The Knocker on Death's Door

CHAPTER 12

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SERGEANT Brice withdrew his team from the cellar as soon as the last of the soil had been sieved, leaving it still piled against the rear wall. None had been returned to the trench since the fragment of gold pencil had been found, in case the site of the discovery should be significant. All the finds had now been removed; the flagstones were left propped in the antechamber, neatly in order, and the cellar door closed and sealed. So much for that part of the job in hand.

But they had not found the gun.

“There’s the old lady’s room,” said Reynolds. “But we can’t touch that, not now. The doctor’s been again. She’s bad. We can’t possibly disturb her.”

They had looked everywhere else but there, creeping quietly about the first floor in order not to be heard in the sick-room. Robert, going in and out with the doctor, had passed by them in the corridors as if they did not exist, intent only on his own responsibilities. When he was cornered and made to acknowledge the solidity of Brice, below in the hall after the doctor’s car had departed, he was seen to drag himself out of his exclusive preoccupation with a convulsive effort and a shivering shock, like a sleep-walker rudely startled into wakefulness.

“Just one moment, sir—if you wouldn’t mind coming in here to the light.”

Robert allowed himself to be led into his own drawing-room, and into the slanting afternoon light from the window.

“Do you recognise this, sir?”

The fluted gold cap tapered away to a minute star, and there was a pocket-clip like a scroll fastened to its side. It was individual enough to be recognisable once one knew it, and solid enough to be, in any one house, probably the only one of its kind around. Robert looked at it with his slightly dazed eyes, hollow with wakefulness, and said almost automatically:

“Why, yes, it’s mine—but I lost that pencil a long time ago. Where did you find it?”

Brice said nothing; it was not necessary. The words were scarcely spoken when Robert himself, struggling to a plane somewhere nearer full consciousness, knew the answer. True, they had been hunting through the entire house, apart from the room where his mother lay doped and mute and fighting for her life, but not for this, or any trifles like it. There was only one place where such a losable thing, once found, could be of any significance.

The hand Robert had extended to take up the cap faltered, recoiled, swayed in mid-air. Brice, startled, looked up from the hand to the face, saw the abrupt, bluish pallor turn the long features to dead clay, and the eyes roll upwards in their sockets. The tall, thin body began to fold at the joints with infinite slowness, collapsing like a dropped puppet. Everything else had fallen on Robert, and had not felled him, but this tiny thing dropped him as a shot might have done.

Brice cried in alarm: “Here, hold up, sir!” and caught him by the arm; but it was Barnes, huge and imperturbable in the background, a carefully placed witness, who swung a chair forward with monumental presence of mind, caught Robert round the body, and lowered him smoothly into it.

“You think there’d be any brandy around, Mr. Brice?”

Robert drew himself together with a spasmodic effect, heaved a vast breath into his lungs, and opened his eyes. He gripped the arms of the chair resolutely, and drew himself a little more erect.

“Thank you, but I’m all right. I’m sorry, I’m afraid I’ve been up too long… I didn’t mean to distress you.”

They waited, watching the faint colour return to his face; it was never more than faint, but the livid blue tint subsided slowly, his lips regained a flush of pink. He moistened them, and even that was an effort.

“I’m quite all right now, thank you, I never intended to inhibit you, officer, if you want to charge me…”

He waited. Brice remembered the moment for its strangeness, ceremony and civility, all of which were confounding.

“No, sir, at present I’ve no charge to make.”

“But I thought…” Robert shook his head, frowning a little. “I don’t understand,” he said with a deep sigh, and abandoned the effort to find a way through the tangle. And in a moment he tightened his grip on the arms of the chair, drew his languid members together and thrust himself to his feet. Barnes took a step towards him, warily, but he stood quite steadily. “If you’ve finished with me, then, I’ll go back to my mother. You know where to find me if you do need me.”

He walked slowly but firmly to the door, and let himself out. In a moment they heard him climbing the stairs.

Hugh drove into the yard at the garage towards six o’clock, and let himself into the house by the back door. Dinah was just beginning her preparations for the evening meal, and had the makings of a salad on the kitchen table, but she put down her knife and pushed the chopping-board away when Hugh came in. She had been half-expecting him all the afternoon.

“Dinah, would you come? We don’t know who else to ask. Only until night…”

“Is she worse?” asked Dinah. “What does the doctor say?”

“He’s getting a nurse to come out for nights, but she won’t get here until about nine o’clock. We’ll be all right tomorrow, old Nurse Taylor—you know, the retired one— she’s willing to come in tomorrow, but she couldn’t make it today. It’s just until nine o’clock, this one night… Rob’s just about out on his feet, he hasn’t closed his eyes for thirty-six hours. And you know me, I’m no good…”

“Idiot, shut up!” said Dinah bracingly. “Of course I’ll come. I’m not much good, either, but it’s only a matter of using a bit of nous, that’s all.”

