The Last Seance Page 4

  The faces of the two girls came up before him. Magdalen’s, dark and aloof, and Charlotte’s, as he had seen it first, wide-eyed, startled, with an unfathomable something in her glance . . .

  He went again to the door and opened it. The boom of Mr Dinsmead’s voice was no longer to be heard. The house was silent.

  He thought to himself.

  ‘I can do nothing tonight. Tomorrow—well. We shall see.’

  Cleveland woke early. He went down through the living-room, and out into the garden. The morning was fresh and beautiful after the rain. Someone else was up early, too. At the bottom of the garden, Charlotte was leaning on the fence staring out over the Downs. His pulse quickened a little as he went down to join her. All along he had been secretly convinced that it was Charlotte who had written the message. As he came up to her, she turned and wished him ‘Good morning’. Her eyes were direct and childlike, with no hint of a secret understanding in them.

  ‘A very good morning,’ said Mortimer, smiling. ‘The weather this morning is a contrast to last night.’

  ‘It is indeed.’

  Mortimer broke off a twig from a tree near by. With it he began idly to draw on the smooth, sandy patch at his feet. He traced an S, then an O, then an S, watching the girl narrowly as he did so. But again he could detect no gleam of comprehension.

  ‘Do you know what these letters represent?’ he said abruptly.

  Charlotte frowned a little. ‘Aren’t they what boats—liners—send out when they are in distress?’ she asked.

  Mortimer nodded. ‘Someone wrote that on the table by my bed last night,’ he said quietly. ‘I thought perhaps you might have done so.’

  She looked at him in wide-eyed astonishment.

  ‘I? Oh, no.’

  He was wrong then. A sharp pang of disappointment shot through him. He had been so sure—so sure. It was not often that his intuitions led him astray.

  ‘You are quite certain?’ he persisted.

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  They turned and went slowly together toward the house. Charlotte seemed preoccupied about something. She replied at random to the few observations he made. Suddenly she burst out in a low, hurried voice:

  ‘It—it’s odd your asking about those letters, S.O.S.; I didn’t write them, of course, but—I so easily might have done.’

  He stopped and looked at her, and she went on quickly:

  ‘It sounds silly, I know, but I have been so frightened, so dreadfully frightened, and when you came in last night, it seemed like an—an answer to something.’

  ‘What are you frightened of?’ he asked quickly.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know.’

  ‘I think—it’s the house. Ever since we came here it has been growing and growing. Everyone seems different somehow. Father, Mother, and Magdalen, they all seem different.’

  Mortimer did not speak at once, and before he could do so, Charlotte went on again.

  ‘You know this house is supposed to be haunted?’

  ‘What?’ All his interest was quickened.

  ‘Yes, a man murdered his wife in it, oh, some years ago now. We only found out about it after we got here. Father says ghosts are all nonsense, but I—don’t know.’

  Mortimer was thinking rapidly.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said in a businesslike tone, ‘was this murder committed in the room I had last night?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ said Charlotte.

  ‘I wonder now,’ said Mortimer half to himself, ‘yes, that may be it.’

  Charlotte looked at him uncomprehendingly.

  ‘Miss Dinsmead,’ said Mortimer, gently, ‘have you ever had any reason to believe that you are mediumistic?’

  She stared at him.

  ‘I think you know that you did write S.O.S. last night,’ he said quietly. ‘Oh! quite unconsciously, of course. A crime stains the atmosphere, so to speak. A sensitive mind such as yours might be acted upon in such a manner. You have been reproducing the sensations and impressions of the victim. Many years ago she may have written S.O.S. on that table, and you unconsciously reproduced her act last night.’

  Charlotte’s face brightened.

  ‘I see,’ she said. ‘You think that is the explanation?’

  A voice called her from the house, and she went in, leaving Mortimer to pace up and down the garden path. Was he satisfied with his own explanation? Did it cover the facts as he knew them? Did it account for the tension he had felt on entering the house last night?

  Perhaps, and yet he still had the odd feeling that his sudden appearance had produced something very like consternation, he thought to himself:

  ‘I must not be carried away by the psychic explanation, it might account for Charlotte—but not for the others. My coming has upset them horribly, all except Johnnie. What- ever it is that’s the matter, Johnnie is out of it.’

