The Step In The House

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 490, 20 October 1928, Page 20

The Step In The House

By

Rina Ramsay.

CHAPTER XVIII. (Continued) “I never said who it was,” he said sarcastically.* ”1 didn't need. Besides, how could I tell not thinking what I was looking at —just seeing a kind of shape that was a woman’s passing? If I’d known then what I know now of what was done that night I’d have stared my eyes out. I have my fancy, my secret fancy, but who’d- believe me? They’d say Peter Harrison was stark mad. . . . I tell you, doctor, I’ve got it printed in my mind like a photograph, but I can’t see it —I can’t remember.” He was shaking with the violence of his excitement now. Without thinking what he was doing, he clutched at the doctor’s arm. muttering in his ear. “Might after night,” he said, “I stand where l stood then and look. The house is there; the light’s there, but I see no womau. Night after night I watch for the memory of it to creep from the back of my mind and come before my eyesight.” Unconsciously he was drawing hack to his post opposite the house. Pulling at the doctor’s arm, he pointed upwards. “There’s what I see,” he said, “the empty window. And it I spoke out what is in my mind, you’d say I was trying to serve my malice. But I’ll see the rest yet. I’ll know it—and there’ll be none to deny what I saw when I stand up in the witness-box.” The doctor’s gaze had followed his. The night was getting darker; the stars were going in; and the deeper obscurity threw up the dim square of light in the house on the other side of the street. Like a strange answer to the man’s crazy muttering, a shape moved into the light, slowly passing. The man quivered stared “God,” he said, “she it was! I’ll hang that woman yet.” Like one beside himself with triumph, like a hound running down his prey, he darted across the street and in at the open door. But silently. He made no sound. And Richardson, close after him, stopped as he paused just inside the threshold, heard on the landing above them a soft padding step. It was a step he had heard once before—a heavy foot treading lightly. He remembered it, recognised it with a shock that drove everything but that realisation out of his head. Before he could recover from the knowledge that step had brought him, the other man had run up the stairs. And then Richardson heard a screech. Someone on that landing had turned to fly, missed her footing, caught at the rail and as the dryrotted banisters gave under her

weight, fell backwards with a thud on to the floor below. Peter Harrison had not touched her. He had fallen down in a fit. The doctor got help; knocked up some of the nearest neighbours. They laid Mrs. Beamish on the kitchen table; it was the best place for her. She could not be carried up to her own bed; the stair was too steep and too narrow. Someone whispered she could be got up as far as her old master’s room, but she heard and stirred uneasily and tried to shake her head. "No,” she said. Sam, kalf-dres%ed, and muddled with sleep, was asking her how it had happened. She snapped at him. How should it happen, she said, but that he was snoring like a hog while she lay awake fidgety because she had heard the doctor go out of the house, and had not heard him lock the door —the door that made such a noise if you even shut it —! She had risen. and was going down in her bed-socks to drop the bar. And then she saw Peter Harrison’s face at the top of the stairs grinning at her like a devil. And she thought her last hour had come. . . . So it had. “Broken me back, have 1?” she said suddenly to the doctor. His hands were pitiful; but the look in his eyes was stern. There was no use concealing it, and she was a bold old woman. He simply nodded. “Fetch me a magistrate, then,” said Mrs. Beamish. “Sim Burton, at the corner, he’s one. Sim —«rton, the brewer. Fetch him.” The doctor ..ad alread. sent. They had set the red cotton cushion out of Sam’s chair under her head; she could not move her limbs; there was a deadness in them creeping up —but she was just able to look about her. Her eyes travelled round the kitchen. There was no fear in them. Somehow', the doctor felt, she had squared her deeds w’ith what she possessed of a conscience. She was not to be punished in this world, and she did not seem at all afraid of the other. He had a feeling she was enjoying her tremendous moment of consequence. Sim Burton arrived, a stout man, roused hastily out of bed. His short grey hair was rumpled, he had put on a great coat over his pyjamas. She saw him in the doorway and called to him. “Come in, Mr. Burton,” she said, “come in and take down what I’ve got to say, and make them hold my hand up for me to sign it.” There was actually a twinkle in her eyes. Richardson could almost fan.cy she was taking pleasure in the sight of one of the primmest and most selfimportant old gentlemen in the town turning out of his warm bed to be at her beck and call. Bm when she began to make her tardy confession she did not look at him but at the doctor. “X didn’t mean to do it,” she said, "not by way of planning. Why should I? We lived in this house with the master for forty year, and I looked to it he would make us comfortable for the rest of our lives. When he got that rampage about not having made