She made some tea for him, and forced him to eat something before they left; who knew if he’d even thought about such mundane things, in this mood? She talked sense to him, prosaically; he had never demanded poetry of her.

“Now look, she’s past seventy… nearly seventy-two, isn’t it? Don’t get to thinking you’ve somehow done this to her, she’s seventy-two, and it happens. Do you know how many people over fifty this ’flu’s knocked off, the last two years? Well, then…”

Dave came in to hang up the workshop keys, and she told him everything. Nobody had to explain to her that Dave didn’t want her to go. Nobody had to explain to Dave that she was going, anyhow. They didn’t argue about it.

“I’ll come round and fetch you at nine, then,” said Dave.

“I can bring her back,” objected Hugh. “Earlier, if the night nurse shows up before then.”

“All right, but if she isn’t back by nine I’ll come round anyhow.”

“I’d better slip across the yard and pick up some more clothes,” Hugh said. “It looks as if I shall have to stay over there for a while.”

He came down in a few minutes to join Dinah in the yard, carrying a small case, which he tossed into the back seat of the Mini. They sat in silence for a while as he drove out along the lane towards the Abbey. It was nearly dark; the hummock of the rising ridge beyond the village lay limp and quiet like a sleeping lizard. The trees were losing their leaves rapidly now, the next high wind would strip the more exposed branches bare.

“Are they still there?” asked Dinah at length. The open gate of the Abbey drive was just coming into sight.

“No, they’ve packed it in for the day, seemingly. They’ve closed up the cellar and taken everything away. It’s dead quiet in the house now, but I expect they’ll be back in the morning. The chief inspector went off just before noon, but his sergeant’s been probing all round the place ever since.”

“Looking for what, do you think?”

“A gun, I suppose—at least, they’ve been asking all sorts of questions about whether there ever was a gun in the house, so I take it that’s what they’re after.”

She thought about that for a moment in sombre silence. Bracewell had been battered to death with a stone, the unfortunate psychic researcher, now conscious but still disoriented in hospital at Comerbourne, had also been attacked with a stone. So if the police were looking for a gun, it could only be in connection with the body they had found here in the Abbey. This one must have died by shooting. Dinah had good reason to be able to guess where the body had been found, under the flags of the cellar floor, which had lain level and unmarked when Alix had first seen it, six years ago, and now was scarred from the movement of the door. What could it be the police had found when they removed the knocker from that door, the knocker that Alix said didn’t belong there? Oh yes, all Mottisham knew that they had removed it, the grapevine had not been foiled for long! The knocker must have been put there to hide something, and whatever the something was, it had sent the police hotfoot to the Abbey to continue their investigations on the spot. They had known where to look, and had had a very good idea of what they were looking for. A dead man. A shot man. Bullets that killed sometimes passed clean through their victims and lodged in a wall or a tree or the earth beyond. Had this one lodged in the door? That could be one more reason for removing the thing from a site where it betrayed too much, to the safe, calm place in the south porch of the church. But the primary reason, of course, was the way it dragged on the flagstones, and called attention to their irregularity.

“Hugh, I’m so sorry! All this is terrible for you.” She would have liked to find something more helpful to say, but what was the use of being optimistic and pretending to believe that a burden like this would simply go away, like a passing illness?

“Terrible for me? What do you think it is for Robert? Oh, they haven’t charged him, but I know he’s expecting them to every moment. They showed him something of his they’d found in the cellar—well, they didn’t say they’d found it in the cellar, it was Rob who said that—he was sure that’s where they’d got it from. The cap off a gold pencil he used to have. They seemed to think it means something pretty grim…”

“But why! I mean, when we don’t even know who this person was, or anything that could possibly connect him with your brother? Why should he want to… What motive can they possibly think he had? And in any case, a cap from a pencil could have been dropped in the cellar any time, it wouldn’t mean a thing.”

“No, not if it was just on the floor somewhere, of course, but if it was… Oh, God, Dinah, I just don’t know! I don’t know anything! Only that if it was a question of protecting Mother, Rob might do anything…”

The gravel of the drive, long since more loam than gravel, sputtered dully under the wheels, and they pulled up before the closed door.

When they entered the blue-curtained bedroom on the first floor, Robert was sitting beside his mother’s bed. There was a dressing-room ensuite, with a single bed in it, ideal, Dinah thought, for the nurse when she came. With the connecting door wide open she would hear every breath from the sick woman’s bed. In the main bedroom itself Robert had laid and lit a modest fire, and the glow it gave was light enough to see by. It cast an unusual warmth on his pale, attenuated face, underlined the hypersensitive line of his mouth, and outlined his lofty eyelids with deep shadows. He had one hand cupped behind his mother’s pillow, and with the other was holding to her lips a teaspoonful of liquid from the cup he had beside him on a small table. He heard them come, but he did not look up. The old lady appeared to be unconscious, with closed eyes and drawn cheeks, yet when the spoon touched her lips they parted a little, accepting the offered drink.

