. Bronson himself came into view and stood a couple of yards away, looking at her gravely.

“Mr. Bronson!” said Amabel.

Mr. Bronson put up a deprecating hand.

“I regret the necessity very much, very much indeed, Mrs. Grey,” he said. “I hope you will believe me when I say this.”

“Mr. Bronson, are you mad?” said Amabel. She spoke faintly. The shock, the surprise were overwhelming. Her mind refused to work. She could only look at Mr. Bronson and wonder whether the whole scene was part of an unquiet dream.

“We are all mad; but some of us have a method in our madness,” said Mr. Bronson quietly. “It was in the highest degree unfortunate for all of us that you should have discovered the passage in the wall this afternoon. You will realize how very unfortunate it was when I tell you that we were on the point of abandoning our attempts to make you leave the house.”

“Your attempts?”

“Yes, it was getting too dangerous. We hadn't anticipated so much difficulty. Other tenants were more easily frightened away. And after Mr. Forsham began to mix himself up in the business we decided not to go on with it. You might have finished your six months' tenancy in peace if you hadn't stumbled on that passage by a most unfortunate accident—I suppose it was an accident?”

“Yes, it was an accident.”

Mr. Bronson heaved a sigh of relief.

“Mr. Forsham, then, knows nothing about it?”

Amabel shook her head.

“Mr. Bronson, I don't understand—” she began.

“My dear Mrs. Grey, I wish you didn't have to understand,” said Mr. Bronson. “The fact is that it doesn't suit me to have the Dower House occupied, because I use the cellars for business purposes.”

“Mr. Forsham went through the cellars,” said Amabel. (What was it that Julian had said about a bricked-up door?)

“He didn't go through these cellars, my dear lady. They were bricked up a good many years ago, as they were not considered safe. I made it my business to have them repaired, and also to put in thorough order the extremely useful passage which runs underground from this house to Forsham Old House. It only wanted a little shoring up, and it has been most useful. I may say, in fact, that we couldn't possibly have managed without it.”

As he spoke, the door behind her opened; someone came in. Mr. Bronson looked past Amabel and asked sharply: “Well, did you manage it?” The answer came in a voice which Amabel knew, and did not know:

“Perfectly. Why not? There was nothing difficult.”

It was not Jenny's voice: it was a deeper, more cultivated voice than Jenny's.

The woman who had spoken came forward, and touched Bronson on the arm.

“What next?” she asked. “What next?”

Amabel stared at her. It was Jenny—and yet not Jenny. At the first glance no one would have known the difference; but after the first glance there were a hundred differences. The likeness was in the hair, the eyes, the dead white skin. The differences were innumerable. Who was it?

Mr. Bronson was speaking.

“Go up to the Old House, and wait there. When Forsham finds her gone, and knows I was the last person to see her, he'll come up there hot-foot—bound to. Have him shown in the morning-room, and leave him there whilst you ring through to me. You'd better get along at once.”

“All right, there's no hurry. I've got to get fit to be seen first anyhow.”

It was the way in which they absolutely ignored her presence that brought home to as Amabel the fact of her extreme danger. They would not speak like this, ignore her like this, make their plans for deceiving Julian in her presence, unless that presence was negligible. It came home to her with fearful distinctness that, as far as these people were concerned, she had ceased to exist. She watched the woman cross the room and stand before a mirror that hung on the farther wall—the sort of cheap, common thing that one buys in a village shop. Under the mirror stood a littered table.

The woman who wasn't Jenny stood there, unconcernedly making her toilet. She was busy first with her face; then the red hair was all brushed up from brow, ears and neck, and pinned closely at the top of the head; finally a black wig was lifted, put on, carefully adjusted.

It was Mademoiselle Lemoine who turned round with all likeness to Jenny gone. The disappearance of the red hair took most of it. Black brows and lashes so darkened the eyes that they too lost their resemblance to Jenny's pale, red-rimmed eyes. The change was most astonishing.

“You would not have recognized me, Mrs. Grey, would you?” said Mademoiselle Lemoine, using the trilled “r” and the slight French accent.

She did not wait for an answer, but turned and went out through a door in the right-hand wall. Amabel had a glimpse of a passage beyond. Then the door was shut, and she and of Mr. Bronson were alone again.

Amabel Grey was a brave woman. The consciousness of danger steadied her nerves and cleared her mind as perhaps nothing else would have done. As soon as the door was shut, she spoke:

“Mr. Bronson,” she said, “I don't ask you why you have done this. But you can't really imagine that I shall not be missed and searched for.”

“Oh, no,” said Mr. Bronson. “You will be missed, and you will be searched for—you are quite right there. Naturally, I have fore-seen all that, and have taken my precautions—my business demands a good deal of foresight and attention to detail.” He spoke in quite a natural, ordinary voice. His whole manner, in fact, was just what it had been in the impressive drawing-room at Forsham Old House. It was very difficult to realize that, though the conventional manner remained, all the sanctions, the laws which civilization imposes, had ceased to operate. Here were not Mr. Bronson and Mrs. Grey, pleasant acquaintances, but a dangerous man who had broken the law, and a woman who stood in his way as an inconvenient witness.

