Death in the dark, p.9
Death in the Dark, page 9
Judy withdrew a little as he leaned across the turnstile. His breath was definitely beery. She guessed that he had been asleep in the shed when he should have been working. A slacker, she thought contemptuously, and probably dishonest. He had a shifty eye.
“I’ve come for the place,” she said crisply.
“The place?”
“Yes. They want a maid, don’t they, up at the house?”
“Do they? I daresay. The other girl went. All right. Through that gate.”
She was conscious that he stood watching her suspiciously until the turn of the drive, winding between high banks of evergreen shrubs, hid her from his sight.
She came to the house, a gaunt, barrack-like, four-storied building with a Doric portico. A few remaining leaves of a Virginia creeper covering one side wall were like splashes of blood on the grey stucco. The gravel sweep before the entrance was enclosed by a thick screen of trees and shrubs which had been allowed to grow, as Judy guessed, to ensure the privacy of the household during the summer when the zoo was open to visitors. In the wintry dusk the general effect was bleak and unfriendly and the girl’s heart sank a little as she rang the bell and stood waiting.
The door was opened eventually by a woman no longer young, who had evidently once been very handsome. Her hair had been dyed a reddish brown and it hung in untidy elf locks about her face. Her lemon-coloured jumper and brown tweed skirt were dirty and her black rubber boots were crusted with mud.
“Sorry,” she said, “I’ve been gardening. What did you want?”
I’ve come about the place.”
“Oh—come in, please. I am Mrs. Ramblett. Who sent you?”
She led the way into a shabby dining-room and bent to poke the dusty coal fire struggling to burn up in the old-fashioned grate.
Judy proffered the card that had been given her at the Domestic Agency and Mrs. Ramblett glanced at it without much interest. Her manner was weary and indifferent and the girl thought she looked ill. Her skin was very sallow under the carelessly applied rouge on her thin cheeks and her lips seemed parched.
“There’s plenty of work in a house like this, but we don’t have late dinner. You can have a couple of hours off every evening after six as well as the usual weekly half day. Of course we are out of the town, but if you have a bicycle and are not nervous—some girls don’t like riding up the avenue after nightfall. It’s very silly. The animals can’t get out.” She sat for a minute, staring at Judith with lack-lustre eyes as if she had forgotten what she had been going to say, before she resumed. “We are four in family. My stepson is an invalid and has his own suite of rooms at the top of the house. You wouldn’t have to take up his meals or do anything for him. I attend to that. Then there is my daughter, Helen, and Mr. Bateman, my secretary and business manager. He sleeps in a bungalow in the grounds and comes in for his meals. We keep three maids, the cook, Mrs. Lacy, and her niece, Mattie.” She paused again before adding, “Mattie is not quite—, but she’s good for the rough work. You could have a pound a week.”
“Yes, madam. I think the place would suit me. I would try to give satisfaction.”
Mrs. Ramblett smiled for the first time with a curious bitterness.
“How unusual. I can only hope you mean it. When can you come?”
“I’ve been staying with an aunt while I was out,” said Judy. “She’ll take care of my luggage if I come for a month on trial. I’d just bring a few things.”
“Very well. And when?”
“To-day if you like, ma’am. I can go back to the town to fetch my suitcase.”
“Very good,” said Mrs. Ramblett, yawning. “Do that. We’ve been without a housemaid for nearly a fortnight, and it’s tiresome for my daughter, Helen. Go round to the back door next time. Mrs. Lacy will look after you and put you in the way of things. You can let yourself out.”
The man Judy had seen before was still leaning over the turnstile when she came back to the avenue, but he was no longer in his shirt sleeves. He had put on a coat and was smoking a pipe. “Have you got the place?”
“Yes.”
Well, there’s no accounting for tastes,” he said obscurely. “We’ll be meeting again then. What’ll I call you?”
Judy had decided on a change of name, so she was not taken unawares.
“Mary,” she said. “Mary Morris.”
“My name’s Bowles. Mr. Bowles, the head keeper. If you go interfering with the animals you’ll have me to deal with.” He took his pipe from his mouth and grinned, showing discoloured snags of teeth.
