Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

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First published in Great Britain by Collins 1938

Copyright © 1938 Agatha Christie Limited (a Chorion company). All rights reserved.

www.agathachristie.com

Agatha Christie asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007119356

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2010 ISBN: 9780007422142

Version: 2018-12-31

To Richard and Myra Mallock to remind them of their journey to Petra

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part I

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Part II

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Epilogue

Keep Reading

E-book Extras

About Agatha Christie

The Agatha Christie Collection

www.agathachristie.com

About the Publisher

Part I

Chapter 1

‘You do see, don’t you, that she’s got to be killed?’

The question floated out into the still night air, seemed to hang there a moment and then drift away down into the darkness towards the Dead Sea.

Hercule Poirot paused a minute with his hand on the window catch. Frowning, he shut it decisively, thereby excluding any injurious night air! Hercule Poirot had been brought up to believe that all outside air was best left outside, and that night air was especially dangerous to the health.

As he pulled the curtains neatly over the window and walked to his bed, he smiled tolerantly to himself.

‘You do see, don’t you, that she’s got to be killed?’

Curious words for one Hercule Poirot, detective, to overhear on his first night in Jerusalem.

‘Decidedly, wherever I go, there is something to remind me of crime!’ he murmured to himself.

His smile continued as he remembered a story he had once heard concerning Anthony Trollope the novelist. Trollope was crossing the Atlantic at the time and had overheard two fellow passengers discussing the last published instalment of one of his novels.

‘Very good,’ one man had declared. ‘But he ought to kill off that tiresome old woman.’

With a broad smile the novelist had addressed them:

‘Gentlemen, I am much obliged to you! I will go and kill her immediately!’

Hercule Poirot wondered what had occasioned the words he had just overheard. A collaboration, perhaps, over a play or a book.

He thought, still smiling: ‘Those words might be remembered, one day, and given a more sinister meaning.’

There had been, he now recollected, a curious nervous intensity in the voice—a tremor that spoke of some intense emotional strain. A man’s voice—or a boy’s…

Hercule Poirot thought to himself as he turned out the light by his bed: ‘I should know that voice again…’

II

Their elbows on the window-sill, their heads close together, Raymond and Carol Boynton gazed out into the blue depths of the night. Nervously, Raymond repeated his former words: ‘You do see, don’t you, that she’s got to be killed?’

Carol Boynton stirred slightly. She said, her voice deep and hoarse: ‘It’s horrible…’

‘It’s not more horrible than this!’

‘I suppose not…’

Raymond said violently: ‘It can’t go on like this—it can’t…We must do something…And there isn’t anything else we can do…’

Carol said—but her voice was unconvincing and she knew it: ‘If we could get away somehow—?’

‘We can’t.’ His voice was empty and hopeless. ‘Carol, you know we can’t…’

The girl shivered. ‘I know, Ray—I know.’

He gave a sudden short, bitter laugh.

‘People would say we were crazy—not to be able just to walk out—’

Carol said slowly: ‘Perhaps we—are crazy!’

‘I dare say. Yes, I dare say we are. Anyway, we soon shall be…I suppose some people would say we are already—here we are calmly planning, in cold blood, to kill our own mother!’

Carol said sharply: ‘She isn’t our own mother!’

‘No, that’s true.’

There was a pause and then Raymond said, his voice now quietly matter-of-fact: ‘You do agree, Carol?’

Carol answered steadily: ‘I think she ought to die—yes…’

Then she broke out suddenly: ‘She’s mad…I’m quite sure she’s mad…She—she couldn’t torture us like she does if she were sane. For years we’ve been saying: “This can’t go on!” and it has gone on! We’ve said, “She’ll die some time”—but she hasn’t died! I don’t think she ever will die unless—’

Raymond said steadily: ‘Unless we kill her…’

‘Yes.’

She clenched her hands on the window-sill in front of her.

Her brother went on in a cool, matter-of-fact tone, with just a slight tremor denoting his deep underlying excitement.

‘You see why it’s got to be one of us, don’t you? With Lennox, there’s Nadine to consider. And we couldn’t bring Jinny into it.’

Carol shivered.

‘Poor Jinny…I’m so afraid…’

‘I know. It’s getting pretty bad, isn’t it? That’s why something’s got to be done quickly—before she goes right over the edge.’

Carol stood up suddenly, pushing back the tumbled chestnut hair from her forehead.

‘Ray,’ she said, ‘you don’t think it’s really wrong, do you?’

He answered in that same would-be dispassionate tone. ‘No. I think it’s just like killing a mad dog—something that’s doing harm in the world and must be stopped. This is the only way of stopping it.’

Carol murmured: ‘But they’d—they’d send us to the chair just the same…I mean we couldn’t explain what she’s like…It would sound fantastic…In a way, you know, it’s all in our own minds!’

Raymond said: ‘Nobody will ever know. I’ve got a plan. I’ve thought it all out. We shall be quite safe.’

Carol turned suddenly round on him.

‘Ray—somehow or another—you’re different. Something’s happened to you…What’s put all this into your head?’

‘Why should you think anything’s happened to me?’

He turned his head away, staring out into the night.

‘Because it has…Ray, was it that girl on the train?’

‘No, of course not—why should it be? Oh, Carol, don’t talk nonsense. Let’s get back again to—to—’

‘To your plan? Are you sure it’s a—good plan?’

‘Yes. I think so…We must wait for the right opportunity, of course. And then—if it goes all right—we shall be free—all of us.’

‘Free?’ Carol gave a little sigh. She looked up at the stars. Then suddenly she shook from head to foot in a sudden storm of weeping.

‘Carol, what’s the matter?’

She sobbed out brokenly: ‘It’s so lovely—the night and the blueness and the stars. If only we could be part of it all…If only we could be like other people instead of being as we are—all queer and warped and wrong.’

‘But we shall be—all right—when she’s dead!’

‘Are you sure? Isn’t it too late? Shan’t we always be queer and different?’

‘No, no, no.’

‘I wonder—’

‘Carol, if you’d rather not—’

She pushed his comforting arm aside.

‘No, I’m with you—definitely I’m with you! Because of the others—especially Jinny. We must save Jinny!’

Raymond paused a moment. ‘Then—we’ll go on with it?’

‘Yes!’

‘Good. I’ll tell you my plan…’

He bent his head to hers.

Chapter 2

Miss Sarah King, M.B., stood by the table in the writing-room of the Solomon Hotel in Jerusalem, idly turning over the papers and magazines. A frown contracted her brows and she looked preoccupied.

The tall middle-aged Frenchman who entered the room from the hall watched her for a moment or two before strolling up to the opposite side of the table. When their eyes met, Sarah made a little gesture of smiling recognition. She remembered that this man had come to help her when travelling from Cairo and had carried one of her suitcases at a moment when no porter appeared to be available.

‘You like Jerusalem, yes?’ asked Dr Gerard after they had exchanged greetings.

‘It’s rather terrible in some ways,’ said Sarah, and added: ‘Religion is very odd!’

The Frenchman looked amused.

‘I know what you mean.’ His English was very nearly perfect. ‘Every imaginable sect squabbling and fighting!’

‘And the awful things they’ve built, too!’ said Sarah.

‘Yes, indeed.’

Sarah sighed.

‘They turned me out of one place today because I had on a sleeveless dress,’ she said ruefully. ‘Apparently the Almighty doesn’t like my arms in spite of having made them.’

Dr Gerard laughed. Then he said: ‘I was about to order some coffee. You will join me, Miss—?’

‘King, my name is. Sarah King.’

‘And mine—permit me.’ He whipped out a card. Taking it, Sarah’s eyes widened in delighted awe.

‘Dr Theodore Gerard? Oh! I am excited to meet you. I’ve read all your works, of course. Your views on schizophrenia are frightfully interesting.’

‘Of course?’ Gerard’s eyebrows rose inquisitively.

Sarah explained rather diffidently.

‘You see—I’m by way of being a doctor myself. Just got my M.B.’

‘Ah! I see.’

Dr Gerard ordered coffee and they sat down in a corner of the lounge. The Frenchman was less interested in Sarah’s medical achievements than in the black hair that rippled back from her forehead and the beautifully shaped red mouth. He was amused at the obvious awe with which she regarded him.

‘You are staying here long?’ he asked conversationally.

‘A few days. That is all. Then I want to go to Petra.’

‘Aha! I, too, was thinking of going there if it does not take too long. You see, I have to be back in Paris on the fourteenth.’

‘It takes about a week, I believe. Two days to go, two days there and two days back again.’

‘I must go to the travel bureau in the morning and see what can be arranged.’

A party of people entered the lounge and sat down. Sarah watched them with some interest. She lowered her voice.