When the spoon was empty, Robert laid it in the saucer and looked up; his face was reserved, resigned, not troubled by any deep personal tenderness. Only when he met Dinah’s eyes did he smile very faintly.

“Brandy and water. He says it can’t hurt her now, and may still help her.” His voice was low and level, just above the disturbing sibilance of a whisper. He got up and came round the bed towards them. “It was very good of you to come, Dinah. In the circumstances, especially.” His eyes held hers; it appeared to be a half-apology for yesterday.

“I’m glad to be some use. You can leave her with me,” said Dinah in the same muted tone. “You ought to try and get some sleep.”

They left her alone with her patient. Hugh did not go far, she knew, only as far as his own room, a mere hotel room now as far as he was concerned, to empty his case on the bed and strip thankfully for a bath, for she heard the bath running very soon after he had left her. What Robert would do she did not try to guess. How do you sleep when the police are merely waiting at leisure to complete their case against you, and the warrant for your arrest on a charge of murder may be issued at any moment? Poor Robert! Extraordinary Robert, so impregnably patient, distant and proud, the pelican of politeness, the patrician to end patricians! Hugh is right, she thought, in defence of his clan he’d do anything—anything! Kill? Well, it would be a kind of duty, wouldn’t it? If there was a threat to the Macsen-Martel name and reputation, everything and everybody outside the magic circle would be expendable.

It was very quiet and still in the main bedroom after the men had gone away. The huge silence of the night came down, and she could feel all about her the immense solidity and force of this ancient house, where even the internal walls were a foot thick, and of native stone.

She refilled a hot water bottle and placed it beside the old woman’s bony feet, and then for a long time she sat beside the bed, and did not more than record what she felt and saw. The bed was a double one, no doubt the patient’s marriage bed long ago. There were no four posts and canopy, yet the frame seemed to have been converted from something belonging to the eighteenth century, broad, bold and sensuous, covered now with faded folkweave, and grinding its castered feet into a threadbare Persian carpet. The fire made the room warm and human, but it must have seemed large, bare and cheerless when the grate was empty. The furniture was on a grand scale, as everywhere in the house, but not outstanding of its kind, only elephantine.

Dinah sat beside the bed and looked at her patient. The old woman’s grey hair, unbraided, spread over the pillows in a silvery cloud, unexpectedly beautiful in its gossamer fineness. Against that silken veil the haughty face, elongated still further by the rigidity of unconsciousness, lay staring starkly upwards through large, closed eyelids, thin nostrils spread, thin mouth drawn down in distaste, the very image of Bishop Wolfhart Roth of Augsburg, with the bad smell under his nose. She was a tomb figure already, except that she breathed, and when Dinah put a spoonful of brandy and water to her lips, the lips moved miraculously and she drank. Something inside her functioned still and desired to live, or it would have disdained the means of living.

After a while the grey lips remained still, and ceased to accept what was offered. She had sunk into a slightly deeper sleep, or else into a shallow coma. Her breathing eased and lengthened a little. Dinah sat back and let her alone. Better have a look, perhaps, at the arrangements Robert had made for the nurse’s comfort.

The former dressing-room was small by the standards of this barn-like dwelling, with a lower ceiling, and paler walls. The bed was immaculate beneath a candlewick spread, and there were towels laid out, and even a little trough of books installed on top of the chest of drawers. He had left nothing for anyone to do. Unless, perhaps, something could be done about those personal things one tends not to carry on short-term visits because of their bulk. The nurse was coming from Comerbourne, where she probably inhabited a small, centrally-heated flat; she might be none too well-prepared for the bleak chilliness of the Abbey. The travel dressing-gown, for instance, is liable to be a thin nylon housecoat—“because it folds up like a handkerchief”. And those thin plastic folding slippers, comfortable enough on a carpeted floor in a new town block, would be like walking barefoot for penance on these flagged floors and bare board corridors. Perhaps something more substantial could be offered, whether she actually needed it or not.

There was obviously only one room in which to look, since there was only one woman resident in the house. Dinah went back into Mrs. Macsen-Martel’s room. The old woman had not moved. The sheet over her chest lifted just perceptibly with her shallow, feeble breathing; she was so frail that her body scarcely swelled the covers enough to cast a shadow in the firelight.

