Darkness at Pemberley Page 13

  "I was an observer just at the very end of the War. Somebody could write a very interesting war book about observers. Imagine trusting yourself to a separate person, in a machine which might go wrong at any moment, in a situation which meant almost certain death if it did go wrong—and that quite apart from the dangers of actual combat. The observers were much braver than the pilots. It used to be interesting to see the old observers looking over the new pilots, wondering how safe they were. But this is apart from what I was trying to tell you. I never got to France, but I knew an observer who did. He was a shrivelled little man with bright eyes, like a bird's. His pilot was shot through the chest one day, over the lines. The man flew the machine back and landed his observer safely, a perfect landing. He was dead when the machine came to rest. That's a man I shall always envy. He had something to do when he was dying. He had a fight for it, and he pulled it off. He was busy and striving with death to the last moment, and he died in his triumph."

  Wilder said: "And according to you, if the machine had crashed in the end, the observer's death would have been the worst kind—for he wouldn't have had a chance to fight it?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm not sure that I agree with you. He had no responsibility. I can imagine that observer, if he was a brave man, leaning back and getting quite a kick out of it. Also, of course, there's an odd satisfaction about trusting people. I don't know."

  "The kind of death I should like," said Elizabeth, "is rather like Chiz's. Only Chiz wants to die fighting and I want to die enjoying myself. I should like to be killed instantaneously, hunting. I suppose if I were Cleopatra or Faustine, I should choose some other form of death by enjoyment, but as it is I should like to break my neck at a double oxer. One can get quite close to what it would be like by thinking of the falls one's had. Joy till the last moment, and then a split second's anxiety, instinctive self-preservation: the faculties moving too quickly for emotion. One's last word would be 'Damn!'"

  Wilder said: "Buller, what's your contribution to this question?"

  "I think it's a very silly question. I don't want to die at all. I want to go on living for ever, with more joy and more experience every day. I want to put my arms right round the world and never, never leave go."

  "My dear Buller!" said the surgeon. "I told you you ought to be a poet once before."

  *****

  Pemberley was again in darkness, but the darkness was less hostile. Buller had wanted to keep up the system of watches for one more night, but his doubts had been overruled. "If the man's dead," Wilder had said, "he can't do us any harm, and if he did a bunk yesterday it's highly unlikely that he'll come back to-day. If he's bunked he'll come back, but not immediately. The danger of his coming back will increase as the days go by. To-day its at it's minimum. Anyway it's ten to one that he's dead in one of the chimneys, caught sleeping. We deserve a rest."

  Buller, tired by his lack of sleep in the past few days, and worried by his own problems, had assented. But he could not sleep.

  Too tired for immediate rest, and falling between the stools of two questions, his mind revolved in the darkness with aching concentration. His brain resembled that fabulous and legless bird, circling wearily about the perch, but defeated by its own structure of any hope of peace. In the south of France, he seemed to remember, the enthusiastic Latins would employ a decoy pigeon: a live bird tethered by the leg to a sharply pointed pole, round which it would flutter till it died, unable to perch because of the sharpness of the point.

  He wondered if Mauleverer were dead, but could not believe it. He wondered when he had left the house, and how soon he would come back. He wondered how long the net of protection which he had drawn round Charles would stand the strain, and where it was weakest. He felt thankful, at least, that he had himself lit Charles's fire this evening, as a last concession to his fear that Mauleverer might be there. If there should be a secret chamber, he thought, and if Mauleverer had found it and hidden in it, would it have been airtight enough to keep the gas out? Edgeworth had assured him that there was not a padlocked cupboard or closed drawer in the house which would not have been permeated. And if Mauleverer had been hidden in some secret chamber, and had died there, perhaps they would never find the chamber or his body. To-morrow's search might well reveal no corpse among the chimneys, and that would prove nothing. Mauleverer might moulder in his secret room till the end of Charles's life, without being discovered. The shadow of uncertainty would never lift from Pemberley.