‘Those people who have just come in, did you notice them on the train the other night? They left Cairo the same time as we did.’

Dr Gerard screwed in an eyeglass and directed his glance across the room. ‘Americans?’

Sarah nodded.

‘Yes. An American family. But—rather an unusual one, I think.’

‘Unusual? How unusual?’

‘Well, look at them. Especially at the old woman.’

Dr Gerard complied. His keen professional glance flitted swiftly from face to face.

He noticed first a tall rather loose-boned man—age about thirty. The face was pleasant but weak and his manner seemed oddly apathetic. Then there were two good-looking youngsters—the boy had almost a Greek head. ‘Something the matter with him, too,’ thought Dr Gerard. ‘Yes—a definite state of nervous tension.’ The girl was clearly his sister, a strong resemblance, and she also was in an excitable condition. There was another girl younger still—with golden-red hair that stood out like a halo; her hands were very restless, they were tearing and pulling at the handkerchief in her lap. Yet another woman, young, calm, dark-haired with a creamy pallor, a placid face not unlike a Luini Madonna. Nothing jumpy about her! And the centre of the group—‘Heavens!’ thought Dr Gerard, with a Frenchman’s candid repulsion. ‘What a horror of a woman!’ Old, swollen, bloated, sitting there immovable in the midst of them—a distorted old Buddha—a gross spider in the centre of a web!

To Sarah he said: ‘La Maman, she is not beautiful, eh?’ And he shrugged his shoulders.

‘There’s something rather—sinister about her, don’t you think?’ asked Sarah.

Dr Gerard scrutinized her again. This time his eye was professional, not aesthetic.

‘Dropsy—cardiac—’ he added a glib medical phrase.

‘Oh, yes, that!’ Sarah dismissed the medical side.

‘But there is something odd in their attitude to her, don’t you think?’

‘Who are they, do you know?’

‘Their name is Boynton. Mother, married son, his wife, one younger son and two younger daughters.’

Dr Gerard murmured: ‘La famille Boynton sees the world.’

‘Yes, but there’s something odd about the way they’re seeing it. They never speak to anyone else. And none of them can do anything unless the old woman says so!’

‘She is of the matriarchal type,’ said Gerard thoughtfully.

‘She’s a complete tyrant, I think,’ said Sarah.

Dr Gerard shrugged his shoulders and remarked that the American woman ruled the earth—that was well known.

‘Yes, but it’s more than just that.’ Sarah was persistent. ‘She’s—oh, she’s got them all so cowed—so positively under her thumb—that it’s—it’s indecent!’

‘To have too much power is bad for women,’ Gerard agreed with sudden gravity. He shook his head.

‘It is difficult for a woman not to abuse power.’

He shot a quick sideways glance at Sarah. She was watching the Boynton family—or rather she was watching one particular member of it. Dr Gerard smiled a quick comprehending Gallic smile. Ah! So it was like that, was it?

He murmured tentatively: ‘You have spoken with them—yes?’

‘Yes—at least with one of them.’

‘The young man—the younger son?’

‘Yes. On the train coming here from Kantara. He was standing in the corridor. I spoke to him.’

There was no self-consciousness in her attitude to life. She was interested in humanity and was of a friendly though impatient disposition.

‘What made you speak to him?’ asked Gerard.

Sarah shrugged her shoulders.

‘Why not? I often speak to people travelling. I’m interested in people—in what they do and think and feel.’

‘You put them under the microscope, that is to say.’

‘I suppose you might call it that,’ the girl admitted.

‘And what were your impressions in this case?’

‘Well,’ she hesitated, ‘it was rather odd…To begin with, the boy flushed right up to the roots of his hair.’

‘Is that so remarkable?’ asked Gerard drily.

Sarah laughed.

‘You mean that he thought I was a shameless hussy making advances to him? Oh, no, I don’t think he thought that. Men can always tell, can’t they?’

She gave him a frank questioning glance. Dr Gerard nodded his head.

‘I got the impression,’ said Sarah, speaking slowly and frowning a little, ‘that he was—how shall I put it?—both excited and appalled. Excited out of all proportion—and quite absurdly apprehensive at the same time. Now that’s odd, isn’t it? Because I’ve always found Americans unusually self-possessed. An American boy of twenty, say, has infinitely more knowledge of the world and far more savoir-faire than an English boy of the same age. And this boy must be over twenty.’

‘About twenty-three or four, I should say.’

‘As much as that?’

‘I should think so.’

‘Yes…perhaps you’re right…Only, somehow, he seems very young…’

‘Maladjustment mentally. The “child” factor persists.’

‘Then I am right? I mean, there is something not quite normal about him?’

Dr Gerard shrugged his shoulders, smiling a little at her earnestness.

‘My dear young lady, are any of us quite normal? But I grant you that there is probably a neurosis of some kind.’

‘Connected with that horrible old woman, I’m sure.’

‘You seem to dislike her very much,’ said Gerard, looking at her curiously.

‘I do. She’s got a—oh, a malevolent eye!’

Gerard murmured: ‘So have many mothers when their sons are attracted to fascinating young ladies!’

Sarah shrugged an impatient shoulder. Frenchmen were all alike, she thought, obsessed by sex! Though, of course, as a conscientious psychologist she herself was bound to admit that there was always an underlying basis of sex to most phenomena. Sarah’s thoughts ran along a familiar psychological track.

She came out of her meditations with a start. Raymond Boynton was crossing the room to the centre table. He selected a magazine. As he passed her chair on his return journey she looked at him and spoke.

‘Have you been busy sightseeing today?’

She selected her words at random, her real interest was to see how they would be received.

Raymond half stopped, flushed, shied like a nervous horse and his eyes went apprehensively to the centre of his family group. He muttered: ‘Oh—oh, yes—why, yes, certainly. I—’

Then, as suddenly as though he had received the prick of a spur, he hurried back to his family, holding out the magazine.

The grotesque Buddha-like figure held out a fat hand for it, but as she took it her eyes, Dr Gerard noticed, were on the boy’s face. She gave a grunt, certainly no audible thanks. The position of her head shifted very slightly. The doctor saw that she was now looking hard at Sarah. Her face was quite impassive, it had no expression in it. Impossible to tell what was passing in the woman’s mind.

Sarah looked at her watch and uttered an exclamation.

‘It’s much later than I thought.’ She got up. ‘Thank you so much, Dr Gerard, for standing me coffee. I must write some letters now.’

He rose and took her hand.

‘We shall meet again, I hope,’ he said.

‘Oh, yes! Perhaps you will come to Petra?’

‘I shall certainly try to do so.’

Sarah smiled at him and turned away. Her way out of the room led her past the Boynton family.

Dr Gerard, watching, saw Mrs Boynton’s gaze shift to her son’s face. He saw the boy’s eyes meet hers. As Sarah passed, Raymond Boynton half turned his head—not towards her, but away from her…It was a slow, unwilling motion and conveyed the idea that old Mrs Boynton had pulled an invisible string.

Sarah King noticed the avoidance, and was young enough and human enough to be annoyed by it. They had had such a friendly talk together in the swaying corridor of the wagons-lits. They had compared notes on Egypt, had laughed at the ridiculous language of the donkey boys and street touts. Sarah had described how a camel man when he had started hopefully and impudently, ‘You English lady or American?’ had received the answer: ‘No, Chinese.’ And her pleasure in seeing the man’s complete bewilderment as he stared at her. The boy had been, she thought, like a nice eager schoolboy—there had been, perhaps, something almost pathetic about his eagerness. And now, for no reason at all, he was shy, boorish—positively rude.

‘I shan’t take any more trouble with him,’ said Sarah indignantly.

For Sarah, without being unduly conceited, had a fairly good opinion of herself. She knew herself to be definitely attractive to the opposite sex, and she was not one to take a snubbing lying down!

She had been, perhaps, a shade over-friendly to this boy because, for some obscure reason, she had felt sorry for him.

But now, it was apparent, he was merely a rude, stuck-up, boorish young American!

Instead of writing the letters she had mentioned, Sarah King sat down in front of her dressing-table, combed the hair back from her forehead, looked into a pair of troubled hazel eyes in the glass, and took stock of her situation in life.

She had just passed through a difficult emotional crisis. A month ago she had broken off her engagement to a young doctor some four years her senior. They had been very much attracted to each other, but had been too much alike in temperament. Disagreements and quarrels had been of common occurrence. Sarah was of too imperious a temperament herself to brook a calm assertion of autocracy. Like many high-spirited women, Sarah believed herself to admire strength. She had always told herself that she wanted to be mastered. When she met a man capable of mastering her she found that she did not like it at all! To break off her engagement had cost her a good deal of heart-burning, but she was clear-sighted enough to realize that mere mutual attraction was not a sufficient basis on which to build a lifetime of happiness. She had treated herself deliberately to an interesting holiday abroad in order to help on forgetfulness before she went back to start working in earnest.

