Read Online And So To Murder by John Dickson Carr - Free Book Online
Authors: John Dickson Carr
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Inside was a little hall, so thickly stuffy that it was difficult to breathe. In the dimness she could just make out a staircase rising along the wall to the right, and on the left the doors to the two downstairs rooms.
‘Hello!’ she called.
There was no reply. Monica, hesitating on the step, felt a faint twinge of alarm, an irrational stir at the nerves. But she knew this to be nonsense. She was not entering a lonely house in a suburban street at midnight. She was entering a painted film-set, constructed in the middle of a big barn where people were moving and talking and laughing all around her.
She walked into the little hall, and two steps took her through an open door into the front room. Here she barked her ankle against a chair. She was not frightened, but she suddenly felt furiously angry with Thomas Hackett for all this foolishness. Why couldn’t they say what they wanted? Why did they have to do things like this?’
There was a box of matches in her handbag. She got it out and struck a match. The brief flame showed her a room so completely furnished, so realistically arranged, that she was almost shocked: as though she had blundered into a real house.
There were just such rooms round about East Roystead. It breathed the atmosphere of the nineteenth century. Mr Lensworth, the dentist at Ridley, had a waiting-room very much like it. There was a heavy reddish cloth, with tassels, on the centre table; and antimacassars over the chairs. That picture over the mantelpiece – ‘The Banjo Player’ – she had seen many times at her Grandmother Styles’s.
The match went out. Then she saw that there was a door at the back of the room, and that under this door wavered a thin, yellow line of light.
In the back room, Mr Hackett had said. She stumbled across to this door, and opened it.
A real gas-jet was burning, bluish-yellow, inside a flattish shade like a glass dish. It was set on a bracket over a roll-top desk, and the dim flame wavered with the opening of the door. The room was small and dingy, with cracked linoleum on the floor. A stethoscope and a dresser’s case lay on the centre table. The shelf of the portentous black mantelpiece was strewn with cotton-wadding and bandages, glass measures, thermometers, and syringes. From one wall projected the metal mouth of a speaking-tube – by which, presumably, the doctor’s wife could communicate with him from the room above. Below this were shelves lined with bottles and books. There were a couple of plush chairs, and a rather gruesome anatomical chart.
But there was nobody here.
The dim light glistened on the bottles, on the maplewood desk, and on the metal mouth of the speaking-tube.
Reassuringly, she could look out of a broad rear window, dusty but uncurtained, into the gloom of the sound-stage. This was only make-believe. Half of her mind admired the unpleasantly realistic detail. But the other half began to be infected with a tinge of pure superstitious terror. She had been through a number of emotional crises that day, and she had eaten nothing since breakfast. Imagination, always vivid, joined with memories of childhood: it fastened on this room and peopled the sweating walls. She wondered what ‘Dr Rodman Teriss, M.D.’ had done. She wondered what she would do if that cupboard opened and somebody walked out.
Over her head, a board in the ceiling creaked slightly, and creaked again.
There was somebody walking about in the room above.
If this were a practical joke of some kind, Monica swore she would make someone pay for it. Had Thomas Hackett sent that message after all? Was the detestable Cartwright up to something, which he might think was funny?
Between anger and nervousness and the stifling heat of the room, she felt the perspiration start out on her body. Her heart was thudding, and (most annoying of all) as a climax to the day she found tears of pure nerves stinging into her eyes.
‘ Hel-lo!’ she cried, forcing speech at the top
Inside was a little hall, so thickly stuffy that it was difficult to breathe. In the dimness she could just make out a staircase rising along the wall to the right, and on the left the doors to the two downstairs rooms.
‘Hello!’ she called.
There was no reply. Monica, hesitating on the step, felt a faint twinge of alarm, an irrational stir at the nerves. But she knew this to be nonsense. She was not entering a lonely house in a suburban street at midnight. She was entering a painted film-set, constructed in the middle of a big barn where people were moving and talking and laughing all around her.
She walked into the little hall, and two steps took her through an open door into the front room. Here she barked her ankle against a chair. She was not frightened, but she suddenly felt furiously angry with Thomas Hackett for all this foolishness. Why couldn’t they say what they wanted? Why did they have to do things like this?’
There was a box of matches in her handbag. She got it out and struck a match. The brief flame showed her a room so completely furnished, so realistically arranged, that she was almost shocked: as though she had blundered into a real house.
There were just such rooms round about East Roystead. It breathed the atmosphere of the nineteenth century. Mr Lensworth, the dentist at Ridley, had a waiting-room very much like it. There was a heavy reddish cloth, with tassels, on the centre table; and antimacassars over the chairs. That picture over the mantelpiece – ‘The Banjo Player’ – she had seen many times at her Grandmother Styles’s.
The match went out. Then she saw that there was a door at the back of the room, and that under this door wavered a thin, yellow line of light.
In the back room, Mr Hackett had said. She stumbled across to this door, and opened it.
A real gas-jet was burning, bluish-yellow, inside a flattish shade like a glass dish. It was set on a bracket over a roll-top desk, and the dim flame wavered with the opening of the door. The room was small and dingy, with cracked linoleum on the floor. A stethoscope and a dresser’s case lay on the centre table. The shelf of the portentous black mantelpiece was strewn with cotton-wadding and bandages, glass measures, thermometers, and syringes. From one wall projected the metal mouth of a speaking-tube – by which, presumably, the doctor’s wife could communicate with him from the room above. Below this were shelves lined with bottles and books. There were a couple of plush chairs, and a rather gruesome anatomical chart.
But there was nobody here.
The dim light glistened on the bottles, on the maplewood desk, and on the metal mouth of the speaking-tube.
Reassuringly, she could look out of a broad rear window, dusty but uncurtained, into the gloom of the sound-stage. This was only make-believe. Half of her mind admired the unpleasantly realistic detail. But the other half began to be infected with a tinge of pure superstitious terror. She had been through a number of emotional crises that day, and she had eaten nothing since breakfast. Imagination, always vivid, joined with memories of childhood: it fastened on this room and peopled the sweating walls. She wondered what ‘Dr Rodman Teriss, M.D.’ had done. She wondered what she would do if that cupboard opened and somebody walked out.
Over her head, a board in the ceiling creaked slightly, and creaked again.
There was somebody walking about in the room above.
If this were a practical joke of some kind, Monica swore she would make someone pay for it. Had Thomas Hackett sent that message after all? Was the detestable Cartwright up to something, which he might think was funny?
Between anger and nervousness and the stifling heat of the room, she felt the perspiration start out on her body. Her heart was thudding, and (most annoying of all) as a climax to the day she found tears of pure nerves stinging into her eyes.
‘ Hel-lo!’ she cried, forcing speech at the top
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