A sonorous gong boomed pontifically from the hall. Surrounded by a great deal of carved and tortured black wood, the gong had been one of Giles’s aunt’s prized possessions. Mrs Cocker herself appeared to derive distinct pleasure from sounding it and always gave full measure. Gwenda put her hands to her ears and got up.
She walked quickly across the drawing-room to the wall by the far window and then brought herself up short with an exclamation of annoyance. It was the third time she’d done that. She always seemed to expect to be able to walk through solid wall into the dining-room next door.
She went back across the room and out into the front hall and then round the angle of the drawing-room wall and so along to the dining-room. It was a long way round, and it would be annoying in winter, for the front hall was draughty and the only central heating was in the drawing-room and dining-room and two bedrooms upstairs.
I don’t see, thought Gwenda to herself as she sat down at the charming Sheraton dining table which she had just bought at vast expanse in lieu of Aunt Lavender’s massive square mahogany one, I don’t see why I shouldn’t have a doorway made through from the drawing-room to the dining-room. I’ll talk to Mr Sims about it when he comes this afternoon.
Mr Sims was the builder and decorator, a persuasive middle-aged man with a husky voice and a little notebook which he always held at the ready, to jot down any expensive idea that might occur to his patrons.
Mr Sims, when consulted, was keenly appreciative.
‘Simplest thing in the world, Mrs Reed—and a great improvement, if I may say so.’
‘Would it be very expensive?’ Gwenda was by now a little doubtful of Mr Sims’s assents and enthusiasms. There had been a little unpleasantness over various extras not included in Mr Sims’s original estimate.
‘A mere trifle,’ said Mr Sims, his husky voice indulgent and reassuring. Gwenda looked more doubtful than ever. It was Mr Sims’s trifles that she had learnt to distrust. His straightforward estimates were studiously moderate.
‘I’ll tell you what, Mrs Reed,’ said Mr Sims coaxingly, ‘I’ll get Taylor to have a look when he’s finished with the dressing-room this afternoon, and then I can give you an exact idea. Depends what the wall’s like.’
Gwenda assented. She wrote to Joan West thanking her for her invitation, but saying that she would not be leaving Dillmouth at present since she wanted to keep an eye on the workmen. Then she went out for a walk along the front and enjoyed the sea breeze. She came back into the drawing-room, and Taylor, Mr Sims’s leading workman, straightened up from the corner and greeted her with a grin.
‘Won’t be no difficulty about this, Mrs Reed,’ he said. ‘Been a door here before, there has. Somebody as didn’t want it has just had it plastered over.’
Gwenda was agreeably surprised. How extraordinary, she thought, that I’ve always seemed to feel there was a door there. She remembered the confident way she had walked to it at lunch-time. And remembering it, quite suddenly, she felt a tiny shiver of uneasiness. When you came to think of it, it was really rather odd … Why should she have felt so sure that there was a door there? There was no sign of it on the outside wall. How had she guessed—known—that there was a door just there? Of course it would be convenient to have a door through to the dining-room, but why had she always gone so unerringly to that one particular spot? Anywhere on the dividing wall would have done equally well, but she had always gone automatically, thinking of other things, to the one place where a door had actually been.
I hope, thought Gwenda uneasily, that I’m not clairvoyant or anything …
There had never been anything in the least psychic about her. She wasn’t that kind of person. Or was she? That path outside from the terrace down through the shrubbery to the lawn. Had she in some way known it was there when she was so insistent on having it made in that particular place?
Perhaps I am a bit psychic, thought Gwenda uneasily. Or is it something to do with the house?
Why had she asked Mrs Hengrave that day if the house was haunted?
It wasn’t haunted! It was a darling house! There couldn’t be anything wrong with the house. Why, Mrs Hengrave had seemed quite surprised by the idea.
Or had there been a trace of reserve, of wariness, in her manner?
Good Heavens, I’m beginning to imagine things, thought Gwenda.
She brought her mind back with an effort to her discussion with Taylor.
‘There’s one other thing,’ she added. ‘One of the cupboards in my room upstairs is stuck. I want to get it opened.’
The man came up with her and examined the door.
‘It’s been painted over more than once,’ he said. ‘I’ll get the men to get it open for you tomorrow if that will do.’
