A Caribbean Mystery (Miss Marple 15)

They rested on Phyllis. ‘Hallo! Phil,’ he said weakly. ‘Is it you? I thought you weren’t coming until tomorrow.’

She could not yet trust herself to speak but she smiled at him. He looked round with increasing bewilderment.

‘But, I say, where am I? And – how rotten I feel! What’s the matter with me? Hallo, Dr Settle!’

‘You’ve been nearly drowned – that’s what’s the matter,’ returned Settle grimly.

Sir Arthur made a grimace. ‘I’ve always heard it was beastly coming back afterwards! But how did it happen? Was I walking in my sleep?’

Settle shook his head. ‘We must get him to the house,’ I said, stepping forward.

He stared at me, and Phyllis introduced me. ‘Dr Carstairs, who is staying here.’

We supported him between us and started for the house. He looked up suddenly as though struck by an idea.

‘I say, doctor, this won’t knock me up for the 12th, will it?’

‘The 12th?’ I said slowly, ‘you mean the 12th of August?’

‘Yes – next Friday.’

‘Today is the 14th of September,’ said Settle abruptly. His bewilderment was evident.

‘But – but I thought it was the 8th of August? I must have been ill then?’

Phyllis interposed rather quickly in her gentle voice. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you’ve been very ill.’

He frowned. ‘I can’t understand it. I was perfectly all right when I went to bed last night – at least of course it wasn’t really last night. I had dreams though. I remember, dreams . . .’ His brow furrowed itself still more as he strove to remember. ‘Something – what was it? Something dreadful – someone had done it to me – and I was angry – desperate . . . And then I dreamed I was a cat – yes, a cat! Funny, wasn’t it? But it wasn’t a funny dream. It was more – horrible! But I can’t remember. It all goes when I think.’

I laid my hand on his shoulder. ‘Don’t try to think, Sir Arthur,’ I said gravely. ‘Be content – to forget.’

He looked at me in a puzzled way and nodded. I heard Phyllis draw a breath of relief. We had reached the house.

‘By the way,’ said Sir Arthur suddenly, ‘where’s the mater?’

‘She has been – ill,’ said Phyllis after a momentary pause. ‘Oh! poor old mater!’ His voice rang with genuine concern. ‘Where is she? In her room?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but you had better not disturb –’

The words froze on my lips. The door of the drawing-room opened and Lady Carmichael, wrapped in a dressing-gown, came out into the hall.

Her eyes were fixed on Arthur, and if ever I have seen a look of absolute guilt-stricken terror I saw it then. Her face was hardly human in its frenzied terror. Her hand went to her throat.

Arthur advanced towards her with boyish affection. ‘Hello, mater! So you’ve been knocked up too? I say, I’m awfully sorry.’ She shrank back before him, her eyes dilating. Then suddenly, with a shriek of a doomed soul, she fell backwards through the open door.

I rushed and bent over her, then beckoned to Settle. ‘Hush,’ I said. ‘Take him upstairs quietly and then come down again. Lady Carmichael is dead.’

He returned in a few minutes. ‘What was it?’ he asked. ‘What caused it?’

‘Shock,’ I said grimly. ‘The shock of seeing Arthur Carmichael, restored to life! Or you may call it, as I prefer to, the judgment of God!’

‘You mean –’ he hesitated.

I looked at him in the eyes so that he understood. ‘A life for a life,’ I said significantly. ‘But –’

Oh! I know that a strange and unforeseen accident permitted the spirit of Arthur Carmichael to return to his body. But, nevertheless, Arthur Carmichael was murdered.’

He looked at me half fearfully. ‘With prussic acid?’ he asked in a low tone.

‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘With prussic acid.’

Settle and I have never spoken our belief. It is not one likely to be credited. According to the orthodox point of view Arthur Carmichael merely suffered from loss of memory, Lady Carmichael lacerated her own throat in a temporary fit of mania, and the apparition of the Grey Cat was mere imagination.

But there are two facts that to my mind are unmistakable. One is the ripped chair in the corridor. The other is even more significant. A catalogue of the library was found, and after exhaustive search it was proved that the missing volume was an ancient and curious work on the possibilities of the metamorphosis of human beings into animals!

One thing more. I am thankful to say that Arthur knows nothing. Phyllis has locked the secret of those weeks in her own heart, and she will never, I am sure, reveal them to the husband she loves so dearly, and who came back across the barrier of the grave at the call of her voice.

