The Step In The House

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 475, 3 October 1928, Page 5

The Step In The House

By

Rina Ramsay.

CHAPTER X. ■’The ” said Richardson, and hesitated. “The real one,” said Johnny. “Oh. there’s no possible doubt whatever She’s got all the necessary documents to prove her identity, every blessed one. I’m fixing it up for her. She asked me immediately to take care of her interests. She’ll take out letters of administration, and between us eve'll settle up the estate. My word, she was upset when I broke it to her that her poor old uncle had beeu murdered before he could make his will. She thought that meant she ■Was left out of it, and I had to explain to her it was just the opposite. No legacies or anything to lessen the residue. She’s a fine woman, Richardson. A different type entirely.” “Did she give you an explanation?” said Richardson. Johnny smiled. “It wasn't for her to explain, you know,” he said. “But she says she thinks she knows who the woman is who has been personating her over here. She says there were five or six of them rooming in a hoardinghouse together, out iu some fearful town in British Columbia, where she’s come from. And she had been talking of coming over, she was sick of hard times, to her English uncle, and then she was taken ill with something infectious, and they carried her off to hospital, and she thinks it was imported that she was dead, and this other one —she was half French, she says, and a reckless creature must have gone straight off and taken her passage to England in the next boat. Luckily she’d not trusted her with her papers; she’d left them with the landlady. She said did the person look French? So l said ‘rather!’ You know I said that from the very first. Your French Canadians, she says, are *»o very excitable. She feels certain it was she who murdered the poor old man.” He didn’t look at the doctor. He ■*'as always forgetting poor Richardson’s prepossession in favour of the impostor. Poor devil, one could afford to be magnanimous over his outbreak of yesterday! That was what the expression in his face said all too Plainly, and the other man had to keep (

a tight grip on himself. He contrived to somehow. "Oh!” he said. His confidence was shaken. Things looked black indeed for the Elizabeth that he knew'. Only blind instinct, the passionate instinct of the lover, held him to her. Reason had nothing to do with it. He told himself that even in his own profession he had known science and textbook learning put to shame by the blind instinct of some plain man who was a healer. Would it be the same with him? Would that tenderness that wasn’t even staggered by Johnny’s revelations ever be justified? He loved her. He could bring no argument to her cause but that. He loved her. Unreasonable, but final. He went up to his room, when the lawyer had gone ,aud felt half lawyer had gone, and felt half ness iu himself, unlocked the old mahogany wardrobe that stood near the head of the bed. He put out his hand to where in its dark recesses a little wisp of black silk was hanging, and lifting the edge of it, kissed it. Lunacy, rank lunacy, blind, blind instinct!

“My darling,” he muttered, "my little darling! You did not do it.” The new Miss de Stair came very shortly to take possession. There had hardly been time for her extraordinary story to get about before she showed herself. She had decided, since her only relation was dead and she had no other ties in this country, to settle everything as soon as it could be done and go back to British Columbia, where all her friends were. But first she wanted to visit the old town where her mother had once lived and choose some remembrances to take away with her before the house and the old furniture were all sold. Ail this was expounded by Johnny Adams before she arrived, and the atmosphere was favourable to her when she did appear. The first sign of her presence was an immense wreath of early chrysanthemums on old Harry Dodds's "rave, and Johnny Adams’s new suit, ft was whispered that, having got her among them, he would now relax his efforts, and wind up the estate as slowly as he could. Such a chance did not come every day to a man,

that of standing in a confidential position to an unmarried woman who would have a great deal of money, and had, unlike the other, no terrible cloud of suspicion hanging over her head.