Gwenda acquiesced and Taylor went away.
That evening Gwenda felt jumpy and nervous. Sitting in the drawing-room and trying to read, she was aware of every creak of the furniture. Once or twice she looked over her shoulder and shivered. She told herself repeatedly that there was nothing in the incident of the door and the path. They were just coincidences. In any case they were the result of plain common sense.
Without admitting it to herself, she felt nervous of going up to bed. When she finally got up and turned off the lights and opened the door into the hall, she found herself dreading to go up the stairs. She almost ran up them in her haste, hurried along the passage and opened the door of her room. Once inside she at once felt her fears calmed and appeased. She looked round the room affectionately. She felt safe in here, safe and happy. Yes, now she was here, she was safe. (Safe from what, you idiot? she asked herself.) She looked at her pyjamas spread out on the bed and her bedroom slippers below them.
Really, Gwenda, you might be six years old! You ought to have bunny shoes, with rabbits on them.
She got into bed with a sense of relief and was soon asleep.
The next morning she had various matters to see to in the town. When she came back it was lunch-time.
‘The men have got the cupboard open in your bedroom, madam,’ said Mrs Cocker as she brought in the delicately fried sole, the mashed potatoes and the creamed carrots.
‘Oh good,’ said Gwenda.
She was hungry and enjoyed her lunch. After having coffee in the drawing-room, she went upstairs to her bedroom. Crossing the room she pulled open the door of the corner cupboard.
Then she uttered a sudden frightened little cry and stood staring.
The inside of the cupboard revealed the original papering of the wall, which elsewhere had been done over in the yellowish wall paint. The room had once been gaily papered in a floral design, a design of little bunches of scarlet poppies alternating with bunches of blue cornflowers …
Gwenda stood there staring a long time, then she went shakily over to the bed and sat down on it.
Here she was in a house she had never been in before, in a country she had never visited—and only two days ago she had lain in bed imagining a paper for this very room—and the paper she had imagined corresponded exactly with the paper that had once hung on the walls.
Wild fragments of explanation whirled round in her head. Dunne, Experiment with Time—seeing forward instead of back …
She could explain the garden path and the connecting door as coincidence—but there couldn’t be coincidence about this. You couldn’t conceivably imagine a wallpaper of such a distinctive design and then find one exactly as you had imagined it … No, there was some explanation that eluded her and that—yes, frightened her. Every now and then she was seeing, not forward, but back—back to some former state of the house. Any moment she might see something more—something she didn’t want to see … The house frightened her … But was it the house or herself? She didn’t want to be one of those people who saw things …
She drew a long breath, put on her hat and coat and slipped quickly out of the house. At the post office she sent the following telegram:
West, 19 Addway Square Chelsea London. May I change my mind and come to you tomorrow Gwenda.
She sent it reply paid.
CHAPTER 3
‘Cover Her Face …’
Raymond West and his wife did all they could to make young Giles’s wife feel welcome. It was not their fault that Gwenda found them secretly rather alarming. Raymond, with his odd appearance, rather like a pouncing raven, his sweep of hair and his sudden crescendos of quite incomprehensible conversation, left Gwenda round-eyed and nervous. Both he and Joan seemed to talk a language of their own. Gwenda had never been plunged in a highbrow atmosphere before and practically all its terms were strange.
‘We’ve planned to take you to a show or two,’ said Raymond whilst Gwenda was drinking gin and rather wishing she could have had a cup of tea after her journey.
Gwenda brightened up immediately.
‘The Ballet tonight at Sadler’s Wells, and tomorrow we’ve got a birthday party on for my quite incredible Aunt Jane—the Duchess of Malfi with Gielgud, and on Friday you simply must see They Walked without Feet. Translated from the Russian—absolutely the most significent piece of drama for the last twenty years. It’s at the little Witmore Theatre.’
Gwenda expressed herself grateful for these plans for her entertainment. After all, when Giles came home, they would go together to the musical shows and all that. She flinched slightly at the prospect of They Walked without Feet, but supposed she might enjoy it—only the point about ‘significant’ plays was that you usually didn’t.
