He'on Books


AGATHA

CHRISTIE


Collected Works


AGATHA

CHRISTIE


Endless Night


They Came to Baghdad


HERON BOOKS


Published ly arrangement with
William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd.

Endless Night Agatha Christie Ltd. 1967
They Came to Baghdad  Agatha Christie Ltd. 1951
 Illustrations Edito-Service S.A., Geneva, 1978; 1975

Original Illustrations by
PIERRE MONNERA T &
GILBERT KOULL

Printecl in Spain by
Grdficas Futura, Sdad. Coop. Ltda.
Fuenlabracla, Madrid, Spain
Dep6sito legal.' 2.589-1985
LS.B.N.: 8459903079


Endless Night


TO NORA PRICHARD
from whom I first heard
the legend of Gipsy's Acre


'Every Night and every Morn

 Some to Misery are born.

 Every Morn and every Night
Some are born to Sweet Delight,
 Some are born to Sweet Delight,
some are born to Endless Night.


'Auguries Of Innocence 


CONTENTS


BOOK I


	CHAPTER I
	1

	CHAPTER II
	9

	CHAPTER III
	14

	CHAPTER IV
	21

	CHAPTER V
	28

	CHAPTER VI
	40

	CHAPTER VII
	44

	CHAPTER VIII
	49


BOOK II


	CHAPTER IX
	57

	CHAPTER X
	66

	CHAPTER XI
	87

	CHAPTER XII
	97

	CHAPTER XIII
	103

	CHAPTER XIV
	108

	CHAPTER XV
	121

	CHAPTER XVI
	135


	CHAPTER XVII
	146

	CHAPTER XVIII
	155


CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV


CONTENTS


BOOK III


161

166

177

186

194

210


BOOK I


CHAFFER I


In my end is my beginning..,. That's a quotation I've often
heard people say. It sounds all rightmbut what does it
really mean?

Is there ever any particular spot where one can put one's
finger and say: "It all began that day, at such a time and
such a place, with such an incident?"

Did my story begin, perhaps, when I noticed the Sale
Bill hanging on the wall of the George and Dragon, an-nouncing
Sale by Auction of that valuable property "The
Towers," and giving particulars of the acreage, the miles
and furlongs, and the highly idealised portrait of "The
Towers" as it might.have been perhaps in its prime, any-thing
from eighty to a hundred years ago.

I was doing nothing particular, just strolling along the
main street of Kingston Bishop, a place of no importance
whatever, killing time. I noticed the Sale Bill. Why?
Fate up to its dirty work? Or dealing out its golden hand-shake
of good fortune? You can look at it either way.

Or you could say, perhaps, that it all had its beginnings
when I met Santonix, during the talks I had with him; I
can close my eyes and see: his flushed cheeks, the over
brilliant eyes, and the movement of the strong yet delicate
hand that sketched and drew plans and elevations of homes.
One house in particular, a beautiful house, a home that
would be wonderful to own!

My longing for a home, a fine and beautiful home, such a
house as I could never hope to have, flowered into life then,
1


ENDLESS NIGHT

It was a happy fantasy shared between us, the house that
$antonix would build for me--if he lasted long enough ....
A house that in my dreams I would live in with the girl
that I loved, a house in which just like a child's silly fairy
story we should live together "happy ever afterwards." All
?ute fantasy, all nonsense, but it started that tide of longg
in me. Longing for something I was never likely to lave.
Or if this is a love story--and it/, a love story, I swear--then
why not begin where I first caught sight of Ellie
standing in the dark fir trees of Gipsy's Acre ?
Gipsy's Acre. Yes, perhaps I'd better begin there, at the
fnoment when I turned away from the Sale board with
little shiver because a black cloud had come over the
fun, and asked a question carelessly enough of one of the
locals, who was clipping a hedge in a desultory fashion
aearby.
"What's this house, The Towers, like?"
I can still see the queer face of the old man, as he looked
at me sideways and said:
"That's not what us calls it here. What sort of a name is
that?" He snorted disapproval. "It's many a year now
since folks lived in it and called it The Towers." He snorted
again.
I asked him then what b called k, and again his eyes
shifted away from me in his old wrinkled face in that queer
way country folk have of not speaking to you direct, looking
over your shoulder or round the corner, aa it were, as though
they saw something you didn't; and he said:
"It's called hereabouts Gipsy's Acre."
"why is it called that?" I asked.
"Some sort of a tale. I durmo rightly. One says one
thing, one says another." And then he went on, "Anyway, it's where the accidents take place."
"Car accidents?"
2


ENDLESS NIGHT

"All kinds of accidents. Car accidents mainly nowadays.
It's a nasty corner there, you see."
"Well," I said, "if it's nasty curve, I can well see there
might be accidents."
"Rural Council put up .a Danger sign, but it don't do no
good, that don't. There are accidents just the same."
"Why Gipsy?" I asked him.
Again his eyes slipped past me and his answer was vague.
"Some tale or other. It was gipsies' land once, they say,
and they were turned off, and they put a curse on it."
I laughed.
"Aye," he said, "you can laugh but there's places as/s
cursed. You smart-Alecks in town don't know about them.
But there's places as is cursed all right, and there's a curse
on this place. People got killed here in the quarry when
uhey got the stone out to build. Old Gcordie be fell over the
edge there one night and broke his neck."
"Drunk?" I suggested.
"He may have been. He liked his drop, he did. But
there's many drunks as fall--nasty falls--but it don't do
them no lasting harm. But Geordie, he got his neck broke.
In there," he pointed up behind him to the pine covered
hill, "in Gipsy's Acre."
Yes, I suppose that's how it began. Not that I paid much
attention to it at the time. I just happened to remember it.
That's all. I think--that is when I think properly--that I
built it up a bit in my mind. I don't know if it was before
or later that I asked if there were still any gipsies about
there. He said there weren't many anywhere nowadays.
The police were always moving them on, he said. I
asked:
"Why doesn't anybody like gipsies?"
"They're a thieving lot," he said, disapprovingly. Then
he peered more closely at me. "Happen you've got gipsy
blood yourself?." he suggested, looking hard at me.
3


ENDLESS NIGHT

I said not that I knew of. It's true, I do look a bit like a

gipsy, lerhaps that's what fascinated me about the name of

Gipsy'S Acre. I thought to myself as I was standing there

smiling back at him, amused by our conversation, that per
haps had a bit of gipsy blood.

GipSy'S Acre. I went up the winding road that led out of

the village and wound up through the dark trees and came

at last to the top of the hill so that I could see out to sea and

the ships. It was a marvellous view and I thought, just as

one does think things: I wonder how it would be if Gipsy'a
Acre was my acre 	Just
like that 	It was
only a
ridiculous thought.
When I passed my hedge clipper again,
he said:
,,if you
want gipsies, there's old Mrs. Lee of course. The
Major, he
gives her a cottage to live in."
,,Who's
the Major?" I asked.
He
said, in a shocked voice, "Major Phillpot, of course." '
He seemed quite upset that I should ask! I gathered that Major: Phillpot was God locally. Mrs. Lee was some kind of deper
dant of his, I suppose, whom he'd provided for.
The lhillpotS seemed to have lived there all their
lives and more
or less to have
run the place.
As I wished my old boy good day and
turned
away he said,
"she's got the last cottage at the end of
the street. You'll see her outside, maybe. Doesn't like the
inside of houses. Them as has got
gipsy blood don't."
So there I was, wandering down the
road, whistling and thinking about Gipsy's Acre. I'd almost
forgotten what I'd been told when I saw a tall
black-haired old woman staring at me over a garden hedge. I knew
at once it must be Mrs. Lee. I stopped
and spoke to her.
"I hear you can tell me all about
Gipsy's Acre
up
there,"
I
said.
4


ENDLESS NIGHT


She stared at me through a tangled fringe of black hair
and she said,

"Don't have nought to do with it, young man. You listen
to me. Forget about it. You're a good-looking lad. Nothing

good comes out of Gipsy's Acre and never will."

"I see it's up for sale," I said.

"Aye, that's so, and more fool he who buys it."
"Who's likely to buy it?"

"There's a builder after it. More than one. It'll go cheap.
You'll see."

"Why should it go cheap?" I asked curiously. "It's a
fmc site."

She wouldn't answer that.

"Supposing a builder buys it cheap, what will he do with
it?"

She chuckled to herself. It was malicious, unpleasant
laughter.

"Pull down the old ruined house and build, of course.
Twenty--thirty houses, maybe--and all with a curse on
them."

I ignored the last part of the sentence. I said, speaking
before I could stop myself,

"That would be a shame. A great shame."

"Ah, you needn't worry. They'll get no joy of it, not those
who buys and not those who lays the bricks and mortar.
There'll be a foot that slips on the ladder, and there'll be
the lorry that crashes with a load, and the slate that falls
from the roof of a house and finds its mark. And the trees,
too. Crashing, maybe, in a sudden gale. Ah, you'll see!
There's none that'll get any good out of Gipsy's Acre.
They'd do best to leave it alone. You'll see. You'll see."
She nodded vigorously and then she repeated softly to her-self,
"There's no luck for them as meddles with Gipsy's Acre.
There never has been."

I laughed. She spoke sharply.

5


ENDLESS NIGHT


"Don't laugh, young man. It comes to me as may be one
of these days you'll laugh on the wrong side of your mouth.
There's never been no luck there, not in the house nor yet in
the land."

"What happened in the house?" I asked. "Why has it
been empty so long? Why was it left to fall down?"

"The last people that lived there died, all of them."
"How did they die?" I asked out of curiosity.

"Best not to speak of it again. But no one cared to come
and live in it afterwards. It was left to moulder and decay.
It's forgot by now and best that it should be."

"But you could tell me the story," I said, wheedllngly.
"You know all about it."

"I don't gossip about Gipsy's Acre." Then she let her
voice drop to akind of phoney beggar's whine. "I'll tell your
fortune now, my pretty lad, if you like. Cross my palm with
silver and I'll tell your fortune. You're one of those that'll
go far one of these days."

"I don't believe nonsense about fortune telling," I said,
"and I haven't any silver. Not to spare, anyway."

She came nearer to me and went on in a wheedling voice.
"Sixpence now. Sixpence now. I'll do it for sixpence.
What's that? Nothing at all. I'll do it for sixpence because
you're a handsome lad with a ready tongue and a way with
you. It could be that you'll go far."

I fished a sixpence out of my pocket, not because I
believed in any of her foolish superstitions but because for
some reason I liked the old fraud even if I did see through

her. She grabbed the coin from me, and said,

"Give me your hand then. Both hands."

She took my hands in her withered claw and stared down
at the open palms. She was silent for a minute or two,
staring. Then she dropped my hands abruptly, almost
pushing them away from her. She retreated a step and
spoke harshly.

6


ENDLESS NIGHT

"If you know what's good for you, you'll get out of Gipsy's
Acre here and now and you won't come back! That's the
best advice I can give you. Don't come back."
"Why not? Why shouldn't I come back?"
"Because if you do you'll come back to sorrow and loss
and danger maybe. There's trouble, black trouble waiting
for you. Forget you ever saw this place. I'm warning you."
"Well ofall the "
But she had turned away and was retreating to the cottage.
She went in and slammed the door. I'm not superstitious.
I believe in luck, of course, who doesn't? But not a lot of
superstitious nonsense about ruined homes with curses on
them. And yet I had an uneasy feeling that the sinister old
creature had seen something in my hands. I looked down at
my two palms spread out in front of me. What could anyone
see in the palms of anyone's hands? Fortune telling was
arrant nonsense--just a trick to get money out of you--money
out of your silly credulity. I looked up at the sky. The
sun had gone in, the day seemed different now. A sort of
shadow, a kind of menace. Just an approaching storm, I
thought. The wind was beginning to blow, the backs of the
leaves were showing on the trees. I whistled to 'keep my
spirits up and walked along the road through the village.
I looked again at the pasted-up bill advertising the
auction of The Towers. I even made a note of the date. I
had never attended a property sale in my life but I thought
to myself that I'd come and attend this one. It would be
interesting to see who bought The Towers. That is to say
interesting to see who became the owner of Gipsy's Acre.
Yes, I think that's really where it all began .... A fantastic
notion occurred to me. I'd come and pretend to myself that
I was the man who was going to bid for Gipsy's Acre! I'd
bid against the local builders! They'd drop out, disappointed
in their hopes ofbuylng it cheap. /'d buy it and I'd go to
7


ENDLESS NIGHT


Rudolf Santonlx and say "Build me a house. I've bought
the site for you." And I'd find a girl, a wonderful girl and
we'd live in it together happy ever after.

I often had dreams of that kind. Naturally they never
came to anything but they were fun. That's what I thought
then. Funl Fun, my God? If I'd only knownl


CHAPTER II

It was pure chance that had brought me to the neighbourhood
of Gipsy's Acre that day. I was driving a hire car,
taking ome people down from London to attend a sale, a
sale not of a house but of its contents. It was a big house just
at the outskirts of the town, a particularly ugly one. I drove
an elderly couple there who were interested, from what I
"Could overhear of their conversation, in a collection of papier mdcht, whatever papier m&M was. The only time I
ever heard it mentioned before was by my mother in connection
with washing-up bowls. She'd said that a papier
ra&M washing-up bowl was far better than a plastic one any
day I It seemed an odd thing for rich people to want to come
down and buy a collection of the stuff.
' However I stored the fact away in my mind and I thought
 I would look in a dictionary or read up somewhere what papier mdctd really was. Something that people thought
worth while to hire a car for, and go down to a country sale
and bid for. I liked knowing about things. I was twenty-two
years of age at that time and I had picked up a fair
amount of knowledge one way and another. I knew a good
deal about cars, was a fair mechanic and a careful driver.
Once I'd worked with horses in Ireland. I nearly got entangled
with a dope gang but I got wise and quit in time. A
job aa a chauffeur to a classy car hire firm isn't bad at all.
Good money to be made with tips. And not usually too
strenuous. But the work itself was boring.
Once I'd gone fruit picking in summer time. That didn't
pay much, but I enjoyed myself. I'd tried a lot of things.
9


ENDLESS NIGHT

I'd been a waiter in a third class hotel, life gUard on a summer
beach, I'd sold encyclopaedias and vacuum cleaners
and a few other things. I'd once done horticultural work in
a botanical garden and had learnt a little about flowers.
I never stuck to anything. Why should I? I'd found
nearly everything I did interesting. Some things were
harder work than others but I didn't really mind that. I'm
 ,ot really lazy. I suppose what I really am is restless.
I want to go everywhere, see everything, do everything. I want to find something. Yes, that's it. I want to find
something.
From the time I left school I wanted to find something,
but I didn't yet know what that something was going to be.
It was just something I was looking for in a vague, unsatisfied
sort of way. It was somewhere. Sooner or later I'd know all
about it. It might perhaps be a girl 	I
like girls, but no
girl
I'd met so far had been important 	You liked
them
all right
but then you went on to the next one quite gladly. They were
like the jobs I took. All right for a bit and then you
got fed up with them and you wanted to move on to the next
one. I'd gone from one thing to another ever since I'd left
school.
A
lot of people disapproved of my way of life. I suppose they
were what you might call my well-wishers. That was because
they didn't understand the first thing about me. They
wanted me to go steady with a nice girl, save money, get
married to her and then settle down to a nice steady job.
Day after day, year after year, world without end, amen.
Not for yours truly! There must be something better than
that. Not just all this tame security, the good old welfare
state limping along in its half-baked way! Surely, I thought,
in a world where man has been able to put satellites
in the sky and where men talk big about visiting the stars,
there must be something that rouses you, that makes your
heart beat, that's worth while searching all over the 10


ENDLESS NIGHT

world to find! One day, I remember, I was walking down
Bond Street. It was during my waiter period and I was due
on duty. I'd been strolling looking at some shoes in a shop
window. Very natty they were. l.lke they say in the
advertisements in newspapers: 'What rmart mtn art wearing
to-day' and there's usually a picture of the smart man in
qution. My word, he usually looks a twerp l Used to
make me laugh, advertisements like that did.
I passed on from the shoes to the next window. It was
a picture shop. Just three pictures in the window artily
arranged with a drape of limp velvet in some neutral colour
arranged over a corner of a gilt frame. Cissy, if you know
what I mean. I'm not much of a one for Art. I dropped in
to the National Gallery once out of curiosity. Fair gave me
the pip, it did. Great big shiny coloured pictures of battles
in rocky glens, or emaciated saints getting themselves stuck
with arrow. Portraits of simpering great ladies sitting
smirking in silks and velvets and lace. I decided then and
there that Art wasn't for me. But the picture I was looking
at now was somehow different. There were three pictures
in the window. One a landscape, nice bit of country for
what I call everyday. One of a woman drawn in such a
funny way, so much out of proportion, that you could hardly
see she was a woman. I suppose that's what they call art
nouveau. I don't know what it was about. The third picture
was my picture. There wasn't really much to it, if you know
what I mean. It wasthow can I describe it? It was kind of
 /mp/e. A lot of space in it and a few great widening circles
all round each other if you can put it that way. All in
different colours, odd colours that you wouldn't expect.
And here and there, there were sketchy bits of colour that
didn't seem to mean anything. Only somehow they dfi/
mean something! I'm no good at description. All I can say
is that one wanted terribly to go on looking at it.
I just stood there, feeling queer as though something very ll


ENDLESS NIGHT

unusual had happened to me. Those fancy shoes now, I'd

have liked them to wear. I mean I take quite a bit of trouble

about my clothes. I like to dress well so as to make an

impression, but I never seriously thought in my life of

buying a pair of shoes in Bond Street. I know the kind of

fancy prices they ask there. Fifteen pounds a pair those

shoes might be. Hand made or something, they call it, mak
ing it more worthwhile for some reason. Sheer waste of

money that would be. A classy line in shoes, yes, but you

can pay too much for class. I've got my head screwed on

the right way.

But this picture, what would that cost, I wondered?

Suppose I were to buy that picture? You're crazy, I said to

myself. You don't go for pictures, not in a general way.
That was true enough. But I wanted this picture 	I'd
like
it to be mine. I'd like to be able to hang it and sit and look
at it as long as I liked and know that I owned it! Me! Buying
pictures. It seemed a crazy idea. I took a look at the
picture again. Me wanting that picture didn't make sense,
and anyway I probably couldn't afford it. Actually I
was in funds at just that moment. A lucky tip on a horse. This
picture would probably cost a packet. Twenty pounds ? Twenty-five?
Anyway, there would be no harm in asking. They
couldn't eat me, could they? I went in, feeling rather aggressive
and on the defensive.
The
inside of the place was all very hushed and grand. There
was a sort of muted atmosphere with neutral colour walls
and a velvet settee on which you could sit and look at the pictures.
A man who looked a little like the model for the perfectly
dressed man in advertisements came and attended to
me, speaking in a rather hushed voice to match the scenery.
Funnily, he didn't look superior as they usually do in
high grade Bond Street shops. He listened to what I said and
then he took the picture out of the window and displayed it
for me against a wall, holding it there for me to 12


ENDLESS NIGHT

look at as long as I wanted. It came to me thenmin the way
you sometimes know just exactly how things are, that the
same rules didn't apply over pictures as they do about
other things. Someone might come into a place like this
dressed in shabby old clothes and a frayed shirt and turn
out to be a millionaire who wanted to add to his collection.
Or he could come in looking cheap and flashy, rather like
me perhaps, but somehow or other he'd got such a yen for a
picture that he managed to get the money together by some
kind of sharp practice.
"A very fine example of the artist's work," said the man
who was holding the picture.
"How much?" I said briskly.
The answer took my breath away.
"Twenty-five thousand," he said in his gentle voice.
I'm quite good at keeping a poker face. I didn't show
anything. At least I don't think I did. He added some
name that sounded foreign. The artist's name, I suppose
and that it had just come on the market from a house in the
country, where the people who lived there had had no idea
what it was. I kept my end up and sighed.
"It's a lot of money but it's worth it, I suppose," I said.
Twenty-five thousand pounds. What a laugh!
"Yes," he said and sighed. "Yes indeed." He lowered the picture very gently and carried it back to the window.
He looked at me and smiled. "You have good taste," he
said.
I felt that in some way he and I understood each other. I
thanked him and went out into Bond Street.

13


CHAPTER Ill

I don't know much about writing things down--not, I
mean, in the way a proper writer would do. The bit about
that picture I saw, for instance. It doesn't really have anything
to do with anything. I mean, nothing came of it, it
didn't lead to anything and yet I feel somehow that it is
important, that it has a place somewhere. It was one of the
things that happened to me that meant something. Just like
Gipsy's Acre meant something to me. Like Santonix meant
something to me.
I haven't really said much about him. He was an architect.
Of course you'll have gathered that. Architects are
another thing I'd never had much to do with, though I
knew a few things about the building trade. I came across
Santonix in the course of my wanderings. It was when I
was working as a chauffeur, driving the rich around places.
Once or twice I drove abroad, twice to Germany--I knew
a bit of German--and once or twice to France--I had a
smattering of French too--and once to Portugal. They
were usually elderly people, who had money and bad
health in about equal quantities.
When you drive people like that around, you begin to
*]fink that money isn't so hot after all. What with incipient
heart attacks, lots of bottles of little pills you have to take
all the time, and losing your temper over the food or the
service in hotels. Most of the rich people I've known have
been fairly miserable. They've got their worries, too.
Taxation and investments. You hear them talking together
or to friends. Worry! That's what's killing half of them.
14


ENDLESS NIGHT


And their sex life's not so hot either. They've either got long-legged
blonde sexy wives who are playing them up with boy-friends
somewhere, or they're married to the complaining
kind of woman, hideous aa hell, who keeps telling .them
where they get off. No. I'd rather be myself. Michael
Rogers, seeing the world, and getting off with good-looking
girls when he feels like it!

Everything a bit hand-to-mouth, of course, but I put up
with that. Life was good fun, and I'd been content to go on
with fife being fun. But I suppose I would have in any case.
That attitude goes with youth. When youth begins to pass
fun isn't fun any longer.