Judy was fortunate in not having long to wait for a bus at the cross roads. She had left her suitcase at the station and she had come prepared for her adventure with two brown linen frocks and an adequate supply of muslin caps and aprons.
On her return journey she was the only passenger in the bus, and the conductor was inclined to be talkative.
“In service, and going to Sard Manor? Why, a sister of my wife’s was there once, but she left after four days. What with the wolves howling and one thing and another it fair gave her the creeps. It don’t pay, not the zoo, I mean, only for a few weeks in the height of summer, and it’s all falling to rack and ruin, I’ve heard. The Rambletts are a good old family, mind you, but the old man lost most of his money and sold the farms, and after he died the son got the notion of turning the park into a zoo. And then—what do you think he did? He married the same woman twice.
“How did he manage that?”
“Easy. He divorced his first wife. Three girls he had by her. He married again, and the second wife died leaving one child, a boy, the one that’s an invalid now, though my sister-in-law said he was strong enough when she was there. Then he re-married the first one, and not so long after that it was his turn to hop off the perch. She runs the show now with a chap called Bateman. Well, if you don’t like it you can always come away, can’t you?” He rang the bell to stop the bus. “Here you are.”
The way seemed even longer now that she was burdened with a heavy suitcase, and she felt and looked hot and tired when she reached her destination. She had hoped that the cook would be stout and jolly but Mrs. Lacy was a wizened little woman with an anxious, hesitating manner, who greeted the newcomer in a sibilant whisper, while her niece, a clumsy girl with a large red face and the piggy, expressionless eyes of her type, said nothing but only stared.
Materially, however, the welcome was warm enough. A good fire blazed in the kitchen grate and the table was laid for tea with mounds of toast and hot cakes and jam, and Judy, for the first time for weeks, was really hungry.
After the meal Mrs. Lacy took her round the house. “Mattie does the washing up and preparing the vegetables and the cleaning of the kitchen and scullery. You have the upstairs rooms and laying the meals for them and clearing away. Mrs. Ramblett, and Miss Helen if she’s in, have a cup of tea about four, and then there’s a high tea, a kind of supper at half-past six, and nothing more after that. I’ll come up with you to-night and show you where the china and silver’s kept. There’s a butler’s pantry up there, where you’ll wash the silver and the glass. Everything else comes down for Mattie to deal with.”
There was a large hall on the ground floor, with two rooms on either side, those in front darkened by the thick screen of trees and shrubberies that shut the house and garden off from the park, while those at the back had a fine view across the valley. A baize-covered door shut this part of the house off from the servants’ quarters in the left wing.
“On the first floor only three of the bedrooms are in use at present. Mrs. Ramblett in front, on the right of the landing, and Miss Helen on the left.”
“And Mr. Bateman?”
Mrs. Lacy looked down her nose. “Mr. Bateman has his meals with the family, but he don’t sleep on the premises. He has a bungalow in the gardens, though he did come in for a week or two last winter when the snow was on the ground. Now I’ll show you your room. It’s on the ground floor, but you needn’t be nervous. Mattie and I are next door to you.”
“Don’t they use the top floor?”
“Not since Master Oliver has been ill. He’s got to be kept very quiet. You’ve no call to go up there, Mary, and you’re not supposed to. It’s his nerves, and he can’t bear to be looked at.”
“Has he been like that long?”
“Some time now.”
“How old is he?”
“Nineteen or twenty. Come along now. I’ve fish to fry for supper.”
They went down again to the dining-room and Judy laid the table under Mrs. Lacy’s supervision. At half past six she sounded the gong.
Mrs. Ramblett and her daughter arrived together. Helen Ramblett had inherited her mother’s beauty. She was a big, dark girl with a skin like a ripe nectarine and brilliant dark eyes, but she looked very sulky and discontented. Mrs. Ramblett still wore her dirty tweed skirt, but she had draped an orange silk fringed shawl over her woollen jumper and exchanged her rubber boots for bedroom slippers of red felt very much trodden over and edged with mangy fur. She smiled at Judy. “So you really have come? Helen, we’ve actually got a housemaid. I’ve forgotten her name. So you can have a rest.”
