Collins Chillers. Агата Кристи
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soft childish voice spoke.
‘My child!’ cried Madame Exe. ‘My child!’
She half-rose from her seat.
‘Be careful, Madame,’ cried Raoul warningly.
The materialization came hesitatingly through the curtains. It was a child. She stood there, her arms held out.
‘Maman!’
‘Ah!’ cried Madame Exe.
Again she half-rose from her seat.
‘Madame,’ cried Raoul, alarmed, ‘the medium—’
‘I must touch her,’ cried Madame Exe hoarsely.
She moved a step forward.
‘For God’s sake, Madame, control yourself,’ cried Raoul.
He was really alarmed now.
‘Sit down at once.’
‘My little one, I must touch her.’
‘Madame, I command you, sit down!’
He was writhing desperately in his bonds, but Madame Exe had done her work well; he was helpless. A terrible sense of impending disaster swept over him.
‘In the name of God, Madame, sit down!’ he shouted. ‘Remember the medium.’
Madame Exe paid no attention to him. She was like a woman transformed. Ecstasy and delight showed plainly in her face. Her outstretched hand touched the little figure that stood in the opening of the curtains. A terrible moan came from the medium.
‘My God!’ cried Raoul. ‘My God! This is terrible. The medium—’
Madame Exe turned on him with a harsh laugh.
‘What do I care for your medium?’ she cried. ‘I want my child.’
‘You are mad!’
‘My child, I tell you. Mine! My own! My own flesh and blood! My little one come back to me from the dead, alive and breathing.’
Raoul opened his lips, but no words would come. She was terrible, this woman! Remorseless, savage, absorbed by her own passion. The baby lips parted, and for the third time the same word echoed:
‘Maman!’
‘Come then, my little one,’ cried Madame Exe.
With a sharp gesture she caught up the child in her arms. From behind the curtains came a long-drawn scream of utter anguish.
‘Simone!’ cried Raoul. ‘Simone!’
He was aware vaguely of Madame Exe rushing past him, of the unlocking of the door, of the retreating footsteps down the stairs.
From behind the curtains there still sounded the terrible high long-drawn scream—such a scream as Raoul had never heard. It died away in a horrible kind of gurgle. Then there came the thud of a body falling …
Raoul was working like a maniac to free himself from his bonds. In his frenzy he accomplished the impossible, snapping the rope by sheer strength. As he struggled to his feet, Elise rushed in crying, ‘Madame!’
‘Simone!’ cried Raoul.
Together they rushed forward and pulled the curtain.
Raoul staggered back.
‘My God!’ he murmured. ‘Red—all red …’
Elise’s voice came beside him harsh and shaking.
‘So Madame is dead. It is ended. But tell me, Monsieur, what has happened. Why is Madame all shrunken away—why is she half her usual size? What has been happening here?’
‘I do not know,’ said Raoul.
His voice rose to a scream.
‘I do not know. I do not know. But I think—I am going mad … Simone! Simone!’
I’ve no explanation of this story. I’ve no theories about the why and wherefore of it. It’s just a thing—that happened.
All the same, I sometimes wonder how things would have gone if I’d noticed at the time just that one essential detail that I never appreciated until so many years afterwards. If I had noticed it—well, I suppose the course of three lives would have been entirely altered. Somehow—that’s a very frightening thought.
For the beginning of it all, I’ve got to go back to the summer of 1914—just before the war—when I went down to Badgeworthy with Neil Carslake. Neil was, I suppose, about my best friend. I’d known his brother Alan too, but not so well. Sylvia, their sister, I’d never met. She was two years younger than Alan and three years younger than Neil. Twice, while we were at school together, I’d been going to spend part of the holidays with Neil at Badgeworthy and twice something had intervened. So it came about that I was twenty-three when I first saw Neil and Alan’s home.
We were to be quite a big party there. Neil’s sister Sylvia had just got engaged to a fellow called Charles Crawley. He was, so Neil said, a good deal older than she was, but a thoroughly decent chap and quite reasonably well-off.
We arrived, I remember, about seven o’clock in the evening. Everyone had gone to his room to dress for dinner. Neil took me to mine. Badgeworthy was an attractive, rambling old house. It had been added to freely in the last three centuries and was full of little steps up and down, and unexpected staircases. It was the sort of house in which it’s not easy to find your way about. I remember Neil promised to come and fetch me on his way down to dinner. I was feeling a little shy at the prospect of meeting his people for the first time. I remember saying with a laugh that it was the kind of house one expected to meet ghosts in the passages, and he said carelessly that he believed the place was said to be haunted but that none of them had ever seen anything, and he didn’t even know what form the ghost was supposed to take.
Then he hurried away and I set to work to dive into my suitcases for my evening clothes. The Carslakes weren’t well-off; they clung on to their old home, but there were no menservants to unpack for you or valet you.
Well, I’d just got to the stage of tying my tie. I was standing in front of the glass. I could see my own face and shoulders and behind them the wall of the room—a plain stretch of wall just broken in the middle by a door—and just as I finally settled my tie I noticed that the door was opening.
I don’t know why I didn’t turn around—I think that would have been the natural thing to do; anyway, I didn’t. I just watched the door swing slowly open—and as it swung I saw into the room beyond.
It was a bedroom—a larger room than mine—with two bedsteads in it, and suddenly I caught my breath.
For at the foot of one of those beds was a girl and round her neck were a pair of man’s hands and the man was slowly forcing her backwards and squeezing her throat as he did so, so that the girl was being slowly suffocated.
There wasn’t the least possibility of a mistake. What I saw was perfectly clear. What was being done was murder.
I could see the girl’s face clearly, her vivid golden hair, the agonized terror of her beautiful face, slowly suffusing with blood. Of the man I could see his back, his hands, and a scar that ran down the left side of his face towards his neck.
It’s taken some time to tell, but in reality only a moment or two passed while I stared dumbfounded. Then I wheeled round to the rescue …
And on the wall behind me, the wall reflected in the glass, there was only a Victorian mahogany wardrobe. No door open—no scene of violence. I swung back to the mirror. The mirror reflected only the wardrobe …
I passed my hands across my eyes.