Behind it, I think, was always the other thing--wanting
someone and something .... However, to go on with what
I was saying, there was one old boy I used to drive down to
the Riviera. He'd got a house being built there. He went
down to look how it was getting on. Santonix was the
architect. I don't really know what nationality Santonix
was. English I thought at first, though it was a funny sort
of name I'd never heard before. But I don't think he was
English. Scandinavian of some kind I guess. He was an ill
man. I could see that at once. He was young and very fair
and thin with an odd face, a face that was askew somehow.
The two sides of it didn't match. He could be quite bad-tempered
to his clients. You'd have thought aa they were
paying the money that they'd call the tune and do the
bullying. That wasn't so. Santonix bullied them and he
was always quite sure of himself although they weren't.

This particular old boy of mine was frothing with rage, I
remember, aa soon aa he arrived and had seen how things
were going. I used to catch snatches here and there when I
was standing by ready to assist in my chauffeurly and handy-man
way. It was always on the cards that Mr. Constantine
would have a heart attack or a stroke.

"You have not done as I said," he half screamed. "You
15


ENDLESS NIGHT

have spent too much money. Much too much money. It
is not as we agreed. It is going to cost me more than
thought?"
"You're absolutely fight," said Santonix. "But the
money's got to be spent."
"It shall not be spent! It shall not be spent. You have
got to keep within the limits I laid down. You understand?"
"Then you won't get the kind of house you want,"
said $antonix. "I Imozo what you want. The house I build
you will be the house you want. I'm quite sure of that and
you're quite sure of it, too. Don't give me any of your
pettifogging middle-class economies. You want a house of
quality and you're going to get it, and you'll boast about it
to your friends and they'll envy you. I don't build a house
for anyone, I've told you that. There's more to it than
money. This house isn't going to be like other people's
houses
"It is going to be terrible. Terrible."
"Oh no it isn't. The trouble with you is that.you don't
know what you want. Or at least so anyone might think.
But you do know what you want really, only you can't bring
it out into your nind. You can't see it clearly. But I know. That's the one thing I always know. ghat people are after
and what they want. There's a feeling in you for quality.
I'm going to give you quality."
He used to say things like that. And I'd stand by and
listen. Somehow or other I could see for myself that this
house that was being built there amongst pine trees looking
over the sea, wasn't going to be the usual house. Half of it
didn't look out towards the sea in a conventional way. It
looked inland, up to a certain curve of mountains, up to
a glimpse of sky between hills. It was odd and unusual and
very exciting.
Santonix used to talk to me sometimes when I was off
duty. He said,
16


ENDLESS NIGHT

"I only build h{:uses for people I want to build for."
"Rich people, you mean?"
"They have to be rich or they couldn't pay for the houses.
But it's not the money I'm going to make out of it I care
about. My clients have to be rich because I want to make
the kind of houses that cost money. The house only isn't
enough, you see. It has to have the setting. That's just as
important. It's like a ruby or an. emerald. A beautiful stone
is only a beautiful stone. It doesn't lead you anywhere
further. It doesn't mean anything, it has no form or significance
until it has its setting. And the setting has to have
a beautiful jewel to be worthy of it. I take the setting, you
see, out of the landscape, where it exists only in its own
right. It has no meaning until there is my house sitting
proudly like a jewel within its grasp." lie looked at me and
laughed. "You don't understand?"
"I suppose not," I said slowly, "and yet--in a way--I
think I do .... "
"That may be." He looked at me curiously.
We came down to the 1Liviera again later. By then the
house was nearly finished. I won't describe it because I
couldn't do it properly, but it was--well---something
special--and it was beautiful. I could see that. It was a
house you'd be proud of, proud to show to people, proud
to look at yourself, pr.oud to be in with the fight person
perhaps. And then suddenly one day Santonix said to ITle,
"I could build a house fory0u, you know. I'd know the
kind of house you'd want."
I shook my head.
"I shouldn't know myself," I said, honestly.
"Perhaps you wouldn't. I'd know for you." Then he
added, "It's a thousand pities you haven't got the money."
"And never shall have," I said.
"You can't say that," said Santonix. "Born poor doesn't
17


ENDLESS NIGHT

mean you've got to stay poor. Money's queer.
	It goes
where it's wanted."

"I'm not sharp enough," I said.
"You're not ambitious enough. Ambition hasn't woken
up in you, but it's there, you know."
"Oh well," I said, "some day when I've woken up
ambition and I've made money, then I'll come to you and
say 'build me a house'."
He sighed then. He said,
"I can't wait .... No, I can't afibrd to wait. I've only a
short time to go now. One housewtwo houses more. Not
more than that. One doesn't want to die young .... Sometimes
one has to .... It doesn't really matter, I suppose."
"I'll have to wake up my ambition quick."
"No," said Santonix. "You're healthy, you're having fun,
don't change your way of life."
I said: "I couldn't if I tried."
I thought that was true then. I liked my way of life and I
was having fun and there was never anything wrong with
my health. I've driven a lot of people who've made money,
who've worked hard and who've got ulcers and coronary
thrombosis and many other things as a result of working
hard. I didn't want to work hard. I could do a job as well as
another but that was all there was to it. And I hadn't got
ambition, or I didn't think I had ambition. Santouix had
had ambition, I suppose. I could see that designing houses
and building them, the planning of the drawing and something
else that I couldn't quite get hold of, all that had taken
it out of him. He hadn't been a strong man to begin with. I
had a fanciful idea sometimes that he was killing himself
before his time by the work he had put out to drive his
ambition. I didn't want to work. It was as simple as that.
I distrusted work, disliked it. I thought it was a very bad
thing, that the human race had unfortunately invented for
itself.
18


ENDLESS NIGHT

I thought about Santonix quite often. He intrigued me
almost more than anyone I knew. One of the oddest things
in life, I think, is the things one remembers. One chooses
to remember, I suppose. Something in one must choose.
Santonix and his house were one of the things and the picture
in Bond Street and visiting that ruined house, The
Towers and hearing the story of Gipsy's Acre, all those were
the things that I'd chosen to remember! Sometimes girls
that I met, and journeys to the foreign places in the course
of driving clients about. The clients were all the same. Dull.
They always stayed at the same kind of hotels and ate the
same kind of unimaginative food.
I still had that queer feeling in me of waiting for something,
waiting for something to be offered to me, or to
happen to me, I don't quite know which way describes it
best. I suppose really I was looking for a girl, the right sort
of girlmby which I don't mean a nice, suitable girl to settle
down with, which is what my mother would have meant or
my Uncle Joshua or some of my friends. I didn't know at
that time anything about love. All I knew about was sex.
That was all anybody of my generation seemed to know
about. We talked about it too much, I think, and heard too
much about it and took it too seriously. We didn't know--any
of my friends or myself what it was really going to be
when it happened. Love I mean. We were young and virile
and we looked the girls over we met and we appreciated
their curves and their legs and the kind of eye they gave you,
and you thought to yourself: 'will they or won't they?
Should I be wasting my time?' And the more girls you
. made the more you boasted and the finer fellow you were
thought to be, and the finer fellow you thought yourself.
I'd no real idea that that wasn't all there was to it. I
suppose it happens to everyone sooner or later and it
happens suddenly. You don't think as you imagine you're
going to think: 'This might be the girl for me 	This
is
	19


ENDLESS NIGHT

the girl who is going to be mine.' At least, I didn't feel it
that way. I didn't know that when it happened it would
happen quite suddenly. That I would say: 'That's the girl
I belong to. I'm hers. I belong to hr, utterly, for always.'
No. I never dreamed it would be like that. Didn't one of
the old comedians say once--wasn't it one of his stock
jokes? "I've been in love once and if I felt it coming on
again I tell you I'd emigrate." It was the same with me. If
I had known, if I had only known what it could all come to
mean I'd have emigrated too I If I'd been wise. that is.

2O


CHAPTER IV

I hadn't forgotten my plan of going to the auction.
There was three weeks to go. I'd had two more trips to
the Gontinent, one to France and the other to Germany. It
was when I was in Hamburg that things came to a crisis.
For one thing I took a violent dislike to the man and his wife
I was driving. They represented everything I disliked most.
They were rude, inconsiderate, unpleasant to look at, and I
suppose they developed in me a feeling of being unable to
stand this life ofsycophancy any longer. I was careful, mind
you. I thought I couldn't stand them another day but I
didn't tell them so. N'o good running yourself in bad with
the firm that employs you. So I telephoned up their hotel,
said I was ill and I wired London saying the same thing. I
said I might be in quarantine and it would be advisable it
they sent out a driver to replace me. Nobody could blame
me for that. They wouldn't care enough about me to make
further inquiries and they'd merely think that I was too
feverish to send them any more news. Later, I'd turn up in
London again, spinning them a yarn of how ill I'd been!
But I didn't think I should do that. I was fed up with the
driving racket.
That rebellion of mine was an important turning point
in my life. Becanse of that and of other things, I turned up
at the auction rooms on the appointed date.
'Unless sold before by private treaty' had been pasted
across the original board. But it was still there, so it hadn't
been sold by private treaty. I was so excited I hardly knew
what I was doing.
21


ENDLESS NIGHT


As I say, I had never been to a public auction of property
before. I was imbued with the idea that it would be exciting
but it wasn't exciting. Not in the least. It was one of the
most moribund performances I have ever attended. It took
place in a semi-gloomy atmosphere and there were only
about six or seven people there. The auctioneer was quite
different from those auctioneers that I had seen presiding at
furniture sales or things of that kind; men with facetious
voices and very hearty and full of jokes. This one, in a dead
and alive voice, praised the property and described the
acreage and a few things like that and then he went half-heartedly
into the bidding. Somebody made a bid of5,ooo.
The auctioneer gave a tired smile rather as one who hears a
joke that isn't really funny. He made a few remarks and
there were a few more bids. They were mostly country
types standing around. Someone who looked like a farmer,
someone who I guessed to be one of the competitive builders,
a couple of lawyers, I think, one a man who looked as though
he was a stranger from London, well dressed and professional
looking. I don't know if he made an actual bid, he may have
done. If so it was very quietly and done more by gesture.
Anyway the bidding petered to an end, the auctioneer an-nounced
in a melancholy voice that the reserve price had
not been reached and the thing broke up.

"That was a dull business," I said to one of the country-loo.king
fellows whom I was next to as I went out.

"Much the same usual," he said. "Been to many of
these?"

"No," I said, "actually it's the first."

"Come out of curiosity did you? I didn't notice you
doing any bidding."

"No fear," I said. "I just wanted to see hoTM it would go."

"Well, it's the way it runs very often. They just want to
see who's interested, you know."

I looked at him inquiringly.

22


ENDLESS NIGHT

"Only three of 'em in it, I should say," said my friend.
"Whcthcrby from Hclminster. He's the builder, you know.
Then Dakham and Coombe, bidding on behalf of some
Liverpool firm, I understand, and a dark horse from
London, too, I should say a lawyer. Of course there may be
more in it than that, but those seemed the main ones to me.
It'll go cheap. That's what everyone says."
"Because of the place's reputation?" I asked.
"Oh, you've heard about Gipsy's Acre, have you? That's
only what the country people say. Rural council ought to
have altered that road years ago--it's a death trap."
"But the place has got a bad reputation?"
"I tell you that's just superstition. Anyway, as I say, the
real business'Il happen now behind the scenes, you know.
They'll go and make offers. I'd say the Liverpool people
might get it. I don't think Whetherby'll go high enough.
He likes buying cheap. Plenty of properties coming into the
market nowadays for development. After all, it's not many
people who could afford to buy the place, pull that ruined
house down and put up another house there, could they?"
"Doesn't seem to happen very oRen nowadays," I said.
"Too difficult. What with taxation and one thing and
another, and you can't get domestic help in the country.
No, people would rather pay thousands for a luxury flat in
a town nowadays up on the sixteenth floor of a modem
building. Big unwieldy country houses are a drag in the
market."
"But you could build a modem home," I argued.
"Labour saving."
"You could, but it's an expensive business and people
aren't so fond of living lonely."
"Some people might be," I said.
Pie laughed and we parted. I walked along, frowning,
puzzling to myself. My feet took me without my really
noticing where I was going along the road between the
23


ENDLESS NIGHT

trees and up, up to the curving road that led between the
trees to the moorlands.
And so I came to the spot in the road where I first saw
Ellie. As I said, she was standing just by a tall fir tree and
she had the look, if I eon so explain it, of someone who
hadn't been there a moment before but had just materialed,
as it were, out of the tree. She was wearing a sort of dark
green tweed and her hair was the soft brown colour of an
autumn leaf and there was something a bit unsubstantial
about her. I saw her and I stopped. She was looking at me,
her lips just parted, looking slightly startled. I suppose I
looked starfied too. I wanted to say something and I didn't
quite know what to say. Then I said,
"Sorry. I--I didn't mean to starde you. I didn't know
there was anyone here."
She said, and her voice was very soft and gentle, it might
have been a little girl's voice but not quite. She said,
"It's quite all right. I mean, I didn't think anyone would
be here either." She looked round her and said "It--it's
a lonely spot." And she shivered just a little.
There was rather a chilly wind that afternoon. But perhaps
it wasn't the wind. I don't know. I came a step or
two nearer.
"It is a sort of scary place rather, isn't it?" I said. mean , the house being a ruin the way it is."
"The Towers," she said thoughtfully. "That was the
name of it, wasn't it, only--I mean, there don't seem to
have been any towers."
"I expect that was just a name," I said. "People call
their houses names like The Towers to make them sound
grandcr than they are."
She laughed just a little. "I suppose that was it," she said.
"This--perhaps you know, I'm not sm-e--this is the place
that they're selling to-day or putting up for auction?"
"Yes," I said. "I've come from the auction now."
24


ENDLESS NIGHT

"Oh." She sounded startled. "Were you--are you--interested ?"
"I'm not llkcly to buy a rulncd house with a few hundred
acres of woodland land," I said. "I'm not in that class."
"Was it sold?" she asked.
"No, it didn't come up to the reserve."
"Oh. I see." She sounded relieved.
"You didn't want to buy it either, did you?" I said.
"Oh no," she said, "of course not." She sounded ncrvoua
about it.
I hesitated and then I blurted out the words that came to
my lips.
"I'm pretending," I said. "I can't buy it, of course,
becauae I haven't got any money, but I'm interested. I'd li];e to buy it. I want to buy it. Open your mouth and laugh
at me if you like but that's the way it is."
"But isn't it rather too decrepit, too "
"Oh yes," I said. "I don't mean I want it like it is now. I want to pull this down, cart it all away. It's an ugly house
and I think it must have been a sad house. But this plate isn't sad or ugly. It's beautiful. Look here. Come a little
this way, through the trees. Look out at the view that way
where it goes to the hills and the moors. D'you see? Clear
away a vista/tire--and then you come this way "
I took her by the arm and led her to a second point of the
compass. If we were behaving unconventionally she did
not notice it. Anyway, it wasn't that kind of way I was
holding her. I wanted to show her what I saw.
"Here," I said, "here you see where it sweeps down to
the sca and where the rocks show out fire. There's a town
between ua and that but we can't see it becauae of the hills
bulging out farther down the slope. And then you can look a third way, to a vague forcsty valley. Do you sec now if you
cut down trees and make big vistas and clear this space
round the houae, do you see what a beautiful house you

25


ENDLESS NIGHT

could have here? You wouldn't site it where the old one is.
You'd go about fifty--a hundred yards to the right, here.
This is where you could have a house, a wonderful house.
A house built by an architect who's a genius."
"Do you know any architects who are geniuses?" She
sounded doubtful.
"I know one," I said.
Then I started telling her about Santonix. We sat down
side by side on a fallen tree and I talked. Yes, I talked to
that slender woodland girl whom I'd never seen before and
I put. all I had into what I was telling her. I told her the
dream that one could build up.
"It won't happen," I said, "I know that. It couldn't
happen. But think. Think into it just like I'm thinking into
it. There we'd cut the trees and there we'd open up, and
we'd plant things, rhododendrons and azaieas, and my
friend Santonix would come. He'd cough a good deal
because I think he's dying of consumption or something but
he could do it. He could do it before he died. He could
build the most wonderful house. You don't know what his
houses are like. He builds them for very rich people and
they have to be people who want the right thing. I don't
mean the right thing in the conventional sense. Things
people who want a dream come true want. Something
wonderful."
"I'd want a house like that," said Ellie. "You make me
see it, feel it .... Yes, this would be a lovely place to live.
Everything one has dreamed of come true. One could live
here and be free, not hampered, not tied round by people
pushing you into doing everything you don't want, keeping
you from doing anything you do want. OiL I am so sick of my
life and the people who are round me and everything I"
That's the way it began, Ellie and I together. Me with
my dreams and she with her revolt against her life. We
stopped talking and looked at each other.
26


ENDLESS NIGHT


"What's your name?" she said.

"Mike Rogers," I said. "Michael Rogers," I amended.
"What's yours?"

"Fenella." She hesitated and then said, "Fenella Good-man,"
looking at me with a rather troubled expression.

This didn't seem to take us much farther but we went on
looking at each other. We both wanted to ee ear. h other
again--but just for the moment we didn't know how to set
about it.


27


CHAPTER V


Well, that's how it began between Ellie and myself. It
didn't really go along so very quickly, I suppose, became
we both had our secrets. Both had things we wanted to keep
from the other and so we couldn't tell each other as much
about ourselves as we nfight have done, and that kept
bringing us up sharp, as it were, against a kind of barrier. We
couldn't bring things into the open and say "When shall we
meet again? Where can I find you? Where do you live?"
Became, you see, if you ask the other person that, they'd
expect you to tell the same.

Fenella looked apprehensive when she gave me her name.
So much so that I thought for a moment that it mightn't be
her real name. I almost thought that she might have made
it up! But of course I knew that that was impossible. I'd
given her my real name.

We didn't know quite how to take leave of each other
that day. It was awkward. It had become cold and we
wanted to wander down from The Towers-but what then?

Rather awkwardly, I said tentatively:

"Are you staying round here?"

She said she was staying in Market Chadwell. That was
a market town not very far away. It had, I knew, a large
hotel, three-starred. She'd be staying there, I guessed. She

said, with something of the same awkwardness, to me:
"Do you llve here?"

"No," I said, "I don't live here. I'm only here for the
day."

28


ENDLESS NIGHT

Then a rather awkward silence fell again. She gave a
faint shiver. A cold tittle wind had come up.
"We'd better walk," I said, "and keep ourselves warm.
Are you--have you got a car or are you going by bus or
train?"
She said she'd left a car in the village.
"But I'll be quite all right," she said.
She seemed a little nervous. I thought perhaps she
wanted to get rid of me but didn't quite know how to
manage it. I said:
"We'll walk down, shall we, just as far as the village."
She gave me a quick grateful look then. We walked
slowly down the winding road on which so many car
accidents had happened. As we came round a corner, a
figure stepped suddenly from beneath the shelter of the fir
tree. It appeared so suddenly that Ellie gave a start and said
"Oh I" It was the old woman I had seen the other day in
her own cottage garden. Mrs. Lee. She looked a great deal
wilder to-day with a tangle of black hair blowing in the wind
and a scarlet cloak round her shoulders; the commanding
stance she took up made her look taller.
"And what would you be doing, my dears?" she said.
"What brings you to Gipsy's Acre?"
"Oh," Ellie said, "we aren't trespassing, are we?"
"That's as may be. Gipsies' land this used to be. Gipsies'
land and they drove us off it. You'll do no good here, and
no good will come to you prowling about Gipsy's Acre."
There was no fight in Ellie, she wasn't that kind. She said gently and politely,
"I'm very sorry if we shouldn't have come here.
thought this place was being sold today."
"And bad luck it will be to anyone who buys it!" said the
old woman. "You listen, my pretty, for you're pretty
enough, bad luck will come to whoever buys it. There's a
curse on this land, a curse put on it long ago, many years
29


ENDLESS NIGHT


ago. You keep clear of it. Don't have naught to do with
Gipsy's Acre. Death it will bring you and danger. Go away
home across the sea and don't come back to Gipsy's Acre.
Don't say I didn't warn you."

With a faint spark of resentment Ellie said,

"We're doing no harm."

"Come now, Mrs. Lee," I said, "don't frighten this young
lady."

I turned in an explanatory way to Ellie.

"Mrs. Ia.'e lives in the village. She's got a cottage there.
She tells fortunes and prophesies the future. All that, don't
you, Mrs. Lee?" I spoke to her in a jocular way.

"I've got the gift," she said simply, drawing her gipsy-like
figure up straighter still. "I've got the gift. It's born in
me. We all have it. I'll tell your fortune, young lady.
Cross my palm with silver and I'll tell your fortune for

y

OU?'


"I don't think I want my fortune told."

"It'd be a wise thing to do. Know something about the
future. Know what to avoid, know what's coming to you if
you don't take care. Come now, there's plenty of money in
your pocket. Plenty of money. I know things it would be
wise for you to know."

I believe the urge to have one's fortune told is almost
invariable in women. I've noticed it before with girls I
knew. I nearly always had to pay for them to go into the
fortune tellers' booths if I took them to a fair. Ellie opened
her bag and laid two half-crowns in the old woman's
hand.

"Ah, my pretty, that's right now. You hear what old
Mother Lee will tell you."

Ellie drew off her glove and laid her small delicate palm
in the old woman's hand. She looked down at it, muttering
to herself. "What do I see now? What do 1 see?"

Suddenly she dropped Ellie's hand abruptly.

