The Last Seance Page 3

  Somehow that made a difference. I came home in the autumn of 1918 just before the Armistice and I went straight to Sylvia and told her that I loved her. I hadn’t much hope that she’d care for me straight away, and you could have knocked me down with a feather when she asked me why I hadn’t told her sooner. I stammered out something about Crawley and she said, ‘But why did you think I broke it off with him?’ and then she told me that she’d fallen in love with me just as I’d done with her—from the very first minute.

  I said I thought she’d broken off her engagement because of the story I told her and she laughed scornfully and said that if you loved a man you wouldn’t be as cowardly as that, and we went over that old vision of mine again and agreed that it was queer, but nothing more.

  Well, there’s nothing much to tell for some time after that. Sylvia and I were married and we were very happy. But I realized, as soon as she was really mine, that I wasn’t cut out for the best kind of husband. I loved Sylvia devotedly, but I was jealous, absurdly jealous of anyone she so much as smiled at. It amused her at first, I think she even rather liked it. It proved, at least, how devoted I was.

  As for me, I realized quite fully and unmistakably that I was not only making a fool of myself, but that I was endangering all the peace and happiness of our life together. I knew, I say, but I couldn’t change. Every time Sylvia got a letter she didn’t show to me I wondered who it was from. If she laughed and talked with any man, I found myself getting sulky and watchful.

  At first, as I say, Sylvia laughed at me. She thought it a huge joke. Then she didn’t think the joke so funny. Finally she didn’t think it a joke at all—

  And slowly, she began to draw away from me. Not in any physical sense, but she withdrew her secret mind from me. I no longer knew what her thoughts were. She was kind—but sadly, as thought from a long distance.

  Little by little I realized that she no longer loved me. Her love had died and it was I who had killed it . . .

  The next step was inevitable, I found myself waiting for it—dreading it . . .

  Then Derek Wainwright came into our lives. He had everything that I hadn’t. He had brains and a witty tongue. He was good-looking, too, and—I’m forced to admit it—a thoroughly good chap. As soon as I saw him I said to myself, ‘This is just the man for Sylvia . . .’

  She fought against it. I know she struggled . . . but I gave her no help. I couldn’t. I was entrenched in my gloomy, sullen reserve. I was suffering like hell—and I couldn’t stretch out a finger to save myself. I didn’t help her. I made things worse. I let loose at her one day—a string of savage, unwarranted abuse. I was nearly mad with jealousy and misery. The things I said were cruel and untrue and I knew while I was saying them how cruel and how untrue they were. And yet I took a savage pleasure in saying them . . .

  I remember how Sylvia flushed and shrank . . .

  I drove her to the edge of endurance.

  I remember she said, ‘This can’t go on . . .’

  When I came home that night the house was empty—empty. There was a note—quite in the traditional fashion.

  In it she said that she was leaving me—for good. She was going down to Badgeworthy for a day or two. After that she was going to the one person who loved her and needed her. I was to take that as final.

  I suppose that up to then I hadn’t really believed my own suspicions. This confirmation in black and white of my worst fears sent me raving mad. I went down to Badgeworthy after her as fast as the car would take me.

  She had just changed her frock for dinner, I remember, when I burst into the room. I can see her face—startled—beautiful—afraid.

  I said, ‘No one but me shall ever have you. No one.’

  And I caught her throat in my hands and gripped it and bent her backwards.

  And suddenly I saw our reflection in the mirror. Sylvia choking and myself strangling her, and the scar on my cheek where the bullet grazed it under the right ear.

  No—I didn’t kill her. That sudden revelation paralysed me and I loosened my grasp and let her slip on to the floor . . .

  And then I broke down—and she comforted me . . . Yes, she comforted me.

  I told her everything and she told me that by the phrase ‘the one person who loved and needed her’ she had meant her brother Alan . . . We saw into each other’s hearts that night, and I don’t think, from that moment, that we ever drifted away from each other again . . .

  It’s a sobering thought to go through life with—that, but for the grace of God and a mirror, one might be a murderer . . .

  One thing did die that night—the devil of jealousy that had possessed me so long . . .

