“’Tis Sister, dear God o’ mercy, ’tis Sister…” she screamed.
The torch fell from her nerveless hands, jerked itself out, and Emma Higson’s shrieks rent the air as another crash resounded through the darkness, and a heavy body went headlong down the polished stairs, right down the steep flight from top to bottom, with one final crash as the helpless body hurtled against the wall at the bottom.
Emma Higson screamed on. It was Reeves’s homely voice which first penetrated her panic.
“It’s not Sister, you silly old fool, it’s just somebody playing the goat. I tell you it’s not Sister.”
Macdonald had got to her by that time, his own torch-light showing the familiar stairs, empty of the apparition which had appalled her.
“It’s all right, Cook. It wasn’t a ghost. Ghosts don’t make a row like that falling downstairs. What about poor Hannah? She’ll be frightened out of her life.”
Emma Higson left off screaming and staggered to her feet with Macdonald’s firm hand under her arm: she was still in a state of semi-hysteria, and between her sobs she clucked out, “Please to take me notice. I can’t abide any more…”
“I’ll take your notice, Cook, but better come and see if Hannah’s all right,” persisted Macdonald. They went in together to the narrow little room where Hannah lay on her back with moonbeams playing over her withered face. She hadn’t moved since Macdonald last saw her, but the uproar in the house must have disturbed even her solid slumber, for suddenly she began to snore; turning over, she tucked a hand under her cheek and a diminutive grey plait slipped askew across her peaceful face.
“I’ll light the candle for you,” said Macdonald serenely, but Emma Higson had recovered herself.
“That you won’t, and me in me night shift,” she said tremulously.
“All right. I’ll bring you up a cup of tea and put it outside the door,” said Macdonald.
“I won’t say no,” she sniffed, and then uttered the remark which Macdonald always thought of as ‘the curtain’ to that particular act.
“Doctor always said them stairs’d be the death of someone. Him was right, seemingly.”
5
Macdonald had been aware of sounds downstairs which were certainly not due to Reeves’s activities, though doubtless Reeves was fully occupied. When the Chief Inspector went downstairs, he found that the lights were on in the hall, and another man had appeared on the scene. It was Raymond Ferens, who was bending over the body of the man who had fallen downstairs. The cape and the veil had been loosened and thrown to one side and lay, a negligible huddle of dark material, looking oddly inadequate for the result they had achieved. Ferens stood up saying, “He’s alive…just. I think his neck is dislocated, apart from the head injuries. I suppose we’ve got to get an ambulance.”
His voice was irresolute, but Reeves said, “I’ll ring through to Milham Prior.”
He produced the key of the office and went in, and Ferens said to Macdonald: “I was out in the garden and I heard someone screaming, so I came over at the double and your chap let me in.”
Macdonald nodded, looking down at the grey face on the floor. “How much did you know about this, Ferens?”
“I didn’t know anything at all,” said Ferens, and he looked Macdonald straight in the face. “Neither was it my business to guess. I’ve told no lies at all, and it wasn’t up to me to hazard possibilities. It was your job, first and last. I said from the start that Gramarye was no business of mine.”
“Yes. I noticed you were adamant on that point,” said Macdonald. “And how many people in the village knew—or guessed?”
“I don’t think anybody knew, if by knowing you mean having any evidence,” said Ferens slowly, “but villages like this one have their own sort of awareness. I can’t define what it is. It isn’t detection, in your sense of the word. It isn’t intuition. Awareness is the only word I can use.”
“Awareness of human nature,” said Macdonald quietly, “and much greater powers of observation than townspeople ever realise. Country folk study human nature as they study the weather, and they’re more often right than either the psychologists or the meteorologists. They did their best for him. Some of them risked a criminal charge to try to get him out of the mess.”
“Because they were fond of him. Good man or bad, he’d doctored them for half a lifetime. He was part of their village.”
Macdonald nodded, looking down at old Dr. Brown’s face, so still and grey, as he lay on the floor.
“Can’t you understand…” broke out Ferens.
“Oh, I understand—but it’s no good,” said Macdonald. “And you know it’s no good,” he concluded. “The thing he did was worse than the thing he tried to escape from. There’s no all clear via murder.”
Chapter XVIII
1
“I tell you I didn’t know,” persisted Raymond Ferens stubbornly.
“All right. Have it your own way,” replied Macdonald placidly. The four of them—Raymond, Anne, Macdonald, and Reeves—were sitting on the lawn of the Dower House. Reeves was lying prone, his hands busy with the making of a daisy chain, and Anne Ferens watched him with amused eyes. It was she who took up the argument:
“What is knowledge? It’s as elusive as wisdom. If you put me in the witness box and I said, ‘I know she was wicked,’ you would demand proof, chapter and verse. If I said, ‘I have an extra sense, and it tells me when a person is wicked—by the pricking of my thumbs,’ wouldn’t the judge rebuke me for levity and say that feelings are not evidence?”
“Probably,” replied Macdonald, and Reeves put in, sotto voce:
“Depends on the judge. He wouldn’t admit your feelings as evidence, but he’d make a mental note. Some of them are both sensible and sensitive. Sorry. Don’t mind me.”
Macdonald took up his tale. “When I first called on you, Dr. Ferens, I expected you to say quite a lot about Dr. Brown:
