Агата Кристи – Collins Chillers (страница 7)
I said, ‘No one but me shall ever have you. No one.’
And I caught her throat in my hands and gripped it and bent her backwards.
And suddenly I saw our reflection in the mirror. Sylvia choking and myself strangling her, and the scar on my cheek where the bullet grazed it under the right ear.
No—I didn’t kill her. That sudden revelation paralysed me and I loosened my grasp and let her slip on to the floor …
And then I broke down—and she comforted me … Yes, she comforted me.
I told her everything and she told me that by the phrase ‘the one person who loved and needed her’ she had meant her brother Alan … We saw into each other’s hearts that night, and I don’t think, from that moment, that we ever drifted away from each other again …
It’s a sobering thought to go through life with—that, but for the grace of God and a mirror, one might be a murderer …
One thing did die that night—the devil of jealousy that had possessed me so long …
But I wonder sometimes—suppose I hadn’t made that initial mistake—the scar on the
Or are the past and the future all one?
I’m a simple fellow—and I can’t pretend to understand these things—but I saw what I saw—and because of what I saw, Sylvia and I are together in the old-fashioned words—till death do us part. And perhaps beyond …
‘Ah!’ said Mr Dinsmead appreciatively.
He stepped back and surveyed the round table with approval. The firelight gleamed on the coarse white tablecloth, the knives and forks, and the other table appointments.
‘Is—is everything ready?’ asked Mrs Dinsmead hesitatingly. She was a little faded woman, with colourless face, meagre hair scraped back from her forehead, and a perpetually nervous manner.
‘Everything’s ready,’ said her husband with a kind of ferocious geniality.
He was a big man, with stooping shoulders, and a broad red face. He had little pig’s eyes that twinkled under his bushy brows, and a big jowl devoid of hair.
‘Lemonade?’ suggested Mrs Dinsmead, almost in a whisper.
Her husband shook his head.
‘Tea. Much better in every way. Look at the weather, streaming and blowing. A nice cup of hot tea is what’s needed for supper on an evening like this.’
He winked facetiously, then fell to surveying the table again.
‘A good dish of eggs, cold corned beef, and bread and cheese. That’s my order for supper. So come along and get it ready, Mother. Charlotte’s in the kitchen waiting to give you a hand.’
Mrs Dinsmead rose, carefully winding up the ball of her knitting.
‘She’s grown a very good-looking girl,’ she murmured. ‘Sweetly pretty, I say.’
‘Ah!’ said Mr Dinsmead. ‘The mortal image of her Ma! So go along with you, and don’t let’s waste any more time.’
He strolled about the room humming to himself for a minute or two. Once he approached the window and looked out.
‘Wild weather,’ he murmured to himself. ‘Not much likelihood of our having visitors tonight.’
Then he too left the room.
About ten minutes later Mrs Dinsmead entered bearing a dish of fried eggs. Her two daughters followed, bringing in the rest of the provisions. Mr Dinsmead and his son Johnnie brought up the rear. The former seated himself at the head of the table.
‘And for what we are to receive, etcetera,’ he remarked humorously. ‘And blessings on the man who first thought of tinned foods. What would we do, I should like to know, miles from anywhere, if we hadn’t a tin now and then to fall back upon when the butcher forgets his weekly call?’
He proceeded to carve corned beef dexterously.
‘I wonder who ever thought of building a house like this, miles from anywhere,’ said his daughter Magdalen pettishly. ‘We never see a soul.’
‘No,’ said her father. ‘Never a soul.’
‘I can’t think what made you take it, Father,’ said Charlotte.
‘Can’t you, my girl? Well, I had my reasons—I had my reasons.’
His eyes sought his wife’s furtively, but she frowned.
‘And haunted too,’ said Charlotte. ‘I wouldn’t sleep alone here for anything.’
‘Pack of nonsense,’ said her father. ‘Never seen anything, have you? Come now.’
‘Not
‘But what?’
Charlotte did not reply, but she shivered a little. A great surge of rain came driving against the window-pane, and Mrs Dinsmead dropped a spoon with a tinkle on the tray.