  But I wonder sometimes—suppose I hadn’t made that initial mistake—the scar on the left cheek—when really it was the right—reversed by the mirror . . . Should I have been so sure the man was Charles Crawley? Would I have warned Sylvia? Would she be married to me—or to him?

  Or are the past and the future all one?

  I’m a simple fellow—and I can’t pretend to understand these things—but I saw what I saw—and because of what I saw, Sylvia and I are together in the old-fashioned words—till death do us part. And perhaps beyond . . .

  S.O.S.

  ‘Ah!’ said Mr Dinsmead appreciatively.

  He stepped back and surveyed the round table with approval. The firelight gleamed on the coarse white tablecloth, the knives and forks, and the other table appointments.

  ‘Is—is everything ready?’ asked Mrs Dinsmead hesitatingly. She was a little faded woman, with colourless face, meagre hair scraped back from her forehead, and a perpetually nervous manner.

  ‘Everything’s ready,’ said her husband with a kind of ferocious geniality.

  He was a big man, with stooping shoulders, and a broad red face. He had little pig’s eyes that twinkled under his bushy brows, and a big jowl devoid of hair.

  ‘Lemonade?’ suggested Mrs Dinsmead, almost in a whisper.

  Her husband shook his head.

  ‘Tea. Much better in every way. Look at the weather, streaming and blowing. A nice cup of hot tea is what’s needed for supper on an evening like this.’

  He winked facetiously, then fell to surveying the table again.

  ‘A good dish of eggs, cold corned beef, and bread and cheese. That’s my order for supper. So come along and get it ready, Mother. Charlotte’s in the kitchen waiting to give you a hand.’

  Mrs Dinsmead rose, carefully winding up the ball of her knitting.

  ‘She’s grown a very good-looking girl,’ she murmured. ‘Sweetly pretty, I say.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Mr Dinsmead. ‘The mortal image of her Ma! So go along with you, and don’t let’s waste any more time.’

  He strolled about the room humming to himself for a minute or two. Once he approached the window and looked out.

  ‘Wild weather,’ he murmured to himself. ‘Not much likelihood of our having visitors tonight.’

  Then he too left the room.

  About ten minutes later Mrs Dinsmead entered bearing a dish of fried eggs. Her two daughters followed, bringing in the rest of the provisions. Mr Dinsmead and his son Johnnie brought up the rear. The former seated himself at the head of the table.

  ‘And for what we are to receive, etcetera,’ he remarked humorously. ‘And blessings on the man who first thought of tinned foods. What would we do, I should like to know, miles from anywhere, if we hadn’t a tin now and then to fall back upon when the butcher forgets his weekly call?’

  He proceeded to carve corned beef dexterously.

  ‘I wonder who ever thought of building a house like this, miles from anywhere,’ said his daughter Magdalen pettishly. ‘We never see a soul.’

  ‘No,’ said her father. ‘Never a soul.’

  ‘I can’t think what made you take it, Father,’ said Charlotte.

  ‘Can’t you, my girl? Well, I had my reasons—I had my reasons.’

  His eyes sought his wife’s furtively, but she frowned.


  ‘And haunted too,’ said Charlotte. ‘I wouldn’t sleep alone here for anything.’

  ‘Pack of nonsense,’ said her father. ‘Never seen anything, have you? Come now.’

  ‘Not seen anything perhaps, but—’

  ‘But what?’

  Charlotte did not reply, but she shivered a little. A great surge of rain came driving against the window-pane, and Mrs Dinsmead dropped a spoon with a tinkle on the tray.

  ‘Not nervous are you, Mother?’ said Mr Dinsmead. ‘It’s a wild night, that’s all. Don’t you worry, we’re safe here by our fireside, and not a soul from outside likely to disturb us. Why, it would be a miracle if anyone did. And miracles don’t happen. No,’ he added as though to himself, with a kind of peculiar satisfaction. ‘Miracles don’t happen.’

  As the words left his lips there came a sudden knocking at the door. Mr Dinsmead stayed as though petrified.

  ‘Whatever’s that?’ he muttered. His jaw fell.

