Death Walks at Eastrepps

Chapter 1-2

At last.... There was a grinding of brakes, and the train abruptly slowed down.

Eldridge cautiously peered through the open window. The train had fallen almost to a walking pace, but he would wait until it stopped. Margaret was always insistent on that. She was afraid lest he should fall. Precious Margaret!... careful of him even in the least of things.

But already he could see the hedge— thick, good stout hollies, grown to withstand the strong sea winds straight from the Pole.

The train stopped with a faint jar which caused him to sway ever so slightly. He stood quite still a moment, and looked up and down the train to make sure that no one was watching. Then, quietly pressing down the catch, he pushed open the door, slipped out on to the step and down to the ballast beneath.

He closed the door carefully behind him, then sped into the shelter of the holly trees, scratching the back of his left hand slightly as he made his way through. Screened by the hedge, he crouched, till the train should pass, in a dry ditch, where some of the dead leaves of the previous autumn still lingered. Ten yards away the lights of the express gleamed like the fantastic scales of a fairy serpent. There came at last a faint whistle from the engine far ahead, followed by a grinding of wheels. The train was in motion.

Eldridge waited till the red lamp at the end was an Indian jewel on the bosom of the night. Then he brushed his knees and stepped out into the darkness. All was well. Once more the manoeuvre had been successful. No one had seen him. Now, so far as the world knew, he was still in London. The train always stopped for a moment at that spot before moving backwards into the station at Eastrepps, which stood on a branch line aside from the main track. Always it stopped in the same place, just opposite the holly hedge. And next morning he would slip away from Margaret as quietly as he had slipped from the train, climb the station stairs punctually at 11:55, and so to the platform just as the first London train drew in, to deliver up his ticket in the usual way and walk out with the rest of the passengers. And nobody any the wiser.

Eldridge set out into the night, crossing the quiet summer fields wet with a heavy dew. He skirted an acre of waving corn, soon to turn yellow with the promise of a fine harvest, and so by a hedge, where nightingales sang in May, to a little lane down which he walked between festoons of old man's beard, nettles and deadly nightshade. Then he passed down a street, where no one was likely to recognise the respectable Mr. Eldridge— a street of workmen's dwellings. He paused a moment at the end. A lamp shone upon the heavy enamel plate which bore the name of the street—Sheffield Park. He read the name absently and passed on, turning abruptly to the right into Heath Road. The salt tang of the sea wind struck his nostrils. He paused a moment, and ran a silk handkerchief between his neck and collar, for he was hot, and he hated to enter the presence of Margaret anything but cool and collected. The sea was somewhere in front, scarcely half a mile away. Upon the dark, unharvested waters far out, as it seemed, hanging in the sky, shone the lights of a passing ship. A faint refreshing wind fanned his face.

Again he paused. Something stirred in him. This was beautiful, and Margaret was near. He strode off manfully to the right. There it was at last—a small cottage. How small for such a treasure! But he would change all that.

A faint light showed through a slit between the curtains of the ground-floor window. He raised a hand and tapped softly on the window-pane, then stood waiting in the outer darkness of the porch, looking towards the door of fumed oak which he could not see. His heart was beating high. Custom could not stale his great content.

There came the sound of a catch slipping back and the door swung open.

Robert Eldridge stepped forward.

"Margaret!" he said.

ii

AT half-past seven on July 16th, 1930—the day on which Mr. Eldridge travelled from Fenchurch Street, Miss Mary Hewitt sat down to dinner with her brother James. The stained oak table, set of six chairs and chiffonier with its glass front were wearing bravely, but were definitely not younger than their years. The room itself was pleasant enough, papered a soft brown, with three or four good sporting prints on the walls and a fine Shiraz, blue and pink, lying in front of the double window.

The windows looked upon a small garden which consisted mostly of lawn. The roses in the flower-beds, though carefully tended, wore a stricken look, for the house faced the sea, which could be heard from time to time mumbling the sandstone cliffs upon which the house was built. At the end of the garden ran a low hedge of tamarisks.

There was no wind that evening. Far away to the right, to be just seen if you craned your neck from the window, the sun was sinking to the grey waters. But the room was full of light, and above the low sound of the sea the single note of a church clock, half a mile away, striking the hour could just be heard.

Miss Hewitt and her brother took their places in silence, which remained unbroken until, abruptly, the serving hatch shot up with a bang and startled the Colonel, so that he dropped the ring of his napkin. His red face disappeared for a moment, while his old fingers scrabbled on the carpet. Just as he rose again above the table, a pair of hands grasping two plates over-full of soup were thrust into the room from the kitchen.

"Damn that girl!" said the Colonel.

His sister signed, and delayed to answer her brother till the hatch had shut again with a second bang behind the plates.

