Noonday and Night

‘Oh, well, all we can do is to wait upon events, I suppose.’

Events were not long in coming. Laura, who never needed more than three to four hours of sleep a night, was wide awake when the sounds downstairs caused her to sit up in bed and listen. Then she crept out on to the landing and listened again. She returned to her room, pulled slacks and a sweater over her pyjamas and laced up a pair of stout but rubber-soled shoes before she made her way to her employer’s bedroom. Dame Beatrice, partly because of her medical training and partly because it came naturally at her advanced age, was a light sleeper. She sat up the moment Laura turned the handle of the door.

‘Don’t show a light,’ murmured Laura. ‘Visitors downstairs.’

‘I expected them,’ Dame Beatrice murmured in response. ‘Leave my door ajar.’ She fished a small revolver out from under her pillow, slid out of bed and pulled on her dressing-gown and slippers. ‘Into the cupboard with you.’

The Stone House had been built in an age when the principal bedrooms needed an annexe in the form of a powder closet. That which was attached to Dame Beatrice’s room was large and airy and had a small window which overlooked the drive. Laura went over to this as Dame Beatrice quickly rearranged the bed, then extracted the key from the lock of the powder-room drawer and brought it in with her, but did not quite close the door. ‘Not burglars?’ Laura asked, sotto voce again.

‘I think not. Listen!’ The Stone House possessed a creaking stair. Dame Beatrice, whose life had been threatened more than once by the friends and relatives of persons she had helped to get (in the old days) hanged or (nowadays) put away, had realised the value of this stair and had allowed it to remain as a useful kind of watchdog. Sure enough the intruder trod on it as he made his stealthy progress upwards and it gave its usual warning. There was a slight exclamation, quickly stifled, and then the bedroom door creaked in its turn.

Laura tensed herself. Dame Beatrice cocked her revolver. A faint, grey, late summer dawn was already beginning to break and she always opened her curtains when she was ready to get into bed, so that, although it was still too dark to recognise the intruder, it was just possible to follow his shadowy movements as he crossed over to the bed.

A couple of grunts and a couple of heavy blows indicated his purpose. Dame Beatrice gave an eldritch screech, shouted, ‘Hands up! ’ and fired a couple of blanks into the room. There was a hoarse yell, the intruder leapt to the bedroom window, forced up the lower sash and dropped out into the garden.

‘Stay where you are,’ said Dame Beatrice to Laura. ‘He may not be alone.’ But the next moment there was the sound of a car being started up.

‘Didn’t break his neck, anyway,’ said Laura. There was a pounding of feet on the staircase and a voice shouted with Gallic urgency,

‘Madame! Madame! Montrez-moi le gredin! Ou est le scelerat?’

‘Gone like the dew from off the grass,’ Dame Beatrice replied, switching on the bedroom light. She stooped and picked up something from the floor. Laura uttered a gargling cry and, ignoring the object which Dame Beatrice had retrieved from where the intruder, in his efforts to force open the window, had dropped it on the carpet, pointed dramatically at the bed.

‘What – what – what on earth! ’ she said.

‘That?’ said her employer, leering indulgently at the object under the counterpane. ‘Oh, that is my doppelganger.’

‘Good heavens! You mustn’t say that sort of thing, even in jest!’ said Laura, horrified. She subjected the counterfeit Dame Beatrice to scrutiny. She saw the vague outline of a thin body under the coverlet. On the pillow was a wig of black hair. A papier mache head to which it was attached had been smashed to pieces.

‘Good God!’ exclaimed Laura, horrified.

‘The Sherlock Holmes touch,’ said Dame Beatrice complacently. ‘I had time to slip it into the bed before I joined you in the cupboard. But observe! We have a prize.’ She displayed the object she had retrieved from the carpet. It was a Commando fighting knife, a thin-bladed, double-edged, workmanlike little weapon with a black, cast-metal hilt topped by a brass knob. The grip was slightly indented with a series of criss-cross patterns to render it non-slip and at the top of the blade, which was about seven inches long and tapered to a sharp point, there was engraved on one side the makers’ name, that of a pre-eminent maker of razor-blades, and on the other the initials F – S and the words Fighting Knife.

‘He came well-prepared,’ said Laura grimly. ‘First a coshing and then a stabbing. You know, the odd thing is that there was something about him – of course one only got an impression — do you know who he was?’

‘I believe so.’

‘You’ll have to charge him.’

‘On the strength of a doubtful recognition in the grey light which precedes the dawn?’

‘Fingerprints on the knife, then.’

‘I have overlaid them with my own.’

‘That wouldn’t fox the police.’

‘No, perhaps not, but I am sure he would have taken the precaution of wearing gloves. Besides, I want him arrested for actual murder, not for a clumsy attempt at it. I think that, if this little episode means anything, it means that the murderer of Noone and Daigh…’

‘And possibly Knight…’

‘Is becoming alarmed, and that indicates that, whether we are aware of it or not, we are making progress.’

‘What I should like to know is how he got wise to you. I mean, I know that your name has been mentioned in connection with the inquest on Noone, but why should this thug believe you to be so dangerous to him that he sets out to kill you? He doesn’t even know I broke into that bungalow.’