  Mrs Dinsmead gave a little whimpering cry and pulled her shawl up round her. The colour came into Magdalen’s face and she leant forward and spoke to her father.

  ‘The miracle has happened,’ she said. ‘You’d better go and let whoever it is in.’

  Twenty minutes earlier Mortimer Cleveland had stood in the driving rain and mist surveying his car. It was really cursed bad luck. Two punctures within ten minutes of each other, and here he was, stranded miles from anywhere, in the midst of these bare Wiltshire downs with night coming on, and no prospect of shelter. Serve him right for trying to take a shortcut. If only he had stuck to the main road! Now he was lost on what seemed a mere cart-track, and no idea if there were even a village anywhere near.

  He looked round him perplexedly, and his eye was caught by a gleam of light on the hillside above him. A second later the mist obscured it once more, but, waiting patiently, he presently got a second glimpse of it. After a moment’s cogitation, he left the car and struck up the side of the hill.

  Soon he was out of the mist, and he recognized the light as shining from the lighted window of a small cottage. Here, at any rate, was shelter. Mortimer Cleveland quickened his pace, bending his head to meet the furious onslaught of wind and rain which seemed to be trying its best to drive him back.

  Cleveland was in his own way something of a celebrity though doubtless the majority of folks would have displayed complete ignorance of his name and achievements. He was an authority on mental science and had written two excellent text books on the subconscious. He was also a member of the Psychical Research Society and a student of the occult in so far as it affected his own conclusions and line of research.

  He was by nature peculiarly susceptible to atmosphere, and by deliberate training he had increased his own natural gift. When he had at last reached the cottage and rapped at the door, he was conscious of an excitement, a quickening of interest, as though all his faculties had suddenly been sharpened.

  The murmur of voices within had been plainly audible to him. Upon his knock there came a sudden silence, then the sound of a chair being pushed back along the floor. In another minute the door was flung open by a boy of about fifteen. Cleveland could look straight over his shoulder upon the scene within.

  It reminded him of an interior by some Dutch Master. A round table spread for a meal, a family party sitting round it, one or two flickering candles and the firelight’s glow over all. The father, a big man, sat one side of the table, a little grey woman with a frightened face sat opposite him. Facing the door, looking straight at Cleveland, was a girl. Her startled eyes looked straight into his, her hand with a cup in it was arrested halfway to her lips.

  She was, Cleveland saw at once, a beautiful girl of an extremely uncommon type. Her hair, red gold, stood out round her face like a mist, her eyes, very far apart, were a pure grey. She had the mouth and chin of an early Italian Madonna.

  There was a moment’s dead silence. Then Cleveland stepped into the room and explained his predicament. He brought his trite story to a close, and there was another pause harder to understand. At last, as though with an effort, the father rose.

  ‘Come in, sir—Mr Cleveland, did you say?’

  ‘That is my name,’ said Mortimer, smiling.

  ‘Ah! yes. Come in, Mr Cleveland. Not weather for a dog outside, is it? Come in by the fire. Shut the door, can’t you, Johnnie? Don’t stand there half the night.’

  Cleveland came forward and sat on a wooden stool by the fire. The boy Johnnie shut the door.

  ‘Dinsmead, that’s my name,’ said the other man. He was all geniality now. ‘This is the Missus, and these are my two daughters, Charlotte and Magdalen.’

  For the first time, Cleveland saw the face of the girl who had been sitting with her back to him, and saw that, in a totally different way, she was quite as beautiful as her sister. Very dark, with a face of marble pallor, a delicate aquiline nose, and a grave mouth. It was a kind of frozen beauty, austere and almost forbidding. She acknowledged her father’s introduction by bending her head, and she looked at him with an intent gaze that was searching in character. It was as though she were summing him up, weighing him in the balance of her young judgement.

  ‘A drop of something to drink, eh, Mr Cleveland?’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mortimer. ‘A cup of tea will meet the case admirably.’

  Mr Dinsmead hesitated a minute, then he picked up the five cups, one after another, from the table and emptied them into the slop bowl.

  ‘This tea’s cold,’ he said brusquely. ‘Make us some more, will you, Mother?’