People liked her. She was a large, fair woman with a placid manner; she did not talk much, but smiled pleasantly, and said whatever was proper for her to say. They asked her w armly to their houses, and she asked the women to have tea with her in. Harry Dodds’s sad old house. She would not sleep there, but went over in the daytime. She didn’t like being alone in the dark, she confessed, after what had happened. She wanted company. When this transpired, the parson’s wife begged her to exchange the hotel for the vicarage—perhaps with her weather eye open for possible subscriptions and help in the parish bazaar. (What an attraction for the outside public, said the ribald, the real niece of the murdered man would be!) She was also pushed to this by her rankling sense of how she had refused the doctor in the case of the impostor (as things turned out). She w-asn’t inhospitable really, or unbind, and he must see it. Strange and pitiable that the best of men could be so fooled! Iu three days this Miss de Stair had established herself. The two old servants had accepted her with stolid faces. Perhaps they were beyond astonishment. Mrs. Beamish served her with a glum respect. She wasn’t currying favour, but neither was she risking the reward of good service by any demonstrations in a lost cause. The newcomer was practical. Sam had orders to keep the shop open until the stock was sold. He w-asn’t interfered with; Miss de Stair, after her first round of inspection, never put her foot in the shop—let Johnny Adams go through the boobs. She and the lawyer had long confabulations together. Once, w-hen he was going out of the house, Johnny Adams could not resist saying a word to the old woman. He had an inquisitive desire to find out what she was thinking. But, like Mr. Smith, he got nothing out of her. She said "Yes” and “No” to him stolidly, and held the door open. Only one remark she made that struck him. She said “Yes, she is a very pleasant lady. But Missle wasn’t afraid of the ghost.” She was going back to the kitchen,

w-hen the new mistress called to her over the stairs. Her voice was not so calm as usual.

“Mrs. Beamish, Mrs. Beamish, what did you say about a ghost?” “Ghost, Miss?” said Mrs. Beamish, and twisted her apron, “Ghost?” “Yes. Come up here and tell me w-hat you mean, will you?” said the new Miss de Stair in a disturbed voice.

The old woman smiled to herself. But as always, her face was stolid. She mounted obediently and stood before her new mistress. Miss de Stair had been examining the contents of a chiffonier in the unused parlour of Harry Dodds’s day. She was leaving, as Mrs. Beamish had muttered to Sam once, no dish unturned. Her hands were dusty, and her fair hair, too, had a dusty look. She went back into the parlour, that musty room with its antique trappings, and its collection of rubbish that might be priceless to a collector. 'There's ghosts in all old houses,

Miss,” said Mrs. Beamish. Outwardly impassive, she measured the new lady with her eye. “Do you mean that your master—-w-alks?” said Miss de Stair. “Go on, speak out.” “Him?” said Mrs. Beamish. “I don’t mind him. It’s the young one.” There was a horrid matter-of-fact-ness in her way of bringing this out that was somehow more impressive than if she had uttered it more fearfully. The other woman shaped her mouth in a question, and could not bring it out.

“Do you mean there is something?” she said at last, and quite unconsciously dropped her voice to a w-hisper. Mrs. Beamish nodded. “1 see what I see,” she said. “But I don’t say nothing. You want to sell the old house, Miss, don’t you? Them

as would buy it wouldn’t if they knew what was in it. She walks and watches, Miss, walks and watches. I don’t wonder you won’t sleep here, Miss.” Miss de Stair moved nervously a little nearer. Her face was pale, her eyes flitted from the old woman’s stolid red face to her capacious apron, down to her wide slippers, and back to her face. “What is she like?” she said. “She walks across this landing,” said Mrs. Beamish slowly, “and in at the old master’s room as if she wanted to tell him something. You might see her yourself, Miss, if you wanted. Wherever you’ve been in the day time she goes and sits in your chair.” Miss de Stair did not ask again what the ghost was like. Down stairs went Mrs. Beamish into the kitchen. She found Sam, who had come in from the shop for his tea, toasting himself a kipper. “I've tried her,” she said. "I’ve tried her. She and Lawyer Adams

plotting in there! Selling and turning us out of a house we’ve been in 40 year! And what have they done with Missie?” Sam heaved a kind of groan. “I pray they never find her,” he said. "She must ha’ done it, Susan, she must ha’ done it.” _J‘You fool,” said Mrs. Beamish. After that, Miss de Stair took as few opportunities of being by herself in ! the house as she could. She found, i among the new friends she was daily making, somebody or other to keep her j company while she explored the contents of her uncle’s house. She had never owned a house before, she said, and it was a great amusement to her to look over what she found In it. A kind of treasure hunt. But she would not stay after dusk. When the late | autumn sun sank and the sky dimmed J

she would grow restless and make excuse to go. Nothing had been heard or seen of her predecessor, the girl who had fled from the threatened exposure. The police were supposed to be searching for her, and at any moment, said some, the paper might be full of her arrest and trial. It was nonsense to imagine it was anyone but she who had murdered poor Harry Dodds. According to Miss de Stair, she was a desperate character. They had worked together in a store (for she was very poor, out there), and they had been rivals. Jeanne had her reasons for hating her, and she had threatened her many times. (To be continued.)