3O


I

ENDLESS NIGHT

"I'd go away from here if I were you. Go-and don't come back! That's what 1 told you just now and it's true.
I've seen it again in your palm. Forget Gipsy's Acre, forget
you ever saw it. And it's not just the ruined house up there,
it's the land itself that's cursed."
"You've got a mania about that," I said roughly. "Anyway
the young lady has nothing to do with the land here.
She's only here for a walk to-day, she's nothing to do with
this neighbourhood."
The old woman paid no attention to me. She said dourly,
"I'm telling you, my pretty. I'm warning you. You can have a happy life--but you must avoid danger. Don't come
to a place where there's danger or where there's a curse.
Go away where you're loved and taken care of and looked
after. You've got to keep yourself safe. Remember that.
Otherwise--otherwise "she gave a short shiver.
don't like to see it, I don't like to see what's in your hand."
Suddenly, with a queer, brisk gesture she pushed back
the two half-crowns into Ellie's palm, mumbling something
we could hardly hear. It sounded like "It's cruel. It's
 cruel, what's going to happen." Turning, she stalked away
at a rapid pace.
"What a--what a frightening woman," said Ellie.
"Pay no attention to her," I said, gruffly. "I think she's
half off her head anyway. She just wants to frighten you
off. They've got a sort of feeling, I think, about this particular
piece of land."
"Have there been accidents here? Have bad things happened?''
"Bound to be accidents. Look at the curve and the narrowness
of the road. The town council ought to be shot for
not doing something about it. Of course there'll be accidents
here. There aren't enough signs warning you."
"Only accidents--or other things?"
"Look here," I said, "people like to collect disasters.
31


ENDLESS NIGHT

There are plenty of disasters always to collect. That's the

way stories build themselves up about a place."

"Is that one of the reasons why they say this property

which is being sold will go cheap?"

"Well, it may be, I suppose. Locally, that is. But I

don't suppose it'll be sold locally. I expect it'll be bought

for developing. You're shivering," I said. "Don't shiver.

Come on, we'll walk fast." I added, "Would you rathcr I

left you before you got back into the town?"

"No. Of course not. Why should I?"

I made a desperate plunge.

"Look here," I said, "I shall be in Market Chadwcll to
morrow. I---I sui?pose--I don't know whether you'll still
be there 	I
mean, would there be any chance of--seeing
you?"
I shuffled my feet and turned my head away. I got rather
red, I think. But if I didn't say something now, how was
I going to go on with this?
"Oh yes," she said, "I shan't be going back to London until
the evening."
"Then
perhaps--would you--I mean, I suppose it's
rather
cheek "
"No,
it isn't."
"Well, perhaps you'd come and have tea at a cafd the
Blue Dog I think it's called. It's quite nice," I said. "Ir'sI
mean, it's "I couldn't get hold of the word I wanted
and I used the word that I'd heard my mother use once or
twice--"it's quite ladylike," I said anxiously.
Then Ellie laughed. I suppose it sounded rather peculiar
nowadays.
"I'm sure it'll be very nice," she said. "Yes. I'll come.
About half past four, will that be right?"
"I'll be there waiting for you," I said. "I--I'm glad."
I didn't say what I was glad about.
We had come to the last turn of the road where the home
began.
32


ENDLESS NIGHT

"Good-bye, then," I said, "till to-morrow. /knd--don't
think again about what that old hag said. She just likes
scaring people, I think. She's not all there," I added.
"Do you feel it's a frightening place?" Ellie asked.
"Gipsy's Acre? No, I don't," I said. I said it perhaps a
trifle too decidedly, but I didn't think it was frightening. I
thought as I'd thought before, that it was a beautiful place,
a beautiful setting for a beautiful house ....
Well, that's how my first meeting with Ellie went. I was
in Market Chadwell the next day waiting in the Blue Dog
and she came. We had tea together and we talked. We still
didn't say much about ourselves, not about our lives, I mean.
We talked mostly about things we thought, and felt; and
then Ellie glanced at her wrist watch and said she must be
going because her train to London left at 5.3o
"I thought you had a car down here," I said.
She looked slightly embarrassed then and she said no, no,
that hadn't been her car yesterday. She didn't say whose it
had been. That shadow of embarrassment came over us
again. I raised a finger to the waitress and paid the bill,
then 1 said straight out to Ellie,
"Am I--am I ever going to see you again?"
She didn't look at me, she looked down at the table. She
said,
"I shall be in London for another fortnight."
I said,
"Where? How?"
We made a date to meet in Regent's Park in three days'
time. It was a fine day. We had some food in the open air
restaurant and we walked in Queen Mary's garden and we
sat there in two deck-chairs and we talked. From that time
on, we began to talk about ourselves. I'd had some good
schooling, I told her, but otherwise I didn't amount to
much. I told her about the jobs I'd had, some of them at any
rate, and how I'd never stuck to things and how I'd been
33


ENDLESS NIGHT

restless and wandered about trying this and that. Funnily
enough, she was entranced to hear all this.
"So different," she said, "so wonderfully different."
"Different from what?"
"From me."
"You're a rich girl?" I said teasingly--"A poor little rich
girl."
"Yes," she said, "I'm a poor little rich girl."
She talked then in a fragmentary way about her background
of riches, of stifling comfort, of boredom, of not really
choosing your own friends, of never doing what you wanted.
Sometimes looking at people who seemed to be enjoying
themselves, when she wasn't. Her mother had died when
she was a baby and her father had married again. And then,
not many years after, he had died, she said. I gathered she
didn't care much for her stepmother. She'd lived mostly in
America but also travelling abroad a fair amount.
It seemed fantastic to me listening to her that any girl in
this age and time could live this sheltered, confined existence.
True, she went to parties and entertainments, but it
might have been fifty years ago it seemed to me from the
way she talked. There didn't seem to be any intimacy, any
fun! Her life was as different from mine as chalk from
cheese. In a way it was fascinating to hear about it but it
sounded stultifying to me.
"You haven't really got any friends of your own then?"
I said, incredulously. "What about boy friends?"
"They're chosen for me," she said rather bitterly.
"They're deadly dull."
"It's like being in prison," I said.
"That's what it seems like."
"And really no friends of your own?"
"I have now. I've got Greta."
"Who's Greta?" I said.
"She came first as an au pair girl--no, not quite that,
34


ENDLESS NIGHT


perhaps. But anyway I'd had a French girl who lived with
us for a year, for French, and then Greta came from Ger-many,
for German. Greta was different. Everything was
different once Greta came."

"You're very fond of her?" I asked.

"She helps me," said Ellie. "She's on my side. She
arranges so that I can do things and go places. She'll tell
lies for me. I couldn't have got away to come down to
Gipsy's Acre if it hadn't been for Greta. She's keeping me
company and looking after me in London while my step-mother's
in Paris. I write two or three letters and if I go off
anywhere Greta posts them every three or four days so that
they have a London postmark."

"Why did you want to go down to Gipsy's Acre though?"
I asked. "What for?"

She didn't answer at once.

"Greta and I arranged it," she said. "She's rather
wonderful," she went on. "She thinks of things, you know.
She suggests ideas."

"What's this Greta look like?" I asked.

	"Oh, Greta's beautiful," she said.
	"Tall and blonde.

	She can do anything."

	"I don't think I'd like her," I said.

	Ellie laughed.

"Oh yes you would. I'm sure you would. She's very
clever, too."

"I don't like clever girls," I said. "And I don't like tall

blonde girls. I like small girls with hair like autumn leaves."
"I believe you're jealous of Greta," said Ellie.
"Perhaps I am. You're very fond of her, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am very fond ofher. She's made all the difference
in my life."

"And it was she who suggested you went down there.
Why, I wonder? There's not much to see or do in that part
of the world. I find it rather mysterious."

35


ENDLESS NIGHT

"It's our secret," said Ellie and looked embarrassed.
"Yours and Greta's? Tell me."
She shook her head. "I must have some secrets of my
own," she said.
"Does your Greta know you're meeting me?"
"She knows I'm meeting someone. That's all. She
doesn't ask questions. She knows I'm happy."
After that there was a week when I didn't sec Ellie. Her
stepmother had come back from Paris, also someone whom
she called Uncle Frank and she expl,ined almost casually
that she was having a birthday, and that they were giving a
big party for her in London.
"I shan't be able to get away," she said. "Not for the
next week. But after that--atcr that, it'll be different."
"Why will it be different after that?" "I shall be able to do what I like then."
"With Greta's help as usual?" I skid.
It used to make Ellie laugh the way I talked about
Greta. She'd say "You're so silly to be jealous of her. One
day you must meet her. You'll like her."
"I don't like bossy girls," I said obstinately.
"Why do you think she's bossy?"
"By the way you talk about her. She's always busy
arranging something."
"She's very efficient," said Ellie. "She arranges things
very well. That's why my stepmother relies on her so
much."
I asked what her Uncle Frank was like.
She said, "I don't know him really so very well. He was
my father's sister's husband, not a real relation. I think
he's always been rather a rolling stone and got into trouble
once or twice. You know the way people talk about someone
and sort of hint things."
"Not socially acceptable?" I asked. "Bad lot?"
"Oh, nothing really bad I think, but he used to get into
36


ENDLESS NIGHT

scrapes, 1 believe. Financial ones. And trustees and lawyers
and people used to have to get him out of them. Pay up for

"That's it," I said. "He's the bad hat of the family. I
expect I'd get on better with him than I would with the
paragon Greta."
"He can make himself very agreeable when he likes,"
said Ellie. "He's good company."
"But you don't really like him?" I asked sharply.
"I think I do .... It's just that sometimes, oh I can't
explain it. I just feel I don't know what he's thinking or
planning."
"One of our planners, is he ?"
"I don't know what he's really like," said Ellie again.
She didn't ever suggest that I should meet any of her
family. I wondered sometimes if I ought to say something
about it myself. I didn't know how she felt about the
subject. I asked her straight out at last.
"Look here, Ellie," I said, "do you think I ought to--meet
your family or would you rather I didn't?"
"I don't want you to meet them," she said at once.
"I know I'm not much "I said.
"I don't mean it that way, not a bit! I mean they'd make
a fuss. I can't stand a fuss."
"I sometimes feel," I said, "that this is rather a hole and
corner business. It puts me in a rather bad light, don't you
think?"
"I'm old enough to have my own friends," said Ellie. "I'm nearly twenty-one. When I am twenty-one I can have
my own friends and nobody can stop me. But now you see--well,
as I say there'd be a terrible fuss and they'd cart me
off somewhere so that I couldn't meet you. Thcre'd be--oh
do, do let's go on as we are now."
"Suits me if it suits you," I said. "I just didn't want to
be, well, too underhand about everything."
37


ENDLESS NIGHT

"It's. not being underhand. It's just having a friend one
can talk to and say things to. It's Someone one can"
she smiled suddenly, "one can make-believe with. You don't
know lOw wonderful that is.".
Yes, there was a lot of hat--make-believe! More and
more our times together were to turn out that way. Sometimes
it was me. More often it was Ellie who'd say, "Let's
suppose that we've bought Gipsy's Acre and that we're building
a house there."
I had told her a lot about Santonix and about the houses
he'd built. I tried to describe to her the kind of houses they
were and the way he thought about things. I don't think I
described it very well because I'm not good at describing
things. Ellie no doubt had her own picture of the house--our
house. We didn't sa. "our house" but we knew that's
what we meant ....
So for over a week I wasn't to see Ellie. I had taken out
what savings I had (there weren't many), and I'd bought
her a little green shamrock ring made of some Irish bog
stone. I'd given it to her for a birthday present and she'd
loved it and looked very happy.
"It's beautiful," she said.
She didn't wear much jcwellery and when she did I had
no doubt it was real diamonds and emeralds and things like
that but she liked my Irish green ting.
"It will be the birthday present I like best," she said.
Then I got a hurried note from her. She was going abroad
with her family to the South of France immediately after
her birthday.
"But don't worry," she wrote, "we shall be back again in
two or three weeks' time, on our way to America this time.
	But anyway we'll meet again then.
	I've got something
	special I want to talk to you about."
I felt restless and ill at ease not seeing Ellie and knowing
she'd gone abroad to France. I had a bit of news about the
38


ENDLESS NIGHT

Gipsy's Acre property too. Apparently it had been sold by
private treaty but there wasn't much information about
who'd bought it. Some firm of London solicitors apparently
were named as the purchasers. I tried to get more information
about it, but I couldn't. The firm in question were very
cagey. Naturally I didn't approach the principals. I palled
up to one of their clerks and so got a little vague information.
It had been bought for a very rich client who was
going to hold it as a good investment capable of appreciation
when the land in that part of the country was becoming
more developed.
It's very hard to find out about things when you're
dealing with really exclusive firms. Everything is as much
of a deadly secret as though they were M.I.5 or something!
Everyone is always acting on behalf of someone else who
can't be named or spoken of! Take-over bids aren't in it!
I got into a terrible state of restlessness. I stopped thinking
about it all and I went and saw my mother.
I hadn't been to see her for a good long time.

39


CHAPTER VI

My mother lived in the same street she had lived in for
the last twenty years, a street of drab houses all highly
respectable and devoid of any kind of beauty or interest.
The front doorstep was nicely whitened and it looked just
the same as usual. It was No. 46. I pressed the front-door
bell. My mother opened the door and stood there looking at
me. She looked just the same as usual, too. Tall and angular,
grey hair parted in the middle, mouth like a rat-trap,
and eyes that were eternally suspicious. She looked hard as
nails. But where I was concerned there was a core of softness
somewhere in her. She never showed it, not if she could
help it, but I'd found out that it was there. She'd never stopped for a moment wanting me to be different but her
wishes were never going to come true. There was a perpetual
state of stalemate between us.
"Oh," she said, "so it's you."
"Yes," I said, "it's me."
She drew back a little to let me pass and I came into the
house and went on past the sitting-room door and into the
kitchen. She followed me and stood looking at me.
"It's been quite a long time," she said. "What have you
been doing?"
I shrugged my shoulders.
"Tiffs and that," I said.
"Ah," said my mother, "as usual, eh?"
"As usual," I agreed.
"How many jobs have you had since I saw you last?"
40


ENDLESS NIGHT

I thought a minute. "Five," I said.
"I wish you'd grow up."
"I'm fully adult," I said. "I have chosen my way of life.
How have things been with you?" I added. "Also as usual," said my mother.
"Quite well and all that?"
"I've no time to waste being ill," said my mother. Then
she said abruptly, "What have you come for?"
"Should I have come for anything in particular?"
"You usually do."
"I don't see why you should disapprove so strongly of my
seeing the world," I said.
"Driving luxurious cars all over the Continent! Is that
your idea of seeing the world?"
"Certainly."
"You won't make much of a success in that. Not if you
throw up the job at a day's notice and go sick, dumping
your clients in some heathen town."
"How did you know about that?"
"Your firm rang up. They wanted to know if I knew
your address."
"What did they want me for?"
"They wanted to re-employ you I suppose," said my
mother. "I can't think why."
"Because I'm a good driver and the clients like me.
Anyway, I couldn't help it if I went sick, could I?"
"I don't know," said my mother.
Her view clearly was that I could have helped it.
"Why didn't you report to them when you got back to
England?"
"Because I had other fish to fry," I said.
She raised her eyebrows. "More notions in your head?
More wild ideas? What jobs have you been doing since?"
"Petrol pump. Mechanic in a garage. Temporary clerk
washer-up in a sleazy night-club restaurant."
41


ENDLESS NIGHT

"Going down the hill in fact," said my mother with a kind of grim satisfaction.
"Not at all," I said. "It's all part of the pln. My
plan I"
She sighed. "What would you like, tea or coffee? I've
got both."
I plumped for coffee. I've grown out of the tea drinking
habit. We sat there with our cups in front of us and she
took a home-made cake out of a tin and cut us each a slice.
"You're different," she said, suddenly.
"Me, how?"
"I don't know, but you're different. What's happened?"
"Nothing's happened. What should have happened?"
"You're excited," she said.
"I'm going to rob a bank," I said.
She was not in the mood to be amused. She merely said,
"No, I'm not afraid of your doing that."
"Why not? Seems a very easy way of getting rich
quickly nowadays."
"It would need too much work," she said. "And a lot of
planning. More brainwork than you'd like to have to do.
Not safe enough, either."
"You think you know all about me," I said.
"No, I don't. 1 don't really know anything about you,
because you and I are as different as chalk and cheese. But
I know when you're up to something. You're up to something
now. What is it, Micky? Is it a girl?"
"Why should you think it's a girl?"
"I've always known it would happen some day."
"What do you mean by 'some day'? I've had lots of
girls."
"Not the way I mean. It's only been the way of a young
man with nothing to do. You've kept your hand in with
girls but you've never been really serious till now."
"But you thini I'm serious now?"
42


ENDLESS NIGHT

"Is it a girl, Micky?"
I didn't meet her eyes. I looked away and said, "In a
way."
"What kind of a girl is she?" '
"The right kind for me," I said.
"Are you going to bring her to sec me?"
"No," I said.
"It's like that, is it?"
"No, it isn't. I don't want to hurt your feelings but
"You're not hurting my feelings. You don't want me to
See her in case I should say to you 'Don't'. Is that it?"
"I wouldn't pay any attention if you did."
"Maybe not, but it would shake you. It- would shake you
somewhere inside because you take notice of what I say and
think. There axe things I've guessed about youmand
maybe I've guessed right and you know it. I'm the only
person in the world who can shake your confidence in yourself.
Is this girl a bad lot who's got hold of you?"
"Bad lot?" I said and laughed. "If you only saw herl
You make me laugh."
"What do you want from me? You want something. You
always do."
"I want some money," I said.
"You won't get it from me. What do you want it for--to
spend on this girl?"
"No," I said, "I want to buy a tint-ciasa suit to get married
i
l,'
"You're going to marry her?"
"If she'll have me."
That shook her.
"If you'd only tell me something!" she said. "You'vo
gotit badly, I can see that. It's the thing I always feared,
that you'd choose the wrong girl."
"Wrong girl! Hell?' I shouted. I was angry.
I went out of the house and I banged the door.
43


CHAPTER VII

When I got home there was a telegram waiting for me--it
had been sent from Antibes.
Meet me tomorrow four-thirty usual place.
Ellie was different. I saw it at once. We met as always in
Regent's Park and at first we were a bit strange and awkward
with each other. I had something I was going to say
to her and I Was in a bit of a state as to how to put it. I
suppose any man is when he comes to the point of proposing
marriage.
And she was strange about something too. Perhaps she
was considering the nicest and kindest way of saying No to
me. But somehow I didn't think that. My whole belief in life was based on the fact that Ellie loved me. But there
was a new independence about her, a new confidence in herself
which I could hardly feel was simply because she was a
year older. One more birthday can't make that difference
to a girl. She and her family-had been in the South of France
and she told me a little about it. And then rather shyly she
said:
"I--! saw that house there, the one you told me about.
The one that architect friend of yours had built."
"What--Santonix?"
"Yes. We went there to lunch one day."
"How did you do that? Does your stepmother know the
man who lives there?"
"Dmitri Gonstantine? Well--not exactly but she met
him and--well---Greta fixed it up for us to go there as a
matter of fact."

44


ENDLESS NIGHT


"Greta again," I said, allowing the usual exasperation to
come into my voice.

"I told you," she said, "Greta is very good at arranging
things."

"Oh all right. So she arranged that you and your step-mother
"

"And Uncle Frank," said Ellie.

"Quite a family party," I said, "and Greta too, I sup-pose."

"Well, no, Greta didn't come because, well--" Ellie
hesitated, "--Cora, my stepmother, doesn't treat Greta
exactly like that."

"She's not one of the family, she's a poor relation, is she?"
I said. "Just the au pair girl, in fact. Greta must resent
being treated that way sometimes."

"She's not an au pair girl, she's a kind of companion to
me."

"A chaperon," I said, "a cicerone, a duenna, a governess.
There are lots of words."

"Oh do be quiet," said Ellie, "I want to tell you. I know
now what you mean about your friend Santonix. It's
a wonderful house. It's--it's quite different. I can see
that if he built a house for us it would be a wonderful
house."

She had used the word quite unconsciously. Us, she had
said. She had gone to the Riviera and had made Greta
arrange things so as to see the house I had described,
because she wanted to visualise more clearly the house that
we would, in the dream world we'd built ourselves, have built
for us by Rudolf Santonix.

"I'm glad you felt like that about it," I said.

She said: "What have you been doing?"

"Just my dull job," I said, "and I've been to a race meet-ing
and I put some money on an outsider. 3to . I put

45


ENDLESS NIGHT

every penny I had on it and it won by a length. Who says
my luck isn't in?"
"I'm glad you won," said Ellie, but she said it without
excitement, because putting all you had in the world on
an outsider and the outsider winning, didn't mean anything
in IF. llie's world. Not the kind of thing it meant in
mine.
"And I went to see my mother," I added.
"You've never spoken much of your mother."
"Why should I ?" I said.
"Aren't you fond of her?"
I considered. "I don't know," I said. "Sometimes I
don't think I am. After all, one grows up and---outgrows
parents. Mothers and fathers."
"I think you do care about her," said FAlie. "You
wouldn't be so uncertain when you talk about her other-

"I'm afraid of her in a way," I said. "She knows me too
well. She knows the worst of me, I mean."
"Somebody has to," said Ellie.
"What do you mean?"
"There's a saying by some great writer or other that no
man is a hero to his valet. Perhaps everyone ought to have
a valet. It must be so hard otherwise, always living up to
people's good opinion of one."
"Well, you certainly have ideas, Ellie," I said. I took her
hand. "Do you know all about me?" I said.
"I think so," said Ellie. She said it quite calmly and
simply.
"I never told you much."
"You mean you never told me anything at all, you
always clammed up. That's different. But I know quite
well what you are like, you yourself."
"I wonder if you do" I said. I went on, "It sounds
rather silly saying I love you. It seems too late for that,
46


ENDLESS NIGHT

doesn't it? I mean, you've known about it a long time,
practically from the beginning, haven't you?"
"Yes," said Ellie, "and you knew, to% didn't you, about
me?"
"The thing is," I said, "what are we going to do about
it? It's not going to be easy, Ellie. You know pretty well
what I am, what I've done, the sort of life I've led. I went
back to see my mother and the grim respectable little street
she lives in. It's not the same world as yours, Ellie. I don't
know that we can ever make them meet."
"You could take me to see your mother."
"Yes, I could," I said, "but I'd rather not. I expect that
sounds very harsh to you, perhaps cruel, but you see we've
got to lead a queer life together, you and I. It's not going
to be the life that you've led and it's not going to be the life
that I've led either. It's got to be a new life where we have
a sort of meeting ground between my poverty and ignorance
and your money and culture and social knowledge. My
friends will think you're stuck up and your fi'iends will
think I'm socially unpresentable. So what are we going to
do?"
"I'll tell you," said Ellie, "exactly what we're going to do.
We're going to live on Gipsy's Acre in a house--s dream
house--that your friend Santonix will build for us. That's
what we're going to do." She added, "We'll get married
first. That's what you mean, isn't it?"
"Yes," I said, "that's what I mean. Ifyou're sure it's all
right for you."
"It's quite easy," said Ellie, "we can get married next
week. I'm of age, you see. I can do what I like now. That
makes all the difference. I think perhaps you're right about
relations. I shan't tell my people and you won't tell your
mother, not until it's all over and then they can throw fits
and it won't matter."
"That's wonderful," I said, "wonderful, Ellie. But there's
47


ENDLESS NIGHT


one thing. I hate telling you about it. We can't live at
Gipsy's Acre, Ellie. Wherever we build our house it can't
be there because it's sold."

