The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

While I got that he pushed her backward. Her strength seemed almost as great as his. I swabbed at her throat when I could, and found no mark; then helped him to control her a little. Miss Elizabeth leaped back to bed, wailing like a child.

“Tie up her hand somehow,” said Baxter. “Don’t let it drip about the place. She” – he stepped on broken glass in his slippers, “She must have smashed a pane.”

Miss Mary lurched towards the open window again, dropped on her knees, her head on the sill, and lay quiet, surrendering the cut hand to me.

“What did she do?” Baxter turned towards Miss Elizabeth in the far bed.

“She was going to throw herself out of the window,” was the answer. “I stopped her, and sent Arthurs for you. Oh, we can never hold up our heads again!”

Miss Mary writhed and fought for breath. Baxter found a shawl which he threw over her shoulders.

“Nonsense!” said he. “That isn’t like Mary”; but his face worked when he said it.

“You wouldn’t believe about Aggie, John. Perhaps you will now!” said Miss Elizabeth. “I saw her do it, and she’s cut her throat too!”

“She hasn’t,” I said. “It’s only her hand.”

Miss Mary suddenly broke from us with an indescribable grunt, flew, rather than ran, to her sister’s bed, and there shook her as one furious schoolgirl would shake another.

“No such thing,” she croaked. “How dare you think so, you wicked little fool?”

“Get into bed, Mary,” said Baxter. “You’ll catch a chill.”

She obeyed, but sat up with the grey shawl round her lean shoulders, glaring at her sister. “I’m better now,” she crowed. “Arthurs let me sit out too long. Where’s Arthurs? The kettle.”

“Never mind Arthurs,” said Baxter. “You get the kettle.” I hastened to bring it from the side table. “Now Mary, as God sees you, tell me what you’ve done.”

His lips were dry, and he could not moisten them with his tongue. Miss Mary applied herself to the mouth of the kettle, and between indraws of steam said: “The spasm came on just now, while I was asleep. I was nearly choking to death. So I went to the window. I’ve done it often before, without waking any one. Bessie’s such an old maid about draughts. I tell you I was choking to death. I couldn’t manage the catch, and I nearly fell out. That window opens too low. I cut my hand trying to save myself. Who has tied it up in this filthy handkerchief? I wish you had had my throat, Bessie. I never was nearer dying!” She scowled on us all impartially, while her sister sobbed.

From the bottom of the bed we heard a quivering voice:’ ‘Is she dead ? Have they took her away? Oh, I never could bear the sight o’ blood!”

“Arthurs,” said Miss Mary, “you are an hireling. Go away!”

It is my belief that Arthurs crawled out on all fours, but I was busy picking up broken glass from the carpet.

Then Baxter, seated by the side of the bed, began to cross-examine in a voice I scarcely recognized. No one could for an instant have doubted the genuine rage of Miss Mary against her sister, her cousin, or her maid; and that the doctor should have been called in – for she did me the honour of calling me doctor – was the last drop. She was choking with her throat; had rushed to the window for air; had near pitched out, and in catching at the window bars had cut her hand. Over and over she made this clear to the intent Baxter. Then she turned on her sister and tongue-lashed her savagely.

“You mustn’t blame me,” Miss Bessie faltered at last. “You know what we think of night and day.”

“I’m coming to that,” said Baxter. “Listen to me. What you did, Mary, misled four people into thinking you – you meant to do away with yourself.”

“Isn’t one suicide in the family enough? Oh God, help and pity us! You couldn’t have believed that!” she cried.

“The evidence was complete. Now, don’t you think,” Baxter’s finger wagged under her nose – “can’t you think that poor Aggie did the same thing at Holmescroft when she fell out of the window?”

“She had the same throat,” said Miss Elizabeth. “Exactly the same symptoms. Don’t you remember, Mary?”

“Which was her bedroom?” I asked of Baxter in an undertone.

“Over the south verandah, looking on to the tennis lawn.”

“I nearly fell out of that very window when I was at Holmescroft – opening it to get some air. The sill doesn’t come much above your knees,” I said.

“You hear that, Mary? Mary, do you hear what this gentleman says? Won’t you believe that what nearly happened to you must have happened to poor Aggie that night? For God’s sake – for her sake – Mary, won’t you believe?”

There was a long silence while the steam kettle puffed.

“If I could have proof – if I could have proof,” said she, and broke into most horrible tears.

Baxter motioned to me, and I crept away to my room, and lay awake till morning, thinking more specially of the dumb Thing at Holmescroft which wished to explain itself. I hated Miss Mary as perfectly as though I had known her for twenty years, but I felt that, alive or dead, I should not like her to condemn me.

Yet at mid-day, when I saw Miss Mary in her bath-chair, Arthurs behind and Baxter and Miss Elizabeth on either side, in the park-like grounds of the Hydro, I found it difficult to arrange my words.

“Now that you know all about it,” said Baxter aside, after the first strangeness of our meeting was over, “it’s only fair to tell you that my poor cousin did not die in Holmescroft at all. She was dead when they found her under the window in the morning. Just dead.”

“Under that laburnum outside the window?” I asked, for I suddenly remembered the crooked evil thing.

“Exactly. She broke the tree in falling. But no death has ever taken place in the house, so far as we were concerned. You can make yourself quite easy on that point. Mr M’Leod’s extra thousand for what you called the ‘clean bill of health’ was something towards my cousins’ estate when we sold. It was my duty as their lawyer to get it for them – at any cost to my own feelings.”

I know better than to argue when the English talk about their duty. So I agreed with my solicitor.

“Their sister’s death must have been a great blow to your cousins,” I went on. The bath-chair was behind me.

“Unspeakable,” Baxter whispered. “They brooded on it day and night. No wonder. If their theory of poor Aggie making away with herself was correct, she was eternally lost!”

“Do you believe that she made away with herself?”

“No, thank God! Never have! And after what happened to Mary last night, I see perfectly what happened to poor Aggie. She had the family throat too. By the way, Mary thinks you are a doctor. Otherwise she wouldn’t like your having been in her room.”

“Very good. Is she convinced now about her sister’s death?”

“She’d give anything to be able to believe it, but she’s a hard woman, and brooding along certain lines makes one groovy. I have sometimes been afraid for her reason – on the religious side, don’t you know. Elizabeth doesn’t matter. Brain of a hen. Always had.”

Here Arthurs summoned me to the bath-chair and the ravaged face, beneath its knitted Shetland wool hood, of Miss Mary Moultrie.

“I need not remind you, I hope, of the seal of secrecy – absolute secrecy – in your profession,” she began. “Thanks to my cousin’s and my sister’s stupidity, you have found out –” she blew her nose.

“Please don’t excite her, sir,” said Arthurs at the back.

“But, my dear Miss Moultrie, I only know what I’ve seen, of course, but it seems to me that what you thought was a tragedy in your sister’s case, turns out, on your own evidence, so to speak, to have been an accident – a dreadfully sad one – but absolutely an accident.”

“Do you believe that too?” she cried. “Or are you only saying it to comfort me?”

“I believe it from the bottom of my heart. Come down to Holmescroft for an hour – for half an hour – and satisfy yourself.”

“Of what? You don’t understand. I see the house every day – every night. I am always there in spirit – waking or sleeping. I couldn’t face it in reality.”