Witching Hill Part 21

I began by explaining why this scarcely comes into the category of Witching Hill coincidences. Yet it was rather startling at the time, and Uvo Delavoye looked as though his evil ancestor had materialised at the foot of the bed.

"All right, Jane! Mr. Gillon will be down directly."

It was the first time his voice had risen to more than a whisper, and it was shaky. The maid seemed to catch some echo of an alarm already communicated to herself, and faintly sounded in her own announcement.

"Sarah seems very anxious to see you, sir," she ventured, turning to me, and then withdrew in some embarra.s.sment.

I rose to follow. Sarah was almost as great a character as her master, and I for one liked her the better of the two. She was a simple, faithful, incompetent old body, who once told me that she had known Mr.

Nettleton, man and boy, most of his life, but without betraying a page of his past. She had come with him to Witching Hill Road as cook-general. There had been a succession of auxiliary servants who had never in any instance outstayed their month. The last of them had left precipitately, threatening a summons, to the scandal of the neighbours; but beyond that fact the matter had been hushed up, and even I only knew that Sarah was now practically single-handed through her coming to me about a charwoman. I thought I ought to see her at once, but Uvo detained me with an almost piteous face.

"Do wait a moment! Of course it's probably nothing at all; but you've given me an idea that certainly never crossed my mind before. I won't say you've put the fear of G.o.d on me, Gilly, but you have put me in rather a funk about old Nettleton! He is a rum 'un--I must admit it. If he should have done anything that could possibly be traced to ... all that.... I'll never open my mouth about it again."

"Oh, bless your life, it's only more servant troubles," I rea.s.sured him.

"I shouldn't wonder if old Sarah herself finds him more than she can stick. They do say he a.s.saulted that last girl, so that she could hardly limp into her cab!"

Uvo rolled his head on the pillow.

"It wasn't an a.s.sault, Gilly. I know what happened to her. But I must know what's happened to old Sarah, or to Nettleton himself. Will you promise to come back and tell me?"

"Certainly."

"Then off you go, my dear fellow, and I'll hang on to my soul till you get back. You may have to go along with her, if he's been doing anything very mad. Take my key, and tell them downstairs not to lock you out."

Sarah was waiting for me on the front-door mat, but she refused to make any communication before we left the house. She really was what she herself would have described as an elderly party, though it is doubtful whether even Sarah would have considered the epithet appropriate to her years. She certainly wore a rather jaunty bonnet on her walks abroad. It had a garish plume that nodded violently with her funny old head, and simply danced with mystery as she signified the utter impossibility of speech within reach of other ears.

"I'm very sorry to trouble you, sir, very," said the old lady, as she trotted beside me up Mulcaster Park. "But I never did know such a thing to 'appen before, and I don't like it, sir, not at all I don't, I'm sure."

"But what has happened, Sarah?"

As a witness Sarah would not have been a success; she believed in beginning her story very far back, in following it into every by-way and blind alley of immaterial fact, in reporting every sc.r.a.p of dialogue that she could remember or improvise, and in eschewing the oblique oration as an unworthy economy of time and breath. If interrupted, she would invariably answer a question that had not been asked, and on getting up to any real point she would shy at it like a fractious old steed. It was then impossible to spur her on, and we had to retrace much ground at her pleasure. The _ipsissima verba_ of this innocent creature are therefore frankly unprintable. But towards the top of Mulcaster Park I did make out that a number of pointless speeches, delivered by Mr.

Nettleton at his lunch, had culminated in the announcement that he was going to the theatre that night.

"The theatre!" I cried. "I thought he never even went up to town?"

I had gathered that from Delavoye, and Sarah confirmed it with much embroidery. I was also told his reasons for making such a sudden exception, and as given by Sarah they were certainly not convincing.

"Then he's in the theatre now, or ought to be?" I suggested; for it was then just after nine o'clock.

"Ah, that's where it is, sir!" said Sarah, weightily. "He _ought_ to be, as you say, sir. But he's locked his lib'ry, and there's a light under the door, and I can't get no answer, not though I knock, knock, knock, till I'm tired of knocking!"

I now ascertained that Sarah also had been given money to make a night of it, in her case at the Parish Hall, where one of the church entertainments was going on. Sarah made mention of every item on the programme, as far as she had heard it out. But then it seemed she had become anxious about her kitchen fire, which she had been ordered to keep up for elaborate reasons connected with the master's bath. There had been no fire in the lib'ry that day; it was late in February, but exceptionally mild for the time of year. She knew her master sometimes left his lib'ry locked, after that what happened the last house-parlourmaid, and serve people right for going where they had no business. She could not say that he had left it locked on this occasion; she only knew it was so now, and a light under the door, though he had gone away in broad daylight.