Chapter 46

The Call of Wings

‘The Call of Wings’ was first published in the hardback The Hound of Death and Other Stories (Odhams Press, 1933). No previous appearances have been found.

Silas Hamer heard it first on a wintry night in February. He and Dick Borrow had walked from a dinner given by Bernard Seldon, the nerve specialist. Borrow had been unusually silent, and Silas Hamer asked him with some curiosity what he was thinking about. Borrow’s answer was unexpected.

‘I was thinking, that of all these men tonight, only two amongst them could lay claim to happiness. And that these two, strangely enough, were you and I!’

The word ‘strangely’ was apposite, for no two men could be more dissimilar than Richard Borrow, the hard working East-end parson, and Silas Hamer, the sleek complacent man whose millions were a matter of household knowledge.

‘It’s odd, you know,’ mused Borrow, ‘I believe you’re the only contented millionaire I’ve ever met.’

Hamer was silent a moment. When he spoke his tone had altered. ‘I used to be a wretched shivering little newspaper boy. I wanted then – what I’ve got now! – the comfort and the luxury of money, not its power. I wanted money, not to wield as a force, but to spend lavishly – on myself! I’m frank about it, you see. Money can’t buy everything, they say. Very true. But it can buy everything I want – therefore I’m satisfied. I’m a materialist, Borrow, out and out a materialist!’

The broad glare of the lighted thoroughfare confirmed this confession of faith. The sleek lines of Silas Hamer’s body were amplified by the heavy fur-lined coat, and the white light emphasized the thick rolls of flesh beneath his chin. In contrast to him walked Dick Borrow, with the thin ascetic face and the star-gazing fanatical eyes.

‘It’s you,’ said Hamer with emphasis, ‘that I can’t understand.’ Borrow smiled.

I live in the midst of misery, want, starvation – all the ills of the flesh! And a predominant Vision upholds me. It’s not easy to understand unless you believe in Visions, which I gather you don’t.’

‘I don’t believe,’ said Silas Hamer stolidly, ‘in anything I can’t see, hear and touch.’

‘Quite so. That’s the difference between us. Well, good bye, the earth now swallows me up!’

They had reached the doorway of a lighted tube station, which was Borrow’s route home.

Hamer proceeded alone. He was glad he had sent away the car tonight and elected to walk home. The air was keen and frosty, his senses were de

lightfully conscious of the enveloping warmth of the fur-lined coat.

He paused for an instant on the kerbstone before crossing the road. A great motor bus was heavily ploughing its way towards him. Hamer, with the feeling of infinite leisure, waited for it to pass. If he were to cross in front of it he would have to hurry – and hurry was distasteful to him.

By his side a battered derelict of the human race rolled drunkenly off the pavement. Hamer was aware of a shout, an ineffectual swerve of the motor bus, and then – he was looking stupidly, with a gradually awakening horror, at a limp inert heap of rags in the middle of the road.

A crowd gathered magically, with a couple of policemen and the bus driver as its nucleus. But Hamer’s eyes were riveted in horrified fascination on that lifeless bundle that had once been a man – a man like himself! He shuddered as at some menace.

‘Dahn’t yer blime yerself, guv’nor,’ remarked a rough-looking man at his side. ‘Yer couldn’t ’a done nothin’. ’E was done for anyways.’

Hamer stared at him. The idea that it was possible in any way to save the man had quite honestly never occurred to him. He scouted the notion now as an absurdity. Why if he had been so foolish, he might at this moment . . . His thoughts broke off abruptly, and he walked away from the crowd. He felt himself shaking with a nameless unquenchable dread. He was forced to admit to himself that he was afraid – horribly afraid – of Death . . . Death that came with dreadful swiftness and remorseless certainty to rich and poor alike . . .

He walked faster, but the new fear was still with him, enveloping him in its cold and chilling grasp.

He wondered at himself, for he knew that by nature he was no coward. Five years ago, he reflected, this fear would not have attacked him. For then Life had not been so sweet . . . Yes, that was it; love of Life was the key to the mystery. The zest of living was at its height for him; it knew but one menace, Death, the destroyer!

He turned out of the lighted thoroughfare. A narrow passageway, between high walls, offered a short-cut to the Square where his house, famous for its art treasures, was situated.

The noise of the street behind him lessened and faded, the soft thud of his own footsteps was the only sound to be heard.