"I beg you. James," she entreated, "not to make these scenes in front of the servants."

"Servants!" said the Colonel, as his sister rose and placed one of the plates in front of him. "One maid with dirty thumbs, and she can't even keep 'em out of the soup."

He glared fiercely at the squat bottle of colonial burgundy standing by his plate.

"If you go on like this, James," returned his sister quietly, "we shall have no maid at all. This is the third girl we have had since Easter."

"When I was at Jullundur," said the Colonel, "I had fourteen servants—fourteen!... and they gave less trouble in a year than this one does in a week."

"But we are not at Jullundur," said his sister.

Silence fell for a moment. Miss Hewitt again rose from the table to take away her brother's plate. She moved quietly to the service hatch, lifted it and pushed the plates through into the kitchen.

"Wine?" asked the Colonel, laying hold of the bottle.

"No, thank you, James," replied his sister.

"Sorry, m'm." came a voice from the hatch, "but I've had a bit of trouble with the fish. I don't seem to get the hang of this 'ere stove."

"That will be all right," said Miss Hewitt nervously.

"Then it will be the cold meat, mm?"

"Yes, Deborah, the cold meat."

"I am sorry, James." said Mrs Hewitt, turning to her brother. "I suppose you heard..."

"Yes, Mary, I heard."

The Colonel's face had assumed a terrible expression, but his sister did not blench. She realised that he was only trying to smile.

"I heard," continued the Colonel, "and I was glad to hear. I am getting rather tired of cotton wool with pins in it."

His voice died away in a rumble.

The hatch opened again, and Miss Hewitt, taking the dish upon which reposed the remains of a sirloin, placed it in front of the Colonel. She then went to the sideboard, and, taking a dish of cold beetroot, put it beside the meat.

"Under-done," said the Colonel, waving the carvers. "I'm glad she does not over-cook the meat. Did you hear that, Maria? You can tell her, with my compliments, that she docs not over-cook the meat."

He passed a plate of red beef to his sister.

"Chutney," continued the Colonel. "Where's the chutney?"

"Must you, James? You know what the doctor said."

"Damn the doctor!" said the Colonel, but without heat, for he always damned the doctor as inevitably as he damned the dentist, all trades-people, the secretary of the golf club, the War Office and, above all, the Pensions Department.

Miss Hewitt had returned to her place.

"That confounded Sawbones isn't going to cut out the chutney," he said, getting heavily to his feet and moving to the sideboard.

He returned in triumph bearing a dark glass jar, from which he helped himself with a liberal hand.

The Colonel, after two helpings of beef, began to feel better. Now and then he looked resentfully but not unkindly at his sister. She was silent this evening, even more silent than usual. Poor Mary! he reflected, never very bright at the best of times; ought to have married long ago; not a bad-looking girl in her day; and it was confounded hard luck that she should have wasted the best years of her life waiting for that missionary fellow. The Boxers had chopped him up in '02.

The Colonel, to cheer his sister, started to tell her about the putt he had missed on the thirteenth green. For that he must blame the Secretary. The grass had been cut only that morning, and the green was therefore much faster than usual. But no one had informed him of the fact, though he had taken a drink with the Secretary, just before teeing up.

Miss Hewitt did her best to listen, but her mind was far away, reviewing a life that had failed to offer her very much. Partly, as she secretly admitted, it was her own fault; but that did not make it any the easier. She should never, for example, have agreed to keep house for James. James was not really a bad sort, but after thirty years in India— well, what could you expect? Then there had been that unlucky investment of her small fortune in Anaconda Ltd. What had possessed her, a spinster of independent means, with five thousand pounds soundly and safely invested, to take such a terrible risk? But people did these things. Hundreds had done it in this particular case. Why. there were half a dozen she knew of in Eastrepps itself, small though the place was. The Selby crash... it was still a theme for the gossips.

"Mary," said the Colonel suddenly, "you haven't heard a word of what I was saying."

Her apology was cut short by a further raising of the hatch. Again Miss Hewitt rose from her seat, to receive and bring to the table a white cornflour blancmange islanded in a dish of stewed prunes. There was also a letter addressed to the Colonel. It lay on the tray beside the sweets in a buff-coloured envelope and inscribed as on His Majesty's Service.

"Sorry, m'm," came the voice of Deborah from the far side of the hatch. "There's a letter for the master. It came by the afternoon post."

Miss Hewitt laid the dish of prunes on the table.

"I had it out afterwards with the Secretary." continued the Colonel. "'When the grass is cut,' I said, 'the members ought to be warned.' The fellow was inclined to be impertinent, but there you are— no consideration for old residents, while the young entries are coddled— positively coddled. That fellow Longstaffe, for instance— just because he can hit a ball with that unsporting steel shaft of his further than...."