"I know it's sold," said Ellie. She was laughing. "You
don't understand, Mike. I'm the person who's bought
it."


48


CHAPTER VIII


I sat there, on the grass by the stream among the water
flowers with the little paths and the stepping stones all round
us. A good many other people were sitting round about us,
but we didn't notice them or even see they were there, because
we were like all the others. Young couples, talking about
their future. I stared at her and stared at her. I just couldn't
speak.

"Mike," she said. "There's something, something I've
got to tell you. Something about me, I mean."

"You don't need to," I said, "no need to tell me anything."
"Yes, but I must. I ought to have told you long ago but
I didn't want to because--because I thought it might drive

you away. But it explains in a way, about Gipsy's Acre."
"You bought it?" I said, "but how did you buy it?"
"Through lawyers," she said, "the usual way. It's a
perfectly good investment, you know. The land will ap-preciate.
My lawyers were quite happy about it."

It was odd suddenly to hear Ellie, the gentle and timid
Ellie, speaking with such knowledge and confidence of the

business world of buying and selling.

"You bought it for us?"

"Yes. I went to a lawyer of my own, not the family one.
I told him what I wanted to do, I got him to look into it,
I got everything set up and in train. There were two other
people after it but they were not really desperate and they
wouldn't go very high. The important thing was that the
whole thing had to be set up and arranged ready for me to
sign as soon as I came of age. It's signed and finished."

49


ENDLESS NIGHT

"But you must have made some deposit or something
beforehand. Had you enough money to do that?"
"No," said Ellie, "no, I hadn't control of much money
beforehand, but of course there are people who will advance
you money. And if you go to a new firm of legal advisers,
they will want you to go on employing them for business
deals once you've come into what money you're going to have
so they're willing to take the risk that you might drop down
dead before your birthday comes."
"You sound so businesslike," I said, "you take my breath
away I"
"Never mind business," said Ellie, "I've got to get back
to what I'm telling you. In a way I've told it you already,
but I don't suppose really you realise it."
"I don't want to know," I said. My voice rose, I was
almost shouting. "Don't tell me anything. I don't want to
know anything about what you've done or who you've been
fond of or what has happened to you."
"It's nothing of that kind," she said. "I didn't realise
that that was what you were fearing it might be. No, there's
nothing of that kind. No sex secrets. There's nobody but
you. The thing is that I'm--well--I'm rich."
"I know that," I said, "you've told me already."
"Yes," said Ellie with a faint smile, "and you said to
me, 'poor little rich girl'. But in a way it's more than that.
My grandfather, you see, was enormously rich. Oil. Mostly
oil. And other things. The wives he paid alimony to
are dead, there was only my father and myself left because
his two other sons were killed. One in Korea and one
in a car accident. And so it was all left in a great big
huge trust and when my father died suddenly, it all
came to rat. My father had made provision for my stepmother
before, so she didn't get anything more. It was all
m/ne. I'm -- actually one of the richest women in America,

50


ENDLESS NIGHT

	"Good Lord," I said. "I didn't know 	Yes,
you're
right,
I didn't know it was like that."
"I
didn't want you to know. I didn't want to tell you. That
was why I was afraid when I said my name---Fenella Goodman.
We spell it G-u-t-e-m-a-n, and I thought you might
know the name of Guteman so I slurred over it and made
it into Goodman."
"Yes,"
I said, "I've seen the name of Guteman vaguely. But
I don't think I'd have recognised it even then. Lots of people
are called names rather like that."
"That's
why," she said, "I've been so hedged around all the
time and fenced in, and imprisoned. I've had detectives guarding
me and young men being vetted before they're allowed
even to speak to me. Whenever I've made a friend they've
had to be quite sure it wasn't an unsuitable one. You
don't know what a terrible, terrible prisoner's life it is! But now
that's all over, and if you don't mind"
"Of course I don't mind," I said, "we shall have lots of
fun. In fact," I said, "you couldn't be too rich a girl for me
We both laughed. She said: "What I like about you is
that you can be natural about things."
"Besides," I said, "I expect you pay a lot of tax on it, don't you? That's one of the few nice things about being
like me. Any money I make goes into my pocket and nobody
can take it away from me."
"We'll have our house," said Ellie, "our house on Gipsy's
Acre." Just for a moment she gave a sudden little shiver.
"You're not cold, darling," I said. I looked up at the
sunshine.
"No," she said.
It was really very hot. We'd been basking. It might
almost have been the South of France.
"No," said Ellie, "it was just that--that woman, that
gipsy that day."
"Oh don't think of her," I said, "she was crazy anyway."
51


ENDLESS NIGHT


"Do you think she really thinks there's a curse on the
land?"

"I think gipsies are like that. You know--always wanting

to make a song and dance about some curse or something."
"Do you know much about gipsies?"

"Absolutely nothing," I said truthfully. "If you don't
want Gipsy's Acre, Ellie, we'll buy a house somewhere else.
On the top of a mountain in Wales, on the coast of Spain
or an Italian hillside, and Santonix can build us a house
there just as well."

"No," said Ellie, "that's how I want it to be. It's where
I first saw you walking up the road, coming round the
corner very suddenly, and then you saw me and stopped and

stared at me. I'll never forget that."

"Nor will I," I said.

"So that's where it's going to be. And your friend
Santonix will build it."

"I hope he's still alive," I said with an uneasy pang.
"He was a sick man."

"Oh yes," said Ellie, "he's alive. I went to see him."
"You went to see him?"

"Yes. When I was in the South of France. He was in a
sanitorium there."

"Every minute, Ellie, you seem to be more and more
amazing. The things you do and manage."

"He's rather a wonderful person I think," said Ellie, "but
rather frightening."

"Did he frighten you?"

"Yes, he frightened me very much for some reason."
"Did you talk to him about us?"

"Yes. Oh yes, I told him all about us and about Gipsy's
Acre and about the house. He told me then that we'd have
to take a chance with him. He's a very ill man. He said he
thought he still had the life left in him to go and see the site,
to draw the plans, to visualise it and get it all sketched out.

52


ENDLESS NIGHT

He said he wouldn't mind really if he died before the house
was finished, but I told him," added Ellie, "that he mustn't die before the house was finished because I wanted him to see
us live in it."
"What did he say to that?"
"He asked me if I knew what I was doing marrying you,
and I said of course I did."
"And then?"
"He said he wondered if.0u knew what you were doing."
"I know all right," I said.
"He said 'You will always know where you're goings Miss
Guteman.' He said 'You'll be going always where you want
to go and because it's your chosen way.'
"'But Mike,' he said, 'might take the wrong road. He
hasn't grown up enough yet to know where he's going.' "I said," said Ellie, "he'll be quite safe with me."
She had superb self-confidence. I was angry though at
what Santonix had said. He was like my mother. She
always seemed to know more about me than I knew myself.
"I know where I'm going," I said. "I'm going the way I
want to go and we're going it together."
"They've started pulling down the ruins of The Towers
already," said Ellie.
She began to talk practically.
"It's to be a rush job as soon as the plans are finished. We
must hurry. Santonix said so. Shall we be married next
Tuesday," said Ellie, "it's a nice day of the week."
"With nobody else there," I said.
"Except Greta," said Ellie.
"To hell with Greta," I said, "she's not coming to our
wedding. You and I and nobody else. We can pull the
necessary witnesses out of the street."
I really think, looking back, that that was the happiest
day of my life ....

53


BOOK II


CHAPTER IX


So that was that, and Ellie and I got married. It sounds
abrupt just putting it like that, but you see it was really just
the way things happened. We decided to be married and
we got married.

It was part of the whole thingmnot just an end to a
romantic novel or a fairy story. "And so they got maxried
and lived happily ever afterwards." You can't, after all,
make a big drama out of living happily ever afterwards.
We were married and we were both happy and it was really
quite a time before anyone got on to us and began to make
the usual difficulties and commotions and we'd made up our
minds to those.

The whole thing was really extraordinarily simple. In
her desire for freedom Ellie had covered her tracks very
cleverly up to now. The useful Greta had taken all the
necessary steps, and was always on guard behind her. And I
had realised fairly soon on that there was nobody really
whose business it was to care terribly about Ellie and what
she was doing. She had a stepmother who was engrossed in
her own social life and love affairs. If Ellie didn't wish to
accompany her to any particular spot on the globe there
was no need for Ellie to do so. She'd had all the proper
governesses and ladies' maids and scholastic advantages and
if she wanted to go to Europe, why not? If she chose to
have her twenty-first birthday in London, again why not?
Now that she had come into her vast fortune she had the
whip hand of her family in so far as spending her money went.
57


ENDLESS NIGHT

If she'd wanted a villa on the Kiviera or a castle on the
Costa Brava or a yacht or any of those things, she had only
to mention the fact and someone among the retinues that
surround millionaires would put .everything in hand immediately.
Greta, I gather, was regarded by her family as an admirable
stooge. Competent, able to make all arrangements
with the utmost efficiency, subservient no doubt and charming
to the stepmother, the uncle and a few odd cousins who
seemed to be knocking about. Ellie had no fewer than three
lawyers at her command, from what she let fall every now
and then. She was surrounded by a vast financial network of
bankers and lawyers and the administrators of Trust Funds.
It was a world that I just got glimpses ofevery now and then, mostly from things that Ellie let fall carelessly in the course
of conversation. It didn't occur to her, naturally, that I
wouldn't know about all those things. She had been brought
up in the midst of them and she naturally concluded that
the whole world knew what they were and how they worked
and all the rest of it.
In fact, getting glimpses of the special peculiarities
of each other's lives were unexpectedly what we enjoyed
most in our early married life. To put it quite crudely--and
I did put things crudely to myself, for that was the only way
to get to terms with my new life--the poor don't really
know how the rich live and the rich don't know how the
poor live, and to find out is really enchanting to both of them.
Once I said uneasily:
"Look here, Ellie, is there going to be an awful schemozzle
over all this, over our marriage, I mean?"
Ellie considered without, I noticed, very much interest.
"Oh yes," she said, "they'll probably be awful." And she
added, "I hope you won't mind too much."
"I won't mind--why should I?----But you, will they
bully you over it?"
58


ENDLESS NIGHT

"I expect so," said Ellie, "but one needn't listen. The
point is that they can't do anything."
"But they'll try?"
"Oh yes," said Ellie. "They'll try." Then she added
thoughtfully, "They'll probably try and buy you off."
"Buy me off?."
"Don't look so shocked," said EIlie, and she smiled, a
rather happy little girl's smile. "It isn't put exactly like
that." Then she added, "They bought off Minnie Thompson's
first, you know."
"Minnie Thompson? Is that the one they always call
the oil heiress?"
"Yes, that's right. She ran off and married a Life Guard
off the beach."
"Look here, Ellie," I said uneasily, "I was a Life Guard
at Littlehampton once."
"Oh, were you? What fun! Permanently?"
"No, of course not. Just one summer, that's all."
"I wish you wouldn't worry," said Ellie.
"What happened about Minnie Thompson?"
"They had to go up to oo,ooo dollars, I think," said
Ellie. "He wouldn't take less. Minnie was man-mad and
really a half-wit," she added.
"You take my breath away, Ellie," I said. "I've not only
acquired a wife, I've got something I can trade for solid
cash at any time."
"That's right," said Ellie. "Send for a high powered
lawyer and tell him you're willing to talk turkey. Then he
fixes up the divorce, and the amount of alimony," said Ellie,
continuing my education. "My stepmother's been married
four times," she added, "and she's made quite a lot out of
it." And then she said, "Oh, Mike, don't look so shodced."
The funny thing is that I was shocked. I felt a priggish distaste
for the corruption of modern society in its richer
phases. There had been something so little grl-like about
59


ENDLESS NIGHT

Ellie, so simple, almost touching in her attitude that I was
astonished to find how well up she was in worldly affairs
and how much she took for granted. And yet I knew that I
was right about her fundamentally. I knew quite well the
kind of creature that Ellie was. Her simplicity, her affection,
her natural sweetness. That didn't mean she had to be
ignorant of things. What she did know and took for granted
was a fairly limited slice of humanity. She didn't know much
about my world, the world of scrounging for jobs, of racecourse
gangs and dope gangs, the rough and tumble
dangers of life, the sharp-Aleck flashy type that I knew so
well from living amongst them all my life. She didn't know
what it was to be brought up decent and respectable but
always hard up for money, with a mother who worked her
fingers to the bone in the name of respectability, determining
that her son should do well in life. Every penny scrimped for
and saved, and the bitterness when your gay carefree on
threw away his chances or gambled his all on a good tip for
the 3.3.
She enjoyed hearing about my life as much as I enjoyed
hearing about hers. Both of us were exploring a foreign
country.
Looking back I see what a wonderfully happy life it wa,
those early days with Ellie. At the time I took them for
granted and so did she. We were married in a registry office
in Plymouth. Guteman is not an uncommon name. Nobody,
reporters or otherwise, knew the Guteman heiress was
in England. There had been vague paragraphs in papers
occasionally, describing her as in Italy or on someone's
yacht. We were married in the Registrar's Office with his
clerk and a middle-aged typist as witnesses. He gave us a
serious little harangue on the serious responsibilities of
married life, and wished us happiness. Then we went out,
free and married. Mr. and Mrs. Michael Rogers! We spent
a week in a seaside hotel and then we went abroad. We had
6O


ENDLESS NIGHT

a glorious three weeks travelling about wherever the fancy
took us and no expense spared.
We went to Greece, and we went to Florence, and to
Venice and lay on the Lido, then to the French Riviera and
then to the Dolomites. Half the places I forget the names of
now. We took planes or chartered a yacht or hired large
and handsome cars. And while we enjoyed ourselves, Greta, I gathered from Ellie, was still on the Home Front doing
her stuff.
Travelling about in her own way, sending letters and
forwarding all the various post-cards and letters that Ellie
had left with her.
"There'll be a day of reckoning, of course," said Ellie.
"They'll come down on us like a cloud of vultures. But we
might as well enjoy ourselves until that happens."
"What about Greta?" I said, "won't they be rather
angry with her when they find out?"
"Oh, of course," said Ellie, "but Greta won't mind.
She's tough."
"Mightn't it stop her getting another job?"
"Why should she get another job?" said Ellie. "She'll
come and live with us."
"No!" I said.
"What do you mean, no, Mike?"
"We don't want anyone living with us," I said.
"Greta wouldn't be in the way," said Ellie, "and she'd
be very useful. Really, I don't know what I'd do without
her. I mean, she manages and arranges everything."
I frowned. "I don't think I'd like that. Besides, we want
our own house--our dream house, after all, Ellie--we want
it to ourselves."
"Yes," said Ellie, "I know what you mean. But all the
same "She heeitated. "I mean, it would be very hard
on Greta not to have anywhere to live. After all, she's been
with me, done everything for me for four years now.
61


ENDLESS NIGHT


And look how she's helped me to get married and all that."
"I won't have her butting in between us all the time!"

"But she's not like that at all, Mike. You haven't even
met her yet."

"No. No, I know I haven't buttbut it's nothing to do
with, oh with liking her or not. We want to be by ourselves,

llie.' '

"Darling Mike," said Ellie softly.

We left it at that for the moment. ?

During the course of our travels we had met Santonix.
That was in Greece. He had been in a small fisherman's
cottage near the sea. I was startled by how ill he looked,
much worse than when I had seen him a year ago. He

greeted both Ellie and myself very warmly.

"So you've done it, you two," he said.

"Yes," said Ellie, "and now we're going to have our
house built, aren't we?"

"I've got the drawings for you here, the plans," he said
to me. "She's told you, hasn't she, how she came and
ferreted me out and gave me her--commands," he said,
choosing the word thoughtfully.

"Oh! not commands," said Ellie. "I just pleaded.''
"You know we've bought the site?" I said.

"Ellie wired and told me. She sent me dozens of photo-graphs."

"Of course you've got to come and see it first," said Ellie.

"You mightn't like the site."

"I do like it."

"You can't really know till you've seen it."

"But I have seen it, child. I flew over five days ago. I met

one of your hatchet-faced lawyers there--the English one."
"Mr. Crawford ?"

"That's the man. In fact, operations have already
started; clearing the ground, removing the ruins of the old
house, foundations--drains. When you get back to

62


ENDLESS NIGHT


England I'll be there to meet you." He got out his plans
then and we sat talking and looking at our house to be.
There was even a rough water-colour sketch of it as well as

the architectural elevations and plans.
"Do you like it, Mike?"
I drew a deep breath.

"Yes," I said, "that's it. That's absolutely it."

"You used to talk about it enough, Mike. When I was in
fanciful mood I used to think that piece of land had laid
a spell upon you. You were a man in love with a house that
you might never own, that you might never see, that might
never even be built."

"But it's going to be built," said Ellie. "It's going to be
built, isn't it?"

"If God or the devil wills it," said SantonLx. "It doesn't
depend on me."

"You're not any--any better?" I asked doubtfully.

"Get it into your thick head. 1 shall never be better. That's
not on the cards."

"Nonsense," I said. "People are finding cures for things
all the time. Doctors are gloomy brutes. They give people
up for dead and then the people laugh and cock a snook at
them and live for another fifty years."

"I admire your optimism, Mike, but my malady isn't one
of that kind. They take you to hospital and give you a
change of blood and back you come again with a little lee-way
of life, a little span of time gained. And so on, getting
weaker each time."

"You are very brave," said Ellie.

"Oh no, I'm not brave. When a thing is certain there's
nothing to be brave about. All you can do is to find your
consolation."

"Building houses?"

"No, not that. You've less vitality all the time, you see,
and therefore building houses becomes more difficult, not

63


ENDLESS NIGHT


easier. The strength keeps giving out. No. But there are

consolations. Sometimes very queer ones."

"I don't understand you," I said.

"No, you wouldn't, Mike. I don't know really that Ellie
would. She might." He went on, speaking not so much to
us as to himself. "Two things run together, side by side.
Weakness and strength. The weakness of fading vitality and
the strength of frustrated power. It doesn't matter, you see,
what you lo now! You're going to die anyway. So you can
do anything.you choose. There's nothing to deter you, there's
nothing to hold you back. I could walk through the streets
of Athens shooting down every man or woman whose face I
didn't like. Think of that."

"The police could arrest you just the same," I pointed
out.

"Of course they could. But what could they do? At the
most take my life. Well my life's going to be taken by a
greater power than the law in a very short time. What else
could they do? Send me to prison for twenty--thirty years?
That's rather ironical, isn't it, there aren't twenty or thirty
years for me to serve. Six months--one year--eighteen
months at the utmost. There's nothing anyone can do to
me. So in the span that's left to me I am king. I can do what
I like. Sometimes it's a very heady thought. Only---only,
you see, there's not much temptation because there's noth-ing
particularly exotic or lawless that I want to do."

After we had left him, as we were driving back to Athens,
Ellie said to me,

"He's an odd person. Sometimes you know, I feel
frightened of him."

"Frightened, of Rudolf Santonix--why?"

"Because he isn't like other people and because he has
a--I don't knowma ruthlessness and an arrogance about
him somewhere. And I think that he was trying to tell us,
really, that knowing he's going to die soon has increased his

64


ENDLESS NIGHT


arrogance. Supposing," said Ellie, looking at me in an
animated way, with almost a rapt and emotional ex-pression
on her face, "supposing he built us our lovely castle,
our lovely house on the cliff's edge there in the pines, sup-posing
we were coming to live in it. There he was on the

doorstep and he welcomed us in and then

"Well, Ellie?"

"Then, supposing he came in after us, he slowly closed
the doorway behind us and sacrificed us there on the thresh-old.
Cut our throats or something."

"You frighten me, Ellie. The things you think of!"
"The trouble with you and me, Mike, is that we don't
live in the real world. We dream of fantastic things that
may never happen."

"Don't think of sacrifices in connection with Gipsy's
Acre."

'tit's the name, I suppose, and the curse upon it."

"There isn't any curse," I shouted. "It's all nonsense.
Forget it."

That was in Greece.