‘You’ll adore my Aunt Jane,’ said Raymond. ‘She’s what I should describe as a perfect Period Piece. Victorian to the core. All her dressing-tables have their legs swathed in chintz. She lives in a village, the kind of village where nothing ever happens, exactly like a stagnant pond.’
‘Something did happen there once,’ his wife said drily.
‘A mere drama of passion—crude—no subtlety to it.’
‘You enjoyed it frightfully at the time,’ Joan reminded him with a slight twinkle.
‘I sometimes enjoy playing village cricket,’ said Raymond, with dignity.
‘Anyway, Aunt Jane distinguished herself over that murder.’
‘Oh, she’s no fool. She adores problems.’
‘Problems?’ said Gwenda, her mind flying to arithmetic.
Raymond waved a hand.
‘Any kind of problem. Why the grocer’s wife took her umbrella to the church social on a fine evening. Why a gill of pickled shrimps was found where it was. What happened to the Vicar’s surplice. All grist to my Aunt Jane’s mill. So if you’ve any problem in your life, put it to her, Gwenda. She’ll tell you the answer.’
He laughed and Gwenda laughed too, but not very heartily. She was introduced to Aunt Jane, otherwise Miss Marple, on the following day. Miss Marple was an attractive old lady, tall and thin, with pink cheeks and blue eyes, and a gentle, rather fussy manner. Her blue eyes often had a little twinkle in them.
After an early dinner at which they drank Aunt Jane’s health, they all went off to His Majesty’s Theatre. Two extra men, an elderly artist and a young barrister were in the party. The elderly artist devoted himself to Gwenda and the young barrister divided his attentions between Joan and Miss Marple whose remarks he seemed to enjoy very much. At the theatre, however, this arrangement was reversed. Gwenda sat in the middle of the row between Raymond and the barrister.
The lights went down and the play began.
It was superbly acted and Gwenda enjoyed it very much. She had not seen very many first-rate theatrical productions.
The play drew to a close, came to that supreme moment of horror. The actor’s voice came over the footlights filled with the tragedy of a warped and perverted mentality.
‘Cover her face. Mine eyes dazzle, she died young …’
Gwenda screamed.
She sprang up from her seat, pushed blindly past the others out into the aisle, through the exit and up the stairs and so to the street. She did not stop, even then, but half walked, half ran, in a blind panic up the Haymarket.
It was not until she had reached Piccadilly that she noticed a free taxi cruising along, hailed it and, getting in, gave the address of the Chelsea house. With fumbling fingers she got out money, paid the taxi and went up the steps. The servant who let her in glanced at her in surprise.
‘You’ve come back early, miss. Didn’t you feel well?’
‘I—no, yes—I—I felt faint.’
‘Would you like anything, miss? Some brandy?’
‘No, nothing. I’ll go straight up to bed.’
She ran up the stairs to avoid further questions.
She pulled off her clothes, left them on the floor in a heap and got into bed. She lay there shivering, her heart pounding, her eyes staring at the ceiling.
She did not hear the sound of fresh arrivals downstairs, but after about five minutes the door opened and Miss Marple came in. She had two hot-water bottles tucked under her arm and a cup in her hand.
Gwenda sat up in bed, trying to stop her shivering.
‘Oh, Miss Marple, I’m frightfully sorry. I don’t know what—it was awful of me. Are they very annoyed with me?’
‘Now don’t worry, my dear child,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Just tuck yourself up warmly with these hot-water bottles.’
‘I don’t really need a hot-water bottle.’
‘Oh yes, you do. That’s right. And now drink this cup of tea …’
It was hot and strong and far too full of sugar, but Gwenda drank it obediently. The shivering was less acute now.
‘Just lie down now and go to sleep,’ said Miss Marple. ‘You’ve had a shock, you know. We’ll talk about it in the morning. Don’t worry about anything. Just go to sleep.’
She drew the covers up, smiled, patted Gwenda and went out.
Downstairs Raymond was saying irritably to Joan: ‘What on earth was the matter with the girl? Did she feel ill, or what?’
‘My dear Raymond, I don’t know, she just screamed! I suppose the play was a bit too macabre for her.’
‘Well, of course Webster is a bit grisly. But I shouldn’t have thought—’ He broke off as Miss Marple came into the room. ‘Is she all right?’