Sarah’s thoughts came back from the past to the present.

‘I wonder,’ she thought, ‘if Dr Gerard will let me talk to him about his work. He’s done such marvellous work. If only he’ll take me seriously…Perhaps—if he comes to Petra—’

Then she thought again of the strange boorish young American.

She had no doubt that it was the presence of his family which had caused him to react in such a peculiar manner, but she felt slightly scornful of him, nevertheless. To be under the thumb of one’s family like that—it was really rather ridiculous—especially for a man!

And yet…

A queer feeling passed over her. Surely there was something a little odd about it all?

She said suddenly out loud: ‘That boy wants rescuing! I’m going to see to it!’

Chapter 3

When Sarah had left the lounge, Dr Gerard sat where he was for some minutes. Then he strolled to the table, picked up the latest number of Le Matin and strolled with it to a chair a few yards away from the Boynton family. His curiosity was aroused.

He had at first been amused by the English girl’s interest in this American family, shrewdly diagnosing that it was inspired by interest in one particular member of the family. But now something out of the ordinary about this family party awakened in him the deeper, more impartial interest of the scientist. He sensed that there was something here of definite psychological interest.

Very discreetly, under the cover of his paper, he took stock of them. First the boy in whom that attractive English girl took such a decided interest. Yes, thought Gerard, definitely the type to appeal to her temperamentally. Sarah King had strength—she possessed well-balanced nerves, cool wits and a resolute will. Dr Gerard judged the young man to be sensitive, perceptive, diffident and intensely suggestible. He noted with a physician’s eye the obvious fact that the boy was at the moment in a state of high nervous tension. Dr Gerard wondered why. He was puzzled. Why should a young man whose physical health was obviously good, who was abroad ostensibly enjoying himself, be in such a condition that nervous breakdown was imminent?

The doctor turned his attention to the other members of the party. The girl with the chestnut hair was obviously Raymond’s sister. They were of the same racial type, small-boned, well-shaped, aristocratic looking. They had the same slender well-formed hands, the same clean line of jaw, and the same poise of the head on a long, slender neck. And the girl, too, was nervous…She made slight involuntary nervous movements, her eyes were deeply shadowed underneath and over bright. Her voice, when she spoke, was too quick and a shade breathless. She was watchful—alert—unable to relax.

‘And she is afraid, too,’ decided Dr Gerard. ‘Yes, she is afraid!’

He overheard scraps of conversation—a very ordinary normal conversation.

‘We might go to Solomon’s Stables?’ ‘Would that be too much for Mother?’ ‘The Wailing Wall in the morning?’ ‘The Temple, of course—the Mosque of Omar they call it—I wonder why?’ ‘Because it’s been made into a Moslem mosque, of course, Lennox.’

Ordinary commonplace tourist’s talk. And yet, somehow, Dr Gerard felt a queer conviction that these overheard scraps of dialogue were all singularly unreal. They were a mask—a cover for something that surged and eddied underneath—something too deep and formless for words…Again he shot a covert glance from behind the shelter of Le Matin.

Lennox? That was the elder brother. The same family likeness could be traced, but there was a difference. Lennox was not so highly strung; he was, Gerard decided, of a less nervous temperament. But about him, too, there seemed something odd. There was no sign of muscular tension about him as there was about the other two. He sat relaxed, limp. Puzzling, searching among memories of patients he had seen sitting like that in hospital wards, Gerard thought:

‘He is exhausted—yes, exhausted with suffering. That look in the eyes—the look you see in a wounded dog or a sick horse—dumb bestial endurance…It is odd, that…Physically there seems nothing wrong with him…Yet there is no doubt that lately he has been through much suffering—mental suffering—now he no longer suffers—he endures dumbly—waiting, I think, for the blow to fall…What blow? Am I fancying all this? No, the man is waiting for something, for the end to come. So cancer patients lie and wait, thankful that an anodyne dulls the pain a little…’

Lennox Boynton got up and retrieved a ball of wool that the old lady had dropped.

‘Here you are, Mother.’

‘Thank you.’

What was she knitting, this monumental impassive old woman? Something thick and coarse. Gerard thought: ‘Mittens for inhabitants of a workhouse!’ And smiled at his own fantasy.

He turned his attention to the youngest member of the party—the girl with the golden-red hair. She was, perhaps, nineteen. Her skin had the exquisite clearness that often goes with red hair. Although over thin, it was a beautiful face. She was sitting smiling to herself—smiling into space. There was something a little curious about that smile. It was so far removed from the Solomon Hotel, from Jerusalem…It reminded Dr Gerard of something…Presently it came to him in a flash. It was the strange unearthly smile that lifts the lips of the Maidens in the Acropolis at Athens—something remote and lovely and a little inhuman…The magic of the smile, her exquisite stillness gave him a little pang.

And then with a shock, Dr Gerard noticed her hands. They were concealed from the group round her by the table, but he could see them clearly from where he sat. In the shelter of her lap they were picking—picking—tearing a delicate handkerchief into tiny shreds.

It gave him a horrible shock. The aloof remote smile—the still body—and the busy destructive hands…

Chapter 4

There was a slow asthmatic wheezing cough—then the monumental knitting woman spoke.

‘Ginevra, you’re tired, you’d better go to bed.’

The girl started, her fingers stopped their mechanical action. ‘I’m not tired, Mother.’

Gerard recognized appreciatively the musical quality of her voice. It had the sweet singing quality that lends enchantment to the most commonplace utterances.

‘Yes, you are. I always know. I don’t think you’ll be able to do any sightseeing tomorrow.’

‘Oh! but I shall. I’m quite all right.’

In a thick hoarse voice—almost a grating voice, her mother said: ‘No, you’re not. You’re going to be ill.’

‘I’m not! I’m not!’

The girl began trembling violently.

A soft, calm voice said: ‘I’ll come up with you, Jinny.’

The quiet young woman with wide, thoughtful grey eyes and neatly-coiled dark hair rose to her feet.

Old Mrs Boynton said: ‘No. Let her go up alone.’

The girl cried: ‘I want Nadine to come!’

‘Then of course I will.’ The young woman moved a step forward.

The old woman said: ‘The child prefers to go by herself—don’t you, Jinny?’

There was a pause—a pause of a moment, then Ginevra Boynton said, her voice suddenly flat and dull:

‘Yes; I’d rather go alone. Thank you, Nadine.’

She moved away, a tall angular figure that moved with a surprising grace.

Dr Gerard lowered his paper and took a full satisfying gaze at old Mrs Boynton. She was looking after her daughter and her fat face was creased into a peculiar smile. It was, very faintly, a caricature of the lovely unearthly smile that had transformed the girl’s face so short a time before.

Then the old woman transferred her gaze to Nadine. The latter had just sat down again. She raised her eyes and met her mother-in-law’s glance. Her face was quite imperturbable. The old woman’s glance was malicious.

Dr Gerard thought: ‘What an absurdity of an old tyrant!’

And then, suddenly, the old woman’s eyes were full on him, and he drew in his breath sharply. Small black smouldering eyes they were, but something came from them, a power, a definite force, a wave of evil malignancy. Dr Gerard knew something about the power of personality. He realized that this was no spoilt tyrannical invalid indulging petty whims. This old woman was a definite force. In the malignancy of her glare he felt a resemblance to the effect produced by a cobra. Mrs Boynton might be old, infirm, a prey to disease, but she was not powerless. She was a woman who knew the meaning of power, who had exercised a lifetime of power and who had never once doubted her own force. Dr Gerard had once met a woman who performed a most dangerous and spectacular act with tigers. The great slinking brutes had crawled to their places and performed their degrading and humiliating tricks. Their eyes and subdued snarls told of hatred, bitter fanatical hatred, but they had obeyed, cringed. That had been a young woman, a woman with an arrogant dark beauty, but the look had been the same.

‘Une dompteuse,’ said Dr Gerard to himself.

And he understood now what that undercurrent to the harmless family talk had been. It was hatred—a dark eddying stream of hatred.

He thought: ‘How fanciful and absurd most people would think me! Here is a commonplace devoted American family revelling in Palestine—and I weave a story of black magic round it!’

Then he looked with interest at the quiet young woman who was called Nadine. There was a wedding ring on her left hand, and as he watched her he saw her give one swift betraying glance at the fair-haired, loose-limbed Lennox. He knew, then…

They were man and wife, those two. But it was a mother’s glance rather than a wife’s—a true mother’s glance—protecting, anxious. And he knew something more. He knew that, alone out of that group, Nadine Boynton was unaffected by her mother-in-law’s spell. She may have disliked the old woman, but she was not afraid of her. The power did not touch her.