65


CHAPTER X

It was, I think, the day after that. We were in Athens.
Suddenly, on the steps of the Acropolis Ellie ran into people
that she knew. They had come ashore from one of the Hellenic
cruises. A woman of about thirty-five detached herself
from the group and rushed along the steps to Ellie exclaiming,
"Why, I never did. It's really you, Ellie Guteman? Well,
what are you doing here ? I'd no idea. Are you on a cruise ?"
"No," said Ellie, "just staying here."
"My, but it's lovely to see you. How's Cora, is she here?"
"No, Cora is at Salzburg I believe."
"Well, well." The woman was looking at me and Ellie
said quietly, "Let me introduce--Mr. Rogers, Mrs. Benning-ton."
"How d'you do. How long are you here for?"
"I'm leaving to-morrow," said Ellie.
"Oh dear! My, I'll lose my party if I don't go, and I just
don't want to miss a word of the lecture and the descriptions.
They do hustle one a bit, you know. I'm just dead beat at
the end of the day. Any chance of meeting you for a drink?"
"Not to-day," said Ellie, "we're going on an excursion."
Mrs. Bennington rushed off to rejoin her party. Ellie, who
had been going with me up the steps of the Acropolis, turned
round and moved down again.
"That rather settles things, doesn't it," she said to me.
"What does it settle?"
Ellie did not answer for a minute or two and then she said
with a sigh, "I must write tonight."
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ENDLESS NIGHT

"Write to whom?"
"Oh, to (3ora, and to Uncle Frank, I suppose, and Uncle
Andrew."
"Who's Uncle Andrew? He's a new one."
"Andrew Lippincott. Not really an uncle. He's my
principal guardian or trustee or whatever you call it. He's a
lawyer--a very well known one."
"What are you going to say?"
"I'm going to tell them I'm married. I couldn't say
suddenly to Nora Bennington 'Let me introduce my
husband'. There would have been frightful shrieks and
exclamations and 'I never heard you were married. Tell me
all about it, darling' etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. It's only
fair that my stepmother and Uncle Frank and Uncle Andrew
should be the first to know." She sighed. "Oh well, we've
had a lovely time up to now."
"What will they say or do?" I asked.
"Make a fuss, I expect," said Ellie, in her placid way. "It doesn't matter if they do and they'll have sense enough to
know that. We'll have to have a meeting, I expect. We
could go to New York. Would you like that?" She looked
at me inquiringly.
"No," I said, "I shouldn't like it in the least."
"Then they'll come to London probably, or some of them
will. I don't know if you'd like that any better."
"I shouldn't like any of it. I want to be with you and se
our house going up brick by brick as soon as Santonix gets
there."
"So we can," said Ellie. "After all, meetings with the
family won't take long. Possibly just one big splendid row
would do. Get it over in one. Either we fly over there or
they fly over here."
'ti thought you said your stepmother was at Salzburg."
"Oh, I just said that. It sounded odd to say I didn't know
where she was. Yes," said Ellie with a sigh, "we'll go home
67


ENDLESS NIGHT

and meet them all. Mike, I hope you won't mind too much."
"Mind what--your family?"
"Yes. You won't mind if they're nasty to you."
"I suppose it's the price I have to pay for marrying you,"
I said. "I'll bear it."
"There's your mother," said Ellie thoughtfully.
"For heaven's sake, Ellie, you're not going to try and
arrange a meeting between your stepmother in her frills and
her furbelows and my mother from her back street. What do
you think they'd ever have to say to each other?"
"If Cora was my own mother they might have quite a lot
to say to each other," said Ellie. "I wish you wouldn't be
so obsessed with class distinctions, Mike I"
"Me!" I said incredulously. "What's your American
phrase---I come from the wrong side of the tracks, don't I ?"
"You don't want to write it on a placard and pin it on
yourself."
"I' don't know the right clothes to wear," I said bitterly. "I don't know the right way to talk about things and I
don't know anything really about pictures or art or music.
I'm only jugt learning who to tip and how much to give."
"Don't you think, Mike, that that makes it all much more
exciting for you? I think so."
"Anyway," I said, "you're not to drag my mother into
your family party."
"I wasn't proposing to drag anyone into anything, but I think, Mike, I ought to go and see your mother when we
go back to England."
"No," I said explosively.
She looked at me rather startled.
"Why not, Mike, though. I mean, apart from anything
else, I mean it's just very rude not to. Have you told her
you're married?"
"Not yet."
"Why not?"
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ENDLESS NIGHT

I didn't answer.
"Wouldn't the simplest way be to tell her you're married
and take me to see her when we get back to England?"
"No," I said again. It was not so explosive this time but
it was still fairly well underlined.
"You don't want me to meet her," said Ellie, slowly.
I didn't, of course. I suppose it was obvious enough but
the last thing I could do was to explain. I didn't see how
could explain.
"It wouldn't be the right thing to do," I said slowly.
"You must see that. I'm sure it would Icad to trouble.'
"You think she wouldn't like me?"
"Nobody could help liking you, but it wouldn't
oh I don't know how to put it. But she might be upset and
confused. After all, well, I mean I've married out of my
station. That's the old-fahioncd term. She wouldn't like that."
Fllie shook her head slowly.
"Does anybody rcaily think like that nowadays?"
"Of course they do. They do in your country too."
"Yes," she said, "in a way that's true bu[--if anyone
makes good there "
"You mean if a man makes a lot of money."
"Well, not only money."
"Yes," I said, "it's money. Ifa man makes a lot ofmoney
he's admired and looked up to and it doesn't matter whero
he was born."
"Well, that's the same everywhere," said Ellle.
"Please, Ellie," I said. "Please don't go and see my
mother."
"I still thln it's unkind."
"No it isn't. Can't you let me know what's best for my
own mother? She'd be upset. I tell you she would."
"But you must tell her' you've got married."
"All right," I said. "I'll do that."
69


ENDLESS NIGHT

It occurred to me it would be easier to write to my mother
from abroad. That evening when Ellie was writing to
Uncle Andrew and Uncle Frank and her stepmother Cora
van Stuyvesant, .I, too, was writing my own letter. It was
quite short.
"Dear Mum," I wrote. "I ought to have told you before
but I felt a bit awkward. I got married three weeks ago.
It was all rather sudden. She's a very pretty girl and very
sweet. She's got a lot of money which makes things a bit
awkward sometimes. We're going to build ourselves a
house somewhere in the country. Just at present we're
travelling around Europe. All the best, Yours, Mike."
The results of our evening's correspondence were somewhat
varied. My mother let a week elapse before she sent a
letter remarkably typical of her.
"Dear Mike. I was glad to get your letter. I hope you'll
be very happy. Your affectionate mother."
As Ellie had prophesied, there was far more fuss on her
side. We'd stirred up a regular hornet's nest of trouble. We
were beset by reporters who wanted news of our romantic
marriage, there were articles in the papers about the
Guteman heiress and her romantic elopement, there were
letters from bankers and lawyers. And finally official
meetings were arranged. We met Santonix on the site of
Gipsy's Acre and we looked at the plans there and discussed
things, and then having seen things under way we
came to London, took a suite at Claridge's and prepared as
they say in old world books, to receive cavalry.
The first to arrive was Mr. Andrew P. Lippincott. He
was an elderly man, dry and precise in appearance. He was
long and lean with suave and courteous manners. He was a
Bostonian and from his voice I wouldn't have known he was
an American. By arrangement through the telephone he
called upon us in our suite at 2 o'clock. Ellie was nervous, I
could tell, although she concealed it very well.
TO


ENDLESS NIGHT

Mr. Lippincott kissed Ellie and extended a hand and a
pleasant smile to me.
"Well, Ellie my dear, you are looking very well. Blooming,
I might say."
"How are you, Uncle Andrew? How did you come. Did
you fly?"
"No, I had a very pleasant trip across on the Queen Mary.
And this is your husband?"
"This is Mike, yes."
I played up, or thought I did. "How are you, sir?" I said.
Then I asked him if he'd have a drink, which he refused
pleasantly. He sat down in an upright chair with gilt arms
to it and looked, still smiling, from Ellie to me.
"Well," he said, "you young people have been giving us
shocks. All very romantic, eh?"
"I'm sorry," said Ellie, "I really am sorry."
"Are you?" said Mr. Lippincott, rather dryly.
"I thought it was the best way," said Ellie.
"I am not altogether of your opinion there, my dear."
"Uncle Andrew," Ellie said, "you know perfectly well
that if I'd done it any other way there would have been the
most frightful fuss."
"Why should there have been such a frightful fuss?"
"You know what they'd have been like," said Ellie.
'You too," she added accusingly. She added "I've had two
letters from Cora. One yesterday and one this morning.''
"You must discount a certain amount of agitation, my
dear. It's only natural under the circumstances, don't you
think?"
"It's my business who I get married to and how and
where."
"You may think so, but you will find that the women of
any family would rarely agree as to that."
"Really, I've saved everyone a lot of trouble."
71


ENDLESS NIGHT


"You may put it that way."

"But it's true, isn't it?"

"But you practised, did you not, a good deal ofdeceptlon,
helped by someone who should have known better than to

do what she did."

Ellie flushed.

"You mean Greta? She only did what I asked her to.
Are they all very upset with her?"

"Naturally. Neither she nor you could expect anything
else, could you? She was, remember, in a position of
trust."

"I'm of age. I can do what I like."

"I am speaking of the period of time before you were of
age. The deceptions began then, did they not?"

"You mustn't blame Ellie, sir," I said. "To begin with I
didn't know what was going on and since all her rdations
are in another country it wasn't easy for me to get in touch
with them."

"I quite realise," said Mr. Lippincott, "that Greta posted
certain letters and gave certain information to Mrs. van
Stuyvesant and to myself as she was requested to do by Ellie
here, and made, if I may say so, a very competent job of it.
You have met Greta Andersen, Michael? I may call you
Michael, since you are Ellie's husband."

"Of course," I said, "call me Mike. No, I haven't met
Miss Andersen "

"Indeed? That seems to me surprising." lie looked at
me with a long thoughtful gaze. "I should have thought
that she would have been present at your marriage."

"No, Greta wasn't there," said Ellie. She threw me a
look of reproach and I shifted uncomfortably.

Mr. Lippincott's eyes were still resting on me thought-fully.
He made me uncomfortable. He seemed about to say
something more then changed his mind.

"I'm afraid," he said after a moment or two, "that

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ENDLESS NIGHT

you two, Michael and Ellie, will have to put up with a
certain amount of reproaches and criticm fi.om Ellie's
family."
"I suppose they are going to descend on me in a bunchy"
said Ellie.
"Very probably," said Mr. Lippincott. "I've tried to
pave the way," he added.
"You're on our side, Uncle Andrew?" .aid Ellie, smiling
at him.
"You must hardly ask a prudent lawyer to go as far as that.
I have learnt that in life it is wise to accept what is a fait
axcorapli. You two have fallen in love with each other and
have got married and have, I understood you to say, Ellie,
bought a piece of property in the South of England and have
already started building a house on it. You propose, therefore,
to live in this country?"
"We want to make our home here, yes. Do you object to
our doing that?" I said with a touch of anger in my voice.
"Ellie's married to me and she's a British subject now. So
why shouldn't she live in England?"
"No reason at all. In fact, there is no reason why Fenella
should not live in any country she chooses, or indeed have
property in more than one country. The house in Nassau
belongs to you, remember, Ellie."
"I always thought it was Cora's. She always has behaved
as though it was."
"But the actual property fights are vested in you. You
also have the house in Long Island whenever you care to
visit it. You are the owner of a great deal of oil bearing
roperty in the West." His voice was amiable, pleasant but
I had the feeling that the words were directed at me in some
curious way. Was it his idea of trying to insinuate a wedge
between me and Ellie? I was not sure. It didn't seem very
sensible, rubbing it in to a man that his wife owned property
all over the world and was fabulously rich. If anything I
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ENDLESS NIGHT

should have thought that he would have played down
Ellie's property rights and her money and all the rest of it. iF i was a fortune hunter as he obviously thought, that would
be all the more grist to my mill But I did realise that Mr.
Lippincott was a subtle man. It would be hard at any time
to know what he was driving 'at; what he had in his mind
behind his even and pleasant manner. Was he trying in a
way of his own to make me feel uncomfortable, to make
me feel that I was going to be branded almost publicly as a
fortune hunter. He said to Ellie,
"I've brought over a certain amount of legal stuff which
you'll have to go through with me, Ellie. I shall want your
signature to many of these things."
"Yes, of course, Uncle Andrew. Any time."
"As you say, any time. There's no hurry. I have other
business in London and I shall be over here for about ten
days."
Ten days, I thought. That's a long time. I rather wished
that Mr. Lippincott wasn't going to be here for ten days. He
appeared friendly enough towards me, though, as you might
say, indicating that he still reserved his judgment on certain
points, but I wondered at that moment whether he was really
my enemy. If he was, he would not be the kind of man to
show his hand.
"Well," he went on, "now that we've all met and come to
terms, as you might say, for the future, I would like to have
a short, interview with this husband of yours."
Ellie said, "You can talk to us both." She was up in
arms. I put a hand on her arm.
"Now don't flare up, ducks, you're not a mother hen
protecting a chicken." I propelled her gently to the door
in the wall that led into the bedroom. "Uncle Andrew
wants to size me up," I said. "He's well within his rights."
I pushed her gently through the double doors. I shut
them both and came back into the room. It was a large
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ENDLESS NIGHT


handsome sitting-room. I came back and took a chair and
faced Mr. Lippincott. "All right," I said. "Shoot."

"Thank you, Michael," he said. "First of all I want to
assure you that I am not, as you may be thinking, your
enemy in any way."

"Well," I said, "I'm glad to hear that." I didn't sound
very sure about it.

"Let me speak frankly," said Mr. Lippincott, "more
frankly than I could do before that dear child to whom I am
guardian and of whom I am very fond. You may not yet
appreciate it fully, Michael, but Ellie is a most unusually
sweet and lovable girl."

"Don't you worry. I'm in love with her all right."

"That is not at all the same thing," said Mr. Lippincott
in his dry manner. "I hope that as well as being in love with
her you can also appreciate what a really dear and in some
ways very vulnerable person she is."

"I'll try," I said. "I don't think I'll have to try very hard.
She's the tops, Ellie is."

"So I will go on with what I was about to say. I shall put
my cards on the table with the utmost frankness. You are
not the kind of young man that I should have wished Ellie to
marry. I should like her, as her family would have liked her,
to marry someone of her own surroundings, of her own

set "

"A toff in other words," I said.

"No, not only that. A similar background is, I think, to
be desired as a basis for matrimony. And I am not referring
to the snob attitude. After all, Herman Guteman, her
grandfather, started lire'as a dock hand. He ended up as
one of the richest men in America."

"For all you know I might do the same," I said. "I may
end up one of the richest men in England."

"Everything is possible," said Mr. Lippincott. "Do you
have ambitions that way?"

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ENDLESS NIGHT

"It's not just the money," I said. "I'd like to--I'd like to
get somewhere and do things and "I hesitated, stopped.
"You have ambitions, shall we say? Well, that is a very
good thing, I am sure."
"I'm starting at long odds," I said, "starting from scratch.
I'm nothing and nobody and I won't pretend otherwise."
He nodded approval.
"Very frankly and handsomely said. I appreciate it.
Now, Michael, I am no relation to Ellie, but I have acted as
her guardian, I am a trustee, left so by her grandfather, of
her affairs, I manage her fortune and her investments. And
I assume therefore a certain responsibility for them. Therefore
I want to know all that I can know about the husband
she has chosen."
"Well," I said, "you can make inquiries about me, I
suppose, and find out anything you like easily enough."
"Quite so," said Mr. Lippincott. "That would be one
way of doing it. A wise precaution to take. But actually,
Michael, I should like to know all that I can about you from
your own lips. I should like to hear your own story of what
your life has been up to now."
Of course I didn't like it. I expect he knew I wouldn't.
Nobody in my position would like that. It's second nature
to make the best of yourself. I'd made a point of that at
school and onwards, boasted about things a bit, said a few
things, stretching the truth a bit. I wasn't ashamed of it.
I think it's natural. I think it's the sort of thing that you've
got to do if you want to get on. Make out a good case for
yourself. People take you at your own valuation and I
didn't want to be like that chap in Dickens. They read it
out on the television, and I must say it's a good yarn on its
own. Uriah something his name was, always going about
being humble and rubbing his hands, and actually planning
and scheming behind that humility. I didn't want to be like
that.
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ENDLESS NIGHT

I was ready enough to boast a bit with the chaps I met or
to put up a good case to a prospective employer. After all,
you've got a best side and a worst side of yourself and it's no
good showing the worst side and harping on it. No, I'd
always done the best for myself describing my activities
up to date. But I didn't fancy doing that sort of ihing with
Mr. Lippincott. He'd rather pooh-poohed the idea of
making private inquiries about me but I wasn't at all sure
that he wouldn't do so all the same. So I gave him the truth
unvarnished, as you might say.
Squalid beginnings, the fact that my father had been a
drunk, but that I'd had a good mother, that she'd slaved a
good bit to help me get educated. I made no secret of the
fact that I'd been a rolling stone, that I'd moved from one
job to another. He was a good listener, encouraging, if you
know what I mean. Every now and then, though, I realised
how shrewd he was. Just little questions that he slipped in,
or comments, some comments that I might have rushed in
unguardedly either to admit or to deny.
Yes, I had a sort of feeling that I'd better be wary and on
my toes. And after ten minutes I was quite glad when he
leaned back in his chair and the inquisition, if you could call
it that, and it wasn't in the least like one, seemed to be over.
"You have an adventurous attitude to life, Mr. Rogera
Michael. Not a bad thing. Tell me more about this house
that you and Ellie are building."
"Well," I said, "it's not far from a town called Market
Chadwell."
"Yes," he said, "I know just where it is. As a matter of
fact I ran down to see it. Yesterday, to be exact."
That startled me a little. It showed he was a deviou
kind of fellow who got round to more things than you might
think he would.
"It's a beautiful site," I said defensively, "and the house
77


ENDLESS NIGHT

we're building is going to be a beautiful house. The architect's
a chap called Santonix. Rudoff Santonix. I don't
know if you've ever heard of him but'
"Oh yes," said Mr. Lippincott, "he's quite a well known
name among architects."
"He's done work in the States I believe."
"Yes, an architect of eat promise and talent. Unfortunately
I believe lib health is not good."
"He think he's a dying man," I said, "but I don't
believe it. I believe he'll get cured, get well again. Doctor
--they'll say anything."
"I hope your optimism is justified. You are an optimist." "I ara about Santonix."
"I hope all you wish will come true. I may say that I
think you and Ellie have made an extremely good purchase
in the piece of property that you have bought."
I thought it was nice of the old boy to use the pronoun
'you'. It wasn't rubbing it in that Ellie had done the buying
on her own.
"I have had a consultation with Mr. Crawford " "Crawford?" I frowned slightly.
"Mr. Crawford of Reece & Crawford, a firm of English
olicitors. Mr. Crawford was the member of the firm who
put the purchase in hand. It is a good firm of solicitors and I gather that this property was acquired at a cheap figure. I may say that I wondered slightly at that. I am familiar
with the present prices of land in this country and I really
felt rather at a loss to account for it. I think Mr. Crawford
himself was surprised to get it at o low a figure. I wondered
if you knew at all why property happened to go so
cheaply. Mr. Crawford did not advance any opinion on that.
In fact he seemed slightly embarrassed when I put the
question to him."
"Oh well," I said "it's got a curse on it."
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ENDLESS NIGHT

"I beg your pardon, Michael, what did you say?"
"A curse, sir," I explained. ,The gipsy's warning, that
sort of thing. It is known locally as Gipsy's Acre."
"Ah. A story?"
"Yes. It seems rather confused and I don't know how
much people have made up and how much is true. There
was a murder or something long ago. A man and his wife
and another man. Some story that the husband shot the
other two and then shot himself. At least that's the verdict
that was brought in. But all sorts of other stories go flying
about. I don't think anyone really knows what happened.
It was a good long time ago. It's changed hands about four
or five times since, but nobody stays there long."
"Ah," said Mr. Lippincott appreciatively, "yes, quite a
piece of English folklore." He looked at me curiously.
"And you and Ellie are not afraid of the curse?" He said it lightly , with a slight smile.
"Of course not," I said. "Neither Ellie nor I would
believe in any rubbish of that kind. Actually it's a lucky
thing since because of it we got it cheap." When I said that
a sudden thought struck me. It was lucky in one sense, but
I thought that with all Ellie's money and her property and
all the rest of it, it couldn't matter to her very much whether
she bought a piece of land cheap or at the top price. Then
I thought, no, I was wrong. After all, she'd had a grandfather
who came up from being a dock labourer to a
millionaire. Anyone of that lrlnd would always wish to buy
cheap and sell dear.
"Well, I am not superstitious," said Mr. Lippincott, "and
the view fxom your property is quite magnificent." 'He hesitated.
"I only hope that when you come to move into your
house to live there, that F.l!ie will not hear too many of
these stories that are going about."
"I'll keep everything from her that I can," I said. "I
don't suppose anybody will say anything to her."
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ENDLESS NIGHT

"People in country villages are very fond of repeating
stories of that kind," said lIr. Lippincott. "And Ellie,
remember, is not as tough as you are, Michael. She can be
influenced easily. Only in some ways. Which brings me "
he stopped without going on to say what he had been going
to. He tapped on the table with one finger. "I'm going to
speak to you now on a matter of some difficulty. You said
just now that you had not met Greta Andersen."
"No, as I said, I haven't met her yet."
"Odd. Very curious."
"Well?" I looked at him inquiringly.
"I should have thought you'd have been almost sure to
have met her," he said slowly. "How much do you know
about her?"
"I know that she's been with Ellie some time."
"She has been with F.111e since Ellie was seventeen. She
has occupied a post of some responsibility and trust. She
came first to the States in the capacity of secretary and companion.
A kind of chaperon to F.111e when Mrs. van
$tuyvesant, her stepmother, was away from home, which I
may say was a quite frequent occurrence." He spoke
particularly dryly when he said this. "She is, I gather, a wellborn
girl with excellent references, half Swedish half German.
Ellie became, quite naturally, very much attached to
her."
"So I gather," I said.
"In some ways Ellie was, I suppose, almost too much
ttached to her. You don't mind my saying that."
"No. Why should I mind? As a matter of fact I've--well,
I've thought so myself once or twice. Greta this and
Greta that. I got--well, I know I've no business to, but I
used to get fed up sometimes."
".amd yet she expressed no wish for you to meet Greta?"
"Well," I said, "it's rather difficult to explain. But I
think, yes, I think she probably did suggest it in a mild way
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ENDLESS NIGHT

once or twice but, well, we were too taken up with having
met each other. Besides, oh well, I suppose I didn't really
want to meet Greta. I didn't want to share Ellie with anyone."
"I see. Yes, I see. And Fllie did not suggest Greta being
present at your wedding?"
"She did suggest it," I said.
"But--but you didn't want her to come. Why?"
"I don't know. I really don't know. I just felt that this
Greta, this girl or woman I'd never met, she was aJways
homing in on everything. You know, arranging Ellic's life
for her. Sending post-cards and letters and filling in for
Ellic, arranging a whole itinerary and passing it on to the
family. I felt that Ellie was dependent on Greta in a way,
that she let Greta run her, that she wanted to do everything
that Greta wanted. I--oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Lippincott, I
oughtn't to be saing all these things perhaps. Say I was
just plain jealous. Anyway I blew up and I said'I didn't
want Greta at the wedding, that the wedding was ours, that
it was just our business and nobody clse's. And so we went
along to the Rcgistrar's office and his clerk and the typist
from his office were the two witnesses. I dare say it was mean
of me to refuse to have Greta there, but I wanted to have
Ellic to myself."
"I see. Yes, I sec, and I think, if I may say so, that you
were wie, Michael."
"You don't like Greta either," I said shrewdly.
"You can hardly use the word 'either', Michael, if you
have not even met her."
"No, I know but, well, lC mean if you hear a lot about a
person you can form some sort of idea of them, some judgment
of them. Oh well call it plain jealousy. Why don't you like Greta?" ,
"This is without prejudice," said Mr. Lippincott, "but
you are Ellie's husband, Michael, and I have Ellie's happi-
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ENDLESS NIGHT

ness very much at heart. I don't think that the influence
that Greta has over Ellie is a very desirable one. She takes
too much upon herself."
"Do you think she'll try and make trouble between us?"
I asked.
"I think," said Mr. Lippincott, "that I have no fight to
say anything of that kind."
He sat looking cautiously at me, and blinking like a
wrinkled old tortoise.
I didn't know quite what to say next. He spoke first,
choosing his words with some care.
"There has been, then, no suggestion that Greta Andersen
might take up her residence with you?"
"Not if I can help it," I said.
"Ah. So that is what you feel? The idea has been
mooted."
"Ellie did say something of the kind. But we're newly
married, Mr. Lippincott. We want our house--our new
home to ourselves. Of course she'll come and stay sometimes,
I suppose. That'll only be natural."
"As you say, that would be only natural. But you realise,
perhaps, that Greta is going to be in a somewhat difficult
position as regards further employment. I mean, it is not a
question of what Ellie thinks of her, but of what the people
who engaged her and reposed trust in her feel."
"You mean that you or Mrs. van What's-her-name won't
recommend her for another post of the same kind?"
"They are hardly likely to do so except so far as to satisfy
purely legal requirements."
"And you think that she'll want to come to England and
live on Ellie."
"I don't want to prejudice you too much against her.
After all, this is mostly in my mind. I dislike some of the
things she has done and the way she has done them. I think
that Ellie who has a very generous heart will be upset at
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ENDLESS NIGHT

having, shall we say, blighted Greta's prospects in many
ways. She might impulsively insist on her coming to live with
y
OU.''

