The Catherine Wheel

CHAPTER 15

Eily slipped in on the far side of the big bed and felt warmth and safety close round her. She said, “Thank you, Miss Heron,” on a soft breath, and heard a laugh from the neighbouring pillow.

“Oh, drop the Miss Heron! We’ll be cousins when you marry John Higgins.”

Jane lay there thinking how odd it all was. She knew the moment when Eily fell asleep, but she herself was broad awake. If you scare your first sleep away, it doesn’t readily come back. Her mind went over all the things that had happened since they came to the Catherine-Wheel-the old house, the dark passage to the shore, Al Miller’s drunken laugh, Eily, Luke White nursing a bleeding hand, Jeremy kissing her in the little room half way down the stairs. They came back as thoughts, but the thoughts changed to pictures, and the pictures went with her over the edge of sleep. In the last of them she was out of bed standing at the door of the room. The door was open. She looked into the passage, and it was empty-empty and dark. But there was a light at the end where the stair went down. She went along as far as the landing and looked over the stair. The door of the little room half way down was open and someone was coming out. It was Jeremy. That is what she thought when she saw him. And then she wasn’t sure. His hair was much longer, and he looked so ill. He had on a big loose coat and a high dark stock. His hands were pressed hard against his side, the blood ran between his fingers. It wasn’t Jeremy- it couldn’t be Jeremy. He came out of the room and looked up at her standing there. She knew that he was going to die. She screamed, and the scream waked her.

She was sitting up in the big bed in the dark with her hand at her throat and the scream ringing in her ears. For a moment the dream hung there-Jeremy looking up at her, and the blood running down-and the scream. It was her own scream. Or was it? The dream went back into the place from which it had come, and she wasn’t sure. She remembered Eily. If she had screamed like that, why hadn’t Eily waked?

She stretched out a hand across the bed to feel for Eily, and she wasn’t there. From the time of her waking to that time was a matter of seconds. It takes too long to tell. To live through, it had taken no longer than to lift a hand and let it fall again. In the moment she knew Eily wasn’t there she heard the scream again. It came from somewhere in the house.

Jane was at the door before she knew how she had got there. The passage stretched away dark to the landing-dark and empty. It was just like her dream, except that in her dream she hadn’t known whether it was hot or cold, and now she was so cold that she could hardly get her breath. Her heart thumped and her breath caught in her throat. She must have picked up her dressing-gown, because she had it clutched up against her. She must have caught it up from the foot of the bed without thinking what she did. She huddled it about her shoulders, and heard the house wake round her. A bed-spring creaked, doors opened. Miss Silver came out of her room fastening the cord of her crimson dressing-gown.

Jane ran past her to the head of the stairs and halted. It was just as if she had gone back again into her dream, because the door of the little room half way down was open and Jeremy was coming out. Terror went over her like a cold breath. And then it was gone, and the dream with it. This was Jeremy, very much alive and on the spot, in blue and white pyjamas, with his hair standing on end.

Jane ran down the half flight and caught his arm. She said, “Jeremy!”-or she began saying it and then stuck. With her lips parted and half his name frozen on them, she looked down into the hall. There were three people there. One of them lay sprawling in the middle of the floor. He lay on his face as if he had tripped on the bottom step and pitched forward with his arms spread wide. There was a handkerchief twisted round his left hand. He was in his stocking feet, but he wore dark trousers and a grey linen coat. The rough horn handle of a knife stuck up under his left shoulder. The yellow light of the hanging lamp showed all the grey linen on that side horribly stained. The lamp hung on three brass chains and it had been turned low, but it showed Luke White lying there dead with a knife in his back.

It might have been Florence Duke who had screamed. She stood just past the newel of the stair where the passage went on to the baize door. She was dressed as she had been at dinner. The scarlet dress with its flaring pink and green pattern gave her a most ghastly look. The old make-up put on hours ago stood out from the pallor of her face with shocking effect. She held her hands a little away from her and stared at them. The fingers were red.

Eily was on the bottom step of the stair, crouched down with her face in her hands.

In the moment that it took Jane and Jeremy to see all this Miss Silver passed them. She went straight down into the hall and touched one of those outflung wrists. As she straightened up again, Fogarty Castell came running down, dishevelled past belief, red pyjama jacket open at the neck, plaid dressing-gown flapping. At once the whole frozen scene broke up. His noisy agitation swamped it. Ejaculations, protests, asseverations set the air throbbing.

“My poor Luke! What has he done that this should happen to him? Who is the assassin? And why should it happen to me, in my house-my respectable house? And Mr. Taverner here-and the party-the reunion! What a reunion! We must have a doctor-why does nobody send for a doctor? Perhaps he may be restored-perhaps he may speak-if it is only one word-if it is only the name of the murderer who ruins me by arranging an assassination in my house! My poor Luke- such a waiter-such a hand with a cocktail!” He ran his fingers through his already distracted hair and produced an epitaph in a single word-“Unreplaceable!”

It was at this moment that Geoffrey Taverner made his appearance, an unruffled figure, his grey dressing-gown neatly fastened, his hair immaculate. The horn-rimmed glasses had been removed and left behind in his room. They marked the place at which he had been interrupted in his reading of Three Corpses and a Coffin.

Jacob Taverner followed a step or two behind, overcoated and muffled as if about to take the road, his face puckered up with cold. Or perhaps it wasn’t cold, but something else which gave him that yellow tinge under the tan. He came round the bend of the stair on Geoffrey Taverner’s heels, and heard Miss Silver say,

“He is quite dead, Mr. Castell. The police must be rung up immediately.”