This room, in which Nettleton certainly kept his books, but also his carpenter's bench, test-tubes and retorts, and a rack of stoppered bottles, was the one at the back leading into the garden. It was meant for the drawing-room in this particular type of house, was of considerable size, but only divided from the kitchen by a jerry-built wall. Sarah could not say that she had heard a sound in the lib'ry--though she often did hear master, as she was setting there of a evening--since he went away without his tea. Of course she had not noticed the light under the door till after dark; not, in fact, till she came back from her entertainment. No; she had not thought of going into the room to draw the curtains. The less she went in there, without orders, the better, Sarah always thought. And yet, when she trotted in front of me through her kitchen and scullery, and so round to the French windows of the sealed chamber, we found them closely shuttered, as they must have been left early in the afternoon, unless Nettleton had returned from his theatre and locked himself in.

It was with rather too vivid a recollection of the finding of Abercromby Royle, in a corresponding room in Mulcaster Park, that I went on to my office for an a.s.sortment of keys.

"Now, Sarah, you stand sentinel at the gate," I said on my return. "If Mr. Nettleton should come back while I'm busy, keep him in conversation while I slip out through your kitchen. I don't much like my job, Sarah, but neither do I think for a moment that there's anything wrong."

Yet there was a really bright layer of light under the door in which I now tried key after key, while the old body relieved me of her presence in order to keep a rather unwilling eye up the road.

At last a key fitted, turned, and the door was open for me to enter if I dared; and never shall I forget the scene that presented itself when I did.

The room was unoccupied. That was one thing. Neither the quick nor the dead lay in wait for me this time. A mere glance explored every corner; the scanty furniture was that of a joiner's shop and a laboratory in one; all the library to be seen was a couple of standing bookcases, not nearly full. But my eyes were rooted in horror to the floor. It also was bare, in the sense that there was no carpet, though a rug or two had been roughly folded and piled on the carpenter's bench. In their place, from skirting-board to skirting-board, the floor was ankle-deep in shavings. And among the shavings, like so many lighthouses in a yellow sea, burnt four or five fat ecclesiastical candles. They were not in candlesticks; at first I thought that they were mounted merely in their own grease. But Nettleton had run no such risk of one toppling before its time. Their innocent little flames were within an inch or so of the shavings--one was nearer still--but before I could probe the simple secret of the vile device, there was a rustle at my elbow, and there stood Sarah with her nodding plume.

"Well, I never did!" she exclaimed in a scandalised whisper. "Trying to set fire to the 'ouse--oh, fie!"

The grotesque inadequacy of these comments, taken in conjunction with her comparative composure, made me suspect for one wild moment that Sarah herself was an accomplice in the horrible design. She grasped it at a glance, much quicker than I had done, and it seemed to shock her very much less. I s.n.a.t.c.hed up one of the candles--they were pinned in place with black-headed toilet pins--and I lit the gas with it before stalking through the shavings and setting a careful foot upon the rest in turn.

When I had extinguished the last of them, I turned to find my innocent old suspect snivelling on the threshold, and nodding her gay plume more emphatically than ever.

"'Ow awful!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed in hushed tones. "Madness, I call it.

Setting fire to a nice 'ouse like this! But there, he's been getting queer for a long time. I've often said so--to myself, you know, sir--I wouldn't say it to n.o.body else. That burgular business was the beginning."

"Well, Sarah," I said, "he's got so queer that we must think what's to be done, and think quickly, and do it double-quick! But I shall be obliged if you'll stick to your excellent rule of not talking to outsiders. We've had scenes enough at Witching Hill, without this getting about."

"Oh! I shan't say a word, sir," said Sarah, solemnly. "Even pore Mr.

Nettleton, he shall never know from _me_ how I found him out!"

I could hardly believe my ears. "Good G.o.d, woman! Do you dream of spending another night under this maniac's roof?"

"Why, of course I do, sir," cried old Sarah, bridling. "Who's to look after him, if I go away and leave him, I should like to know? The very idea!"

"I'll see that he's looked after," said I, grimly, and went and bolted the front door, lest he should return before I had decided on my tactics.

In the few seconds that my back was turned, Sarah seemed to have acquired yet another new and novel point of view. I found the old heroine almost gloating over her master's dreadful handiwork.

"Well, there, I never did see anything so artful! Him at his theatre, to come home and look on at the fire, and me at my concert, safe and sound as if I was at church! Oh, he'd see to that, sir; he wouldn't've done it if he 'adn't've arranged to put me out of 'arm's way. That's Mr.