‘Yes, I think so. She’d had a bad shock, you know.’
‘Shock? Just seeing a Jacobean drama?’
‘I think there must be a little more to it than that,’ said Miss Marple thoughtfully.
Gwenda’s breakfast was sent up to her. She drank some coffee and nibbled a little piece of toast. When she got up and came downstairs, Joan had gone to her studio, Raymond was shut up in his workroom and only Miss Marple was sitting by the window, which had a view over the river; she was busily engaged in knitting.
She looked up with a placid smile as Gwenda entered.
‘Good morning, my dear. You’re feeling better, I hope.’
‘Oh yes, I’m quite all right. How I could make such an utter idiot of myself last night, I don’t know. Are they—are they very mad with me?’
‘Oh no, my dear. They quite understand.’
‘Understand what?’
Miss Marple glanced up over her knitting.
‘That you had a bad shock last night.’ She added gently: ‘Hadn’t you better tell me all about it?’
Gwenda walked restlessly up and down.
‘I think I’d better go and see a psychiatrist or someone.’
‘There are excellent mental specialists in London, of course. But are you sure it is necessary?’
‘Well—I think I’m going mad … I must be going mad.’
An elderly parlourmaid entered the room with a telegram on a salver which she handed to Gwenda.
‘The boy wants to know if there’s an answer, ma’am?’
Gwenda tore it open. It had been retelegraphed on from Dillmouth. She stared at it for a moment or two uncomprehendingly, then screwed it into a ball.
‘There’s no answer,’ she said mechanically.
The maid left the room.
‘Not bad news, I hope, dear?’
‘It’s Giles—my husband. He’s flying home. He’ll be here in a week.’
Her voice was bewildered and miserable. Miss Marple gave a gentle little cough.
‘Well—surely—that is very nice, isn’t it?’
‘Is it? When I’m not sure if I’m mad or not? If I’m mad I ought never to have married Giles. And the house and everything. I can’t go back there. Oh, I don’t know what to do.’
Miss Marple patted the sofa invitingly.
‘Now suppose you sit down here, dear, and just tell me all about it.’
It was with a sense of relief that Gwenda accepted the invitation. She poured out the whole story, starting with her first view of Hillside and going on to the incidents that had first puzzled her and then worried her.
‘And so I got rather frightened,’ she ended. ‘And I thought I’d come up to London—get away from it all. Only, you see, I couldn’t get away from it. It followed me. Last night—’ she shut her eyes and gulped reminiscently.
‘Last night?’ prompted Miss Marple.
‘I dare say you won’t believe this,’ said Gwenda, speaking very fast. ‘You’ll think I’m hysterical or queer or something. It happened quite suddenly, right at the end. I’d enjoyed the play. I’d never thought once of the house. And then it came—out of the blue—when he said those words—’
She repeated in a low quivering voice: ‘Cover her face, mine eyes dazzle, she died young.
‘I was back there—on the stairs, looking down on the hall through the banisters, and I saw her lying there. Sprawled out—dead. Her hair all golden and her face all—all blue! She was dead, strangled, and someone was saying those words in that same horrible gloating way—and I saw his hands—grey, wrinkled—not hands—monkey’s paws … It was horrible, I tell you. She was dead …’
Miss Marple asked gently: ‘Who was dead?’
The answer came back quick and mechanical.
‘Helen …’
CHAPTER 4
Helen?
For a moment Gwenda stared at Miss Marple, then she pushed back the hair from her forehead.
‘Why did I say that?’ she said. ‘Why did I say Helen? I don’t know any Helen!’
She dropped her hands with a gesture of despair.
‘You see,’ she said, ‘I’m mad! I imagine things! I go about seeing things that aren’t there. First it was only wallpapers—but now it’s dead bodies. So I’m getting worse.’
‘Now don’t rush to conclusions, my dear—’
‘Or else it’s the house. The house is haunted—or bewitched or something … I see things that have happened there—or else I see things that are going to happen there—and that would be worse. Perhaps a woman called Helen is going to be murdered there … Only I don’t see if it’s the house that’s haunted why I should see these awful things when I am away from it. So I think really that it must be me that’s going queer. And I’d better go and see a psychiatrist at once—this morning.’