  Concurrently with these thoughts Buller's mind was circling round Elizabeth. He wondered how much was behind the convention which forbade her to marry a policeman. He wondered at what point of affection the compensation of marrying the person one loved would redress the balance of this contrary convention. Above all he wondered if she possibly could love him. She had said such curious things, which in the old days would have been construed as being affectionate. But nowadays that counted for nothing. These bright young people called each other darling remorselessly. He was afraid. He did not understand. He was miserably in love.

  Lying on his back in the darkness, amid a tangle of pillows, Buller put up his hand and felt the short hairs at the back of his neck. His fingers strayed over his face, tentatively, pressing the cheeks and feeling under the eyes. He was middle-aged, he supposed, and he had never been handsome. He felt his hardening skin anxiously. He turned over in bed and pushed a pillow on the floor, exasperated.

  Elizabeth's hair was mouse-coloured, and her lips were red. He got out of bed, saying to himself "I am a fool"; and fetched the handkerchief with which he had wiped her mirror. He sniffed it, put it under the remaining pillow, and lay down again. Like a child who has been allowed to take his newest toy to bed with him, Buller felt comfortable again at once. Her eyebrows had a trick of lifting. It was indescribable. Buller snuggled his middle-ageing head deeper into the pillow. There were certain things, in short, that he would like her to like him to do to her. Buller was asleep, almost before he had reached the end of this complicated sentiment.

  Elizabeth had been lying awake under similar problems. It was unmaidenly, she decided, to ask a gentleman's hand in marriage: but then she had never been a lady. She would ask Buller at once if she thought he wanted to and was afraid. But she was proud, too. She had dropped hints, cast straws to see which way the wind blew. There had been no wind, no response. She dared not believe that Buller was in love with her; and, if not, she dared not face the situation of a proposal. Or dared she? Nothing venture, nothing have. This kind of love must be worth risking a rebuff for.

  She felt her arms in the darkness. They were empty. She was getting old, she supposed. She was getting fat. She must bant.

  At this moment she became conscious that there was somebody in the room. Not only in the room, but by the side of her bed. She had thrown out her arm and touched something which moved.

  She opened her mouth to scream, but a hand closed over it. Nothing came but a sort of exaggerated snore. She struck out with her arm, and it was caught. It was held between two knees. She tried to roll over, but as she moved there was a faint stab above the elbow in the held arm. She struck with the free arm, struggling for breath. The man was hurting her nose and she was suffocating. Her knuckles struck him in the face, but against something hard, which cut them. Then her free arm was caught too, and a body lay across her, pinning her down. She struggled to throw it off. There was an interminable pause, whilst her mind battled on the brink of consciousness, and then her arms were cautiously released. She would get up and shout for help.

  Her body would not move.

  She became conscious that she must be dead.

  CHAPTER XVI

  Buller dreamed that there was a gas attack in the trenches, and he was suffocating. The Germans were black men with white hands, whose bayonets were as sharp as razors. They were swarming over the parapet, and surrounded him with their cutting points in deadly attitudes. He had been wounded and was paralysed. But he must sound the gas ala
rm. The gong was a shell case hanging from the trench wall. He could reach it by crawling on his stomach, if he moved without being observed. He crawled between their black legs, stealthily, dragging his paralysed spine behind him. Evidently his back was broken, but he could move his arms. They saw him as he reached the gong, and sprang to stab him. But he reared up like a broken snake and beat it with the butt end of his pistol, in agonising measured strokes. It sounded thrillingly through the house; for each trill the black men stabbed him in the back.

  Buller woke up in a muck sweat to the last stab of the telephone bell downstairs. The bed-clothes swept to the right and his legs to the left in the same moment. He did not wait to thrust his bare feet into slippers even, or to snatch a dressing-gown.

  Wilder's tousled head looked over the banisters as he reached the instrument.

  "Hullo?"

  "Yes."

  "Hullo? Hullo?"

  "Yes, what is it?"

  "No. When?"