“Thank God!” said Helen, but without a smile. “You needn’t wait. We look after ourselves. We’ll ring if we want anything.”
“Very well, Miss.”
“What is your name?”
“Mary.”
Mr. Bateman was coming into the dining-room as Judy went out. He was a middle-aged man with small, neat features. He was in evening dress with a dinner jacket and black tie, and his spick and span appearance contrasted very oddly with that of Mrs. Ramblett. She exclaimed at the sight of him petulantly. “Going out again, James?”
“To the Farwells to play bridge. Do you mind?”
“Of course not. Your evenings are your own. But I thought she was ill.”
“She’s better again, it seems.”
“It’s queer how often doctors’ wives are sickly.”
Judy closed the door very carefully and lingered a moment, but she could hear nothing now but a murmur of voices.
That night when she went to her room she sat for a while on the side of her bed thinking over every incident of a crowded day. She had succeeded, so far, beyond her expectations. This was the family that had everything to gain from the death of Mr. Fallowes. Evidently their connection with him was not known in the neighbourhood, or it would certainly have been mentioned as an item of interest, by the bus conductor who had told her so much of the local gossip. It was plain, by the state of the house and grounds and by their manner of living, that they needed the money badly. But they would not profit equally. Oliver Ramblett was the sole heir, unless, of course, he died before he reached his majority, in which case the money was divided among his half sisters. Judy thought of Helen, handsome, sullen, brooding over the fire as she had seen her when she went into the drawing-room to ask if there was anything more she could do. She had answered rudely, “Nothing,” without turning her head. Three of them. That would be thirty thousand pounds each.
Yes, but lots of people talked and thought, more or less vaguely, of their expectations from their wealthy relatives, who would shrink, appalled, at the word murder. If David’s story was true the murder of Mr. Fallowes had been carefully planned and carried out with devilish ingenuity. A cold-blooded crime. Judy shivered. She did not like this house. There was something queer about all the people she had met so far. Mrs. Ramblett with her ravaged beauty and her soft, well-bred voice and the dirt in her nails; her handsome, discontented daughter; the cook, with her furtive glances and her habit of dropping her voice to a whisper, and the silent, lumpish Mattie. Mr. Bateman—Judy had not placed him yet. In that slatternly household he had looked surprisingly clean and well groomed. He had given her a very sharp look as he passed her in the doorway. Mrs. Ramblett had described him as her secretary, but her manner to him had not been that of an employer.
Judy yawned. She was very tired and it was getting late. She took a letter pad and her fountain pen from her case. She had two people who would be expecting to hear from her, and there would be no time in the morning.
“Sard Manor,
“Nr. Bedesford.
“DEAR AUNTIE APPLE,
“I’ve got in here as housemaid. It was easy as pie. Servants are always leaving this sort of place. Miles from everywhere and one of those old-fashioned houses. I haven’t heard anything said about them coming into money yet. The son is an invalid and has the rooms on the top floor. His meals are taken up by his stepmother, and I’ve been warned not to be snoopy. The cook says he hasn’t always been that way. He’s the one Mr. F. left his money to. I mean to have a peep at him by hook or by crook, but I’ve got to be careful. There may be nothing in it at all, but with David’s life at stake I can’t leave anything untried, and I don’t feel quite so awful as I did when I was just sitting with my hands folded. Don’t tell Ben Levy about this if he calls. Just say I’ve gone away to stay with friends. He’s been so good to us, but I can’t like him the way he wants. I’m sorry. When you answer this address me as Miss Mary Morris, and be careful what you say. I’ll try and let you know how I’m getting on, but I shan’t have much time for writing.
“God bless you. Your loving
“JUDY.”
Her other letter was addressed to Master Fleming.
“Sard Manor,
“Nr. Bedesford.