“If Mr. Forsham has not already returned, he will be back by half-past six,” said Amabel quietly.

“Oh, he's not back yet,” said Mr. Bronson. “I suppose you thought he might be because of the telephone bell; but, of course you must realize that the bell was rung to get you into the bedroom—quite a simple device really. Mr. Forsham will arrive by the six-twenty, and when he gets up to the house he will find rather a shaky scrawl from you saying that you can't stand it any longer. He will draw his own conclusions.”

Amabel cried out very sharply. Mr. Bronson's gay talk of Angela and the games they were to play to-morrow. His “Now, you write the same sentence at the other end of the paper.” Her own thought of how appropriate that sentence was: “I can't stand it any longer.” She saw herself writing the words with a hand not over-steady; and she saw Julian reading them. The thought hurt so much that her mind recoiled. She spoke with a sudden anger that sent a flush into her cheeks:

“You use Angela as a decoy then! Haven't you any shame at all?”

Mr. Branson's brow darkened; for the first time the conventional manner failed him.

“Here, none of that,” he said roughly. “None of that, or you'll be sorry. Angela doesn't come into this at all, I tell you. She's as honest as they're made. My business is my business, and she don't know anything about it. Angela's as good a girl as your own.”

So Angela was the vulnerable spot. Amabel looked at him with contempt, and spoke, partly of design, and partly on an impulse of real disgust;

“You say she's a good girl, and you put her with a woman like Miss Lemoine!”

The colour rushed into the man's face. For a moment Amabel thought he would have struck her. She saw him control himself with an effort, and heard him mutter:

“Mind what you're saying. I won't have it.” His voice rose. “You mind what you're saying, and keep a civil tongue in your head. Miss Lemoine's my wife.”

Chapter XXXV

Julian Forsham turned from the telephone. The words F. Miller rang in his ears. Miller around whom his chief suspicions had clustered—Miller was one of Piggy's men! From anyone but Piggy himself he could hardly have believed it. Piggy having said it, it was true; and since it was true, he must get into touch with Miller at once. He was not on the telephone, but Edward would send down a note. He crossed to the writing-table and sat down. Miller had better go to the Dower House. He himself must see Bronson, since Bronson had been the last person to see Amabel. He would see him, and then join Miller. He took pen and paper and wrote rapidly:

“D
EAR
M
R
. M
ILLER
,”

“I owe you an apology. Julian Le Mesurier has just given me your name and referred me to you for assistance. Mrs. Grey has disappeared, leaving the enclosed note, and I am in great anxiety. Bronson saw her last, and I am going to see him now. Please meet me at the Dower House. I will come straight on there.”

He signed and addressed the note, and went in search of the Berkeleys. Two minutes later he was out in the rain on his way to Forsham Old House.

Miss Lemoine crossed the hall as the door opened to admit him. She dismissed the servant with a nod, and took Julian into the morning-room.

“Mr. Bronson is finishing some letters,” she said. “Sit down, and I will tell him you are here.”

He was still standing in frowning impatience when Mr. Bronson came in five or six minutes later.

“So sorry to have kept you waiting,” he said in pleasant apology.

“Mr. Bronson,” said Julian abruptly, “we are in distress about Mrs. Grey. She has left the Dower House suddenly, and—well, I believe you saw her this afternoon. Perhaps you can tell me whether she spoke of any such intention.”

“Dear me!” said Mr. Bronson. “I'm very sorry to hear this. No, she certainly did not speak of going away.” He seemed to hesitate.

“She didn't speak of going to see anyone?”

“No, she didn't. She did not, in fact, speak very much at all. I looked in with a message from my daughter. Mrs. Grey seemed depressed, I thought. She asked me to stay to tea, but I could not do so. I wish now—” he broke off and looked at Julian with concern—“Mr. Forsham, you do not think?—”

“No!” said Julian almost violently. “No no, of course not!”

When Julian had left the house, Mr. Bronson went back to his study. He found Miss Lemoine there, walking up and down with a light, uneasy step. She waited till he shut the door, and then broke out quickly with:

“What did he say? What did he want? He looked dreadful.”

Mr. Bronson raised his eyebrows.

“Do control yourself,” he said. “You're a great deal too fond of scenes, Annie, and I simply haven't any use for them. Mr. Forsham naturally wanted to know how I had left Mrs. Grey. I told him that she seemed very depressed.”

“Was that all?”

“Pretty well.”

There was a pause. Miss Lemoine came nearer, dropped her voice.

“Heavens, how glad I shall be to be out of this! When do we start?”

He looked at her coldly.

“When do we start? We don't start. What are you thinking about?”

“Charles, what do you
mean
? We ought to get away as soon as possible.”