‘Not nervous are you, Mother?’ said Mr Dinsmead. ‘It’s a wild night, that’s all. Don’t you worry, we’re safe here by our fireside, and not a soul from outside likely to disturb us. Why, it would be a miracle if anyone did. And miracles don’t happen. No,’ he added as though to himself, with a kind of peculiar satisfaction. ‘Miracles don’t happen.’
As the words left his lips there came a sudden knocking at the door. Mr Dinsmead stayed as though petrified.
‘Whatever’s that?’ he muttered. His jaw fell.
Mrs Dinsmead gave a little whimpering cry and pulled her shawl up round her. The colour came into Magdalen’s face and she leant forward and spoke to her father.
‘The miracle has happened,’ she said. ‘You’d better go and let whoever it is in.’
Twenty minutes earlier Mortimer Cleveland had stood in the driving rain and mist surveying his car. It was really cursed bad luck. Two punctures within ten minutes of each other, and here he was, stranded miles from anywhere, in the midst of these bare Wiltshire downs with night coming on, and no prospect of shelter. Serve him right for trying to take a shortcut. If only he had stuck to the main road! Now he was lost on what seemed a mere cart-track, and no idea if there were even a village anywhere near.
He looked round him perplexedly, and his eye was caught by a gleam of light on the hillside above him. A second later the mist obscured it once more, but, waiting patiently, he presently got a second glimpse of it. After a moment’s cogitation, he left the car and struck up the side of the hill.
Soon he was out of the mist, and he recognized the light as shining from the lighted window of a small cottage. Here, at any rate, was shelter. Mortimer Cleveland quickened his pace, bending his head to meet the furious onslaught of wind and rain which seemed to be trying its best to drive him back.
Cleveland was in his own way something of a celebrity though doubtless the majority of folks would have displayed complete ignorance of his name and achievements. He was an authority on mental science and had written two excellent text books on the subconscious. He was also a member of the Psychical Research Society and a student of the occult in so far as it affected his own conclusions and line of research.
He was by nature peculiarly susceptible to atmosphere, and by deliberate training he had increased his own natural gift. When he had at last reached the cottage and rapped at the door, he was conscious of an excitement, a quickening of interest, as though all his faculties had suddenly been sharpened.
The murmur of voices within had been plainly audible to him. Upon his knock there came a sudden silence, then the sound of a chair being pushed back along the floor. In another minute the door was flung open by a boy of about fifteen. Cleveland could look straight over his shoulder upon the scene within.
It reminded him of an interior by some Dutch Master. A round table spread for a meal, a family party sitting round it, one or two flickering candles and the firelight’s glow over all. The father, a big man, sat one side of the table, a little grey woman with a frightened face sat opposite him. Facing the door, looking straight at Cleveland, was a girl. Her startled eyes looked straight into his, her hand with a cup in it was arrested halfway to her lips.
She was, Cleveland saw at once, a beautiful girl of an extremely uncommon type. Her hair, red gold, stood out round her face like a mist, her eyes, very far apart, were a pure grey. She had the mouth and chin of an early Italian Madonna.
There was a moment’s dead silence. Then Cleveland stepped into the room and explained his predicament. He brought his trite story to a close, and there was another pause harder to understand. At last, as though with an effort, the father rose.
‘Come in, sir—Mr Cleveland, did you say?’
‘That is my name,’ said Mortimer, smiling.
‘Ah! yes. Come in, Mr Cleveland. Not weather for a dog outside, is it? Come in by the fire. Shut the door, can’t you, Johnnie? Don’t stand there half the night.’
Cleveland came forward and sat on a wooden stool by the fire. The boy Johnnie shut the door.
‘Dinsmead, that’s my name,’ said the other man. He was all geniality now. ‘This is the Missus, and these are my two daughters, Charlotte and Magdalen.’
For the first time, Cleveland saw the face of the girl who had been sitting with her back to him, and saw that, in a totally different way, she was quite as beautiful as her sister. Very dark, with a face of marble pallor, a delicate aquiline nose, and a grave mouth. It was a kind of frozen beauty, austere and almost forbidding. She acknowledged her father’s introduction by bending her head, and she looked at him with an intent gaze that was searching in character. It was as though she were summing him up, weighing him in the balance of her young judgement.