"I don't think F.11ie will insist," I said slowly. I sounded a
little worried all the sam% and I thought Lippincott
noticed it. "But couldn't we--F.1li% I mean--couldn't IF. llie
pension her off?"
"We should not put it precisely like that," said Mr.
,ippincott. "There is a suggestion of age about pensioning
anyone off and Greta is a young woman, and I may say a
very handsome young woman. Beautiful, in fact," he added
in a deprecating, disapproving voice. "She's very attractive
'to men, too."
"Well, perhaps she'll marry," I said. "If she's all that,
why hasn't she got married before this?"
"There have been people attracted, I believe, but she
has not considered them. I think, however, that your suggestion
is a very sound one. I think it might be carried out in
a way that would not hurt anyone's susceptibilities. It
might seem quite a natural thing to do on Ellie's having
attained her majority and having had her marriage helped
on by Greta's good offices--settle a sum of money upon her
in a fit of gratitude." Mr. Lippincott made the last two
words sound as sour as lemon juice.
"Well, then, that's all right," I said cheerfully.
"Again I see that you are an optimist. Let us hope tha!
Greta will accept what is offered to her."
"Why shouldn't she? She'd be mad if she didn't."
"I don't know," said Mr. Lippincott. "I should sa)
it would be extraordinary if she did not accepts and they
will remain on terms of friendship, of course."
"You think--what do you think?"
"I would like to see her influence over Ellie broken," said
Mr. Lippincott. He got up. "You will, I hopes assist me and
do everything you can to further that end?"
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ENDLESS NIGHT

"You bet I will," I said. "The last thing I wat is to have
Greta in our pockets all the time."
"You might change your raind when you see her," aid
Mr. Lippincott.
"I don't think so," I said. "I don't like managing
females, however efficient and even handsome they are."
"Thank you, MichaeI, for listening to me so patiently. I
hope you will give me the pleasure of dining with me, both
of you. Possibly next Tuesday evening? Cora van Stuyvesant
and Frank Barton will probably be in London by that time."
"And I've got to meet them, I suppose?"
"Oh yes, that will be quite inevitable." He smiled at me
and this time his smile seemed more genuine than it had
before. "You mustn't mind too much," he said. "Cora, I
expect, will be very rude to you. Frank will be merely
tactless. Reuben won't be over just at present."
I didn't know who Reuben was--another relation I
supposed.
I went across to the connecting doors and opened them.
"Come on, Ellie," I said, "the grilling is over."
She came back in the room and looked quickly from
Lippincott to myself, then she went across and kissed him.
"Dear Uncle Andrew," she said. "I can see you've been
nice to Michael."
"Well, my dear, if I weren't nice to your husband you
wouldn't have much use for me in the future, would you?
I do reserve the right to give a few words of advice now and
then. You're very young you know, both of you."
"All right," said Ellie, "we'll listen patiently."
"Now, my dear, I'd like to have a word withy0u if I may."
"My turn to be odd man out," I said, and I too went into
the bedroom.
I shut the two double doors ostentatiously but I opened
the inner one again after I got inside. I hadn't been as well
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ENDLESS NIGHT

brought up as Ellie so I felt a bit anxious to find out how
double-faced Mr. Lippincott might turn out to be. But
tually there was nothing I need have listened to. He gave
Ellie one or two wise words of advice. He said she must
realise that I might find it difficult to be a poor man married
to a rlch wife and then he went on to sound her about
making a settlement on Greta. She agreed to it eagerly and
said she'd been going to ak him that herself. He also
suggested that she should make an additional setdement on
Cora van $tuyvesant.
"There is no earthly need that you should do so," he said.
"She has been very well provided for in the matter of alimony
from several husbands. And she is as you know paid
an income, though not a very big one, from the trust fund
leit by your grandfather."
"But you think I ought to give her more still?"
"I think there is no legal or moral obligation to do so.
What I think is that you will find her far less tiresome and
shall I say catty if you do so. I should make it in the form
of an increased income, which you could revoke at any time.
If you find that she has been spreading malicious rumours
about Michael or yourself or your life together, the knowledge
that you can do that will keep her tongue free of those
more poisonous barbs that she so well knows how to plant."
"Cora has always hated me," said Ellie. "I've known
that." She added rather shyly, "You do like Mike, don't
you, Uncle Andrew?"
"I think he's an extremely attractive young man," said
Mr. Lippincott. "And I can quite see how you came to
marry him."
That, I suppose, was as good as I could expect. I wasn't
really his type and I knew it. I eased the door gently to and
in a minute or two Ellie came to fetch me.
We were both standing saying good-bye to Lippincott
when there was a knock on the door and a page boy came in
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ENDLESS NIGHT

with a telegram. Ellie took it and opened it. She gave a
little surprised cry of pleasure.
"It's Greta," she said, "she's arriving in London tonight
and she'll be coming to see us m-morrow. How lovely."
She looked at us both. "Isn't it?" she said.
She saw two sour faces and heard two polite voices saying,
one: "Yes indeed, my dear," the other one "Of course."

86


CHAPTER XI

I had been out shopping the next morning and I arrived
back at the hotel rather later than I had meant. I found
Ellie sitting in the central lounge and opposite her was a
tall blonde young woman, tn fact Greta. Both of them were
talking nineteen to the dozen.
I'm never any hand at describing people but I'll have a
shot at describing Greta. To begin with one couldn't deny
that she was, as Ellie had said, very beautiful and also, as
Mr. Lippincott had reluctantly admitted, very handsome.
The two things are not exactly the same. If you say a woman
is handsome it does not mean that actually you yourself
admire her. Mr. Lippincott, I gathered, had not admired
Greta. All the same when Greta walked across the lounge
into a hotel or in a restaurant, men's heads turned to look
at her. She was a Nordic type of blonde with pure gold-corn
coloured hair. She wore it piled high on her head in the
fashion of the time, not falling straight down on each side of
her face in the Chelsea tradition. She looked what she was,
Swedish or north German. In fact, pin on a pair of wings
and she could have gone to a fancy dress ball as a Valkyrie.
Her eyes were a bright clear blue and her contours were
admirable. Let's admit it. She was something!
][ came along to where they were sitting and joined them,
greeting them both in what I hope was a natural, friendly
manner, though I couldn't help feeling a bit awkward. I'm
not always very good at acting a part. Ellie said immediately:
"At last, Mike, this is Greta."
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ENDLESS NIGHT

I said I guessed it might be, in a rather facetious, not very
happy manner. I said,
"I'm very glad to meet you at last, Greta."
Ellie said,
"As you know very well, if it hadn't been for Greta we
would never have been able to get married."
"All the same we'd have managed it somehow," I said.
"Not if the family had come down on us like a ton of
coals. They'd have broken it up somehow. Tell me, Greta,
have they been very awful?" Ellie asked. "You haven't
written or said anything to me about that."
"I know better," said Greta, "than to write to a happy
couple when they're on their honeymoon."
"But were they very angry with you?"
"Ofcoursel What do you imagine? But I was prepared
'for that, I can assure you."
"What have they said or done?"
"Everything they could," said Greta cheerfully. "Start-lng
with the sack naturally."
"Yes, I suppose that was inevitable. Butwbut what have
you done? After all they can't refuse to give you references."
"Of course they can. And after all, from their point of
view I was placed in a position of trust and abused it shamefully."
She added, "Enjoyed abusing it too."
"But what are you doing now?"
"Oh I've got a job ready to walk into."
"In New York?"
"No. Here in London. Secretarial."
"But are you all right?"
"Darling Ellie," said Greta, "how can I not be all right
with that lovely cheque you sent me in anticipation of
what was going to happen when the balloon went up."
Her English was very good with hardly any trace o!
accent though she used a lot of colloquial terms which
sometimes didn't run quite right.
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ENDLESS NIGHT

"I've seen a bit of the world, fixed myself up in London
and bought a good many things as well."
"Mike and I have bought a lot of things too," said Ellie,
smiling at the recollection.
It was true. We'd done ourselves pretty well with our
continental shopping. It was really wonderful that we had
dollars to spend, no niggling Treasury restrictions. Brocades
and fabrics in Italy for the home. And we'd bought pictures
too, both in Italy and in Paris, paying what seemed fabulous
sums for them. A whole world had opened up to me that
I'd never dreamt would have come my way.
"You both look remarkably happy," said Greta.
"You haven't seen our home yet," said Ellie. "It's going
to be wonderful. It's going to be just like we dreamed it
would be, isn't it, Mike?"
"I have seen it," said Greta. "The first day I got back to '
England I hired a car and drove down there."
"Well?" said Ellie.
I said Well ? too.
"Well," said Greta consideringly. She shifted her head
from side to side.
Ellie looked grief-stricken, horribly taken aback. But I
wasn't taken in. I saw at once that Greta was having a bit
of fun with us. If the thought just flashed across my mind
for a moment that her kind of fun wasn't very kind, it hardly
had time to take root. Greta burst out laughing, a high mm-ical
laugh that made people turn their heads and look at us.
"You should have seen your faces," she said, "especially
yours, Ellie. I have to tease you just a little. It's a wonderful
home, lovely. That man's a genius."
"Yes," I said, "he's something out of the ordinary. Wait
till you meet him."
"I have met him," said Greta. "He was down there the
day I went. Yes, he's an extraordinary person. Rather
frightening, don't you think?"
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ENDLESS NIGHT

"Frightening?" I said, surprised, "in what way?"
"Oh I don't know. It's as though he looks through you
and--well, sees right through to the other side. That's
always disconcerting." Then she added, "He looks rather
ill."
"He is ill. Very ill," I said.
"What a shame. What's the matter with him, tuberculosis,
something like that?"
"No," I said, "I don't think it's tuberculosis. I think it's
something to do with--oh with blood."
"Oh I see. Doctors can do almost anything nowadays,
can't they, unless they kill you first while they're trying to
cure you. But don't let's think of that. Let's think of the
house. When will it be finished?"
"Quite soon, I should think, by the look of it. I'd never
imagined a house could go up so quickly," I said.
"Oh," said Greta carelessly, "that's money. Double
shifts and bonuses---all the rest of it. You don't really know
yourself, Ellie, how wonderful it is to have all the money
you have."
But I did know. I had been learning, learning a great
deal in the last few weeks. I'd stepped as a result of marriage
into an entirely different world and it wasn't the sort of
world I'd imagined it to be from the outside. So far in my
life, a lucky double had been my highest knowledge of
affluence. A whack of money coming in, and spending it
as fast as I could on the biggest blow-out I could find. Crude,
of course. The crudeness of my class. But Ellie's world was
a different world. It wasn't what I should have thought it
to be.. Just more and more super luxury. It wasn't bigger
bathrooms and larger houses and more electric light
fittings and bigger meals and faster cars. It wasn't just
spending for spending's sake and showing off to everyone in
sight. Instead, it was curiously simple. The sort of simplicity
that comes when you get beyond the point of splash90



ENDLESS NIGHT

ing for splashing's sake. You don't want three yachts or
four cars and you can't eat more than three meals a day and if you buy a really top price picture you don't want more
than perhaps one of them in a room. It's as simple as that.
Whatever you have is just the best of its kind, not so much
because it is the best, but because there is no reason if you
like or want any particular thing, why you shouldn't have
it. There is no moment when 3ou say "I'm afraid I can't
afford that one." So in a strange way it makes sometimes
for such a curious simplicity that I couldn't understand it.
We were considering a French impressionist picture, a
Czanne, I think it was. I had to learn that name carefully.
I always mixed it up with a tzigane which I gather is a
gipsy orchestra. And then as we walked along the streets of
Venice, Ellie stopped to look at some pavement artists. On
the whole they were doing some terrible pictures for tourists
which all looked the same. Portraits with great rows of
shining teeth and usually blonde hair falling down their
necks.
And then she bought quite a tiny picture, just a picture of
a little glimpse through to a canal. The man who had
painted it appraised the look of us and she bought it for 6
by English exchange. The funny thing was that I knew
quite well that Ellie had just the same longing for that 6
picture that she had for the Czanne.
It was the same way one day in Paris. She'd said to me
suddenly:
"What fun it would be--let's get a really nice crisp
French loaf of bread and have that with butter and one of
those cheeses wrapped up in leaves."
So we did and Ellie I think enjoyed it more than the meal
we'd had the night before which had come to about o
English. At first I couldn't understand it, then I began to
see. The awkward thing was that I could see now that being
married to Ellie wasn't just fun and games. You have to do
91


ENDLESS NIGHT

	your homework, you have to learn how to go into a restaur
	ant and the sort of things to order and the right tips, and when

	for some reason you gave more than usual. You have to

	memofise what you drink with certain foods. I had to do

	most of it by observation. I couldn't ask Ellie because that

	was one of the things she wouldn't have understood. She'd

	have said "But, darling Mike, you can have anything you

	like. What does it matter if waiters think you ought to have

	one particular wine with one particular thing?" It wouldn't

	have mattered to her because she was born to it but it

	mattered to me because I couldn't do just .as I liked. I

	wasn't simple enough. Clothes too. Ellie was more helpful

	there, for she could understand better. She just guided me

	to the fight places and told me to let them have their head.

	Of course I didn't look fight and sound fight yet. But

	that didn't matter much. I'd got the hang of it, enough so

	that I could pass muster with people like old Lippincott,

	and shortly, presumably, when Ellie's stepmother and

	uncles were around, but actually it wasn't going to matter

	in the future at all. When the house was finished and when

	we'd moved in, we were going to be far away from every
	body. It could be our kingdom. I looked at Greta sitting

	opposite me. I wondered what she'd really thought of our

	house. Anyway, it was what I wanted. It satisfied me

	utterly. I wanted to drive down and go through a private

	path through the trees which led down to a small cove

	which would be our own beach which nobody could come

	to on the land side. It would be a thousand times better, I

	thought, plunging into the sea there. A thousand times

	better than a lido spread along a beach with hundreds of

	bodies lying there. I didn't want all the senseless rich things.

	I wanted--there were the words again, my own particular
words--I want, I want 	I
could feel all the feeling
surging
up in me. I wanted a wonderful woman and a wonderful house
like nobody else's house and I wanted my 92


ENDLESS NIGHT


wonderful house to be full of wonderful things. Things that

belonged to me. Everything would belong to me.

"He's thinking of our house," said Ellie.

It seemed that she had twice suggested to me that we
should go now into the dining-room. I looked at her affec-tionately.

Later in the day--it was that evening--when we were

dressing to go out to dinner, Ellie said a little tentatively,
"Mike, you do--you do like Greta, don't you?"
"Of course I do," I said.

"I couldn't bear it ffyou didn't like her."

"But I do," I protested. "What makes you think I
don't?"

"I'm not quite sure. I think it's the way you hardly look
at her even when you're talking to her."

"Well, I suppose that's became--well, became I feel

Ilervom."

"Nervous of Greta?"

"Yes, she's a bit awe-inspiring, you know."

And I told Ellie how I thought Greta looked rather like a
Valkyrie.

"Not as stout as an operatic one," said Ellie and laughed.
We both laughed. I said,

"It's all very well for you because you've known her for
years. But she is just a bit--well, I mean she's very efficient
and practical and sophisticated." I struggled with a lot of
words which didn't seem to be quite the right ones. I said
suddenly, "I feel--I feel at a disadvantage with her."

"Oh Mike!" Ellie was conscience-stricken. "I know
we've got a lot of things to talk about. Old jokes and old
things that happened and all that. I suppose--yes, I
suppose it might make you feel rather shy. But you'll soon
get to be friends. She likes you. She likes you very much.
She told me so."

"Listen, Ellie, she'd probably tell you that anyway."

93


ENDLESS NIGHT

"Oh no she wouldn't. Greta's very outspoken. You
heard her. Some of the things she said today."
It was true that Greta had not minced her words during
luncheon. She had said, addressing me rather than Ellie,
"You must have thought it queer sometimes, the way I
was backing Ellie up when I'd not even seen you. But I got
so mad--so mad with the life that they were making her
lead. All tied up in a cocoon with their money, their
traditional ideas. She never had a chance to enjoy herself,
go anywhere really by herself and do what she wanted. She
wanted to rebel but she didn't know how. And so--yes, all
right, I urged her on. I suggested she should look at properties
in England. Then I said when she was twenty-one
she could buy one of her own and say good-bye to all that
New York lot."
"Greta always has wonderful ideas," said Ellie. "She
thinks of things I'd probably never have thought of myself."
What were those words Mr. Lippincott had said to me?
'She has too much influence over Ellie.' I wondered if it
was true. Queerly enough I didn't really think so. I felt
that there was a core somewhere in Ellie that Greta, for all
that she knew her so well, had never quite appreciated.
Ellie, I was sure, would always accept any ideas that
matched with the ideas she wanted to have herself. Greta
had preached rebellion to Ellie but Ellie herself wanted to
rebel, only she was not sure how to do so. But I felt that
Ellie, now that I was coming to know her better, was one of
those very simple people who have unexpected reserves. I
thought Ellie would be quite capable of taking a stand of her
own if she wished to. The point was that she wouldn't very
often wish to and I thought then how difficult everyone
was to understand. Even Ellie. Even Greta. Even perhaps
my own mother 	The
way she looked at me with fear
in
her eyes.
		94


ENDLESS NIGHT

I wondered about Mr. Lippincott. I said, as we were
peeling some outsize peaches,
"Mr. Lippincott seems to have taken our marriage very
well really. I was surprised."
"Mr. Lippincott," said Greta, "is an old fox."
"You always say so, Greta," said ERie, "but I think he's
rather a dear. Very strict and proper and all that."
"Well, go on thinking so if you like," said Greta. "Myself,
I wouldn't trust him an inch."
"Not trust him!" said ERie.
Greta shook her head. "I know. He's a pillar ofrespectability
and trustworthiness. He's everything a trustee and a
lawyer should be."
ERie laughed and said, 'Do you mean he's embezzled
my fortune? Don't be silly, Greta. There are thousands
of auditors and banks and check-ups and all that sort of
thing."
"Oh I expect he's all right really," said Greta. "All the
same, those are the people that do embezzle. The trustworthy
ones. And then everyone says afterwards 'I'd never have
believed it of Mr. A' or 'Mr. B. The last man in the world.'
Yes, that's what they say. 'The last man in the world'."
ERie said thoughtfully that her Uncle Frank, she thought
was much more likely to go in for dishonest practices. She
did not seem unduly worried or surprised by the idea.
"Oh well he looks like a crook," said Greta. "That
handicaps him to start with. All that geniality and bonhomie.
But he'll never be in a position to be a crook in a big
way."
"is he your mother's brother?" I asked. I always got
confused over ERie's relations.
"He's my father's sister's husband," said ERie. "She left
him and married someone else and died about six or seven
years ago. Uncle Frank has more or less stuck on with the
family."
95


ENDLESS NIGHT
"There are three of them," said Greta kindly and helpfully.
"Three leeches hanging round, as you might .say.
Ellie's actual uncles were killed, one in Korea and one in a
car accident, so what she's got is a much damaged stepmother,
an Uncle Frank, an amiable hanger-on in the
family home and her cousin Reuben whom she calls Uncle
but he's only a cousin and Andrew Lippincott, and Stanford
Lloyd."
"Who is Stanford Lloyd?" I asked, bewildered.
"Oh another sort of trustee, isn't he, Ellie? At any rate
he manages your investments and things like that. Which
can't really be very difficult because when you've got as
much money as Ellie has, it sort of makes more money all the time without anyone having to do much about it. Those
are the main surrounding group," Greta added, "and I have
no doubt that you will be meeting them fairly soon. They'll
be over here to have a look at you."
I groaned, and looked at Ellie. Ellie said very gently and sweetly ,
"Never mind, Mike, they'll go away again."