She was unhappy, deeply concerned about her husband, but she was free.

Dr Gerard said to himself: ‘All this is very interesting.’

Chapter 5

Into these dark imaginings a breath of the commonplace came with almost ludicrous effect.

A man came into the lounge, caught sight of the Boyntons and came across to them. He was a pleasant middle-aged American of a strictly conventional type. He was carefully dressed, with a long clean-shaven face and he had a slow, pleasant, somewhat monotonous voice.

‘I was looking around for you all,’ he said.

Meticulously he shook hands with the entire family. ‘And how do you find yourself, Mrs Boynton? Not too tired by the journey?’

Almost graciously, the old lady wheezed out: ‘No, thank you. My health’s never good, as you know—’

‘Why, of course, too bad—too bad.’

‘But I’m certainly no worse.’

Mrs Boynton added with a slow reptilian smile: ‘Nadine, here, takes good care of me, don’t you, Nadine?’

‘I do my best.’ Her voice was expressionless.

‘Why, I bet you do,’ said the stranger heartily. ‘Well, Lennox, and what do you think of King David’s city?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’

Lennox spoke apathetically—without interest.

‘Find it kind of disappointing, do you? I’ll confess it struck me that way at first. But perhaps you haven’t been around much yet?’

Carol Boynton said: ‘We can’t do very much because of Mother.’

Mrs Boynton explained: ‘A couple of hours’ sightseeing is about all I can manage every day.’

The stranger said heartily: ‘I think it’s wonderful you manage to do all you do, Mrs Boynton.’

Mrs Boynton gave a slow, wheezy chuckle; it had an almost gloating sound.

‘I don’t give in to my body! It’s the mind that matters! Yes, it’s the mind…’

Her voice died away. Gerard saw Raymond Boynton give a nervous jerk.

‘Have you been to the Wailing Wall yet, Mr Cope?’ he asked.

‘Why, yes, that was one of the first places I visited. I hope to have done Jerusalem thoroughly in a couple more days, and I’m letting them get me out an itinerary at Cook’s so as to do the Holy Land thoroughly—Bethlehem, Nazareth, Tiberias, the Sea of Galilee. It’s all going to be mighty interesting. Then there’s Jerash, there are some very interesting ruins there—Roman, you know. And I’d very much like to have a look at the Rose Red City of Petra, a most remarkable natural phenomenon, I believe that is—and right off the beaten track—but it takes the best part of a week to get there and back, and do it properly.’

Carol said: ‘I’d love to go there. It sounds marvellous.’

‘Why, I should say it was definitely worth seeing—yes, definitely worth seeing.’ Mr Cope paused, shot a somewhat dubious glance at Mrs Boynton, and then went on in a voice that to the listening Frenchman was palpably uncertain:

‘I wonder now if I couldn’t persuade some of you people to come with me? Naturally I know you couldn’t manage it, Mrs Boynton, and naturally some of your family would want to remain with you, but if you were to divide forces, so to speak—’

He paused. Gerard heard the even click of Mrs Boynton’s knitting needles. Then she said:

‘I don’t think we’d care to divide up. We’re a very homey group.’ She looked up. ‘Well, children, what do you say?’

There was a queer ring in her voice. The answers came promptly. ‘No, Mother.’ ‘Oh, no.’ ‘No, of course not.’

Mrs Boynton said, smiling that very odd smile of hers: ‘You see—they won’t leave me. What about you, Nadine? You didn’t say anything.’

‘No, thank you, Mother, not unless Lennox cares about it.’

Mrs Boynton turned her head slowly towards her son.

‘Well, Lennox, what about it, why don’t you and Nadine go? She seems to want to.’

He started—looked up. ‘I—well—no, I—I think we’d better all stay together.’

Mr Cope said genially: ‘Well, you are a devoted family!’ But something in his geniality rang a little hollow and forced.

‘We keep to ourselves,’ said Mrs Boynton. She began to wind up her ball of wool. ‘By the way, Raymond, who was that young woman who spoke to you just now?’

Raymond started nervously. He flushed, then went white.

‘I—I don’t know her name. She—she was on the train the other night.’

Mrs Boynton began slowly to try to heave herself out of her chair.

‘I don’t think we’ll have much to do with her,’ she said.

Nadine rose and assisted the old woman to struggle out of her chair. She did it with a professional deftness that attracted Gerard’s attention.

‘Bedtime,’ said Mrs Boynton. ‘Good night, Mr Cope.’

‘Good night, Mrs Boynton. Good night, Mrs Lennox.’

They went off—a little procession. It did not seem to occur to any of the younger members of the party to stay behind.

Mr Cope was left looking after them. The expression on his face was an odd one.

As Dr Gerard knew by experience, Americans are disposed to be a friendly race. They have not the uneasy suspicion of the travelling Briton. To a man of Dr Gerard’s tact making the acquaintance of Mr Cope presented few difficulties. The American was lonely and was, like most of his race, disposed to friendliness. Dr Gerard’s card-case was again to the fore.

Reading the name on it, Mr Jefferson Cope was duly impressed.

‘Why, surely, Dr Gerard, you were over in the States not very long ago?’

‘Last autumn. I was lecturing at Harvard.’

‘Of course. Yours, Dr Gerard, is one of the most distinguished names in your profession. You’re pretty well at the head of your subject in Paris.’

‘My dear sir, you are far too kind! I protest.’

‘No, no, this is a great privilege—meeting you like this. As a matter of fact, there are several very distinguished people here in Jerusalem just at present. There’s yourself and there’s Lord Welldon, and Sir Gabriel Steinbaum, the financier. Then there’s the veteran English archaeologist, Sir Manders Stone. And there’s Lady Westholme, who’s very prominent in English politics. And there’s that famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.’

‘Little Hercule Poirot? Is he here?’

‘I read his name in the local paper as having lately arrived. Seems to me all the world and his wife are at the Solomon Hotel. A mighty fine hotel it is, too. And very tastefully decorated.’

Mr Jefferson Cope was clearly enjoying himself. Dr Gerard was a man who could display a lot of charm when he chose. Before long the two men had adjourned to the bar.

After a couple of highballs Gerard said: ‘Tell me, is that a typical American family to whom you were talking?’

Jefferson Cope sipped his drink thoughtfully. Then he said: ‘Why, no, I wouldn’t say it was exactly typical.’

‘No? A very devoted family, I thought.’

Mr Cope said slowly: ‘You mean they all seem to revolve round the old lady? That’s true enough. She’s a very remarkable old lady, you know.’

‘Indeed?’

Mr Cope needed very little encouragement. The gentle invitation was enough.

‘I don’t mind telling you, Dr Gerard, I’ve been having that family a good deal on my mind lately. I’ve been thinking about them a lot. If I may say so, it would ease my mind to talk to you about the matter. If it won’t bore you, that is?’

Dr Gerard disclaimed boredom. Mr Jefferson Cope went on slowly, his pleasant clean-shaven face creased with perplexity.

‘I’ll tell you straight away that I’m just a little worried. Mrs Boynton, you see, is an old friend of mine. That is to say, not the old Mrs Boynton, the young one, Mrs Lennox Boynton.’

‘Ah, yes, that very charming dark-haired young lady.’

‘That’s right. That’s Nadine. Nadine Boynton, Dr Gerard, is a very lovely character. I knew her before she was married. She was in hospital then, working to be a trained nurse. Then she went for a vacation to stay with the Boyntons and she married Lennox.’

‘Yes?’

Mr Jefferson Cope took another sip of highball and went on:

‘I’d like to tell you, Dr Gerard, just a little of the Boynton family history.’

‘Yes? I should be most interested.’

‘Well, you see, the late Elmer Boynton—he was quite a well-known man and a very charming personality—was twice married. His first wife died when Carol and Raymond were tiny toddlers. The second Mrs Boynton, so I’ve been told, was a handsome woman when he married her, though not very young. Seems odd to think she can ever have been handsome to look at her now, but that’s what I’ve been told on very good authority. Anyway, her husband thought a lot of her and adopted her judgement on almost every point. He was an invalid for some years before he died, and she practically ruled the roost. She’s a very capable woman with a fine head for business. A very conscientious woman, too. After Elmer died, she devoted herself absolutely to these children. There’s one of her own, too, Ginevra—pretty red-haired girl, but a bit delicate. Well, as I was telling you, Mrs Boynton devoted herself entirely to her family. She just shut out the outside world entirely. Now I don’t know what you think, Dr Gerard, but I don’t think that’s always a very sound thing.’

‘I agree with you. It is most harmful to developing mentalities.’

‘Yes, I should say that just about expresses it. Mrs Boynton shielded these children from the outside world and never let them make any outside contacts. The result of that is that they’ve grown up—well, kind of nervy. They’re jumpy, if you know what I mean. Can’t make friends with strangers. It’s bad, that.’

