Some Must Watch by Ethel Lina White (top 10 motivational books TXT) 📖

CHAPTER XVI

THE SECOND GAP

 

As Helen listened, a herd of vague suspicions and fearsgalloped through

her mind. Lady Warren spoke with the ring of authority. She was not

guessing blindly; sheknew something—but not enough.

 

It was this half-knowledge which terrified Helen. Had any of Dr. Parry’s

audience told her about the murder she would naturally have heard, also,

about the discovery of the body in Captain Bean’s garden.

 

Nurse Barker, alone, stood outside the circle of informed listeners.

That fact did not necessarily assume the most sinister significance. To

use the Professor’s phrase, her alibi was established. When Ceridwen was

being done to death, she was bumping, in the old car, towards the

Summit, in Oates’ company.

 

Yet—if she had told her patient—she must have possessed some horrible

specialized knowledge of the movements, or intentions of the

maniac—which stopped short with the commission of the murder.

 

As Lady Warren gripped her wrist, Helen realized that it was useless to

lie.

 

“How do you know?” she asked.

 

The old woman did not reply. She gave a hoarse gasp. “Ah! Then they’ve

found her. That knocking was the Police. I knew it… Tell me all.”

 

“It was Ceridwen,” Helen said. “You remember? She used to dust under

your bed, and you objected to her feet. She was strangled in the

plantation, about tea-time, and carried afterwards to Captain Bean’s

garden. He found her.”

 

“Any clue?”

 

“One. She tore out a handful of fringe from the murderer’s white silk

scarf.”

 

“That’s all… Go away,” commanded Lady Warren. She pulled up the

sheet, and covered her face entirely, as though she were already dead.

 

On her guard against foxing, Helen sat by the fire, where she could

watch the bed. Although one fear had swallowed up the other—like two

large snakes snatching at the same play—she had an instinctive dread of

exposing her back to Lady Warren.

 

To steady her nerves, she made a mental inventory ef the situation

 

“There’s the Warren family—four; Mrs. Oates, Nurse Barker, Mr. Rice and

me. Eight of us. We ought to be more than a match for one man, even if

he’s as clever and cunning as the Professor says.”

 

Then her mind slipped back to a former situation, as nursery-governess

in the house of a financier. With her phonographic memory for phrases,

she reproduced one o his remarks to his wife.

 

“We want a merger. Separate interests are destructive.” Her face grew

graver as she thought of heated passions rising to boiling-point, and

the strangling complications of the triangle. Had she known of the

actual situation in the drawingroom, she would have been still more

worried.

 

Stephen was affected most adversely by the confinement. He was not only

specially rebellious against closed windows, ut he was nervous of

Simone. Her ardent glances made him uncomfortable, as he remembered the

Oxford episode, when he had been made the goat in another undergraduate

amour.

 

He remembered that when the wretched girl had screamed, Newton had been

first to come to her alleged rescue, and that he had always been

censorious in his judgment, and his refusal to believe in Stephen’s

innocence. Even then, the seeds of jealousy had been sown, although

Simone had only expressed vague admiration for a regular profile.

 

It had been perversity on his part which made him become the Professor’s

pupil, in order that his son might feel some sense of obligation—an

impulse which he had repented, since the visit of the young couple to

the Summit. He stopped his ceaseless pacing of the carpet, to address

Newton.

 

“With due respect, and all that sort of bilge, to your worthy father,

Warren, he doesn’t get our angle. Our generation isn’t afraid of any old

thing—dead, alive, or on the go. It’s being cooped up together, like

rats in adrain, that gets me.”

 

“But I’m adoring it,” thrilled Simone. “It’s like a lot of

married-couples being snow-bound, in one hut. When they come out, just

watch how they’ll pair off.”

 

She seemed lost to all sense of convention, as she staredat Stephen with

concentrated eagerness, as though they were together on a desert island.

 

Completely unselfconscious, she never realized the presence of an

audience. A spoilt brat, who’d been given the run of the toyshop to

sack, she simply could not understand why her desire for any special

plaything should not be instantly gratified.

 

“What are your plans, Stephen?” she asked.

 

“First of all,” he told her, “I shall fail in my Exam.”

 

“Fine advertisement for the Chief,” remarked Newton.

 

“After that,” continued Stephen, “I shall probably go to Canada, and

fell timber.”

 

“Your dog will have to go into quarantine,” Newton reminded him

spitefully.

 

“Then I’ll stay in England, just to please you, Warren. And I’ll come

and have tea with Simone, every Sunday afternoon, when you’re having

your nap.”

 

Newton winced, and then glanced at the clock.

 

“I must go up to Gran. Any use asking you to come with me, Simone? Just

to say ‘Good night’?”

 

“None.”

 

Raising his high shoulders, Newton shambled from the room.

 

When he had gone, Stephen made an instinctive movement towards the door.

Before he could reach it, however, Simone barred his way.

 

“No,” she cried. “Don’t go. Stay and talk… You were telling me

your plans—and they’re pathetic. Supposing you had money, what would you

do?”

 

“Supposing?” Stephen laughed. “I’d do the usual things. Sport. A spot of

travel. A flutter at Monte.”

 

“Does it appeal?”

 

“You bet. A fat lot of good it is talking about it.”

 

“But I have money.”

 

“How nice for you,” he said.

 

“Yes. I can do anything. It makes me secure.”

 

“No woman should feel too secure.” Stephen strained desperately to keep

the scene on a light level. “It makes her despise Fate.”

 

Simone appeared not to hear him, as she came closer and laid her hands

upon his shoulders.. “Steve,” she said, “when you go away, tomorrow,

I’m coming with you.”

 

“Oh, no, you’re not, my dear,” he said quickly.

 

“Yes,” she insisted. “I’m mad about you.”

 

Stephen licked his lips desperately.

 

“Look here,” he said, “you’re jumpy and all worked-up. You’re delirious.

You don’t mean one word. To begin with—there’s old Newton.”

 

“He can divorce me. I don’t care. If he doesn’t, I still don’t care.

We’d have lots of fun together.”

 

Stephen cast a hunted glance towards the door. Fright made him brutal.

 

“I don’t care for you,” he said.

 

The repulse had only the effect of making her more ardent.

 

“I’ll soon make you care for me,” she said confidently.

 

“You’re just a silly boy with inhibitions.”

 

Exultantly, she raised her face to his, her lips expectant of his kiss.

When he shook her off, the first shade of doubt crept into her eyes.

 

“There’s another woman,” she said. “That’s why.”

 

Desperation made him lie.

 

“Of course,” he told her. “There always is.”

 

He was both startled and relieved by her