“MY DEAR TOBY,
“I’ve been taken on here as a housemaid. Your friend was right. The place certainly looks as if they could do with some cash. I don’t much like what I’ve seen of the family, but they may be all right. Oliver is ill. It’s some kind of nerves and he doesn’t like people to look at him. We wondered about his age. I hear he is nineteen or twenty. I’ll write to you again later on if I find out anything. Don’t answer this, as letters may get into the wrong hands. Oliver is living at the top of the house and the stairs leading up to that floor have a door which is locked. I got a chance to try it when I took hot water up to the rooms. I suppose if he’s loopy the rest of the family would have the use of his money—or would he be what they call a ward in chancery? It may be in the family. Mr. F. was eccentric. My name here is Mary Morris. I shall always remember what a nice time we had at the Zoo. I had been so miserable and you cheered me up. I hope you liked the photo.
“Yours sincerely,
“JUDITH MERLE.”
Having finished her letters Judy slipped out of her clothes, blew out her candle, and got into bed. The night was very still, but once before she dropped off to sleep she heard a clatter of iron bars followed by a long drawn snarl. Judy laughed to herself and thought, “No wonder they can’t keep maids.” She had travelled with a menagerie, and such sounds did not trouble her. She was very fast asleep when, a little later in the night, the handle of her door turned very slowly for an inch or two. But the door did not open. There was no key in the lock and Judy, with some experience of cheap lodgings, had wedged the knob with the back of a chair. The knob slipped back with a very faint click. Judy’s head moved on the pillow, but she did not wake.
CHAPTER IX
A HOUSE DIVIDED
Judy had been kept busy all the morning. No cleaning had been done since the departure of the last housemaid and the vacuum cleaner was out of order, so she raised clouds of dust with a brush. After the midday meal she had to wash and dry the glass and silver, and she was slow over the unaccustomed work. She was still in the butler’s pantry when the front door bell rang. She was about to go and answer it when she heard the click of Helen’s high heels running down the stairs and across the hall. Mrs. Ramblett, she knew, had gone up to her room to lie down and Mr. Bateman had returned to the gardens where he was superintending the making of a new enclosure for the bears. Mrs. Lacy and her half-witted niece were in the kitchen. Judy opened the pantry door an inch or two and went on rubbing the glasses.
The visitor had been admitted. There was a noticeable silence, followed by a murmur of voices, Helen’s voice and a man’s. Were they going into the drawing-room? No, they were still in the hall and moving towards the stairs. Judy, listening hard, heard the man say, “You must be patient. Promise you’ll wait.” The answer was inaudible. She waited a few minutes before she ventured to leave the pantry. There was nobody in the hall then. In the kitchen Mrs. Lacy was sitting with her stockinged feet on the fender and her skirt turned up over her knees listening to her portable wireless.
“There’s a visitor,” said Judy. “I didn’t let him in. Miss Helen did.”
The cook answered without interest. “That would be the doctor. Doctor Farwell. He calls two or three times a week to see Master Oliver.”
“I’ve got some letters to post. Would there be time for me to run out before tea? Where’s the pillar box?”
“Down the avenue and turn to your left. It’s a longish way. Leave them on the hall table and they’ll get posted. Bowles goes down on his bicycle twice a day.”
“I’d like a breath of fresh air,” said Judy.
“All right,” said Mrs. Lacy good-naturedly; “if they ring for tea before you get back I’ll take it up.” The new girl seemed willing, and she was anxious not to be left alone with Mattie again.
“Stay out a little longer if you like,” she said when Judy came into the kitchen again in her outdoor things. “Walk round the place and have a look at the animals. I don’t fancy them myself, but some people feel different. And don’t be surprised if you meet a black man.”
It was muddy underfoot in the avenue between the drifts of dead leaves that filled the ditches on either side. Beyond the railings on the right a buffalo, after standing still for a moment to stare at Judy as she passed, lowered his huge shaggy head menacingly and began to paw the ground. Sard Manor was well guarded. It would certainly be dangerous to attempt to approach the house or to leave it by any but the recognised method. Judy had nearly reached the lower gate, which was standing open, when a lorry turned in. She moved to one side to allow it plenty of room to pass and saw that the load was a dead horse partly covered by a tarpaulin, and that the lorry driver was a negro. He touched his cap as he passed her with a friendly grin.