Cautiously Dinah turned the handle of the large wardrobe that filled one end of the room, and tentatively pulled at the door, which opened easily and silently. The first section was all shelves, most of them half-empty; but beyond that came the central hanging section, smelling of some protective against moths, and of the faded lavender bags that were slung on the hangers. The old woman could have bought nothing new for several years. Everything here was good, solid country stuff, but years out of date; and beneath the hanging garments were arrayed a dozen pairs of shoes, all old, well-kept, and meant to last, every pair polished and immaculate, but every pair mended at least once. Dinah found a pair of sheepskin slippers with rubber soles. They might well be too big, for the old lady’s tall frame needed feet made to the same measure, but they would at least be warm. She put them on one side, and began to look through the coats and dresses, but the only dressing-gown she found was of printed silk, no protection against the draughts from these ancient windows. She stood back and looked over the array of open shelves again, and a fold of thick brown woollen cloth caught her eye.

It looked just the kind of material of which winter dressing-gowns used to be made, though why it should have been rolled up and pushed to the back of one of these pigeon-holes was more than she could guess, when everything else in the wardrobe was kept with such meticulous care.

She reached in and drew it out, and the moment they made contact with it her fingers registered a minor shock of astonishment, for it felt cold and damp to the touch. She held it up and let it unroll, and it swung down to brush the floor, hanging crumpled and stained from her hands. On her it would have swept the carpet, but it was not a dressing-gown, after all, it was an ancient camel coat, probably at least twenty years old. Its skirts, which had been the outermost layer of the roll, were dry, but soiled at the hem with greenish stains, as if from wet and muddy grass. The shoulders and back were distinctly damp, and the, multiplicity of creases into which the cloth had set showed that they had been damper still, and for some considerable time.

Dinah’s mind, stung into violent action, reviewed times, intervals, happenings, a rainy night, an apparition in brown… Could thick cloth like this stay damp, she wondered, as long as three days? Yes, rolled up tightly like that and pushed into that narrow shelf, probably even that long.

There were a few lank, dank threads of autumn gossamer, fouled with minute fragments of dirt and dead leaves, on one sleeve. And speared into the collar she found two narrow dark spines of yew leaves.

She stood there with the coat dangling in her hands, and suddenly she felt cold from head to foot, with a chill that seemed to invade her from without, eating through skin and flesh into her bones. Sometimes the mind connects too quickly, the body’s energy is used up in a convulsion of awareness. She seemed to hear her own mental processes at work, like listening to a tape recording of herself, but with the inward ear.

Three nights ago, Saturday night, the psychic research man was knocked on the head. It poured with rain that night. The grass in the churchyard is long, and would be very wet. There are yew trees there. Someone was seen there in a long, brown robe, like a monk, vanishing among the trees. Someone who went there knowing there was something that must not be investigated about that door, and afraid that the researches would not all be psychic. Then that same someone knew about the bullet-hole, if it is a bullet-hole—knew, in any case, about whatever it is that shouldn’t be there and had to be covered up.

Perhaps they had been looking for more than a gun when they searched the house. But they had not searched this room. Impossible to intrude upon mortal illness. There is, after all, only one sure way to escape consequences, and that is to die. She even turned back to the bed to look again at the sleeper, to make sure that this was still sleep. For a moment she would almost have been willing to believe that even mortal illness can be induced, when the need is great enough. But the old woman, austere and still, lay coldly indifferent to all suspicions, the faint rustling in her chest her only comment.

Dinah slid her hand into the right-hand pocket of the coat she held, and her fingers closed over a small round object. Damp here, too, from a rain-wet hand that had thrust this little thing within. She felt the left-hand pocket, and the lining was dry.

The door opened so quietly behind her that she did not hear it, but the soft steps on the interval of bare boards reached her ears, and she swung round almost guiltily. Hugh had come in on tip-toe, flushed and relaxed from his bath, but gingerly and uneasy in a sickroom, and was looking at her with a surprised smile, because she had started so violently.

“Did I startle you? Sorry!” he whispered. He had dressed fully again, evidently he was prepared to come and sit out the vigil with her, and drive her home as he had promised, if the nurse came in good time. “Whatever have you got there?”

He came nearer, still treading stealthily, still smiling. She wanted to roll up the coat and thrust it away again out of his sight, but it was far too late for such a move. Mutely she let him take it from her. In a whisper she said: “I was looking for a warm dressing-gown—for the nurse…”

“Where did you find…?” He broke off there on a sharp, indrawn breath, seeing the wardrobe door open. His hands, suddenly intent, felt at the woollen cloth here and there. One of the yew spines came away and lay in the palm of his hand. He stared at it, and Dinah saw his face tighten and shiver, saw him shake his head and stare again. He, too, could connect, as rapidly as anyone.

In a frightened whisper, barely audible at all, he said: “Oh, no! Oh, my God—Mother!”