Out of the Past

CHAPTER 22

Mrs. Rogers got down on her hands and knees at Cliff Edge and started to do the stairs. Properly ashamed she’d be if anyone took a good look at them, for they hadn’t been done all the week, and no good saying there wasn’t sand brought in off the beach, because there was. It just wasn’t possible to get round to doing them every day, not with all the extra work there was in the house, but Monday, Wednesday, and Friday she did reckon to do them regular. Well, Monday was all right, and she was all set to get on with them on Wednesday, only Mrs. Beeston called her off to give Major Hardwick’s dressing-room a thorough turn-out, and then it was one thing after another, and the day so hot you couldn’t rightly be expected to hurry, so she left the stairs to the last, and blessed if Mrs. Beeston didn’t go and call her off again-Lady Castleton’s white shoes to be cleaned, “And very particular about them she is too.” So the stairs were left till Thursday morning.

And come Thursday morning, Mr. Alan Field had been murdered, and there was the police all over the place. It was as much as you could do to get into the bedrooms, what with poor Mrs. Field crying in hers, and Lady Castleton’s head that bad she wanted the curtains drawn and a tray brought up. Properly upset, the whole lot of them, and no wonder, for if he wasn’t murdered in the house, their own beach hut was as near as makes no difference. And how he got the key, seeing it was kept locked-could anyone tell her that? And what did he want with it anyway? Looked as if he was going to meet someone there to her way of thinking, and if she had her guess who it would be, well, she knew the name that would come into her mind. Married or single, you could pick out the flighty ones, and flighty was what that Mrs. Maybury was, you couldn’t get from it.

The stairs didn’t get done on the Friday neither. She was all set to do them, when that London police officer come along with his B.B.C. voice and the kind of way with him you’d think he was someone. And then it was Wednesday all over again. He’d got to see everyone, and not what she was accustomed to, being interviewed by the police about a murder and lucky if you didn’t get your name in the papers, and Major Hardwick saying perhaps better keep off the stairs while there’s all this coming and going. Well, you can’t keep off stairs and do them at the same time, so they just hadn’t got done. But she was going to do them now. No matter what anyone said or did-and it looked as if there was a regular spite against it-she wasn’t going to let them go dirty over the week-end. A fair disgrace, that’s what they were. She’d be ashamed for anyone to see them and know she worked here.

She went down on her knees and began to brush. Dust swished into the pan. And then she saw the stain. The stair carpet was a handsome one. It had a fawn and blue pattern on a deep crimson ground. What caught Mrs. Rogers’ eye was a piece of the tread where it looked as if the pattern had slipped. There was an extra patch of the dark red. She looked at it, frowning, and brushed again. The colour stayed. She went down a step. All right there. She brushed with vigour and went down again, and there was another of those dark brownish marks. Something came over her, she didn’t quite know what. She had had a herring for her breakfast, and she had a feeling that perhaps it wasn’t going to agree with her. She got to her feet and fetched a wet cloth from the housemaid’s cupboard, and as she went and came again she took care that she didn’t step upon the carpet. She hadn’t begun to think why she was doing any of these things, she just did them.

When she came back to where she had left her dustpan and brush she didn’t kneel down. She bent over and rubbed at the brownish mark with the cloth which she had in her hand, and when she saw the stain which came away on the wet linen she let out a scream which was heard by everyone in the house.

The time being round about half past eight in the morning, most of them were not yet fully dressed. Colonel Trevor put his head round the bathroom door. He had been towelling his hair and it stood wildly on end. Pippa Maybury ran out to the middle of the landing in one of those filmy undergarments which emphasize rather than conceal. Adela Castleton was wearing a chinstrap and a kind of mask of some cosmetic preparation which gave her a horrid resemblance to a corpse. James Hardwick was half way through his shaving. Esther Field had snatched up her dressing-gown, but she had not put it on. Cami-knickers of a solid character fitted closely over corsets that were doing their best. Her hair was in curlers. She clutched the voluminous blue draperies which she made no attempt to draw round her. Carmona came out of her room, slipping her dress over her head.

Since the hall door stood wide to air the house, and the whole of the stair was plainly visible from the threshold, it was this astonishing scene which met the eyes of Colonel Anthony.