  He was quite sure of that, strange that he should be so positive, but there it was.

  At that minute, Johnnie himself came out of the cottage and approached the guest.

  ‘Breakfast’s ready,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Will you come in?’

  Mortimer noticed that the lad’s fingers were much stained. Johnnie felt his glance and laughed ruefully.

  ‘I’m always messing about with chemicals, you know,’ he said. ‘It makes Dad awfully wild sometimes. He wants me to go into building, but I want to do chemistry and research work.’

  Mr Dinsmead appeared at the window ahead of them, broad, jovial, smiling, and at the sight of him all Mortimer’s distrust and antagonism re-awakened. Mrs Dinsmead was already seated at the table. She wished him ‘Good morning’ in her colourless voice, and he had again the impression that for some reason or other, she was afraid of him.

  Magdalen came in last. She gave him a brief nod and took her seat opposite him.

  ‘Did you sleep well?’ she asked abruptly. ‘Was your bed comfortable?’

  She looked at him very earnestly, and when he replied courteously in the affirmative he noticed something very like a flicker of disappointment pass over her face. What had she expected him to say, he wondered?

  He turned to his host.

  ‘This lad of yours is interested in chemistry, it seems!’ he said pleasantly.

  There was a crash. Mrs Dinsmead had dropped her tea cup.

  ‘Now then, Maggie, now then,’ said her husband.

  It seemed to Mortimer that there was admonition, warning, in his voice. He turned to his guest and spoke fluently of the advantages of the building trade, and of not letting young boys get above themselves.

  After breakfast, he went out in the garden by himself, and smoked. The time was clearly at hand when he must leave the cottage. A night’s shelter was one thing, to prolong it was difficult without an excuse, and what possible excuse could he offer? And yet he was singularly loath to depart.

  Turning the thing over and over in his mind, he took a path that led round the other side of the house. His shoes were soled with crepe rubber, and made little or no noise. He was passing the kitchen window, when he heard Dinsmead’s words from within, and the words attracted his attention immediately.

  ‘It’s a fair lump of money, it is.’

  Mrs Dinsmead’s voice answered. It was too faint in tone for Mortimer to hear the words, but Dinsmead replied:

  ‘Nigh on £60,000, the lawyer said.’

  Mortimer had no intention of eavesdropping, but he retraced his steps very thoughtfully. The mention of money seemed to crystallize the situation. Somewhere or other there was a question of £60,000—it made the thing clearer—and uglier.

  Magdalen came out of the house, but her father’s voice called her almost immediately, and she went in again. Presently Dinsmead himself joined his guest.

  ‘Rare good morning,’ he said genially. ‘I hope your car will be none the worse.’

  ‘Wants to find out when I’m going,’ thought Mortimer to himself.

  Aloud he t
hanked Mr Dinsmead once more for his timely hospitality.

  ‘Not at all, not at all,’ said the other.

  Magdalen and Charlotte came together out of the house, and strolled arm in arm to a rustic seat some little distance away. The dark head and the golden one made a pleasant contrast together, and on an impulse Mortimer said:

  ‘Your daughters are very unalike, Mr Dinsmead.’

  The other who was just lighting his pipe gave a sharp jerk of the wrist, and dropped the match.

  ‘Do you think so?’ he asked. ‘Yes, well, I suppose they are.’

  Mortimer had a flash of intuition.

  ‘But of course they are not both your daughters,’ he said smoothly.

  He saw Dinsmead look at him, hesitate for a moment, and then make up his mind.

  ‘That’s very clever of you, sir,’ he said. ‘No, one of them is a foundling, we took her in as a baby and we have brought her up as our own. She herself has not the least idea of the truth, but she’ll have to know soon.’ He sighed.

  ‘A question of inheritance?’ suggested Mortimer quietly.

  The other flashed a suspicious look at him.

  Then he seemed to decide that frankness was best; his manner became almost aggressively frank and open.

  ‘It’s odd that you should say that, sir.’

  ‘A case of telepathy, eh?’ said Mortimer, and smiled.