  "Which way did he go?"

  "To Burton. Right. Which car did he take?"

  "Will you get the others out at once, and running?"

  Buller slammed down the earpiece whilst the small voice was still rattling, and came up the stairs three at a time.

  Wilder said: "Well?"

  "It's Smith, from the garage. He says the Bentley has just gone out, and wanted to know if it was all right. About five minutes ago."

  He was past Wilder and through the morning-room before the latter could speak.

  Charles threw the door open with a jerk as he tapped on it. He had his revolver in his hand.

  Buller said: "Good. Ask Wilder." And was away down the passage before Charles could open his mouth.

  He tapped on Elizabeth's door, but there was no answer. He tapped again, quietly. He must not frighten her. And yet, and yet, why didn't she answer? He kicked the door noisily and cried "Elizabeth! Elizabeth!" It was the second time he had ever addressed her by her Christian name. The room was horribly silent.

  He threw his shoulder against the door, as he had done with Mrs. Bossom's, but the lock and bolt held it. He kicked it, but hurriedly this time and without success. The bolt held.

  Buller immediately became quite calm. Wilder had come up, and the two of them lifted the lacquered cabinet which stood outside, bodily, and crashed it against the door with their combined weights. The cabinet went right through one of the panels of the door, losing a leg in the process, and the door still held. It must have been a strong door.

  Buller put his hand through the broken panel and drew the bolt. The key was fortunately in the lock: he turned it.

  The room was empty.

  Wilder moved across to the curtains, and glanced at the fastenings of the window, whilst Buller cast his eye over the bed. Charles stood in the doorway. There was a split second of arrested movement.

  Buller said: "In the car, obviously. He can't have a quarter of an hour's start of us. Perhaps only eight or ten minutes, if we hurry. Get coats, sweaters, trousers—anything warm."

  He was out of his own room, dressed after a fashion, before either of them. He stood in Wilder's doorway.

  "Charles had better come," he said. "It's safer that he shouldn't be left alone, in any case, and besides we shall want all three cars if we're going to explore the crossroads. I think there's a good chance. I want the Chrysler coupé, and you can take the Daimler if you can drive it. I never knew what these people had all these cars for, but thank God they've got them. Charles will have to take the Studebaker. You're more useful than he is. The Bentley went towards Burton-on-Trent. If he's going any distance there aren't any important turnings before that. At Burton-on-Trent I want you to turn east and explore the Ashby-de-la-Zouch road, and Charles must go north to Uttoxeter. Stop anybody you see, except policemen, and enquire. I'm afraid there won't be many about at three in the morning. If the worst comes to the worst, stop a policeman: so long as you can make up a convincing story—something about a bet. Say it's something to do with this controversy over average speeds on long distances at night. You're a judge, or something, and have missed one of the entrants. You want to know which way he's gone. Speed Charles up and tell him all this. I'm off. Remember you're for Ashby and Charles for Uttoxeter. I'm going straight through to Lichfield."

  Buller was clattering down the stairs as Charles came out of his room.

  Smith was standing by the three cars, with their engines running. He had taken them out on to the drive and left them abreast, as if for the start of a race. He looked at Buller with such a pleading look that Buller said: "All right. Jump in."

  The drive sloped gently away from the house and Buller started off in second whilst Smith was still on the footboard. He glanced at his wristwatch as they shot round the curve in a roar of small pebbles. It was one minute to three.

  "Tell me more about this," he asked.

  "There's nothing but what I told you over the telephone, sir. Mrs. Smith woke me up at quarter to three, saying there was somebody moving about in the garage down below. I got out of bed to see if I could see anything from the window and saw that the big doors was open. I was just putting on my slippers to see who it was when I heard the engine started—it was a still night—and, going to the window, I hears the Bentley come out without lights. I thought there might be something queer, so I stays at the window to see which way the car went if I could. From the top windows of that garage, sir, you can just see the lodge gates. Well, the car had no lights, and I was just thinking that 'twas no good watching any more when I see the lights turned up on the road outside, moving off between the trees towards Burton. He must have driven down the drive and opened the lodge gates in the dark, not trusting to his lights till he was well out on the road."