‘It is very bad.’

‘I’ve no doubt Mrs Boynton meant well. It was just over-devotion on her part.’

‘They all live at home?’ asked the doctor.

‘Yes.’

‘Do neither of the sons work?’

‘Why, no. Elmer Boynton was a rich man. He left all his money to Mrs Boynton for her lifetime—but it was understood that it was for the family upkeep generally.’

‘So they are dependent on her financially?’

‘That is so. And she’s encouraged them to live at home and not go out and look for jobs. Well, maybe that’s all right, there’s plenty of money, they don’t need to take a job, but I think for the male sex, anyway, work’s a good tonic. Then, there’s another thing—they’ve none of them got any hobbies. They don’t play golf. They don’t belong to any country club. They don’t go around to dances or do anything with the other young people. They live in a great barrack of a house way down in the country miles from anywhere. I tell you, Dr Gerard, it seems all wrong to me.’

‘I agree with you,’ said Dr Gerard.

‘Not one of them has got the least social sense. The community spirit—that’s what’s lacking! They may be a very devoted family, but they’re all bound up in themselves.’

‘There has never been any question of one or other of them branching out for him or herself?’

‘Not that I’ve heard of. They just sit around.’

‘Do you put the blame for that on them or on Mrs Boynton?’

Jefferson Cope shifted uneasily.

‘Well, in a sense, I feel she is more or less responsible. It’s bad bringing-up on her part. All the same, when a young fellow comes to maturity it’s up to him to kick over the traces of his own accord. No boy ought to keep on being tied to his mother’s apron strings. He ought to choose to be independent.’

Dr Gerard said thoughtfully: ‘That might be impossible.’

‘Why impossible?’

‘There are methods, Mr Cope, of preventing a tree from growing.’

Cope stared. ‘They’re a fine healthy lot, Dr Gerard.’

‘The mind can be stunted and warped as well as the body.’

‘They’re bright mentally, too.’

Jefferson Cope went on: ‘No, Dr Gerard, take it from me, a man has got the control of his own destiny right there in his own hands. A man who respects himself strikes out on his own and makes something of his life. He doesn’t just sit round and twiddle his thumbs. No woman ought to respect a man who does that.’

Gerard looked at him curiously for a minute or two. Then he said: ‘You refer particularly, I think, to Mr Lennox Boynton?’

‘Why, yes, it was Lennox I was thinking of. Raymond’s only a boy still. But Lennox is just on thirty. Time he showed he was made of something.’

‘It is a difficult life, perhaps, for his wife?’

‘Of course it’s a difficult life for her! Nadine is a very fine girl. I admire her more than I can say. She’s never let drop one word of complaint. But she’s not happy, Dr Gerard. She’s just as unhappy as she can be.’

Gerard nodded his head.

‘Yes, I think that well might be.’

‘I don’t know what you think about it, Dr Gerard, but I think that there’s a limit to what a woman ought to put up with! If I were Nadine I’d put it to young Lennox straight. Either he sets to and proves what he’s made of, or else—’

‘Or else, you think, she should leave him?’

‘She’s got her own life to live, Dr Gerard. If Lennox doesn’t appreciate her as she ought to be appreciated—well, there are other men who will.’

‘There is—yourself, for instance?’

The American flushed. Then he looked straight at the other with a certain simple dignity.

‘That’s so,’ he said. ‘I’m not ashamed of my feeling for that lady. I respect her and I am very deeply attached to her. All I want is her happiness. If she were happy with Lennox, I’d sit right back and fade out of the picture.’

‘But as it is?’

‘But as it is I’m standing by! If she wants me, I’m here!’

‘You are, in fact, the parfait gentil knight,’ murmured Gerard.

‘Pardon?’

‘My dear sir, chivalry only lives nowadays in the American nation! You are content to serve your lady without hope of reward! It is most admirable, that! What exactly do you hope to be able to do for her?’

‘My idea is to be right here at hand if she needs me.’

‘And what, may I ask, is the older Mrs Boynton’s attitude towards you?’

Jefferson Cope said slowly: ‘I’m never quite sure about that old lady. As I’ve told you, she isn’t fond of making outside contacts. But she’s been different to me, she’s always very gracious and treats me quite like one of the family.’

‘In fact, she approves of your friendship with Mrs Lennox?’

‘She does.’

Dr Gerard shrugged his shoulders.

‘That is, perhaps, a little odd?’

Jefferson Cope said stiffly: ‘Let me assure you, Dr Gerard, there is nothing dishonourable in that friendship. It is purely platonic.’

‘My dear sir, I am quite sure of that. I repeat, though, that for Mrs Boynton to encourage that friendship is a curious action on her part. You know, Mr Cope, Mrs Boynton interests me—she interests me greatly.’

‘She is certainly a remarkable woman. She has great force of character—a most prominent personality. As I say, Elmer Boynton had the greatest faith in her judgement.’

‘So much so that he was content to leave his children completely at her mercy from the financial point of view. In my country, Mr Cope, it is impossible by law to do such a thing.’

Mr Cope rose. ‘In America,’ he said, ‘we’re great believers in absolute freedom.’

Dr Gerard rose also. He was unimpressed by the remark. He had heard it made before by people of many different nationalities. The illusion that freedom is the prerogative of one’s own particular race is fairly widespread.

Dr Gerard was wiser. He knew that no race, no country and no individual could be described as free. But he also knew that there were different degrees of bondage.

He went up to bed thoughtful and interested.

Chapter 6

Sarah King stood in the precincts of the Temple—the Haramesh-Sherif. Her back was to the Dome of the Rock. The splashing of fountains sounded in her ears. Little groups of tourists passed by without disturbing the peace of the oriental atmosphere.

Strange, thought Sarah, that once a Jebusite should have made this rocky summit into a threshing floor and that David should have purchased it for six hundred shekels of gold and made it a Holy Place. And now the loud chattering tongues of sightseers of all nations could be heard.

She turned and looked at the Mosque which now covered the shrine and wondered if Solomon’s temple would have looked half as beautiful.

There was a clatter of footsteps and a little party came out from the interior of the Mosque. It was the Boyntons escorted by a voluble dragoman. Mrs Boynton was supported between Lennox and Raymond. Nadine and Mr Cope walked behind. Carol came last. As they were moving off, the latter caught sight of Sarah.

She hesitated, then, on a sudden decision, she wheeled round and ran swiftly and noiselessly across the courtyard.

‘Excuse me,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I must—I—I felt I must speak to you.’

‘Yes?’ said Sarah.

Carol was trembling violently. Her face was quite white.

‘It’s about—my brother. When you—you spoke to him last night you must have thought him very rude. But he didn’t mean to be—he—he couldn’t help it. Oh, do please believe me.’

Sarah felt that the whole scene was ridiculous. Both her pride and her good taste were offended. Why should a strange girl suddenly rush up and tender a ridiculous apology for a boorish brother?

An off-hand reply trembled on her lips—and then, quickly, her mood changed.

There was something out of the ordinary here. This girl was in deadly earnest. That something in Sarah which had led her to adopt a medical career reacted to the girl’s need. Her instinct told her there was something badly wrong.

She said encouragingly: ‘Tell me about it.’

‘He spoke to you on the train, didn’t he?’ began Carol.

Sarah nodded. ‘Yes; at least, I spoke to him.’

‘Oh, of course. It would be that way round. But, you see, last night Ray was afraid—’

She stopped.

‘Afraid?’

Carol’s white face crimsoned.

‘Oh, I know it sounds absurd—mad. You see, my mother—she’s—she’s not well—and she doesn’t like us making friends outside. But—but I know Ray would—would like to be friends with you.’

Sarah was interested. Before she could speak, Carol went on: ‘I—I know what I’m saying sounds very silly, but we are—rather an odd family.’ She cast a quick look round—it was a look of fear.

‘I—I mustn’t stay,’ she murmured. ‘They may miss me.’

Sarah made up her mind. She spoke.

‘Why shouldn’t you stay—if you want to? We might walk back together.’

‘Oh, no.’ Carol drew back. ‘I—I couldn’t do that.’

‘Why not?’ said Sarah.

‘I couldn’t really. My mother would be—would be—’

Sarah said clearly and calmly:

‘I know it’s awfully difficult sometimes for parents to realize that their children are grown up. They will go on trying to run their lives for them. But it’s a pity, you know, to give in! One must stand up for one’s rights.’

Carol murmured: ‘You don’t understand—you don’t understand in the least…’

Her hands twisted together nervously.

Sarah went on: ‘One gives in sometimes because one is afraid of rows. Rows are very unpleasant, but I think freedom of action is always worth fighting for.’