  Mrs Dinsmead got up quickly and hurried off with the teapot. Mortimer had an idea that she was glad to get out of the room.

  The fresh tea soon came, and the unexpected guest was plied with viands.

  Mr Dinsmead talked and talked. He was expansive, genial, loquacious. He told the stranger all about himself. He’d lately retired from the building trade—yes, made quite a good thing of it. He and the Missus thought they’d like a bit of country air—never lived in the country before. Wrong time of year to choose, of course, October and November, but they didn’t want to wait. ‘Life’s uncertain, you know, sir.’ So they had taken this cottage. Eight miles from anywhere, and nineteen miles from anything you could call a town. No, they didn’t complain. The girls found it a bit dull, but he and mother enjoyed the quiet.

  So he talked on, leaving Mortimer almost hypnotized by the easy flow. Nothing here, surely, but rather commonplace domesticity. And yet, at that first glimpse of the interior, he had diagnosed something else, some tension, some strain, emanating from one of those five people—he didn’t know which. Mere foolishness, his nerves were all awry! They were all startled by his sudden appearance—that was all.

  He broached the question of a night’s lodging, and was met with a ready response.

  ‘You’ll have to stop with us, Mr Cleveland. Nothing else for miles around. We can give you a bedroom, and though my pyjamas may be a bit roomy, why, they’re better than nothing, and your own clothes will be dry by morning.’

  ‘It’s very good of you.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said the other genially. ‘As I said just now, one couldn’t turn away a dog on a night like this. Magdalen, Charlotte, go up and see to the room.’

  The two girls left the room. Presently Mortimer heard them moving about overhead.

  ‘I can quite understand that two attractive young ladies like your daughters might find it dull here,’ said Cleveland.

  ‘Good lookers, aren’t they?’ said Mr Dinsmead with fatherly pride. ‘Not much like their mother or myself. We’re a homely pair, but much attached to each other. I’ll tell you that, Mr Cleveland. Eh, Maggie, isn’t that so?’

  Mrs Dinsmead smiled primly. She had started knitting again. The needles clicked busily. She was a fast knitter.

  Presently the room was announced ready, and Mortimer, expressing thanks once more, declared his intention of turning in.

  ‘Did you put a hot-water bo
ttle in the bed?’ demanded Mrs Dinsmead, suddenly mindful of her house pride.

  ‘Yes, Mother, two.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Dinsmead. ‘Go up with him, girls, and see that there’s nothing else he wants.’

  Magdalen preceded him up the staircase, her candle held aloft. Charlotte came behind.

  The room was quite a pleasant one, small and with a sloping roof, but the bed looked comfortable, and the few pieces of somewhat dusty furniture were of old mahogany. A large can of hot water stood in the basin, a pair of pink pyjamas of ample proportions were laid over a chair, and the bed was made and turned down.

  Magdalen went over to the window and saw that the fastenings were secure. Charlotte cast a final eye over the washstand appointments. Then they both lingered by the door.

  ‘Good night, Mr Cleveland. You are sure there is everything?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Miss Magdalen. I am ashamed to have given you both so much trouble. Good night.’

  ‘Good night.’

  They went out, shutting the door behind them. Mortimer Cleveland was alone. He undressed slowly and thoughtfully. When he had donned Mr Dinsmead’s pink pyjamas he gathered up his own wet clothes and put them outside the door as his host had bade him. From downstairs he could hear the rumble of Dinsmead’s voice.

  What a talker the man was! Altogether an odd personality—but indeed there was something odd about the whole family, or was it his imagination?

  He went slowly back into his room and shut the door. He stood by the bed lost in thought. And then he started—

  The mahogany table by the bed was smothered in dust. Written in the dust were three letters, clearly visible, S.O.S.

  Mortimer stared as if he could hardly believe his eyes. It was confirmation of all his vague surmises and forebodings. He was right, then. Something was wrong in this house.

  S.O.S. A call for help. But whose finger had written it in the dust? Magdalen’s or Charlotte’s? They had both stood there, he remembered, for a moment or two, before going out of the room. Whose hand had secretly dropped to the table and traced out those three letters?