96


CHAPTER XII


They did come over. None of them stayed very long. Not
that time, not on a first visit. They came over to have a look
at me. I found them difficult to understand because of course
they were all American. They were types with which I was
not well acquainted. Some of them were pleasant enough.
Uncle Frank, for instance. I agreed with Greta about him.
I wouldn't have trusted him a yard. I had come across the
same type in England. He was a big man with a bit of a
paunch and pouches under his eyes that gave him a dissip-ated
look which was not far from the truth, I imagine. He
had an eye for women, I thought, and even more of an eye
for the main chance. He borrowed money from me once or
twice, quite small sums, just, as it were, something to tide
him over for a day or two. I ffought it was not so much
that he needed the money but he wanted to test me out, to
see if I lent money easily.. It was rather worrying because I
wasn't sure which was the best way to take it. Would it
have been better to refuse point blank and let him know I
was a skinflint or was it better to assume an appearance of
careless generosity, which I was very far from feeling. To
hell with Uncle Frank, I thought.

Cora, Ellie's stcpmother was the one that interested me
most. She was a woman of about forty, well turned out
with tinted hair and a rather gushing manner. She was all
sweetness to Ellie.

"You mustn't mind those letters I wrote you, Ellie," she
said. "You must admit that it came as a terrible shock your

97


ENDLESS NIGHT

marrying like that. $o secretly. But ofcourse I know it was
Greta who put you up to it, doing it that way."
"You mustn't blame Greta," said Ellie. "I didn't mean
to upset you all so much. I just thought that--well, the less
fuss----"
"Well, of course, Ellie dear, you have something there.
All the men of business were simply livid. Stanford Lloyd
and Andrew Lippincott. I suppose they thought everyone
would blame them for not looking after you better. And of
course they'd no idea what Mike would be like. They didn't
realise how charming he was going to be. I didn't myself."
She smiled across at me, a very sweet smile and one of the
falsest ones I'd ever seen! I thought to myself that if ever a
woman hated a man, it was Cora who hated me. I thought
her sweetness to Ellie was understandable enough. Andrew
Lippincott had gone back to America and had, no doubt,
given her a few words of caution. Ellie was selling some of
her property in America, since she herself had definitely
decided to live in England, but she was going to make a
large allowance to Cora so that the latter could live where
she chose. Nobody mentioned Cora's husband much. I
gathered he'd already taken himself off to some other part
of the world, and had not gone there alone. In all probability,
I gathered, another divorce was pending. There
wouldn't be much alimony out of this one. Cora's last
marriage had been to a man a good many years younger
than herself with more attractions of a physical kind than
cash.
Cora wanted that allowance. She was a woman of
extravagant tastes. No doubt old Andrew Lippincott had
hinted clearly enough that it could be discontinued any
time if F.11ie chose, or if Cora so far forgot ,herself as to
criticise Ellie's new husband too virulently.
Cousin Reuben, or Uncle Reuben did not make the
journey. He wrote instead to Ellie a pleasant, noncommittal
98


ENDLESS NIGHT

letter hoping she'd be very happy, but doubted i:t'she would
like living in England. "lfyou don't, Ellie, you come right
back to the States. Don't think you won't get a welcome
here because you. will. Certainly you will from your
Uncle Reuben."
"He sounds rather nice," I said to Ellie.
"Yes," said Ellie meditatively. She wasn't, it seemed,
quite so sure about it.
"Are you fond of any of them, Ellie?" I asked, "or
oughtn't I to ask you that?"
"Of course you can ask me anything." But she didn't
answer for a moment or two all the sne. Then she said,
with a sort offinaiity and dcclsion, "No, I don't think I am.
It seems odd, but I suppose it's because they don't really
belong to me. Only by environment, not by relationship.
They none of them arc my flesh and blood relations.
loved my father, what I remembered of him. I think he
was rather a weak man and I think my grandfather was disappolntcd
in him because he hadn't got much head for
business. He didn't want to go into the business life. He
liked going to Florida and fishing, that sort of thing. And
then later he married Cora and I never cared for Cora
much--or Cora for me, for that matter. My own mother, of
course, I don't remember. I liked Uncle Henry and Uncle
Joe. They were fun. In some ways more fun than my
father was. He, I think, was in some ways a quiet and rather
sad man. But the uncles enjoyed themselves. Uncle Joe was, I think, a bit wild, the kind that is wild just because they've
got lots of money. Anyway, he was the one who got smashed
up in the car, and the other one was killed fighting in the
war. My grandfather was a sick man by that time and it
was a terrible blow to him that all his three sons were dead.
He didn't like Cora and he didn't care much for' any of his
more distant relatives. Uncle Reuben, for instance. He said
you could never tell what Reuben was up to. That's why he
99


ENDLESS NIGHT

made arrangements to put his money in trust. A lot of it
went to museums and hospitais. He left Cora well provided
for, and his daughter's husband Uncle Frank."
"But most of it to you?"
"Yes. And I think that worried him a little bit. He did
his best to get it looked after for me."
"By Uncle Andrew and by Mr. Stanford Lloyd. A lawyer
and a baker."
"Yes. I suppose he didn't think I could look after it very
well by myself. The odd thing is that he let me come into it
at the age of twenty-one. He didn't keep it in trust till I was
twenty-five, as lots of people do. I expect that was because
I was a girl."
"That's odd," I said, "it would seem to me that it ought
to be the other way round?"
Ellie shook her head. "No," she said, "I think my
grandfather thought that young males were always wild and
hit things 'up and that blondes with evil designs got hold of
them. I think he thought it would be a good thing if they
had plenty of time to sow their wild oats. That's your
English saying, isn't it? But he said once to me, 'Ifa girl is going to have any sense at all, she'll have it at twenty-one.
It won't make any difference making her wait four years
longer. If she's going to be a fool she'll be a fool then just
as much.' He said, too," Ellie looked at me and smiled,
"that he didn't think I was a fool. He said 'You mayn't
know very much about life, but you've got good sense, Ellie.
Especially about people. I think you always will have'."
"I don't suppose he would have liked me," I said thoughtfully.
lgllie has a lot of honesty. She didn't try and reassure me
by saying anything but what was undoubtedly the truth.
"No," she said, "I think he'd have been rather horrified.
To begin with, that is. He'd have had to get reed to you."
"Poor Ellie," I said suddenly.
100


ENDLESS NIGHT

"Why do you say that?"
"I said it to you once before, do you remember?"
"Yea. You said poor LITTLE rich girl. You were quite right to0.'
"I didn't mean it the same way this time," I said. "I
didn't mean that you were poor because you were rich. I
think I meant "I hesitated. "You've too many people," I said, "at you. All round you. Too many people who want
things from you but who don't really care for you. That's
true, isn't it?"
"I think Uncle Andrew really cares for me," said Ellie, a
little doubtfully. "He's always been nice to me, sympathetic.
The others--no, you're quite right. They only want things."
"They come and cadge off you, don't they? Borrow
money off you, want favours. Want you to get them out of
jams, that sort of thing. They're at you, at you, at you!"
"I suppose it's quite natural," said Ellie calmly, "but I've
done with them all now. I'm coming to live here in England. I shan't see much of them."
She was wrong there, of course, but she hadn't grasped
that fact yet. Stanford Lloyd came over later by himself.
He brought a great many documents and papers and things
for Ellie to sign and wanted her agreement on investments.
I-Ie talked to her about investments and shares and property
that she owned, and the disposal of trust funds. It was all
Double Dutch to me. I couldn't have helped her or advised
her. I couldn't have stopped Stanford Lloyd from cheating
her, either. I hoped he wasn't, but how could anyone
ignorant like myself be sure?
There was something about Stanford Lloyd that was
almost too good to be true. He was a banker, and he looked
like a banker. He was rather a handsome man though not
young. He was very polite to me and thought dirt of me
though he tried not to show it.
101


ENDLESS NIGHT

"Well," I said when he had finally taken his departure,
"that's the last of the bunch."
"You didn't think much of any of them, did you?"
"I think your stepmother, Cora, is a double faced bitch
if I ever knew one. Sorry, Ellie, perhaps I oughtn'.t to say
that."
"Why not, if that's what you think? I expect you're not
far wrong."
"You must have been lonely, Ellie," I said.
"Yes, I was lonely. I knew girls of my own age. I went
to a fashionable school but I was never reallyJ?ee. If I made
friends with people, somehow or other they'd get me
separated, push another girl at me instead. You know?
Everything was governed by the social register. If I'd cared
enough about anybody to make a fusbut I never got
far enough. There was never anybody I red(y cared for. Not
until Greta came, and then everything was different. For the
first time someone was really fond of rat. It was wonderful."
Her face softened.
"I wish," I said, as I turned away towards the window.
"What do you wish?"
"Oh I don't know .... I wish perhaps that you weren't--weren't
quite so dependent on Greta. It's a bad thing to
be as dependent as that on anyone."
"You don't like her, Mike," said Ellie.
"I do," I protested hurriedly. "Indeed I do. But you
must realise, Ellie, that she is--well, she's quite a stranger to
me. I suppose, let's face it, I'm a bit jealous of her. Jealous
because she and youmwell, I didn't understand before--how
linked together you were."
"Don't be jealous. She's the only person who was good
to me, who cared about me--till I met you."
"But you have met me," I said, "and you've married
me." Then I said again what I'd said before. "And we're
going to live together happily ever afterwards."
102


CHAPTER XIII

I'm trying as best I can, though that isn't saying much, to
paint a picture of the people who came into our lives, that
is to say: who came into my life became, ofcourse, they were
in Ellie's life already. Our mistake was that we thought
they'd go out of ERie's life. But they didn't. They'd no
intention of doing so. However, we didn't know that then.
The English side of our life was the next thing that
hgppened. Our house was finished, we had a telegram from
Santonix. He'd asked us to keep away for about a week,
then the telegram came. It said: "Come tomorrow."
We drove down there, and we arrived at sunset. Santonix
heard the car and came out to meet us, standing in front of
the home. When I saw our home, finished, something inside
me leaped up, leaped up as though to burst out of my skin!
It was my house--and I'd got it at last I I held ERie's arm very
tight.
"Like it?" said Santonix.
"It's the tops," I said. A silly thing to say but he knew
what I meant.
"Yes," he said, "it's the best thing I've done .... It's cost you a mint of money and it's worth every penny of it.
I've exceeded my estimates all round. Come on, Mike,"
he said, "pick her up and carry her over the threshcld.
That's the thing to do when you enter into possession with
your bride I'
I flushed and then I picked up ERie--she was quite a
light weight--and carried her as Santonix had suggested,
103


ENDLESS NIGHT

over the thrcsholc. As I did so, I stumbled just a little and
I saw Santonix frown.
"There you are," said Santonix, "be good to her, Mike.
Take care of her. Don't let any harm happen to her. She
can't take care of herself. She thinks she can."
"Why should any harm happen to me?" said Ellie.
"Because it's a bad world and there are bad people in it,"
said Santonix, "and there are some bad people round you,
my girl. I know. I've seen one or two of them. Seen them
down here. They come nosing around, sniffing around like
the rats they are. Excuse my French but somebody's got
to say it."
"They won't bother us," said Ellie, "they've all gone
back to the States."
"Maybe," said $x.'itonix, "but it's only a few hours by
plane, you know."
He put his hands on her shoulders. They were very thin
now, very white looking. He looked terribly ill.
"I'd look after you myself, child, if I could," he said,
"but I can't. It won't be long now. You'll have to fend for
yourself."
"Cut out the gipsy's warning, Santonix," I said, "and
take us round the house. Every inch of it."
So we went round the house. Some of the rooms were
still empty but most of the things we'd bought, pictures and
the furniture and the curtains were there.
"We haven't got a name for it," said Ellie suddenly.
"We can't call it The Towers, that was a ridiculous name.
What was the other name for it that you told me once?" she
said to me. "Gipsy's Acre, wasn't it?"
"We won't call it that," I said, sharply. "I don't like
that name."
"It'll always be called that hereabouts," said Santonix.
"They're a lot of silly superstitious people," I said.
And then we sat down on the terrace looking at the setting
104


ENDLESS NIGHT

sun and the view, and we thought of names for the house.
It was a kind of game. We started quite seriously and then
we began to think of every silly name we possibly could.
'Journey's End', 'Heart's Delight' and names like boarding
houses. 'Seaview', 'Fairholme', 'The Pines'. Then suddenly
it grew dark and cold, and we went indoors. We didn't
draw the curtains, just closed the windows. We'd brought
down provisions with us. On the following day an expensively
acquired domestic staff was coming.
"They'll probably hate it and say it's lonely and they'll
all go away," said Ellie.
"And then you'll give them double the money to stay on,"
said Santonix.
"2eou think," said Ellle, "that everyone casa be bought?'
But she only said it laughingly.
We had brought pdtg en crotlte with us and French bread
and large red prawns. We sat round the table laughing and
eating and talking. Even Santonix looked strong and
animated, and there was a kind of wild excitement in his
eyes.
And then it happened suddenly. A stone crashed in
through the window and dropped on the table. Smashed
a wineglass too, and a sliver of glass slit Ellie's cheek. For a
moment we sat paralysed, then I sprang up, rushed to the
window, unbolted it and went out on the terrace. There
was no one to be seen. I came back into the room again.
I picked up a paper napcin and bent over Ellie, wiping
away a little trickle of blood I saw coursing down her
cheek.
"It's hurt you .... There, dear, it's nothing much. It's
just a wee cut from a sliver of glass."
My eyes met those of Santonix.
"Why did anyone do it?" said Ellie. She looked bewil.
dered.
"Boys," 1 said, "you know, young hooligans. They knew,
105


ENDLESS NIGHT

perhaps, we were settling in. I dare say you were lucky that
they only threw a stone. They might have had an air gun or
something like that."
	"But why should they do it to us? Why?"

	"I don't know," I said. "Just beastliness."

	Ellie got up suddenly. She said,

	"I'm frightened. I'm afraid."
	"We'll find out to-morrow," I said.
	"We don't know
enough about the people round here."
"Is it because we're rich and they're poor?" said Ellie.
She asked it not of me but of Santonix as though he would
know the answer to the question better than I did.
	"No," said Santonix slowly, "I don't think it's that..."

	Ellie said:
	"It's because they hate us 	Hate
Mike and hate me.
	Why? Because we're happy?"
	Again
Santonix shook his head.
"No,"
Ellie said, as though she were agreeing with him, "no,
it's something else. Something we don't know about. Gipsy's
Acre. Anyone who lives here is going to be hated. Going
to be persecuted. Perhaps they will succeed in the end
in driving us away .... "
	I
poured out a glass ofwine and gave it to her.
"Don't,
Ellie," I begged her. "Don't say such things. Drink
this. It's a nasty thing to happen, but it was only silliness,
crude horseplay."
"I wonder," said Ellie, "I wonder..." She looked hard at
me. "Somebody is trying to drive us away, Mike. To drive
us away from the house we've built, the house we love."
	"We
won't let them drive us away," I said. I added,
"I'll
take care of you. Nothing shall hurt you."
She
looked again at $antonix.
"You
should know," she said, "you've been here while the
house was building. Didn't anyone ever say anything to
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ENDLESS NIGHT

you? Come and throw stones--interfere with the building
of the house ?"
"One can imagine things," said Santonix.
"There were accidents, then?"
"There are always a few accidents in the building of a
house. Nothing serious or tragic. A man falls off a ladder,
someone drops a load on his foot, someone gets a splinter
in his thumb and it goes septic."
"Nothing more than that? Nothing that might have been meant?"
"No," said Santonix, "no. I swear to you, no I"
Ellie turned to me.
"You remember that gipsy woman, Mike. How queer
she was that day, how she warned me not to come here."
"She's just a bit crazy, a bit off her head."
"We've built on Gipsy's Acre," said Ellie. "We've done
what she told us not to do." Then she stamped her foot. "I won't let them drive me away. I won't let anyone drive me
away I"
"Nobody shall drive us away," I said. "We're going to
be happy here."
We said it like a challenge to fate.

107


CHAPTER XIV

That's how our life began at Gipsy's Acre. We didn't find
another name for the house. That first evening fixed
Gipsy's Acre in our heads.
"We'll call it Gipsy's Acre," said Ellie, "just to show A
kind of challenge, don't you think? It's our Acre, and to hell
with the gipsy's warning."
She was her old gay self again the next day and soon we
were busy getting ourselves settled in, and getting also to
know the neighbourhood and the neighbours. Ellie and I
walked down to the cottage where the gipsy woman lived. I
felt it would be a good thing if we found her digging in her
garden. The only time Ellie had seen her before was when
she told our fortunes. If EHie saw she was just an ordinary
old woman--digging up potatoes--but we didn't see her.
The cottage was shut up. I asked if she were dead but the
neighbour I asked shook her head.
"She must have gone away," she said. "She goes away
from time to time, you know. She's a gipsy really. That's
why she can't stay in houses. She wanders away and comes
back again." She tapped her forehead. "Not quite right up
there."
Presently she said, trying to mask curiosity, "You've
come from the new house up there, haven't you, the one on
the top of the hill, that's just been built."
"That's right," I said, "we moved in last night."
"Wonderful looking place it is," she said. "We've all
been up to look at it while it was building. Makes a difference,
doesn't it, seeing a house like that where all those
108


ENDLESS NIGHT

gloomy trees used to be." She said to Ellie rather shyly,
"You're an American lady, aren't you, so we heard?"
"Yes," said Ellie, "I'm American---or I was, but now I'm
married to an Englishman so I'm an Englishwoman."
"And you've come here to settle down and live, haven't
you?"
We said we had.
:'Well, I hope you'll like it, I'm sure.'" She sounded
doubtful.
"Why shouldn't we?"
"Oh well, it's lonely up there, you know. People don't
always like living in a lonely place among a lot of trees."
"Gipsy's Acre," said Ellie.
"Ah, you know the local name, do you? But the house
that was there before was called The Towers. I don't know
why. It hadn't got any towers, at least not in my time."
"I think The Towers is a silly name," said Ellie. "I think
we'll go on calling it Gipsy's Acre."
"We'll have to tell the post office if so," I said, "or we
shan't get any letters."
"No, I suppose we shan't."
"Though when I come to think of it," I said, "would that
matter, Ellie? Wouldn't it be much nicer if we didn't get any
letters ?"
"It might cause a lot of complications," said Ellie. "We shouldn't even get our bills."
"That would be a splendid idea," I said.
"No, it wouldn't," said Ellie. "Bailiffs would come in and
camp there. Anyway," she said, "I wouldn't like not to get
any letters. I'd want to hear from Greta."
"Never mind Greta," I said. "Let's go on exploring."
So we explored Kingston Bishop. It was a nice village,
nice people in the shops. There was nothing sinister about
the place. Our domestic help didn't take to it much, but we
soon arranged that hired cars should take them into the
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ENDLESS NIGHT

	nearegt seaside town or into Market Chadwell on their days

	out. They were not enthusiastic about the location of the

	house, but it was not superstition that worded them. I

	pointed out to E!lle nobody COuld say the house was haunted

	because it had been just built.

	"No," Ellie agreed, "it's not the house. There's nothing
	wrong with the house. It's outside. It's that road where it

	curves round through the trees and that bit of rather gloomy

	wood where that woman stood and made me jump so that

	day."

	"Well, next year," I said, "we might cut down those trees

	and plant a lot of rhododendrons or something like that."

	We went on making plans.
	Greta came down and stayed with uss for a week-end. She

	was enthuusiastic about the house, and congratulated us on

	all our furnishings and pictures and colour schemes. She

	was very tactful. After the week-end she said she wouldn't

	disturb the honeymooners any longer, and anyway she'd

	got to get back to her job.

	ERie enjoyed showing her the house. I could see how fond

	ERie was of her. I. tried to behave very scusibly and pleas
	antly but I was glad 'when Greta went back to London,

	because her staying there had been a strain on me.

	When we'd been there a couple of weeks we were accepted

	locally and made the acquaintance of God. He came one

	afternoon to call upon uss. ERie and I were arguing about

	where we'd have a flower border when our correct, to me

	slightly phoney looking, manservant came out from the house

	to announce that Major Phillpot was in the drawing-room.
	It was then that I said in a whisper to ERie:
	"God?'
	IV. Hie asked me what I meant.