  ‘It is like this, sir. We took her in to oblige the mother—for a consideration, as at the time I was just starting in the building trade. A few months ago I noticed an advertisement in the papers, and it seemed to me that the child in question must be our Magdalen. I went to see the lawyers, and there has been a lot of talk one way and another. They were suspicious—naturally, as you might say, but everything is cleared up now. I am taking the girl herself to London next week, she doesn’t know anything about it so far. Her father, it seems, was one of these rich Jewish gentlemen. He only learnt of the child’s existence a few months before his death. He set agents on to try and trace her, and left all his money to her when she should be found.’

  Mortimer listened with close attention. He had no reason to doubt Mr Dinsmead’s story. It explained Magdalen’s dark beauty; explained too, perhaps, her aloof manner. Nevertheless, though the story itself might be true, something lay behind it undivulged.

  But Mortimer had no intention of rousing the other’s suspicions. Instead, he must go out of his way to allay them.

  ‘A very interesting story, Mr Dinsmead,’ he said. ‘I congratulate Miss Magdalen. An heiress and a beauty, she has a great time ahead of her.’

  ‘She has that,’ agreed her father warmly, ‘and she’s a rare good girl too, Mr Cleveland.’

  There was every evidence of hearty warmth in his manner.

  ‘Well,’ said Mortimer, ‘I must be pushing along now, I suppose. I have got to thank you once more, Mr Dinsmead, for your singularly well-timed hospitality.’

  Accompanied by his host, he went into the house to bid farewell to Mrs Dinsmead. She was standing by the window with her back to them, and did not hear them enter. At her husband’s jovial: ‘Here’s Mr Cleveland come to say goodbye,’ she started nervously and swung round, dropping something which she held in her hand. Mortimer picked it up for her. It was a miniature of Charlotte done in the style of some twenty-five years ago. Mortimer repeated to her the thanks he had already proffered to her husband. He noticed again her look of fear and the furtive glances that she shot at him from beneath her eyelids.

  The two girls were not in evidence, but it was not part of Mortimer’s policy to seem anxious to see them; also he had his own idea, which was shortly to prove correct.

  He had gone about half a mile from the house on his way down to where he had left the car the night before, when the bushes on the side of the path were thrust aside, and Magdalen came out on the track ahead of him.

  ‘I had to see you,’ she said.

  ‘I expected you,’ said Mortimer. ‘It was you who wrote S.O.S. on the table in my room last night, wasn’t it?’

  Magdalen nodded.

  ‘Why?’ asked Mortimer gently.

  The girl turned aside and began pulling off leaves from a bush.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘honestly, I don’t know.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Mortimer.

  Magdalen drew a deep breath.

  ‘I am a practical person,’ she said, ‘not the kind of person who imagines things or fancies them. You, I know, believe in ghosts and spirits. I don’t, and when I tell you that there is something very wrong in that house,’ she pointed up the hill, ‘I mean that there is something tangibly wrong; it’s not just an echo of the past. It has been coming on ever since we’ve been there. Every day it grows worse, Father is different, Mother is different, Charlotte is different.’

  Mortimer interposed. ‘Is Johnnie different?’ he asked.

  Magdalen looked at him, a dawning appreciation in her eyes. ‘No,’ she said, ‘now I come to think of it, Johnnie is not different. He is the only one who’s—who’s untouched by it all. He was untouched last night at tea.’

  ‘And you?’ asked Mortimer.

  ‘I was afraid—horribly afraid, just like a child—without knowing what it was I was afraid of. And father was—queer, there’s no other word for it, queer. He talked about miracles and then I prayed—actually prayed for a miracle, and you knocked on the door.’

  She stopped abruptly, staring at him.

  ‘I seem mad to you, I suppose,’ she said defiantly.

  ‘No,’ said Mortimer, ‘on the contrary you seem extremely sane. All sane people have a premonition of danger if it is near them.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ said Magdalen. ‘I was not afraid—for myself.’

  ‘For whom, then?’

  But again Magdalen shook her head in a puzzled fashion. ‘I don’t know.’