As Mr. and Mrs. Beeston came running from the baize door which led from the back premises, Mrs. Rogers screamed again. She stared at the reddened cloth in her hand and went on screaming.

Colonel Anthony said, “God bless my soul!” and stepped briskly into the hall. He might be an old man, but he hoped he could still tackle an emergency. A corpse at cockcrow in a neighbour’s beach hut, a charwoman in hysterics on a neighbour’s stair-he could take them all in his stride and be damned to them. He had, as a matter of fact, dropped in to have a word with Hardwick on the subject of the corpse. Very odd thing-very peculiar thing. He felt that they should have a friendly chat about it. Since he was in the habit of rising at six himself, it did not occur to him that the hour was an unseasonable one. Bare-headed, his spare trim figure comfortably arrayed in what survived of a tropical outfit, he strode across the hall and up the stairs. He reached the screaming Mrs. Rogers a bare moment after James Hardwick, who had paused to snatch a towel and wipe some of the lather from his face.

“Mrs. Rogers!” said James. And, “Good God, woman, whaf’s the matter?” said Colonel Anthony.

Mrs. Rogers could find no breath for words. With her left hand she clutched James Hardwick’s arm, and with her right she held out the blood-stained cloth. Because there was no doubt now as to the nature of the stain. The red-brown blotches on the carpet, the red-brown streaks on the linen cloth, were quite unmistakably and dreadfully blood. She was now sobbing continuously, and between her sobs she pointed and stumbled into speech.

“There-on the carpet-there! And I didn’t know-I didn’t know! I wouldn’t have touched it! It’s blood!”

Carmona came down, white-faced, to put a hand upon her shoulder. She couldn’t imagine what Colonel Anthony was doing on their stairs, but here he was, and he would have to be reckoned with. She had a dreadful picture in her mind of Pippa coming up from the hall in the middle of Wednesday night, the front of her dress all wet through where she had knelt in Alan’s blood.

Mrs. Rogers jerked and heaved under her touch.

“Cold water!” said Colonel Anthony in a loud military voice. “A cold wet spongeful of water! One of you up there- and be quick about it!”

Mrs. Anthony had always responded immediately to cold water down the back of the neck. During their early married life she had been regrettably prone to hysterics, but the persistent application of a cold sponge had brought about a permanent cure. Mrs. Rogers didn’t wait to see if it would cure her. She wrenched away from his restraining hand and ran down into the hall, where she cast herself weeping on Mrs. Beeston and was presently led away to be solaced with cups of tea.

The remainder of the party stood where they were. They stood looking at the cloth which Mrs. Rogers had dropped. Maisie Trevor, in a becoming lace cap and a frilly dressing-gown which she had waited to put on, now emerged, enquiring vaguely whether the house was on fire.

“Most inconvenient in such hot weather. Or has that woman hurt herself? I thought I heard her scream.”

Colonel Anthony made a sound which may be written “Tchah!” and continued the highly unwelcome remarks he had been making to the Hardwicks.

“You see, my dear fellow, there’s no doubt about it-it’s blood. A spot here, and another on this lower step-and oh, several lower down. There, Mrs. Hardwick-look for yourself! A most extraordinary thing, you know-really a most extraordinary thing. You know, Hardwick, in all the circumstances, and however unpleasant you may feel it, I cannot see that you have any alternative but to report the matter to the police.”

Carmona turned her head. She was standing on the fifth or sixth step from the top. She turned her head and looked up at Pippa Maybury.

Pippa had not moved. She had run out on to the landing almost as far as the head of the stairs. She had been brushing her hair. It stood out in clouds about her head, as light as thistledown and almost as pale. There was no colour in her face. It was as white as milk-as white as her throat, her shoulders, as her whole body except where the pale film of chiffon covered it. Every line of her slim figure showed through the film. Carmona went to her and touched her on the arm.

“We had all better finish dressing. Come and put something on,” she said.

But Pippa didn’t move. She looked down over the stairs. She looked at the wet patch on the step which Mrs. Rogers had rubbed. She looked at the stained white cloth which lay there. And she said in a voice which everyone could hear,

“That’s blood, isn’t it-blood? It must have come off my dress when I came upstairs.”

Colonel Anthony said, “God bless my soul!”