  "I suppose we're not short of petrol?"

  "Full up, sir. I filled up all three of 'em when you spoke to me over the wire."

  Buller said: "You're a stand-by, Smith. You're sure it was a quarter to three?"

  "Certain, sir. I looked at the alarm clock as I got out of bed."

  "That gives him about fourteen minutes start; less than that, really, for he had to feel his way down the drive. I think we might do it, with luck. What do you think?"

  "He has the legs of us, if he chooses to," said Smith, "but not by much. And he probably doesn't know that we're after him. I don't suppose he'll be pushing her along."

  Smith looked back through the small window as a light came through, making the windscreen opaque. The broad fans of light from the two following cars dazzled him.

  "Here's the other two coming," he said, "I'll shut the flap."

  *****

  As the Bentley drew out of Lichfield, Mauleverer looked over his shoulder. His pale face showed thin in the faint light from the dashboard, but his eyes were bright. The light concentrated in them, so that they seemed to gleam with their own lustre. Scarcely more than half a mile behind him he could see a broad fan of light sweeping between the trees, catching them alternately, like an errand boy running his switch along a stretch of iron railings.

  He smiled softly and stepped on the accelerator. The Bentley gathered speed with a succession of squattering detonations, and stormed up the hill.

  *****

  Buller glanced at his watch as they came out of Lichfield. It showed thirty-seven minutes past three. There had been a loss of time at Burton-on-Trent, where he had waited to make sure that Charles and Wilder followed his instructions. He had been rewarded by seeing the two lights flit away, right and left handed, according to plan. In spite of this check he had averaged a little under thirty-eight miles an hour.

  Smith said phlegmatically: "He's less than three quarters of a mile ahead." This startled Buller, for he had seen no lights. The chauffeur pointed them out and Buller trod on the gas.

  Smith said: "He's going at a good lick. He must have been going slow before, for us to have caught up on him like this. He must have seen us."

  Buller said nothing, but drove. Their bore of light s
eemed to tunnel through chaos, creating and abandoning its tiny universe in the same moment of time. The tunnel world of leaning trees and telegraph poles hurtled or poured towards them, snuffing itself out behind their backs in instantaneous night. The strip of road streamed under them, a resistless river of speed between the deep gorges of the dark.

  The fork roads at Sutton Coldfield were blind. The Bentley reached them sixty seconds in advance of Buller, and almost smashed into a car coming from Birmingham. The Birmingham car went on, right handed, towards Tamworth, and the lights of the Bentley suddenly disappeared. Buller arrived a moment afterwards, in time to see the red light of the car from Birmingham vanishing up the road.

  Smith said: "He's doubled back for Tamworth," and Buller brought the car round as quickly as he could, but it was a sharp corner and he lost time. He drove hell-for-leather, saying: "With luck we might catch him between two fires. If Wilder has discovered he didn't go through Ashby-de-la-Zouch, he'll most likely have turned south, to try and strike our line again. In that case he'll be coming through Tamworth, towards us, on this road."

  This was exactly what had happened. Wilder had found a constable outside Ashby, who fell for his story about the average-speed test, and told him that no car had been along that road in the last forty minutes.

  At five minutes to four Buller saw Wilder's light coming towards him, on the far side of the car he was chasing. The latter was only a couple of hundred yards ahead.

  Buller signalled by switching his headlights on and off, rapidly, without decreasing speed. Wilder replied in the same way. As the two opposite courses converged, the quarry in the middle became brightly illuminated. It was a harmless Sunbeam, bringing back its slightly drunken owner at top speed from a dance near Birmingham. The latter was to give up champagne for quite a week, because he said that it made headlights look as if they were doing the morse code afterwards.

  Wilder and Buller drew up on opposite sides of the road and held a hurried conference.