Collins Chillers

The room was quite a pleasant one, small and with a sloping roof, but the bed looked comfortable, and the few pieces of somewhat dusty furniture were of old mahogany. A large can of hot water stood in the basin, a pair of pink pyjamas of ample proportions were laid over a chair, and the bed was made and turned down.

Magdalen went over to the window and saw that the fastenings were secure. Charlotte cast a final eye over the washstand appointments. Then they both lingered by the door.

‘Good night, Mr Cleveland. You are sure there is everything?’

‘Yes, thank you, Miss Magdalen. I am ashamed to have given you both so much trouble. Good night.’

‘Good night.’

They went out, shutting the door behind them. Mortimer Cleveland was alone. He undressed slowly and thoughtfully. When he had donned Mr Dinsmead’s pink pyjamas he gathered up his own wet clothes and put them outside the door as his host had bade him. From downstairs he could hear the rumble of Dinsmead’s voice.

What a talker the man was! Altogether an odd personality—but indeed there was something odd about the whole family, or was it his imagination?

He went slowly back into his room and shut the door. He stood by the bed lost in thought. And then he started—

The mahogany table by the bed was smothered in dust. Written in the dust were three letters, clearly visible, S.O.S.

Mortimer stared as if he could hardly believe his eyes. It was confirmation of all his vague surmises and forebodings. He was right, then. Something was wrong in this house.

S.O.S. A call for help. But whose finger had written it in the dust? Magdalen’s or Charlotte’s? They had both stood there, he remembered, for a moment or two, before going out of the room. Whose hand had secretly dropped to the table and traced out those three letters?

The faces of the two girls came up before him. Magdalen’s, dark and aloof, and Charlotte’s, as he had seen it first, wide-eyed, startled, with an unfathomable something in her glance …

He went again to the door and opened it. The boom of Mr Dinsmead’s voice was no longer to be heard. The house was silent.

He thought to himself.

‘I can do nothing tonight. Tomorrow—well. We shall see.’

Cleveland woke early. He went down through the living-room, and out into the garden. The morning was fresh and beautiful after the rain. Someone else was up early, too. At the bottom of the garden, Charlotte was leaning on the fence staring out over the Downs. His pulse quickened a little as he went down to join her. All along he had been secretly convinced that it was Charlotte who had written the message. As he came up to her, she turned and wished him ‘Good morning’. Her eyes were direct and childlike, with no hint of a secret understanding in them.

‘A very good morning,’ said Mortimer, smiling. ‘The weather this morning is a contrast to last night.’

‘It is indeed.’

Mortimer broke off a twig from a tree near by. With it he began idly to draw on the smooth, sandy patch at his feet. He traced an S, then an O, then an S, watching the girl narrowly as he did so. But again he could detect no gleam of comprehension.

‘Do you know what these letters represent?’ he said abruptly.

Charlotte frowned a little. ‘Aren’t they what boats—liners—send out when they are in distress?’ she asked.

Mortimer nodded. ‘Someone wrote that on the table by my bed last night,’ he said quietly. ‘I thought perhaps you might have done so.’

She looked at him in wide-eyed astonishment.

‘I? Oh, no.’

He was wrong then. A sharp pang of disappointment shot through him. He had been so sure—so sure. It was not often that his intuitions led him astray.

‘You are quite certain?’ he persisted.

‘Oh, yes.’

They turned and went slowly together toward the house. Charlotte seemed preoccupied about something. She replied at random to the few observations he made. Suddenly she burst out in a low, hurried voice:

‘It—it’s odd your asking about those letters, S.O.S.; I didn’t write them, of course, but—I so easily might have done.’

He stopped and looked at her, and she went on quickly:

‘It sounds silly, I know, but I have been so frightened, so dreadfully frightened, and when you came in last night, it seemed like an—an answer to something.’

‘What are you frightened of?’ he asked quickly.

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know.’

‘I think—it’s the house. Ever since we came here it has been growing and growing. Everyone seems different somehow. Father, Mother, and Magdalen, they all seem different.’

Mortimer did not speak at once, and before he could do so, Charlotte went on again.

‘You know this house is supposed to be haunted?’

‘What?’ All his interest was quickened.

‘Yes, a man murdered his wife in it, oh, some years ago now. We only found out about it after we got here. Father says ghosts are all nonsense, but I—don’t know.’

Mortimer was thinking rapidly.

‘Tell me,’ he said in a businesslike tone, ‘was this murder committed in the room I had last night?’

‘I don’t know anything about that,’ said Charlotte.

‘I wonder now,’ said Mortimer half to himself, ‘yes, that may be it.’

Charlotte looked at him uncomprehendingly.

‘Miss Dinsmead,’ said Mortimer, gently, ‘have you ever had any reason to believe that you are mediumistic?’

She stared at him.

‘I think you know that you did write S.O.S. last night,’ he said quietly. ‘Oh! quite unconsciously, of course. A crime stains the atmosphere, so to speak. A sensitive mind such as yours might be acted upon in such a manner. You have been reproducing the sensations and impressions of the victim. Many years ago she may have written S.O.S. on that table, and you unconsciously reproduced her act last night.’

Charlotte’s face brightened.

‘I see,’ she said. ‘You think that is the explanation?’

A voice called her from the house, and she went in, leaving Mortimer to pace up and down the garden path. Was he satisfied with his own explanation? Did it cover the facts as he knew them? Did it account for the tension he had felt on entering the house last night?