‘Freedom?’ Carol stared at her. ‘None of us have ever been free. We never will be.’

‘Nonsense!’ said Sarah clearly.

Carol leaned forward and touched her arm.

‘Listen. I must try and make you understand! Before her marriage my mother—she’s my stepmother really—was a wardress in a prison. My father was the Governor and he married her. Well, it’s been like that ever since. She’s gone on being a wardress—to us. That’s why our life is just—being in prison!’

Her head jerked round again.

‘They’ve missed me. I—I must go.’

Sarah caught her by the arm as she was darting off.

‘One minute. We must meet again and talk.’

‘I can’t. I shan’t be able to.’

‘Yes, you can.’ She spoke authoritatively. ‘Come to my room after you go to bed. It’s 319. Don’t forget, 319.’

She released her hold. Carol ran off after her family.

Sarah stood staring after her. She awoke from her thoughts to find Dr Gerard by her side.

‘Good morning, Miss King. So you’ve been talking to Miss Carol Boynton?’

‘Yes, we had the most extraordinary conversation. Let me tell you.’

She repeated the substance of her conversation with the girl. Gerard pounced on one point.

‘Wardress in a prison, was she, that old hippopotamus? That is significant, perhaps.’

Sarah said:

‘You mean that that is the cause of her tyranny? It is the habit of her former profession.’

Gerard shook his head.

‘No, that is approaching it from the wrong angle. There is some deep underlying compulsion. She does not love tyranny because she has been a wardress. Let us rather say that she became a wardress because she loved tyranny. In my theory it was a secret desire for power over other human beings that led her to adopt that profession.’

His face was very grave.

‘There are such strange things buried down in the unconscious. A lust for power—a lust for cruelty—a savage desire to tear and rend—all the inheritance of our past racial memories…They are all there, Miss King, all the cruelty and savagery and lust…We shut the door on them and deny them conscious life, but sometimes—they are too strong.’

Sarah shivered. ‘I know.’

Gerard continued: ‘We see it all round us today—in political creeds, in the conduct of nations. A reaction from humanitarianism—from pity—from brotherly good-will. The creeds sound well sometimes—a wise régime—a beneficent government—but imposed by force—resting on a basis of cruelty and fear. They are opening the door, these apostles of violence, they are letting up the old savagery, the old delight in cruelty for its own sake! Oh, it is difficult—Man is an animal very delicately balanced. He has one prime necessity—to survive. To advance too quickly is as fatal as to lag behind. He must survive! He must, perhaps, retain some of the old savagery, but he must not—no definitely he must not—deify it!’

There was a pause. Then Sarah said:

‘You think old Mrs Boynton is a kind of sadist?’

‘I am almost sure of it. I think she rejoices in the infliction of pain—mental pain, mind you, not physical. That is very much rarer and very much more difficult to deal with. She likes to have control of other human beings and she likes to make them suffer.’

‘It’s pretty beastly,’ said Sarah.

Gerard told her of his conversation with Jefferson Cope. ‘He doesn’t realize what is going on?’ she said thoughtfully.

‘How should he? He is not a psychologist.’

‘True. He hasn’t got our disgusting minds!’

‘Exactly. He has a nice, upright, sentimental, normal American mind. He believes in good rather than evil. He sees that the atmosphere of the Boynton family is all wrong, but he credits Mrs Boynton with misguided devotion rather than active maleficence.’

‘That should amuse her,’ said Sarah.

‘I should imagine it does!’

Sarah said impatiently:

‘But why don’t they break away? They could.’

Gerard shook his head.

‘No, there you are wrong. They cannot. Have you ever seen the old experiment with a cock? You chalk a line on the floor and put the cock’s beak on it. The cock believes he is tied there. He cannot raise his head. So with these unfortunates. She has worked on them, remember, since they were children. And her dominance has been mental. She has hypnotized them to believe that they cannot disobey her. Oh, I know most people would say that was nonsense—but you and I know better. She has made them believe that utter dependence on her is inevitable. They have been in prison so long that if the prison door stands open they would no longer notice! One of them, at least, no longer even wants to be free! And they would all be afraid of freedom.’

Sarah asked practically: ‘What will happen when she dies?’

Gerard shrugged his shoulders.

‘It depends. On how soon that happens. If it happened now—well, I think it might not be too late. The boy and girl—they are still young—impressionable. They would become, I believe, normal human beings. With Lennox, possibly, it has gone too far. He looks to me like a man who has parted company with hope—he lives and endures like a brute beast.’

Sarah said impatiently: ‘His wife ought to have done something! She ought to have yanked him out of it.’

‘I wonder. She may have tried—and failed.’

‘Do you think she’s under the spell, too?’

Gerard shook his head.

‘No. I don’t think the old lady has any power over her, and for that reason she hates her with a bitter hatred. Watch her eyes.’

Sarah frowned. ‘I can’t make her out—the young one, I mean. Does she know what is going on?’

‘I think she must have a pretty shrewd idea.’

‘H’m,’ said Sarah. ‘That old woman ought to be murdered! Arsenic in her early morning tea would be my prescription.’

Then she said abruptly:

‘What about the youngest girl—the red-haired one with the rather fascinating vacant smile?’

Gerard frowned. ‘I don’t know. There is something queer there. Ginevra Boynton is the old woman’s own daughter, of course.’

‘Yes. I suppose that would be different—or wouldn’t it?’

Gerard said slowly: ‘I do not believe that when once the mania for power (and the lust for cruelty) has taken possession of a human being it can spare anybody—not even its nearest and dearest.’

He was silent for a moment, then he said: ‘Are you a Christian, mademoiselle?’

Sarah said slowly: ‘I don’t know. I used to think that I wasn’t anything. But now—I’m not sure. I feel—oh, I feel that if I could sweep all this away’—she made a violent gesture—‘all the buildings and the sects and the fierce squabbling churches—that—that I might see Christ’s quiet figure riding into Jerusalem on a donkey—and believe in Him.’

Dr Gerard said gravely: ‘I believe at least in one of the chief tenets of the Christian faith—contentment with a lowly place. I am a doctor and I know that ambition—the desire to succeed—to have power—leads to most ills of the human soul. If the desire is realized it leads to arrogance, violence and final satiety—and if it is denied—ah! if it is denied—let all the asylums for the insane rise up and give their testimony! They are filled with human beings who were unable to face being mediocre, insignificant, ineffective and who therefore created for themselves ways of escape from reality so as to be shut off from life itself for ever.’

Sarah said abruptly: ‘It’s a pity the old Boynton woman isn’t in an asylum.’

Gerard shook his head.

‘No—her place is not there among the failures. It is worse than that. She has succeeded, you see! She has accomplished her dream.’

Sarah shuddered.

She cried passionately: ‘Such things ought not to be!’

Chapter 7

Sarah wondered very much whether Carol Boynton would keep her appointment that night.

On the whole she rather doubted it. She was afraid that Carol would have a sharp reaction after her semi-confidences of the morning.

Nevertheless she made her preparations, slipping on a blue satin dressing-gown and getting out her little spirit lamp and boiling up water.

She was just on the point of giving Carol up (it was after one o’clock) and going to bed, when there was a tap on her door. She opened it and drew quickly back to let Carol come in.

The latter said breathlessly: ‘I was afraid you might have gone to bed…’

Sarah’s manner was carefully matter-of-fact.

‘Oh, no, I was waiting for you. Have some tea, will you? It’s real Lapsang Souchong.’

She brought over a cup. Carol had been nervous and uncertain of herself. Now she accepted the cup and a biscuit and her manner became calmer.

‘This is rather fun,’ said Sarah, smiling.

Carol looked a little startled.

‘Yes,’ she said doubtfully. ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’

‘Rather like the midnight feasts we used to have at school,’ went on Sarah. ‘I suppose you didn’t go to school?’

Carol shook her head.

‘No, we never left home. We had a governess—different governesses. They never stayed long.’

‘Did you never go away at all?’

‘No. We’ve lived always in the same house. This coming abroad is the first time I’ve ever been away.’

Sarah said casually: ‘It must have been a great adventure.’

‘Oh, it was. It—it’s all been like a dream.’

‘What made your—your stepmother decide to come abroad?’

At the mention of Mrs Boynton’s name, Carol had flinched. Sarah said quickly:

‘You know, I’m by way of being a doctor. I’ve just taken my M.B. Your mother—or stepmother rather—is very interesting to me—as a case, you know. I should say she was quite definitely a pathological case.’

Carol stared. It was clearly a very unexpected point of view to her. Sarah had spoken as she had with deliberate intent. She realized that to her family Mrs Boynton loomed as a kind of powerful obscene idol. It was Sarah’s object to rob her of her more terrifying aspect.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘There’s a kind of disease of—of grandeur—that gets hold of people. They get very autocratic and insist on everything being done exactly as they say and are altogether very difficult to deal with.’

