The Coming of The Strangers Page 4

  “I don’t mean to frighten you,” he said awkwardly.

  “Listen, Mr. Harris,” she said, “things look and feel very different at night. One can lie awake being scared to death of a noise, or something moving, and find in the morning it’s Just a big beetle that got on to its back and clicked away there till it died. That happened when I was a child. Last night I heard things, when it was dark, and it frightened me then. Now look!” She flung out a beautiful hand. “It’s a lovely morning. The sea’s gold, the sky’s blue. You can smell spring everywhere, the blossom, and the new grass, and hear the birds, and everything is as normal and right as it could possibly be. When I look around me now, I’m not sure about what I thought happened last night. That’s it and all I’ve got to say about it.”

  He ground his cigarette out.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, confusedly.

  “There’s nothing here,” she said, gently. “Nothing at all. I’m sure of it now. That’s why I didn’t call the police. I knew I must be wrong.”

  “I see,” he said, and turned to look towards the gate as a car drew up there. As he saw it he looked back to Laura quickly. “Inspector Darrow.”

  He saw a quick look of fear come into her dark eyes, and a protective instinct made him turn almost aggressively to face Darrow as the Inspector came in at the gate.

  As he was almost standing in front of her, Darrow greeted him first.

  “Hallo, Dickie,” he said, and somehow his eyes ordered the reporter to stand aside. “Mrs. Benson?” As she nodded he went on, “I guess that Dickie and I have come about the same thing.”

  Dickie Harris introduced them somewhat sullenly.

  “This is not an official visit, Mrs. Benson,” Darrow said, with a smile. “The fact is I have just seen a report made out by one of my sergeants, and I thought I would come and see you. We occasionally get stories like this, which can be a little frightening for nervous people. Very often it happens that such stories get exaggerated and spread out about in a way that is out of proportion to their truth or importance. That’s why I thought it best to get an unexcited view, before we get half the town ringing up tonight and claiming their coal buckets are being flung about.”

  It was a long introductory speech, Laura felt, and it made her suspicious. Darrow was obviously at pains to put her at ease.

  “Would you like a drink?” she said, turning towards the window. “They’re quite handy”

  “That’s very nice of you,” Darrow said. He took off his hat and put it on the table as she went in through the windows.

  From the house came the whine of a vacuum cleaner where the daily woman was at work.

  “Got yourself a story, Dickie?” Darrow grinned.

  “It’s one of the usual,” Harris said with a shrug. “I seem to have heard this one before.”

  “We had a case five or six years ago,” said Darrow. ‘Things being thrown about at dead of night, and uproars and alarms. We went in, found nothing wrong, searched the place and went. The people got their priest to exorcise the place. The noises still went on night after night. We went in again and struck lucky. There was a little monkey hiding up in the attic, and he used to scramble out at night and get nuts from a tree in the garden. He’d got away from a pet shop miles off. Lord knows how he made the journey.”

  Laura came out with a tray of drinks. Darrow had a Scotch, Harris a lime and soda, she a tomato juice. As they drank in the bright sun she had the growing feeling of being in a nightmare. Everything was so ordinary and beautiful, so beautiful that a kind of terror was growing inside her, a dread flooding her that had no reason.

  She was frightened for John Sebastian; for the hidden thing that was behind him. And now, these little things, as Harris said, were adding up somehow, trying to form a picture, but bringing only shadows and distortions in her head.

  She told Darrow what had happened last night.

  “There was no wind, was there?” he said.

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “Cats can cause disturbances at night,” he said.

  “A cat cannot shift a bureau,” she said coldly.

  “When you came down the French windows here were open or shut?”

  “Shut. I was going to bed. I was writing my diary in my bedroom. I always do that last thing.”

  “Was everything else locked?”

  She gave a little laugh.

  “You’ll be cross with me,” she said. “I locked the front up all very carefully and left the back door wide open.”

  “Ah!” Darrow seemed relieved. “You’ll be surprised how often that happens. It comes second to people locking themselves out of their own cars … Do you mind if I look through the house?”

  “Of course not,” she said.

  Harris watched her with intense curiosity as she led Darrow into the house. From her changing moods he was beginning to suspect that there was something wrong. But what wrong would a rich young widow do that would get her across the police?

  Dickie Harris’s imagination began to burn in a dozen different, improbable directions.

  3

  Darrow seemed to make a cursory examination of the place, greeting Mrs. Curvey, the cleaner, whom he knew in the town from her repeated visits to the station to recover her lost little boy, who sometimes varied his wanderings by getting his head stuck in the war memorial railings and once got himself bent up into an idle drain-pipe.

  Laura watched Darrow as if he might be an enemy, yet though she strained to sort the mad ideas in her head, she could not find out why. He was a nice man, a charming man, quiet, knowing and smooth. Yet somehow this very quietness seemed a menace, as if something lay behind his pleasant smile, some knowledge that could hurt.

  “Damp?” he said, as they were about to leave the house. “Where?”

  “On the floor by the windows. It’s gone now,” she said. “Mrs. Curvey’s already done the room.”

  “What did it look like?”