his will, I sent Sam East enough to fetch Johnny Adams. And I sent for you, doctor, too, for I thought he might need some doctoring to keep him up to it, him being so weak; and I made sure he wouldn't miss putting in a bit about leaving Sam and me what was proper. And when he got talking so wild about willing it away from his own blood-relation, and how if he didn’t make his will she’d get all, I took up that old Whittaker’s Almanack he’d been reading about the wills in, and carried it down with me to see for myself. It just crossed my mind—he hadn’t any pet friends that I knowed of and he’d owed all his comfort to Sam and me. . . . Well, if he’d left it to us that wouldn’t have been outrageous. . . . And then Johnny Adams, he came strutting downstairs, and, says he, ‘Don’t go to bed, I’ll want you both for witnesses to the will.” She stopped for breath. When she spoke again her voice had a queer note of moral indignation. “f might have expected it of him,” she said. “An old Curmudgeon, who’d rob his own flesh and blood! Didn’t I see it in black and white in that Whitaker’s Almanack that the witnesses to a will w T ould get nothing?— Nothing whatever for Sam and me, who had served him like black slaves for forty years! There was something implacable about her as she went on. Not a sign of compunction.

“So,” she said, “X sat down by the fire and stewed. Ar.d I said to Sam, ‘l’ll bet the master leaves all his money to Johnny Adams! He’s an artful beggar. I never did trust him, and he looks as pleased of his night’s work as a bantam cock,’ and Sam said ‘Bosh,’ nodding in his chair. And I said to myself, ‘We’ll not get our rights out of Johnny Adams, but if it was to come to Missie, she’s a slip of a girl anybody could twist round their little finger.’ And if he was to die before he got his will made and witnessed, it would be so. So I looked at Sam, and he had dropped off to sleep, and I kicked off my slippers. It had come into my head what I was to do. You two didn’t hear me as I nipped upstairs, doctor, you was talking—l slipped quickly into the room and up to the bedside, and he didn’t notice me; he was dozing. Forty year I had served that man, and there he lay, the old villain, with not a spark of conscience for the way he was treating me and Sam! And I snatched up the top pillow that was behind his head, and I jammed it down over his face, and I kept it so with my two hands till the job was finished. ... It didn’t feel no wickeder to me nor drowning kittens. He had got to die, hadn’t he, and it was best he should die before he did mischief. But I couldn’t somehow take that pillow off him. . . .” That was the only time she showed any. trace of a guilty feeling. But she had only lost her nerve for a moment; she went on again stolidly with her recital. “Down I crept,” she said, in my stocking soles, making no more noise than the cat, except when I trod on that creaking board on the landing. I put my foot down as light as a feather as I came by the sitting room door, and inside I could hear that Johnny Adams laying down the law, and I thought, ‘l’ve settled you, my man. I’ve cheated you, anyhow,’ and I got back into my kitchen, and there was Sam still asleep, and no one to know I had ever been out of it, and the kettle was boiling, so I mashed a cup of tea.’ She took a moment to think over if she had said enough, but found nothing to add. Only she fixed her eyes upon Richardson with a sly gleam of peasant cunning. “You’re vexed with me, doctor.

Maybe if I’d guessed he was going to to will it to you, I’d not have done it. And I wouldn’t have let them hurt little Missie. I was scared and upset when they took her up for the murder! I didn't expect it’d come to that when she didn’t do it. . . . But I had to look out for myself, and what was the sense of speaking until I saw if they found her guilty? You needn’t be vexed with me.” . * * * It was dawn before Richardson could get away by himself to th’/fc over what had happened. Sim Burton had gone with the old woman’s signed deposition. Harrison, recovering from his fit. had been taken home, and Sam, who had hardly been able to take in the whole of that night’s work, but who had grasped, with a rather pathetic awaking of interest, his duties with regard to the funeral, was only waiting for daylight to go and consult with the undertaker. A big funeral (and Richardson fancied, with a grim touch of humour, that it would be nearly as popular a function as the funeral of his master! would be a great consolation to him. He had made no allusion to his wife’s confession. "She was a masterful woman,” was the only remark he made. . . .