Carol put down her cup.

‘Oh,’ she cried, ‘I’m so glad to be talking to you. Really, you know, I believe Ray and I have been getting quite—well, quite queer. We’d get terribly worked up about things.’

‘Talking with an outsider is always a good thing,’ said Sarah. ‘Inside a family one is apt to get too intense.’ Then she asked casually: ‘If you are unhappy, haven’t you ever thought of leaving home?’

Carol looked startled. ‘Oh, no! How could we? I—I mean Mother would never allow it.’

‘But she couldn’t stop you,’ said Sarah gently. ‘You’re over age.’

‘I’m twenty-three.’

‘Exactly.’

‘But still, I don’t see how—I mean, I wouldn’t know where to go and what to do.’

Her tone seemed bewildered.

‘You see,’ she said, ‘we haven’t got any money.’

‘Haven’t you any friends you could go to?’

‘Friends?’ Carol shook her head. ‘Oh, no, we don’t know anyone!’

‘Did none of you ever think of leaving home?’

‘No—I don’t think so. Oh—oh—we couldn’t.’

Sarah changed the subject. She found the girl’s bewilderment pitiful.

She said: ‘Are you fond of your stepmother?’

Slowly Carol shook her head. She whispered in a low scared voice: ‘I hate her. So does Ray…We’ve—we’ve often wished she would die.’

Again Sarah changed the subject.

‘Tell me about your elder brother.’

‘Lennox? I don’t know what’s the matter with Lennox. He hardly ever speaks now. He goes about in a kind of daydream. Nadine’s terribly worried about him.’

‘You are fond of your sister-in-law?’

‘Yes, Nadine is different. She’s always kind. But she’s very unhappy.’

‘About your brother?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have they been married long?’

‘Four years.’

‘And they’ve always lived at home?’

‘Yes.’

Sarah asked: ‘Does your sister-in-law like that?’

‘No.’

There was a pause. Then Carol said:

‘There was an awful fuss just over four years ago. You see, as I told you, none of us ever go outside the house at home. I mean we go into the grounds, but nowhere else. But Lennox did. He got out at night. He went into Fountain Springs—there was a sort of dance going on. Mother was frightfully angry when she found out. It was terrible. And then, after that, she asked Nadine to come and stay. Nadine was a very distant cousin of Father’s. She was very poor and was training to be a hospital nurse. She came and stayed with us for a month. I can’t tell you how exciting it was to have someone to stay! And she and Lennox fell in love with each other. And Mother said they’d better be married quickly and live on with us.’

‘And was Nadine willing to do that?’

Carol hesitated.

‘I don’t think she wanted to do that very much, but she didn’t really mind. Then, later, she wanted to go away—with Lennox, of course—’

‘But they didn’t go?’ asked Sarah.

‘No, Mother wouldn’t hear of it.’

Carol paused, and then said:

‘I don’t think—she likes Nadine any longer. Nadine is—funny. You never know what she’s thinking. She tries to help Jinny and Mother doesn’t like it.’

‘Jinny is your youngest sister?’

‘Yes. Ginevra is her real name.’

‘Is she—unhappy, too?’

Carol shook her head doubtfully.

‘Jinny’s been very queer lately. I don’t understand her. You see, she’s always been rather delicate—and—and Mother fusses about her and—and it makes her worse. And lately Jinny has been very queer indeed. She—she frightens me sometimes. She—she doesn’t always know what she’s doing.’

‘Has she seen a doctor?’

‘No, Nadine wanted her to, but Mother said no—and Jinny got very hysterical and screamed, and said she wouldn’t see a doctor. But I’m worried about her.’

Suddenly Carol rose.

‘I mustn’t keep you up. It’s—it’s very good of you letting me come and talk to you. You must think us very odd as a family.’

‘Oh, everybody’s odd, really,’ said Sarah lightly. ‘Come again, will you? And bring your brother, if you like.’

‘May I really?’

‘Yes; we’ll do some secret plotting. I’d like you to meet a friend of mine, too, a Dr Gerard, an awfully nice Frenchman.’

The colour came into Carol’s cheeks.

‘Oh, what fun it sounds. If only Mother doesn’t find out!’

Sarah suppressed her original retort and said instead, ‘Why should she? Good night. Shall we say tomorrow night at the same time?’

‘Oh, yes. The day after, you see, we may be going away.’

‘Then let’s have a definite date for tomorrow. Good night.’

‘Good night—and thank you.’

Carol went out of the room and slipped noiselessly along the corridor. Her own room was on the floor above. She reached it, opened the door—and stood appalled on the threshold. Mrs Boynton was sitting in an armchair by the fireplace in a crimson wool dressing-gown.

A little cry escaped from Carol’s lips. ‘Oh!’

A pair of black eyes bored into hers.

‘Where have you been, Carol?’

‘I—I—’

‘Where have you been?’

A soft, husky voice with that queer menacing under-tone in it that always made Carol’s heart beat with unreasoning terror.

‘To see a Miss King—Sarah King.’

‘The girl who spoke to Raymond the other evening?’

‘Yes, Mother.’

‘Have you made any plans to see her again?’

Carol’s lips moved soundlessly. She nodded assent. Fright—great sickening waves of fright…

‘When?’

‘Tomorrow night.’

‘You are not to go. You understand?’

‘Yes, Mother.’

‘You promise?’

‘Yes—yes.’

Mrs Boynton struggled to get up. Mechanically Carol came forward and helped her. Mrs Boynton walked slowly across the room, supporting herself on her stick. She paused in the doorway and looked back at the cowering girl.

‘You are to have nothing more to do with this Miss King. You understand?’

‘Yes, Mother.’

‘Repeat it.’

‘I am to have nothing more to do with her.’

‘Good.’

Mrs Boynton went out and shut the door.

Stiffly, Carol moved across the bedroom. She felt sick, her whole body felt wooden and unreal. She dropped on to the bed and suddenly she was shaken by a storm of weeping.

It was as though a vista had opened before her—a vista of sunlight and trees and flowers…

Now the black walls had closed round her once more.

Chapter 8

‘Can I speak to you a minute?’

Nadine Boynton turned in surprise, staring into the dark eager face of an entirely unknown young woman.

‘Why, certainly.’

But as she spoke, almost unconsciously she threw a quick nervous glance over her shoulder.

‘My name is Sarah King,’ went on the other.

‘Oh, yes?’

‘Mrs Boynton, I’m going to say something rather odd to you. I talked to your sister-in-law for quite a long time the other evening.’

A faint shadow seemed to ruffle the serenity of Nadine Boynton’s face.

‘You talked to Ginevra?’

‘No, not to Ginevra—to Carol.’

The shadow lifted.

‘Oh, I see—to Carol.’

Nadine Boynton seemed pleased, but very much surprised. ‘How did you manage that?’

Sarah said: ‘She came to my room—quite late.’

She saw the faint raising of the pencilled brows on the white forehead. She said with some embarrassment: ‘I’m sure this must seem very odd to you.’

‘No,’ said Nadine Boynton. ‘I am very glad. Very glad indeed. It is very nice for Carol to have a friend to talk to.’

‘We—we got on very well together.’ Sarah tried to choose her words carefully. ‘In fact we arranged to—to meet again the following night.’

‘Yes.’

‘But Carol didn’t come.’

‘Didn’t she?’

Nadine’s voice was cool—reflective. Her face, so quiet and gentle, told Sarah nothing.

‘No. Yesterday she was passing through the hall. I spoke to her and she didn’t answer. Just looked at me once, and then away again, and hurried on.’

‘I see.’

There was a pause. Sarah found it difficult to go on. Nadine Boynton said presently: ‘I’m—very sorry. Carol is—rather a nervous girl.’

Again that pause. Sarah took her courage in both hands. ‘You know, Mrs Boynton, I’m by way of being a doctor. I think—I think it would be good for your sister-in-law not to—not to shut herself away too much from people.’

Nadine Boynton looked thoughtfully at Sarah.

She said: ‘I see. You’re a doctor. That makes a difference.’

‘You see what I mean?’ Sarah urged.

Nadine bent her head. She was still thoughtful.

‘You are quite right, of course,’ she said after a minute or two. ‘But there are difficulties. My mother-in-law is in bad health and she has what I can only describe as a morbid dislike of any outsiders penetrating into her family circle.’

Sarah said mutinously: ‘But Carol is a grown-up woman.’

Nadine Boynton shook her head.

‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘In body, but not in mind. If you talked to her you must have noticed that. In an emergency she would always behave like a frightened child.’

‘Do you think that’s what happened? Do you think she became—afraid?’

