The Girl in the Cellar

CHAPTER 48

Anne felt her head go round and clear. She knew everything now. She had remembered everything. She was thankful for the chair which had been handy. She might have fallen. She had not fallen. The chair held her up. Her head would settle in a moment. Ross didn’t look at her or speak to her. He was ashamed. And the other man had gone to the fire, and stood with his back to her and prodded sausages with a fork.

She remembered everything with astonishing clarity. Coming to the hotel. The chambermaid who came to her room-a pale girl, rather pretty. She remembered what she had for dinner, and that she had been tired and had gone up early to bed, but she had not slept well. It had been a curious night. She couldn’t remember one just like it-rushing images, dreams that came and went, and went and came again. And then the morning-the girl. It was all quite clear in her mind. She came into the dining-room for breakfast and looked for a table, and there over by the window there was a table for two, and there was a girl sitting at it. There was something in her face like a lost kitten. Anne found herself walking towards her. She pulled out the other chair and said, ‘Do you mind if I sit here?’ and the girl’s face had lighted up, ‘Yes, do,’ she said. ‘Oh, do!’

It was extraordinary how clear it all was. The girl who was dead in the cellar was alive again. Her voice rang in Anne’s ears-a pretty voice with something that was not quite an accent. She got up from her chair and crossed to the door. She couldn’t sit here and remember-she couldn’t

Just as she reached the door Ross turned round. He said,

‘Where are you off to? Breakfast will be ready in five minutes.’ Anne answered him steadily. ‘I won’t be long. Don’t wait.’ She heard the other man laugh as she went out of the door and up the stairs.

In her room she sat down on her bed and went on remembering. That poor child-her ignorance, her folly, and the last glimpse she had of her lying dead at the foot of the steps in a strange house. She had poured the whole thing out. ‘My name is Anne Borrowdale. Well, I don’t know whether it is or not. Perhaps it’s Anne Fancourt. That sounds funny, doesn’t it?’ And she had laughed as if it was all a joke. And then more of that tumbling speech with the something that was not quite an accent running through it. ‘You see, I don’t know whether I’m really married or not. My father, he was killed.’ Her voice went suddenly into tears and she put out her two hands to clasp Anne’s strange ones that didn’t seem strange any longer. ‘They were blasting, and a great stone hit him. Jim said he had run forward. I don’t know how it happened, but it did happen. The stone crushed him, and when he knew that he would die he wanted Jim to marry me, and the priest came and we were married. And he died.’ Her tone lightened. It flung away the past. ‘And the aeroplane came down.’ She clapped her hands together. ‘An American plane that was off its course and must come down. We watched it come nearer and nearer. You don’t know how exciting it was! And when it was down there were two young men in it, and Jim asked them would they take me with them. At first they said no, and then they said yes. That was after Jim talked to them. He told them he had married me, and that it was a matter of life and death to get me out of the country-a matter of life or death. The Russians are very particular about their nationals not going to other countries, and a Russian woman’s child is a Russian, no matter what the father may be. They would not let me go, and Jim had promised my father.’ The two hands were clapped together and she concluded, ‘So you see he persuaded those Americans to bring me with them. And they did.’

Anne remembered her own puzzled frown. She could hear the tone of voice in which she said, ‘And what are you doing here?’ The girl laughed. It came back to Anne how easily she had laughed, and come near to weeping. Now it was the turn of laughter. ‘Well, I thought’-her face screwed up in the funniest way like a little cat-‘I thought all my life I will have to do what Jim says. He is my husband. But I have money here-a lot of money from my father. Why should I not spend a little? Why must I go to that parlourmaid’s house? And I think I will not go. I will go to the hotel my father always talked about, and I will amuse myself. I am a married lady- it is all quite proper. So I post Jim’s letter to his Aunt Lilian who lives at Chantreys, Haleycott. And then I think what I will do to amuse myself.’

That was how it had gone-gay, inconsequent chatter-in the middle of it all something struggling up in her own mind, until quite suddenly she came out with ‘What did you say your father’s name was?’

The girl stopped.

‘My father?’ Tragedy swept across her mood. ‘Oh, my poor father-such a terrible way to die! What did you want to know?’

‘His name.’

‘I told you-Borrowdale.’

‘His Christian names?’ She could see the girl’s sudden suspicious state.

She said, ‘Why?’

And her own answer, ‘Because I think-I think we may be related.’

‘Oh-’

‘I shall know if you tell me his names.’

‘ Leonard Maurice Forest Borrowdale.’

Anne said, ‘I am Anne Forest. I think we are cousins.’

It hurt still-the girl’s pleasure, her excitement. She was like flashing water-there were tears-smiles. It all hurt too much to remember.

From down below came the sound of a man’s footsteps.

‘What are you doing? Aren’t you coming down to breakfast?’

It went through her mind that they didn’t trust her. When you had done murder you couldn’t trust anyone. That was one of the ways in which evil punished itself. She called back, ‘I will come when I have finished what I am doing.’ She was remembering. When she had finished remembering she would go down. She couldn’t remember under the eyes of those two men. Were they both murderers? She didn’t know.