  “Just damp. A little patch.”

  “Do you mean a patch, such as might come up through a wooden floor, or a little pool, such as drips from a raincoat, shall we say?”

  “A little pool, I suppose. When I saw it some of it may have gone into the floor.”

  He nodded and did not seem to be further interested.

  “You called Mr. Sebastian,” he said, “and he searched the house and found nothing?”

  “Yes.”

  “You went for him? Went to his house?”

  “Yes. And we walked back together.”

  “Did he walk straight in here?”

  “No, he stopped in the garden –” She looked at him, but he glanced away from her as if he had not noticed the fear in her eyes.

  “He thought somebody might have gone out and hidden in the garden?”

  “He was being careful, naturally.”

  “You had told him you thought it was a poltergeist you had?” “Yes. When I fetched him I told him that.”

  “Some people just don’t believe in that kind of thing.” “Mr. Sebastian keeps an open mind. He says one can’t know everything.” She was angry at having to talk about him, angry at feeling someone might suggest he would laugh at her, angry because her fright was increasing.

  “You heard this movement in the house. Did you hear anything in the garden beforehand ?”

  “I heard a cat yell and run,” she said. “There have been cats hanging about because of Elfrida’s Siamese.”

  “A cat yell,” Darrow said. “What do you mean, screech?” “Have you ever heard a cat when somebody’s trodden on its tail?” she asked coolly. “Like that.”

  “This pool on the floor. Was it possibly seawater? Someone come across from the beach? We have our eye on a vagrant gentleman who is visiting us, beachcombing. You couldn’t smell if it was seawater?”

  “My dear Inspector, one constantly smells seawater here.” He laughed.

  “A foolish question,” he said. “Well, I don’t think I can he
lp you very much, Airs. Benson. But should you find anything else happening—anything out of the ordinary—will you let me know?”

  “Of course.”

  They went back into the garden.

  “Anything for me, Inspector?” said Harris expectantly. “Nothing,” said the Inspector. “You’d better make it up, as usual.”

  They stayed a little longer, chatting, while her impatience grew, and she had difficulty in keeping up her appearance of calm. It was as if they stayed deliberately, so that she would break down under the strain and they would find out something from her.

  What?

  The question kept dividing the morass of fears in her mind like a pistol shot amongst a murmuring crowd.

  What?

  What could they find out?

  What did she know?

  When they left, finally, she went into her bedroom to do her hair and sat before the mirror, staring into the reflection of her own eyes, asking the same mad question:

  What do I know?

  What is there to know?

  She got up suddenly and walked out of the house. As she came to the garden gate she realized she had heard Mrs. Curvey saying,

  ‘I had a bit of trouble with my Alfie again last— ”

  She felt a sudden guilt that she had not been conscious of it till later, and looked back into the open front door. Mrs. Curvey was leaning on the handle of an electric polisher, looking at her.

  She smiled and, waved. Mrs. Curvey recovered from the slight and waved back. Laura went along the promenade towards the solitary white house at the end.

  She turned and looked back at the little scattered parties on the beach by the pier, miles away it seemed. It was isolated at this far end; the isolation of fear.

  She went on towards the house and the empty end of the promenade by which it stood. The road just ended, sloping off into the loose dry sand of the upper beach, with its scattered rocks amongst the dunes, running to the foot of the reddish cliff with its wrinkled face, like an old man’s skin. The tumbled parts which had come down, formed craggy hills before the caves which, till the falls, had been children’s playgrounds.

  She came to the Spanish gate set in the white garden walls, her eyes still on the sandy waste beyond the end of the road as if something there held her eye.

  She stopped still, puzzled. The scene was quiet, just as she had seen it before many times, and yet something about it was strange. And then it happened.

  Sand began to kick up in little spurts, several at a time, like the footprints of an animal, running away from the comer of the house, kicking up and then falling again to be unnoticed in the million dimples of the dry sand.

  She gave a frightened gasp, then pushed the gate open and ran in.

  “John ! “ she called hysterically.. “John!”

  CHAPTER III

  1

  She ran on to the balcony as he came out of the French windows. He caught her running, frightened figure in his arms and held her tightly. She started to sob on his shoulder.

  “John!” she gasped. “Oh, John, darling.”

  He soothed her, but his anxious eyes were watching the calm peace of the morning.

  “What happened?” he said, urgently. “Tell me what happened.”

  She drew a long breath and lifted her head up.

  “I’m silly to be so frightened,” she said breathlessly. “When

  I know there’s something ” She bit her lip, and then before

  he could speak she laid a hand on his mouth. “I’ll tell you. I promise I won’t be hysterical …” She dropped her hand. “As I came in the gate—something ran away across the sand, but— but there was nothing there.”

  “A little breath of wind, perhaps,” he said, softly. “You’ve still got that damned poltergeist on your mind, darling Laura.”

  Her big eyes searched him desperately.

  “What is it, John? What is it?”

  “The wind,” he said. “It makes little scurries and eddies amongst the rocks there.”

  As if to prove him right, a breath of wind touched her check and lifted a little strand of hair. She hesitated, wanting so much to believe, and knowing that she was wrong.