‘Well, of course, Gwenda dear, you can always do that when you’ve exhausted every other line of approach, but I always think myself that it’s better to examine the simplest and most commonplace explanations first. Let me get the facts quite clear. There were three definite incidents that upset you. A path in the garden that had been planted over but that you felt was there, a door that had been bricked up, and a wallpaper which you imagined correctly and in detail without having seen it? Am I right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, the easiest, the most natural explanation would be that you had seen them before.’
‘In another life, you mean?’
‘Well no, dear. I meant in this life. I mean that they might be actual memories.’
‘But I’ve never been in England until a month ago, Miss Marple.’
‘You are quite sure of that, my dear?’
‘Of course I’m sure. I’ve lived near Christchurch in New Zealand all my life.’
‘Were you born there?’
‘No, I was born in India. My father was a British Army officer. My mother died a year or two after I was born and he sent me back to her people in New Zealand to bring up. Then he himself died a few years later.’
‘You don’t remember coming from India to New Zealand?’
‘Not really. I do remember, frightfully vaguely, being on a boat. A round window thing—a porthole, I suppose. And a man in white uniform with a red face and blue eyes, and a mark on his chin—a scar, I suppose. He used to toss me up in the air and I remember being half frightened and half loving it. But it’s all very fragmentary.’
‘Do you remember a nurse—or an ayah?’
‘Not an ayah—Nannie. I remember Nannie because she stayed for some time—until I was five years old. She cut ducks out of paper. Yes, she was on the boat. She scolded me when I cried because the Captain kissed me and I didn’t like his beard.’
‘Now that’s very interesting, dear, because you see you are mixing up two different voyages. In one, the Captain had a beard and in the other he had a red face and a scar on his chin.’
‘Yes,’ Gwenda considered, ‘I suppose I must be.’
‘It seems possible to me,’ said Miss Marple, ‘that when your mother died, your father brought you to England with him first, and that you actually lived at this house, Hillside. You’ve told me, you know, that the house felt like home to you as soon as you got inside it. And that room you chose to sleep in, it was probably your nursery—’
‘It was a nursery. There were bars on the windows.’
‘You see? It had this pretty gay paper of cornflowers and poppies. Children remember their nursery walls very well. I’ve always remembered the mauve irises on my nursery walls and yet I believe it was repapered when I was only three.’
‘And that’s why I thought at once of the toys, the dolls’ house and the toy cupboards?’
‘Yes. And the bathroom. The bath with the mahogany surround. You told me that you thought of sailing ducks in it as soon as you saw it.’
Gwenda said thoughtfully, ‘It’s true that I seemed to know right away just where everything was—the kitchen and the linen cupboard. And that I kept thinking there was a door through from the drawing-room to the dining-room. But surely it’s quite impossible that I should come to England and actually buy the identical house I’d lived in long ago?’
‘It’s not impossible, my dear. It’s just a very remarkable coincidence—and remarkable coincidences do happen. Your husband wanted a house on the south coast, you were looking for one, and you passed a house that stirred memories, and attracted you. It was the right size and a reasonable price and so you bought it. No, it’s not too wildly improbable. Had the house been merely what is called (perhaps rightly) a haunted house, you would have reacted differently, I think. But you had no feeling of violence or repulsion except, so you have told me, at one very definite moment, and that was when you were just starting to come down the staircase and looking down into the hall.’
Some of the scared expression came back into Gwenda’s eyes.
She said: ‘You mean—that—that Helen—that that’s true too?’
Miss Marple said very gently: ‘Well, I think so, my dear … I think we must face the position that if the other things are memories, that is a memory too …’
‘That I really saw someone killed—strangled—and lying there dead?’
‘I don’t suppose you knew consciously that she was strangled, that was suggested by the play last night and fits in with your adult recognition of what a blue convulsed face must mean. I think a very young child, creeping down the stairs, would realize violence and death and evil and associate them with a certain series of words—for I think there’s no doubt that the murderer actually said those words. It would be a very severe shock to a child. Children are odd little creatures. If they are badly frightened, especially by something they don’t understand, they don’t talk about it. They bottle it up. Seemingly, perhaps, they forget it. But the memory is still there deep down.’