  She went on:

  ‘I wrote S.O.S. on an impulse. I had an idea—absurd, no doubt, that they would not let me speak to you—the rest of them, I mean. I don’t know what it was I meant to ask you to do. I don’t know now.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Mortimer. ‘I shall do it.’

  ‘What can you do?’

  Mortimer smiled a little.

  ‘I can think.’

  She looked at him doubtfully.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mortimer, ‘a lot can be done that way, more than you would ever believe. Tell me, was there any chance word or phrase that attracted your attention just before the meal last evening?’

  Magdalen frowned. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘At least I heard Father say something to Mother about Charlotte being the living image of her, and he laughed in a very queer way, but—there’s nothing odd in that, is there?’

  ‘No,’ said Mortimer slowly, ‘except that Charlotte is not like your mother.’

  He remained lost in thought for a minute or two, then looked up to find Magdalen watching him uncertainly.

  ‘Go home, child,’ he said, ‘and don’t worry; leave it in my hands.’

  She went obediently up the path towards the cottage. Mortimer strolled on a little further, then threw himself down on the green turf. He closed his eyes, detached himself from conscious thought or effort, and let a series of pictures flit at will across his mind.

  Johnnie! He always came back to Johnnie. Johnnie, completely innocent, utterly free from all the network of suspicion and intrigue, but nevertheless the pivot round which everything turned. He remembered the crash of Mrs Dinsmead’s cup on her saucer at breakfast that morning. What had caused her agitation? A chance reference on his part to the lad’s fondness for chemicals? At the moment he had not been conscious of Mr Dinsmead, but he saw him now clearly, as he sat, his teacup poised halfway to his lips.

  That took him back to Charlotte, as he had seen her when the door opened last night. She had sat staring at him over the rim of her teacup. And swiftly on that followed another memory. Mr Dinsmead emptying teacups one after the othe
r, and saying ‘this tea is cold’.

  He remembered the steam that went up. Surely the tea had not been so very cold after all?

  Something began to stir in his brain. A memory of something read not so very long ago, within a month perhaps. Some account of a whole family poisoned by a lad’s carelessness. A packet of arsenic left in the larder had all dripped through on the bread below. He had read it in the paper. Probably Mr Dinsmead had read it too.

  Things began to grow clearer . . .

  Half an hour later, Mortimer Cleveland rose briskly to his feet.

  It was evening once more in the cottage. The eggs were poached tonight and there was a tin of brawn. Presently Mrs Dinsmead came in from the kitchen bearing the big teapot. The family took their places round the table.

  ‘A contrast to last night’s weather,’ said Mrs Dinsmead, glancing towards the window.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Dinsmead, ‘it’s so still tonight that you could hear a pin drop. Now then, Mother, pour out, will you?’

  Mrs Dinsmead filled the cups and handed them round the table. Then, as she put the teapot down, she gave a sudden little cry and pressed her hand to her heart. Mr Dinsmead swung round his chair, following the direction of her terrified eyes. Mortimer Cleveland was standing in the doorway.

  He came forward. His manner was pleasant and apologetic.

  ‘I’m afraid I startled you,’ he said. ‘I had to come back for something.’

  ‘Back for something,’ cried Mr Dinsmead. His face was purple, his veins swelling. ‘Back for what, I should like to know?’

  ‘Some tea,’ said Mortimer.

  With a swift gesture he took something from his pocket, and, taking up one of the teacups from the table, emptied some of its contents into a little test-tube he held in his left hand.

  ‘What—what are you doing?’ gasped Mr Dinsmead. His face had gone chalky-white, the purple dying out as if by magic. Mrs Dinsmead gave a thin, high, frightened cry.

  ‘You read the papers, I think, Mr Dinsmead? I am sure you do. Sometimes one reads accounts of a whole family being poisoned, some of them recover, some do not. In this case, one would not. The first explanation would be the tinned brawn you were eating, but supposing the doctor to be a suspicious man, not easily taken in by the tinned food theory? There is a packet of arsenic in your larder. On the shelf below it is a packet of tea. There is a convenient hole in the top shelf, what more natural to suppose then that the arsenic found its way into the tea by accident? Your son Johnnie might be blamed for carelessness, nothing more.’