Vanishing Point

CHAPTER 33

Lucy Cunningham sat behind her locked door. She had gone up early, but she had not undressed. She was waiting for something to happen, she did not know what. The feeling that she must wait was heavy and cold inside her. It wasn’t a thing about which she could think or reason, it was something felt and to be endured. Like fear, or grief. It was fear itself. With what remained of her conscious thought she tried to cover it up. Nicholas would be coming home-she wouldn’t be alone with Henry any more. When she had heard Nicholas come in and lock the door she would go to bed, and perhaps she would sleep. And in the morning everything would be different.

There are always some to whom the morning does not come. She could almost have thought that someone had said that aloud-here in the room with her. There wasn’t anyone of course. It was only her own frightened mind playing tricks. She got up and began to move about. It was a mistake to sit and listen to the silence. The church clock struck eleven… and then the quarter… and the half hour-

Nicholas was late. She wondered what was keeping him. He had never been as late as this before, not at Dalling Grange. Why, everyone must have gone home hours ago. She felt as if she could not stay here waiting any longer. If anything was going to happen, it was better to let it happen and get it over. The sensible everyday Lucy Cunningham spoke in a sensible everyday voice and asked her what she was afraid of. Or of whom. Since there was only one other person in the house, there was the answer-

Henry.

Put like that, it shocked her into courage. She couldn’t be afraid of Henry-not really. She had let her nerves take charge and frighten her into a nightmare. And the way to come broad awake was to go down and do what she ought to have done hours ago-have it out with Henry-tell him that someone had tried to trip her, and see what he made of it.

She went to the washstand, sponged her face, and felt the better for it. The dreadful helpless feeling was gone. But she put on the landing light and stood looking down the long flight of the stairs before she set a foot upon it. And she put on a second light in the hall. Then she went along to the study and opened the door. Nothing could have been more ordinary than the littered table, the strong overhead light, and Henry with his back to her leaning forward above the specimens laid out before him. The table was so large that it took up nearly half the room, but every inch of it was occupied. There was a tray of fine instruments with a row of little bottles, there were cardboard sheets upon which were displayed the corpses of moths, butterflies, caterpillars, and spiders. There appeared to be rather more of the spiders than of any of the other creatures. Most of them were large, and some of them were hairy. Even at this moment Lucy found herself capable of a shudder. Things with more than four legs had that effect on her-she didn’t like them, and she never would. But as far as Henry himself went there was nothing that was in the least out of the way. With one of those fine instruments in his hand he was bending over the table and doing something to the corpse of the largest and most repulsive of the spiders. It might have been any evening of any day, and the specimen might have been a butterfly, a moth, or even a lizard or a frog, but the general effect would have been the same, and the prevailing smell of antiseptic.

At the sound of the opening door Henry Cunningham made his accustomed protest.

“If you don’t mind-I’m busy.”

Lucy had often minded before, but this time she was making no bones about it.

“I’m sorry, Henry, but I’ve really got to speak to you.”

He said in a mild worried voice,

“Some other time, don’t you think?”

“No, Henry-now.”

He sighed, laid down the fine instrument, and sat back in his chair, where he pushed his glasses up and ran a hand across his eyes.

“I thought you were in bed.”

She went round to the other side of the table and pulled up a chair.

“Well, I’m not.”

He sighed again.

“So I see. But it is very late, and I am really very busy. I have these specimens to get off to a Belgian correspondent. He is giving a lecture on spiders, and I am able to supply him with the specimens he needs for it. Slides will be prepared and thrown upon the screen greatly magnified. The series illustrates Lelong’s theory-but that won’t interest you.”

Lucy Cunningham said, “No.”

Since he appeared to be about to relapse into concentration upon the spider, she repeated her previous remark, only in a louder and firmer tone,

“Henry, I must speak to you.”

He sat back again and said,

“I am really very busy. What is it?”

“Henry, someone tried to kill me last night.”

His spectacles were half way up his forehead. He peered at her and blinked.

“Someone tried to kill you! What do you mean?”

As she leaned towards him, one of her hands was on the table. They could both see that it was shaking. She snatched it back into her lap and said in a voice that he would hardly have known,

“Someone tied a string across the stairs. Then a bell rang in the hall. I thought it was the telephone, but it could have been an alarm clock or any electric bell. I was running to answer it, and the cord caught me just above the ankle. The mark is still there. I had my hand on the balustrade, or I couldn’t have saved myself. If I had gone down head first upon those flagstones I should probably have been killed. Don’t you think so?”

Henry looked bewildered.

“My dear Lucy!”

“Don’t you think so, Henry?”

He had taken up the fine steel instrument. He laid it down again and flexed his fingers. Perhaps they had closed upon it with a cramping pressure. He said,

“Someone must have left a piece of string lying about and you caught your foot-Nicholas-or Mrs. Hubbard. Very careless-very dangerous. I remember in Constantinople -”

She said abruptly,

“This is Hazel Green. The string was garden twine. It wasn’t left lying about. It was stretched across the stairs and fastened to the balusters. It wasn’t there when I went to bed. After that there were only two other people in the house-you and Nicholas. I want to know which of you tied that string across the stairs.”

“Lucy-”

“One of you put it there. If it wasn’t you, it was Nicholas. If it wasn’t Nicholas, it was you. I want to know why.”

“You don’t know what you are saying.”

“I ought to-I’ve had all day to think about it. Someone tried to kill me.”

“Lucy, you can’t be well! Don’t you think if you were to go to bed-perhaps a cup of tea and an aspirin-”

All at once the fear touched her again. He was just Henry messing about with his specimens. But some of the things in those little bottles were poison-A cup of tea and an aspirin- She heard him say,

“You’d much better get to bed. I’ll make you some tea and bring it up.”

There was concern in his voice. Concern about what? She didn’t know. He had never made a cup of tea for anyone else in his life. He forgot his own meals unless he was called to them. She remembered picking up a book at a railway bookstall, and it was called Death in the Cup. The row of little bottles swam before her eyes. She took hold of the edge of the table and stood up.

“Yes, I’ll go to bed. I can’t sleep. I won’t have any tea-it might keep me awake-I’ll just get to bed.”

But on her way to the door she turned.

“Why is Nicholas so late?”

Henry Cunningham was already adjusting his glasses, picking up the long sliver of steel. He said vaguely,

“Nicholas-he’s often later than this-”

“But he telephoned from Dalling Grange and said he had been kept.”

“Oh, well, he will have gone on somewhere.”

He bent forward over the table, and she went out of the room.

As she stood in the hall, it came to her that she had only to lift the telephone receiver and she could speak to anyone she liked-to Mrs. Stubbs at the Holly Tree-to Marian Merridew and her friend, that little Miss Silver-to Lydia Crewe. She could say what she chose to say-that she was ill, that she was nervous-that she had had a fall, a fainting fit. None of them lived more than a few hundred yards away-any one of them would come… Would Lydia? She turned her back on that, and in the next moment on all of it. To make herself the talk of the place- to rouse a friend from her sleep because she couldn’t sleep herself? It was too late, much too late for that. The church clock struck midnight as she went slowly up to her room.