There was a star shining in the gr«y east as Richardson moved quietly out o£ the house and looked up at the sky. Day was breaking . . . and in the house behind him a woman, jfoing from room to room, stopped at the landing window and pulled down the blind. Hp wondered if he could ever endure to go into that house again—a house accursed, the habitation of sordid greed, a house of suspicion, a house of murder! He remembered his worry, his fear for the thing that he had lost, his desperation—and then he remembered that Elizabeth had lived in it; that she had sweetened its dark corners with her presence.

How soon could he get away "rom here and reach London, and tell her? Directly the post office was open for telegrams he would send a wire. Just

“Good news, I am coming”—and he would follow it. No, he would not; there was a milk train first. He went back to his own house through the empty street. Nobody there was stirring. Like a thief he let himself in, wrote a message on the slate for his housekeeper, felt his rough chin and hesitated, then ran up to his room, turned on his bath, and shaved- There was just time for that. Cold water, but what did it matter? He wanted to look like a bridegroom when he saw her, not like a haggard -iglitwatcher. He threw back the doors of his closet to reach for a decent suit and his fingers came in contact with something silken, soft. The thrill of it ran up his arm. Elizabeth’s darling frock—the little silk frock she had sold to buy caps and aprons, and he had so marvellously retrieved./ He laid his cheek for an instant against it, sweet with the faint fragrance of roses—then with redoubled eagerness he got ready to go to her. Slow torment, the milk train was. The only thing to amuse him in all that journey was the station-master’s astonishment when he saw him on the platform in the dim light, and heard him say he must travel by it. He could not sleep. Who could, with that eternal clanking of cans at the wayside stations? He could not think, with his head in a turmoil, and his heart with her. When he reached London the square in which Lady Rooke’s house was, a big, old-fashioned corner house with Butcher’s Striped Aprons, 7s 6d Bert Marshall, Symonds Street.

great stone pillars, was still asleep. He walked up and down in front of it, wondering where, in that high house, her window was. Behind which of the drawn curtains was she lying, perhaps awake, perhaps looking into the future with terrified, sleepless eyes ? Up and down he walked, up and down . . . It was hours to his impatience before he saw signs of-life behind that senseless barrier of stone. And then at last he could go to the door. Lady Rooke was not down, but when he had sent up the card, with its message, "Good news,” she sent for him immediately. He followed her maid into the dim luxurious bedroom where she sat up in her pillows, her plain, weatherbeaten face crowned with a boudoir cap. Eagerly she called him in.

“Come in, doctor,” she said. “What a mercy you are a doctor, and needn’t feel shy. Come on! Well, have you found out the murderer at last? Sit down, man, and get the tale over.” “Yes,” he said, "it was the old woman-servant. The thing is beyond a doubt —we have her dying confession she made before a magistrate. W T ill you tell her at once?” Elizabeth’s far-off cousin laughed. "My dear man,” she “you must tell her. It’s what you’ve come for. Andrews go to Miss Elizabeth and say there is good news for her in my room and she must, come and hear it.” They heard the girl coming, running. There was a white eagerness in her face as she reached the open door and saw him. She stopped with a cry. “Yes,” said Lady Rooke, “it’s he, Elizabeth. It’s really he —it’s your doctor. If you ask him what he is doing in my room at this hour of the morning, he will tell you.” And holding the tv/o little hands that trembled in his, adoring her, from the crown of her dear, fair head to the small feet in furry white slippers that gleamed below the blue velvet wrapper she had flung around her as she ran, Richardson told her. "And the man who breaks into my house at six o’clock in the morning,” said Lady Rooke, “is a real thief. I can see it written all over him that he is going to take you from me.” “As soon as I can,” said Richaudson quietly, but his heart was dancing. “Villain!” said Lady Rooke. "Oh, well, never mind, I must bear it. Child, haven’t you got a word to say?” She tried to speak, the girl who had been living under an awful cloud, bearing it gallantly while the weight was on her, but almost broken by the shock of relief. She was wondering, herself, why she did not faint. And then she knew that it wms because the man who was holding her hands so tight was helping her by his look, and the thrill of his touch of her, to bear her joy. “Oh, I’m a beggar,” she said, '“and my name has been shouted all over the kingdom.” There was a wistfulness in her face, even in this almost terrible happiness. “What does it matter, my life?” said the man, and he laughed at her tenderly. “We will change it.” . (THE END.)