‘I should imagine, Miss King, that my mother-in-law insisted on Carol having nothing more to do with you.’

‘And Carol gave in?’

Nadine Boynton said quietly: ‘Can you really imagine her doing anything else?’

The eyes of the two women met. Sarah felt that behind the mask of conventional words they understood each other. Nadine, she felt, understood the position. But she was clearly not prepared to discuss it in any way.

Sarah felt discouraged. The other evening it had seemed to her as though half the battle were won. By means of secret meetings she would imbue Carol with the spirit of revolt—yes, and Raymond, too. (Be honest now, wasn’t it Raymond really she had had in mind all along?) And now, in the very first round of the battle she had been ignominiously defeated by that hulk of shapeless flesh with her evil, gloating eyes. Carol had capitulated without a struggle.

‘It’s all wrong!’ cried Sarah.

Nadine did not answer. Something in her silence went home to Sarah like a cold hand laid on her heart. She thought: ‘This woman knows the hopelessness of it much better than I do. She’s lived with it!’

The lift gates opened. The older Mrs Boynton emerged. She leaned on a stick and Raymond supported her on the other side.

Sarah gave a slight start. She saw the old woman’s eyes sweep from her to Nadine and back again. She had been prepared for dislike in those eyes—for hatred even. She was not prepared for what she saw—a triumphant and malicious enjoyment. Sarah turned away. Nadine went forward and joined the other two.

‘So there you are, Nadine,’ said Mrs Boynton. ‘I’ll sit down and rest a little before I go out.’

They settled her in a high-backed chair. Nadine sat down beside her.

‘Who were you talking to, Nadine?’

‘A Miss King.’

‘Oh, yes. The girl who spoke to Raymond the other night. Well, Ray, why don’t you go and speak to her now? She’s over there at the writing-table.’

The old woman’s mouth widened into a malicious smile as she looked at Raymond. His face flushed. He turned his head away and muttered something.

‘What’s that you say, son?’

‘I don’t want to speak to her.’

‘No, I thought not. You won’t speak to her. You couldn’t however much you wanted to!’

She coughed suddenly—a wheezing cough.

‘I’m enjoying this trip, Nadine,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.’

‘No?’

Nadine’s voice was expressionless.

‘Ray.’

‘Yes, Mother?’

‘Get me a piece of notepaper—from the table over there in the corner.’

Raymond went off obediently. Nadine raised her head. She watched, not the boy, but the old woman. Mrs Boynton was leaning forward, her nostrils dilated as though with pleasure. Ray passed close by Sarah. She looked up, a sudden hope showing in her face. It died down as he brushed past her, took some notepaper from the case and went back across the room.

There were little beads of sweat on his forehead as he rejoined them, and his face was dead white.

Very softly Mrs Boynton murmured: ‘Ah…’ as she watched his face.

Then she saw Nadine’s eyes fixed on her. Something in them made her own snap with sudden anger.

‘Where’s Mr Cope this morning?’ she said.

Nadine’s eyes dropped again. She answered in her gentle, expressionless voice:

‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen him.’

‘I like him,’ said Mrs Boynton. ‘I like him very much. We must see a good deal of him. You’ll like that, won’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Nadine. ‘I, too, like him very much.’

‘What’s the matter with Lennox lately? He seems very dull and quiet. Nothing wrong between you, is there?’

‘Oh, no. Why should there be?’

‘I wondered. Married people don’t always hit it off. Perhaps you’d be happier living in a home of your own?’

Nadine did not answer.

‘Well, what do you say to the idea? Does it appeal to you?’

Nadine shook her head. She said, smiling: ‘I don’t think it would appeal to you, Mother.’

Mrs Boynton’s eyelids flickered. She said sharply and venomously, ‘You’ve always been against me, Nadine.’

The younger woman replied evenly:

‘I’m sorry you should think that.’

The old woman’s hand closed on her stick. Her face seemed to get a shade more purple.

She said, with a change of tone: ‘I forgot my drops. Get them for me, Nadine.’

‘Certainly.’

Nadine got up and crossed the lounge to the lift. Mrs Boynton looked after her. Raymond sat limply in a chair, his eyes glazed with dull misery.

Nadine went upstairs and along the corridor. She entered the sitting-room of their suite. Lennox was sitting by the window. There was a book in his hand, but he was not reading. He roused himself as Nadine came in. ‘Hallo, Nadine.’

‘I’ve come up for Mother’s drops. She forgot them.’

She went on into Mrs Boynton’s bedroom. From a bottle on the washstand she carefully measured a dose into a small medicine glass, filling it up with water. As she passed through the sitting-room again she paused.

‘Lennox.’

It was a moment or two before he answered her. It was as though the message had a long way to travel.

Then he said: ‘I beg your pardon. What is it?’

Nadine Boynton set down the glass carefully on the table. Then she went over and stood beside him.

‘Lennox, look at the sunshine—out there, through the window. Look at life. It’s beautiful. We might be out in it—instead of being here looking through a window.’

Again there was a pause. Then he said: ‘I’m sorry. Do you want to go out?’

She answered him quickly: ‘Yes, I want to go out—with you—out into the sunshine—out into life—and live—the two of us together.’

He shrank back into his chair. His eyes looked restless, hunted.

‘Nadine, my dear—must we go into all this again?’

‘Yes, we must. Let us go away and lead our own life somewhere.’

‘How can we? We’ve no money.’

‘We can earn money.’

‘How could we? What could we do? I’m untrained. Thousands of men—qualified men—trained men—are out of a job as it is. We couldn’t manage it.’

‘I would earn money for both of us.’

‘My dear child, you’d never even completed your training. It’s hopeless—impossible.’

‘No, what is hopeless and impossible is our present life.’

‘You don’t know what you are talking about. Mother is very good to us. She gives us every luxury.’

‘Except freedom. Lennox, make an effort. Come with me now—today—’

‘Nadine, I think you’re quite mad.’

‘No, I’m sane. Absolutely and completely sane. I want a life of my own, with you, in the sunshine—not stifled in the shadow of an old woman who is a tyrant and who delights in making you unhappy.’

‘Mother may be rather an autocrat—’

‘Your mother is mad! She’s insane!’

He answered mildly: ‘That’s not true. She’s got a remarkably good head for business.’

‘Perhaps—yes.’

‘And you must realize, Nadine, she can’t live for ever. She’s getting old and she’s in very bad health. At her death my father’s money is divided equally among us share and share alike. You remember, she read us the will?’

‘When she dies,’ said Nadine, ‘it may be too late.’

‘Too late?’

‘Too late for happiness.’

Lennox murmured: ‘Too late for happiness.’ He shivered suddenly. Nadine went closer to him. She put her hand on his shoulder.

‘Lennox, I love you. It’s a battle between me and your mother. Are you going to be on her side or mine?’

‘On yours—on yours!’

‘Then do what I ask.’

‘It’s impossible!’

‘No, it’s not impossible. Think, Lennox, we could have children…’

‘Mother wants us to have children. She has said so.’

‘I know, but I won’t bring children into the world to live in the shadow you have all been brought up in. Your mother can influence you, but she’s no power over me.’

Lennox murmured: ‘You make her angry sometimes, Nadine; it isn’t wise.’

‘She is only angry because she knows that she can’t influence my mind or dictate my thoughts!’

‘I know you are always polite and gentle with her. You’re wonderful. You’re too good for me. You always have been. When you said you would marry me it was like an unbelievable dream.’

Nadine said quietly: ‘I was wrong to marry you.’

Lennox said hopelessly: ‘Yes, you were wrong.’

‘You don’t understand. What I mean is that if I had gone away then and asked you to follow me you would have done so. Yes, I really believe you would…I was not clever enough then to understand your mother and what she wanted.’

She paused, then she said: ‘You refuse to come away? Well, I can’t make you. But I am free to go! I think—I think I shall go…’

He stared up at her incredulously. For the first time his reply came quickly, as though at last the sluggish current of his thoughts was accelerated. He stammered: ‘But—but—you can’t do that. Mother—Mother would never hear of it.’

‘She couldn’t stop me.’

‘You’ve no money.’

‘I could make, borrow, beg or steal it. Understand, Lennox, your mother has no power over me! I can go or stay at my will. I am beginning to feel that I have borne this life long enough.’

‘Nadine—don’t leave me—don’t leave me…’

She looked at him thoughtfully—quietly—with an inscrutable expression.

‘Don’t leave me, Nadine.’

He spoke like a child. She turned her head away, so that he should not see the sudden pain in her eyes.

She knelt down beside him.

‘Then come with me. Come with me! You can. Indeed you can if you only will!’

He shrank back from her.

‘I can’t. I can’t, I tell you. I haven’t—God help me—I haven’t the courage…’

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