Nettleton, every inch. Not that I say it was a right thing to do, sir, even with the 'ouse empty as it is. But what can you expect when a pore gentleman goes out of 'is 'ead? There's not many would care what 'appened to n.o.body else! But the artfulness of 'im: in another minute the whole 'ouse might've been blazing like a bonfire! Well, there, you do 'ear of such things, and now we know 'ow they 'appen."

To this extraordinary tune, with many such variations, I was meanwhile making up my mind. The first necessity was to place the intrepid old fool really out of harm's way, and the next was to save, the house if possible, but also and at all costs the good name of the Witching Hill Estate. We had had one suicide, and it had not been hushed up quite as successfully as some of us flattered ourselves at the time; one case of gross intemperance, most scandalous while it lasted, and one gang of burglars actually established on the Estate. People were beginning to talk about us as it was; a case of attempted arson, even if the incendiary were proved a criminal lunatic, might be the end of us as a flourishing concern. It is true that I had no stake in the Company whose servant I was; but one does not follow the dullest avocation for three years without taking a certain interest of another kind. At any rate I intended the secret of this locked room to remain as much a secret as I could keep it, and this gave me an immediate leverage over Sarah. Unless she took herself off before her master returned, I a.s.sured her I would have him sent, not to an asylum, but to the felon's cell which I described as the proper place for him. I was not so sure in my own mind that I meant him to go to one or the other. But this was the bargain that I proposed to Sarah.

It came out that she had friends, in the shape of a labouring brother and his wife and family, whom I strongly suspected of having migrated on purpose to keep in touch with Sarah's kitchen, no further away than the Village. I succeeded in packing the old thing off in that direction, after making her lock her door at the top of the house. Previously I had removed the marks of my boot from the extinguished candles, and had left the locked room locked once more and in total darkness. Sarah and I quitted the house together before ten o'clock.

"I'll see that your master doesn't do himself any damage to-night,"

were my last words to her. "He'll think the candles have been blown out by a draught under the door--which really wouldn't catch them till they burnt quite low--and that you are asleep in your bed at the top of the house. You've left everything as though you were; and that alone, as you yourself have pointed out, is enough to guarantee his not trying it on again to-night. You see, the fire was timed to break out before you left your entertainment, as it would have done if you'd seen the programme through. Tell your people that Mr. Nettleton's away for the night, and you've gone and locked yourself out by mistake. Above all, don't come back, unless you want to give the whole show away; he'd know at once that you'd discovered everything, and even your life wouldn't be safe for another minute. Unless you promise, Sarah, I'll just wait for him myself--with a policeman!"

My reasoning was cogent enough for that simple mind; on the other hand, the word of such an obviously faithful soul was better than the bond of most; and altogether it was with considerable satisfaction that I heard old Sarah trot off into the night, and then myself ran every yard of the way back to the Delavoyes' house.

Up to this point, as I still think, I had done better than many might have done in my place. But for my promise to Uvo, and the fact that he was even then lying waiting for me to redeem it, I would not have rushed to a sick man with my tale. Yet I must say that I was thankful I had no other choice, as matters stood. And I will even own that I had formed no definite plans beyond the point at which Uvo, having heard all, was to give me the benefit of his sound judgment in any definite dilemma.

To my sorrow he took the whole thing in an absolutely different way from any that I had antic.i.p.ated. He took it terribly to heart. I had entirely forgotten the gist of our conversation before I left him; he had been thinking of nothing else. The thing that I had expected to thrill him to the marrow, that would have done nothing else at any other time, simply harrowed him after what it seemed that I had said three-quarters of an hour before. Whatever I had said was overlaid in my mind, for the moment, by all that I had since seen and heard. But Uvo Delavoye might have been brooding over every syllable.

"You said you wouldn't envy me," he cried, huskily, "if poor old Nettleton fell under the influence in his turn. You spoke as if it was _my_ influence; it isn't, but it may be that I'm a sort of medium for its transmission! Sole agent, eh, Gilly? My G.o.d, that's an awful thought, but you gave it me just now and I sha'n't get shot of it in a hurry! None of these beastly things happened before _I_ came here--I, the legitimate son of this infernal soil! I'm the lightning-conductor, I'm the middleman in every deal!"

"My dear Uvo, we've no time for all that," I said. He had started up in bed, painfully excited and distressed, and I began to fear that I might have my work cut out to keep him there. "We agreed to differ about that long ago," I reminded him.

"It's only another way of putting what you said just now," he answered.

"You said you did believe in my power of infecting another fellow with my ideas; you spoke of my responsibility if the other fellow put them into practice; and now he's done this hideous thing, had done it even when we were talking!"