  “How can you be scared of such things on a day like this?” he said.

  She looked for a moment towards the rich blue of the sea and the pure gold of the sand. The very smell of it was exciting, yet over it all hung this strangeness, this intangible atmosphere of evil and wrong.

  “I am scared,” she said, breaking away from him suddenly. “I’m scared right to the very depths of me. I’ve got a feeling as if everything I’ve got and love is under a curse, that I’m going to lose them all, one by one, and no matter how I fight and scratch and scream, I shan’t be able to stop it, won’t be able to save them. It’s almost as if I’m watching them slip away, rushing away down the side of some ghastly mountain, down into something so dizzy deep that I dare not even look.

  can feel it in me. It’s starting to happen. Oh John, John tell me what’s happening, for God’s sake tell me! ”

  Tears came into her eyes, and he took her in his arms again, though she was resistant, as if her trust was dying altogether from the awful despair that began to grip her.

  “I would have done any tiling to stop this,” he whispered. “I would have done anything to have stopped you—throwing yourself away on an utterly worthless man, Laura. That’s what it is. There was never any chance for us, my dear. Never. The rot was there before and it was too late for me to change. I would give everything in the world I have or am ever likely to have to go back, so that I could face you and say, ‘Laura, I love you and I want you, and we can – ” His voice broke off, and he held her tightly in his emotion. Then he hardened himself against showing it any more. “Laura, you must go away from here. Do this, Laura, because I love you more than the world. Go away from here. Forget me and go away! ”

  “Forget you?” she said. “Are you such a dear fool as to believe that’s possible anymore? Forget you? And forget my life? John, sometimes I feel you can’t understand—that you try not to see what anyone can read. When I love you it is with all I am and ever will be. My love for you isn’t something I can take and throw away and just cry over. It is me, John. Me. I can’t go and leave you, not knowing ”

  He let her go suddenly and turned his back, standing stiffly, and she knew he was crying though he gave no other sign. There was a silence between them that hurt like a wound in her.

  “Laura,” he said, huskily, “what I have done is too late to undo. When I took the step I did I threw up everything I might have treasured. I did it deliberately, perhaps in despair, I don’t know, but it was done and my life passed out of my hands. And then this incredible thing happened, this love between us came, not as it should have done, as a lovely thing that could have raised us both to the greatest heights man can know in this poor little world—not like that, but as a terrible punishment, a pain, a scourging, a burning of hell. Laura, I have suffered enough. There is hardly any strength left in me that hasn’t been burnt and twisted and charred by what’s happened. It is because I love you with any goodness that is left in me that I ask you to go from here. To go and not come back. I’ll go on my knees, if you will. I’ll sacrifice myself in any way for you if it will persuade you to go! ”

  She covered her eyes with her hands and a shiver ran through her.

  “Oh John,” she whispered. “My darling!.” She became silent in agony. “Why can’t you tell me? Why can’t you tell me?”

  She dropped her hands. Through her tears she could see his back straight and rigid, his head bent, as if staring at the ground. But his hands were at his sides, clenched into fists so hard they were white as marble. Compassion welled in her, and her love for him overwhelmed her, drowning out her own shes, her own decisions. She took one of his poor, wrenched ids and lifted it to her lips. It relaxed and he turned to her she laid his fingers beside her cheek and the wet of her tears iched them.

>   ‘I’ll go, John,” she whispered. “I’ll go. For you.”

  She let go his hand, and it dropped to his side. She turned d no word was spoken between them as she went. He tried to : her clearly, running down the garden and into the road, lining like a girl as if she did not care who saw.

  “For God’s sake!” he cried suddenly. “Have you no pity? in you not understand human feelings? Can’t you see when u hurt, hear the cries when you torture? Bastards! Set me :e! Let me go! You don’t need me anymore! ”

  Through the answering silence he heard the soft lapping the calm sea, and far in the distance the sudden shriek of a child playing on the sands.

  The strength went out of him. He leaned against the edge of e open window for a while, then turned and went into the eat lounge. He went through it, into the hall beyond, throw- g open doors of the bedrooms, the little dining-room, the bath-room, the kitchen, and when he came to the end of the house : stopped and turned back. Absolute silence was in the house, he came back again, quick and desperate. He stopped in the ill and stood still, trying to calm himself from the emotions surging up inside him. When he could control his voice, he said, “Why don’t you speak any more?”

  He looked all-round the emptiness.

  “Have you finished with me? Listen to me! Have you finished with me?”

  He went on into the little rooms, looking round them, coming at again, going on, until at last he came back into the big lounge. The whole place was still. But he felt something was here, and when the thump came, he ran out into the hall and topped there. The doors were still open, but in the doorway of his own bedroom a suitcase lay, burst open, and from it gorged mass of banknotes spilled like a petrified river on the parquet floor.

  “So they still listen! ” he said bitterly.

  He went to the doorway and looked over the spilled notes to the sunlit room. The windows to the east were open, looking out over the sands. The scene ran away to an almost limitless distance where cumulus clouds built high castles in the sky, miles away. It made the sense of his own imprisonment more acute.