Ross called back and said, ‘Your bacon will be cold.’ Then he went into the dining-room. But he didn’t shut the door when he went in. He left it open so that he would hear when she came down the stairs. They didn’t trust her. There was no reason why they should trust her. There was murder between them. She went on thinking. The girl had stopped her excited chatter. A look of guilt came over her face. She put a hand to her lips, looked at Anne, and said, ‘Oh-’

‘What is it?’

‘I forgot’

‘What did you forget?’

‘I wasn’t to tell anyone-I wasn’t to speak of anything. What shall I do?’

Anne remembered that she had laughed, and she had said quite lightly, ‘Well, it’s too late now. And if we’re cousins it doesn’t matter.’

How had they known she would be a danger to them? It wasn’t a thing you could guess. How did they know? The poor child would have talked to anyone. She was utterly innocent, utterly unprotected. But how did they know that she needed protection?

And then there was the child telling her-‘I am married you know, but here I thought I would be Miss Borrowdale.’ She went into a little rippling laugh. ‘So I wrote all my names in the register-I wrote Anne Forest Borrowdale. It looked nice!’ And she laughed again.

It was heartbreaking to remember, but she had to go on. Anne Forest Borrowdale-she saw it all in one horrid searing flash. Ross Forest Cranston-her cousin-this poor girl’s cousin. Her own name- Anne Forest. The three names wove together in her mind. For a moment she lost herself in the giddy whirl of realisation. Then it all cleared to a deadly cold certainty. She sat in that cold certainty and looked at the facts that faced her there.

She was coming home after three years’ absence. She had written to say she was coming. She had written to the hotel and to her cousins the Cranstons-to Ross’s cousins. So he had known. She didn’t know where the other man came in- the man Maxton. He would be someone Ross knew. He was evil through and through. And Ross? She didn’t know. He had always been difficult. Aunt Letty had troubled about him a lot-Aunt Letty who would have been heartbroken if she had lived. Aunt Letty hadn’t lived. For the first time the dreadful idea came to her that Ross might know why Aunt Letty had died-and how. And she knew when the thought came that it had been there for a long, long time. She wouldn’t look at it, she wouldn’t think of it. She had put it away, but now it came out of the shadows in her mind and stood there plain to see. She made herself look at it, and then turned back.

She was herself, asking the little cousin how she had come to the Hood, and she had the answer bubbling up between tears and laughter. ‘Oh, my father-he always spoke of the Hood. We made such wonderful plans, he and I. How we would come to London and stay at the Hood, and go to the theatre, and see everything!’

She had it all. The only part she didn’t know was the end. She didn’t know how they had persuaded her little cousin to steal a march on her and go round to the house where she had been found dead. She didn’t know why her death had been decided on. She could guess that it had been precipitated by her own arrival. Only why-why-why?

She went over what she had done herself on that morning. She had been out all day-to the bank, shopping. And then she remembered that she had been very tired, so tired that she had… What had she done? Try as she would, she couldn’t remember.

And then quite suddenly it was there, just when she turned away and thought, ‘I won’t go on. It doesn’t matter.’ She saw herself walking down the passage, putting in the key, and opening the door. And there was the note on her dressing-table: ‘I’m going round to see someone. I’m going with-I won’t say who. I’ll tell you in the evening. It’s all very exciting. I’m going to number 109 Greyville Road. Anne.’ She saw herself reading it through-reading it three times. The note must have been given to that nice girl the chamber-maid. She saw herself standing, turning the note round, and then seeing the little squiggle of writing in the corner: ‘Perhaps I’ll tell you now. One of them is a man called Maxton. I don’t like him very much. The other is our cousin Ross Cranston. I’m meeting them there.’

She had met them, and she had met her death. She saw herself in front of the dressing-table, reading the words.

What had she done with the letter? She remembered putting it somewhere. Where? It wasn’t on her after her visit to Greyville Road. But she had dropped her bag there. That was how they had known that she had followed Anne. That was how Maxton had come on her track to Haleycott. It wasn’t in the bag that she had dropped, she felt quite sure about that. And then she remembered that she had put the letter into her handkerchief-case. She didn’t know why she had done that, but she had. She could see herself standing there with the drawer open, putting the letter away. She didn’t know why she had put it away so carefully, she only knew that she had. And then, tired as she was, she had gone downstairs again and walked to the corner and taken a taxi. She even remembered that she had asked the driver whether he knew Greyville Road, and when he said he did she asked to be put down at the corner. Why had she done that? It seemed quite a rational thing to do at the time. She remembered that. Well, then she ought to be able to remember why it had seemed so sensible. She thought it was because she didn’t want to be too obviously following her little cousin. Yes, that was it. She had paid off her taxi at the corner and walked along to number 109, and she had gone up the steps and found the door unlatched. Why was it unlatched? And the answer to that came too. It was because her cousin Anne lay dead in the cellar. It was the last, cruellest trick. It was the trap to involve whoever came next to this door, honest man or thief.

And she herself had walked into the trap.