	"Well, the locals treat him like that," I said.
8o we went in and there was Major Phillpot. He was
just a pleasant, nondescript man of close on .4xty. He was
wearing country clothes, rather shabby, he had grey hair
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ENDLESS NIGHT

going a little thin on top and a short bristly moustache. He
apologised for his wife not being able to come and call on
us. She was something of an invalid, he said. He sat down
and chatted with us. Nothing he said was remarkable or
particularly interesting. He had the knack of making people
feel at their ease. He touched quite lightly on a variety of
subjects. He didn't ask any direct questions, but he soon
got it into his head where our particular interests lay. He
talked to me about racing and to Ellie about making a
garden and what things did well in this particular soil. He
had been to the States once or twice. He found out that
though Ellie didn't care much for race meetings, she was fond of riding. He told her that if she was going to keep
horses she could go up a particular track through the pine
woods and she would come out on a good stretch of moor
where she could have a gallop. Then we came to the subject
of our house and of the stories about Gipsy's Acre.
"I see you know the local name," he said, "and all the
local superstitious, too, I expect."
"Gipsies' warnings in profusion," I said. "Far too many
ofthem. Mostly old Mrs. Lee."
"Oh dear," said Phillpot. "Poor old Esther: she's been
a nuisance, has she?"
"Is she a bit dotty?" I asked.
"Not so much as she likes to make out. I feel more or less
responsible for her. I settled her .in that cottage," he said,
"not that she's grateful for it. I'm fond of the old thing
though she can be a nuisance sometimes."
"Fortune telling?"
"No, not particularly. Why, has she told your fortune?"
"I don't know if you can call it a fortune," said Ellic.
"It was more a warning to m agaiust coming here."
"That seems rather odd to me." Major Phillpot's rather
bristly eyebrows rose. "She's usually got a honeyed
tongue in fortunes. Handsome stranger, marriage bells, six
lll


ENDLESS NIGHT

children and a heap of good fortune and money in your
hand, pretty lady." He imitated rather unexpectedly the
gipsy whine of her voice. "The gipsies used to camp here a
lot when I was a boy," he said. "I suppose I got fond of
them then, though they were a thieving lot, of course. But
I've always been attracted to them. As long as you don't
expect them to be law-abiding, they're all right. Many a tin
mug of gipsy stew I've had as a schoolboy. We felt the family
owed Mrs. Lee something, she saved the life of a brother of
mine when he was a child. Fished him out of a pond when
he'd gone through the ice."
I made a clumsy gesture and knocked a glass ashtray off
a table. It smashed into fragments.
I picked up the pieces and Major Phillpot helped me.
"I expect Mrs. Lee's quite harmless really," said Ellie.
"I was very foolish to have been so scared."
"Scared, were you?" His eyebrows rose again. "It was
as bad as that, was it?"
"I don't wonder she was afraid," I said quickly. "It was
almost more like a threat than a warning."
"A threat!" He sounded incredulous.
"Well, it sounded that way to me. And then the first night
we moved in here something else happened."
I told him about the stone crashing through the window. "I'm afraid there are a good many young hooligans
about nowadays," he said, "though we haven't got many of
them round here--not nearly as bad as some places. Still,
it happens, I'm sorry to say." He looked at Ellie. "I'm
very sorry you were frightened. It was a beastly thing to
happen, your first night moving in."
"Oh, I've got over it now," said Ellie. "It wasn't only
that, it was--it was something else that happened not long
afterwards."
I told him about that too. We had come down one morn112



ENDLESS NIGHT

ing and we had found a dead bird skewered through with a
knife and a small piece of paper with it which said in an
illiterate scrawl "Get out of here if you know what's good for
you."
Phillpot looked really angry then. He said, "You should
have reported that to the police."
"We didn't want to," I said. "After all, that would only
have put whoever it is even more against us."
"Well, that kind of thing has got to be stopped," said
Phillpot. Suddenly he became the magistrate. "Otherwise,
you know, people will go on with the thing. Think it's
funny, I suppose. Only---only this sounds a bit more than
fun. Nasty--malicious-- It's not," he said, rather as
though he was talking to himself, "it's not as though anyone
round here could have a grudge against you, a grudge
against either of you personally, I mean."
"No," I said, "it couldn't be that because we're both
strangers here."
"I'll look into it," Phillpot said.
He got up to go, looking round him as he did.
"You know," he said, "I like this house of yours. I didn't
think I should. I'm a bit of an old square, you know, what
used to be called an old fogey. I like old houses and old
buildings. I don't like all these matchbox factories that are
going up all over the country. Big boxes. Like beehives. I
like buildings with some ornament on them, some grace.
But I like this house. It's plain and very modern, I suppose,
but it's got shape and light. And when you look out from
it you see things--well, in a different way from the way
you've seen them before. It's interesting. Very interesting.
Who designed it? An English architect or a foreigner?"
I told him about Santonix.
"Mm," he said, "I think I read about him somewhere.
Would it have been in House and Garden?
I said he was fairly well known.
113


ENDLESS NIGHT

"I'd like to meet him sometime, though I don't suppose
I'd know what to say to him. I'm not artistic."
Then he asked us to settle a day to come and have lunch
with him and his wife.
	"You can see how you like my house," he said.
	"It's an old house, I suppose?" I said.
"Built x7o. Nice period. The original house was
Elizabethan. That was burnt down about x 700 and a new
one built on the same spot."
"You've always lived here then?" I said. I didn't mean
him personally, of course, but he understood.
"Yes. We've been here fince Elizabethan times. Sometimes
prosperous, sometimes down and out, selling land
when things have gone badly, buying it back when things
went well. I'll be glad to show it to you both," he dd, and
looking at Ellie he said with a smile, "Americans like old
houses, I know. :You're the one who probably won't think
much of it," he said to me.
"I won't pretend I know much about old things," I said.
He stumped off then. In his car there was a spaniel
waiting for him. It was a battered old car with the paint
rubbed off, but I was getting my values by now. I knew that
in this part of the world he was still God all right, and he'd
set the seal of his approval on us. I could see that. He liked
Ellie. I was inclined to think that he'd liked me, too,
although I'd noticed the appraising glances which he shot
over me from time to time, as though he was making a
quick snap judgment on something he hadn't come across
before.
Ellie was putting splinters of glass carefully in the wastepaper
basket when I came back into the drawing-room.
	"I'm sorry it's broken," she said regretfully. "I liked it.'

	"We can get another like it," I said. "It's modern."
	"I know! What startled you, Mike?"

	I considered for a moment.

		114


ENDLESS NIGHT


"Something Phillpot said. It reminded me of something
that happened when I was a kid. A pal of mine at school
and I played truant and went out skating on a local pond.
Ice wouldn't bear us, silly little asses that we were. He went

through and was drowned before anyone could get him out."
"How horrible."

"Yes. I'd forgotten all about it until Phillpot mentioned
that about his own brother."

"I like him, Mike, don't you?"

"Yes, very much. I wonder what his wife is like?"

We went to lunch with the Phillpots early the following
week. It was a white Georgian house, rather beautiful in its
lines, though not particularly exciting. Inside, it was
shabby but comfortable. There were pictures of what I
took to be ancestors on the walls of the long dining-room.
Most of them were pretty bad, I thought, though they might
have looked better if they had been cleaned. There was one of
a fair-haired girl in pink satin that I rather took to. Major
?hillpot smiled and said:

"You've picked one of our best. It's a Gainsborough,
and a good one, though the subject of it caused a bit of
trouble in her time. Strongly suspected of having poisoned
her husband. May have been prejudice, because she was a
foreigner. Gervase Phillpot picked her up abroad some-where."

A few other neighbours had been invited to meet us.
Dr. Shaw, an elderly man with a kindly but tired manner.
He had to rush away before we had finished our meal. There
was the Vicar who was young and earnest, and a middle-aged
woman with a bullying voice who bred corgis. And
there was a tall handsome dark girl called Claudia Hardcastle
who seemed to live for horses, though hampered by having
an allergy which gave her violent hay fever.

She and Ellie got on together rather well. Ellie adored
riding and she too was troubled by an allergy.

115


ENDLESS NIGHT

"In the States it's mostly ragwort gives it to me," she
said--"but horses too, sometimes. It. doesn't trouble me
much nowadays because they have such wonderful things
that doctors can give you for different kinds of allergies.
I'll give you some of my capsules. They're bright orange.
And if you remember to take one before you start out you
don't as much as sneeze once."
Claudia Hardcastle said that would be wonderful.
"Camels do it to me worse than horses," she said. "I
was in Egypt last year--and the tears just streamed down
my face all the way round the Pyramids."
Ellie said some people got it with cats.
"And pillows." They went on talking about allergies.
I sat next to Mrs. Phillpot who was tall and willowy and
talked exclusively about her health in the intervals of
eating a hearty meal. She gave me a full account of all her
various ailments and of how puzzled many eminent members
of the medical profession had been by her case. Occasionally
she made a social diversion and asked me what I did. I parried that one, and she made half-hearted efforts to find
out whom I knew. I could have answered truthfully "Nobody",
but I thought it would be well to refrain--especially
as she wasn't a real snob and didn't really want to know.
Mrs. Corgi, whose proper name I hadn't caught, was much
more thorough in her queries but I diverted her to the
general iniquity and ignorance of vets! It was all quite
pleasant and peaceful, if rather dull.
Later, as we were making a rather desultory tour of the
garden, Claudia Hardcastle joined me.
She said, rather abrupfiy, "I've heard about you--from
my brother."
I looked surprised. I couldn't imagine it to be possible
that I knew a brother of Claudia Hardcastle's.
"Are you sure?" I said.
She seemed amused.
ll6


ENDLESS NIGHT


"As a matter of fact, he built your house."

"Do you mean $antonix is your brother?"

"Half brother. I don't know him very well. We rarely
meet."

"He's wonderful," I said.

"Some people think so, I know."

"Don't you?"

"I'm never sure. There are two sides to him. At one
time he was going right down the hill .... People wouldn't
have anything to do with him. And then--he seemed to
change. He began to succeed in his profession in the most
extraordinary way. It was as though he was--" she paused
for a word--"dedicated."

"I think he is--just that."

Then I asked her if she had seen our house?

"No--not since it was finished."

I told her she must come and see it.

"I shan't like it, I warn you. I don't like modern houses.
Queen Anne is my favourite period."

She said she was going to put Ellie up for the golf club.
And they were going to ride together. Ellie was going to
buy a horse, perhaps more than one. She aaad Ellie seemed
to have made friends.

When Phillpot was showing me his stables he said a word
or two about Claudia.

"Good rider to hounds," he said. "Pity she's mucked up
her life."

"Has she?"

"Married a rich man, years older than herself. Au
American. Name of Lloyd. It didn't take. Came apart
almost at once. She went back to her own name. Don't
think she'll ever marry again. She's anti man. Pity."

When we were driving home, Ellie said: "Dull--but
nice. Nice people. We're going to be very happy here,
aren't we, Mike?"

117


ENDLESS NIGHT

I said: "Yes, we are." And took my hand from the
teeHng wheel and laid it over hers.
When we got back, I dropped Ellie at the house, and
put away the car in the garage.
As I walked back to the house, I heard the faint twanging
of Ellle's guitar. She had a rather beautiful old Spanish
guitar that must have been worth a lot of money. She used
to sing to it in a soft low crooning voice. Very pleasant to
hear. I didn't know what most of the songs were. American
spirituals partly, I think, and some old IHsh and Scottish
ballads--sweet and rather sad. They weren't Pop music or
anything of that kind. Perhaps they were folk songs.
I went round by the terrace and paused by the window
before going in.
Ellie was singing one of my favourites. I don't know
what it was called. She was crooning the words softly to
herself, bending her head down over the guitar and gently
plucking the strings. It had a sweet-sad haunting little
tulle
Man was made for Joy and Woe
And when this we Hghtly know
Thro' the World we safely go...

Every Night and every Morn
Some to Misery are born.
Every Morn and every Night
Some are born to Sweet Delight,
Some are born to Sweet Delight,
Some are born to Endless Night...

She looked up and saw me.
"Why are you looking at me like that, Mike?"
"Like what?"
"You're looking at me as though you loved me..."
"Of corn, se I love you. How else should I be looking at you?"
115


ENDLESS NIGHT

"But what were you thinking just then?"
I answered slowly and truthfully: "I was thinking of you as I saw you first--standing by a dark fir tree." Yes,
I'd been remembering that first moment of seeing Ellie, the
surprise of it and the excitement ....
Ellie smiled at me and sang softly

Every Morn and every Night
Some are born to Sweet Delight,
Some are born to Sweet Delight,
Some are born to Endless Night.

One doesn't recognise in one's life the really important
moments--not until it's too late.
That day when we'd been to lunch with the Phillpots and
came back so happily to our home was such a moment. But
I didn't know it then--not until afterwards.
I said: "Sing the song about the Fly." And she changed
to a gay little dance tune and sang:

Little Fly
Thy Summer's play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance
And drink, and sing
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing
ll9


ENDLESS NIGHT


If thought is life

And strength and breath

And the want

Of thought is death;


Then am I
A happy fly
If I live

Or if I die.


Oh, Ellie--Ellie...


120


CHAPTER XV

It's astonishing in this world how things don't turn out at all
the way you expect them to!
We'd moved into our house and were living there and
we'd got away from everyone just the way I'd meant and
planned. Only of course we hadn't got away from everyone.
Things crowded back upon us across the ocean and in other
ways.
First of all there was Ellie's blasted stepmother. She sent
letters and cables and asked Ellie to go and see estate
agents. She'd been so fascinated, she said, by our house
that she really must have a house of her own in England.
She said she'd love to spend a couple of months every year in
England. And hard on her last cable she arrived and had to
be taken round the neighbourhood with lots of orders to
view. In the end she more or less settled on a house. A
house about fifteen miles away from us. We didn't want her
there, we hated the idea--but we couldn't tell her so. Or
rather, what I really mean is even if we had told her so, it
wouldn't have stopped her taking it if she'd wanted it. We
couldn't order her not to come there. It was the last thing
Ellie wanted. I knew that. However, while she was still
awaiting a surveyor's report, some cables arrived.
Uncle Frank, it seemed, had got himself into a jam of
some kind. Something crooked and fraudulent, I gathered,
which would mean a big sum of money to get him out. More
cables passed to and fro between Mr. Lippincott and Ellie.
And then there turned out to be some trouble between

121


ENDLESS NIGHT

Stanford Lloyd and Lippincott. There was a row about
some of Ellie's investments. I had felt, in my ignorance and
credulity, that people who were in America were a long way
away. I'd never realised that Ellie's relations and business
connections thought nothing of taking a plane over to
England for twenty-four hours and then flying back again.
First Stanford Lloyd flew over and back again. Then
Andrew Lippincott flew over.
Ellie had to go up to London and meet them. I hadn't
got the hang of these financial things. I think everybody
was being fairly careful in what they said. But it was something
to do with the settling up of the trusts on Ellie, and a
kind of sinister suggestion that either Mr. Lippincott had
delayed the matter or it was Stanford Lloyd who was
holding up the accounting.
In a lull between these worries Ellie and I discovered our
Folly. We hadn't really explored all our property yet (only
the part just round the house). We used to follow up tracks
through the woods and see where they led. One day we
followed a sort of path that had been so overgrown that
you couldn't really see where it was at first. But we tracked
it out and in the end it came out at what Ellie said was a
Folly. A sort of little white ridiculous temple looking place.
It was in fairly good condition so we cleared it up and had
it painted and we put a table, and a few chairs in it and a
divan and a corner cupboard in which we put china and
glasses, and some bottles. It was fun really. Ellie said we'd
have the path cleared and made easier to climb and I said
no, it would be more fun if no one knew where it was except
us. Ellie thought that was a romantic idea.
"We certainly won't let Cora know," I said and Ellie
agreed.
It was when we were coming down from there, not the
first time but later, after Cora had gone away and we were
hoping to be peaceful again, that Ellie, who was skipping
122


ENDLESS NIGHT

along ahead of me, suddenly tripped over the root of a tree
and fell and sprained her ankle.
Dr. Shaw came and said she'd taken a nasty sprain but
that she'd be able to get about again all right in perhaps a
week. Ellie sent for Greta then. I couldn't object. There
was no one really to look after her properly, no woman I
mean. The servants we had were pretty useless and anyway
Ellie wanted Greta. So Greta came.
She came and she was a great blessing of course to Ellie.
And to me as far as that went. She arranged things and kept
the household working properly. Our servants gave notice
about now. They said it was too lonely--but really I think
Cora had upset them. Greta put in advertisements and got
another couple almost at once. She looked after Ellie's
ankle, amused her, fetched things for her that she knew she
liked, the kind of books and fruit and things like that--things
I knew nothing about. And they seemed frightfully
happy together. Ellie was certainly delighted to see Greta.
And somehow or other Greta just didn't go away again ....
She stopped on. Ellie said to me,
"You don't mind, do you, if Greta stays on for a bit?"
I said "Oh no. No, of course not."
"It's such a comfort having her," said Ellie. "You see,
there are so many sort offema/e things we can do together.
One's awfully lonely without another woman about."
Every day I noticed Greta was taking a bit more upon
herself, giving orders, queening it over things. I pretended
I liked having Greta there, but one day when Ellie was lying
with her foot up inside the drawing-room and Greta and I
were out on the terrace, we suddenly got into a row together. I can't remember the exact words that started it. Something
that Greta said, it annoyed me and I answered sharply back.
And then we went on, hammer and tongs. Our voices rose.
She let me have it, saying all the vicious, unkind things
she could think of, and I pretty well gave her as good as I
123


ENDLESS NIGHT


was getting. Told her she was a bossy, interfering female,
that she'd far too much influence over Ellie, that I wasn't
going to stand having Ellie bossed about the whole time.
We shouted at each other and then suddenly Ellie came
hobbling out on the terrace looking from one to the other
of us, and I said,

"Darling, I'm sorry. I'm terribly sorry."

I went back into the house and settled Ellie on the sofa
again. She said,

"I didn't realise. I didn't realise a bit that you--that you
really hated having Greta here."

I soothed her and calmed her and said she mustn't take
any notice, that I just lost my temper, that I was rather
quarrelsome sometimes. I said all that was the matter was
that I thought Greta was just a bit bossy. Perhaps that was
natural enough because she'd been used to being so. And in
the end I said I really liked Greta very much, it was just that
I'd lost my temper because I'd been upset and worried. So
it ended that I practically begged Greta to stay on.

It was quite a scene we'd had. I think quite a good many
other people in the house had heard it as well. Our new
manservant and his wife certainly did. When I get angry
I do shout. I dare say I really overdid it a bit. I'm like that.

Greta seemed to make a point of worrying a great deal

about Ellie's health, saying she oughtn't to do this, or that.
"She isn't really very strong, you know," she said to me.

"There's nothing wrong with Ellie," I said, "she's always
perfectly well."

"No, she isn't, Mike. She's delicate."

When Dr. Shaw next came to have a look at Ellie's ankle
and to tell her, by the way, that it was quite all right again,
just bind it up if she was going to walk over rough ground,
I said to him, I suppose in rather the foolish way that men
do,

"She isn't delicate or anything, is she, Dr. Shaw?"

124


ENDLESS NIGHT

"Who says she's delicate?" Dr. Shaw was the kind of
practitioner that is fairly rare nowadays and was, indeed,
known locally as "Leave it to Nature-Shaw."
"Nothing wrong with her as far as I can see," he said.
"Anyone can sprain an ankle."
"r didn't mean her ankle. I wondered if she had a weak
heart or anything like that."
He looked at me through the top of his spectacles. "Don't
start imagining things, young man. What put it into your
head? You're not the type that worries usually about
women's ailments?"
"It was only what Miss Andersen said."
"Ah. Miss Andersen. What does she know about it?
Not medically qualified, is she?"
"Oh no," I said.
"Your wife's a woman of great wealth," he said, "according
to local gossip anyway. Of course some people just imagine
all Americans are rich."
"She is wealthy," I said.
"Well, you must remember this. Rich women get the
worst of it in many ways. Some doctor or other is always
giving them powders and pills, stimulants or pep pills, or
tranquillisers, things that on the whole they'd be better
without. Now the village women are much healthier because
nobody worries about their health in the same way."
"She does take some capsules or something," I said.
"I'll give her a check-up if you like. Might as Well find
out what muck she's been given. I can tell you, before now
I've said to people 'chuck the whole lot in the wastepaper
basket'."
He spoke to Greta before he left. He said,
"Mr. Rogers asked me to give Mrs Rogers a general.
check-up. I can't find anything much wrong with her. I
think more exercise in the open air might do her good. What
does she take in the way of medicines?'
125


ENDLESS NIGHT

"She has some tablets that she takes when she's tired, and
some that she takes for sleeping if she wants them."
She and Dr. Shaw went and had a look at Ellie's prescriptions.
Ellie was smiling a little.
"I don't take all these things, Dr. Shaw," she said.
"Only the allergy capsules."
Shaw took a look at the capsules, read the prescription
and said there was no harm in that, and passed on to a prescription
for sleeping pills.
"Any trouble with sleeping?"
"Not living in the country. I don't think I've taken a
single sleeping pill since I've been here."
"Well, that's a good thing." He patted her on the
shoulder. "There's nothing wrong with you, my dear.
Inclined to worry a bit sometimes, I should say. 3aat's all.
These capsules are mild enough. Lot of people take them
nowadays and they don't do them any harm. Go on with
them but leave the sleeping pills alone."
"I don't know why I worried," I said to Ellie apologetically.
"I suppose it was Greta."
"Oh," said Ellie and laughed, "Greta fusses about me.
She never takes any remedies herself." She said, "We'll
have a turn-out, Mike, and throw most of these things
away."
EIlie was getting on very friendly terms with most of our
neighbours now. Claudia Hardcastle came over quite often
and she and Ellie went riding together occasionally. I
didn't ride, I'd dealt with cars and mechanical things all
my life. I didn't know the first thing about a horse in spite
of mucking out stables in Ireland for a week or two once,
but I thought to myself that some time or other when we
were in London I'd go to a posh riding stable and learn how
to ride properly. I didn't want to start down here. People
would laugh at me very likely. I thought riding was per=
haps good for Ellie. She seemed to enjoy it.
126


ENDLESS NIGHT

Greta encouraged her to ride, although Greta herself
also knew nothing about horses.
Ellie and Claudia went together to a sale and on Claudia's
advice Ellie bought herself a horse, a chestnut called
Conquer. I urged Ellie to be careful when she went out
riding by herself but she laughed at me.
"I've ridden since I was three years old," she said.
So she usually went for a ride about two or three times a
week. Greta used to drive the car and go into Market Chad-well
to do the shopping.
One day Greta said at lunchtime: "You and your
gipsies! There was a terrible looking old woman this
morning. She stood in the middle of the road. I might have
run over her. Just stood smack in front of the car. I had to
pull up. Coming up the hill too."
"Why, what did she want?"
Ellie was listening to us both but she didn't say anything.
I thought, though, that she looked rather worried.
"Damn cheek, she threatened me," said Greta.
"Threatened you?" I said sharply.
"Well, she told me to get out ofhere. She said: 'This is
gipsy land here. Go back. Go back the lot of you. Go back
to where you came from if you wish to be safe.' And she
lifted up her fist and shook it at me. She said: 'If I curse
you,' she said, 'there'll be no good luck for you ever again.
Buying our land and raising houses on our land. We don't
want houses where tent dwellers should be.'"
Greta said a lot more. Ellie said to me afterwards,
frowning a little,
"It all sounded most improbable, didn't you think so,
Mike?"
"I think Greta was exaggerating a bit," I said.
"It didn't sound right somehow," said Ellie. "I wonder
if Greta was making some of it up."
I considered. "Why would she want to make things up?"
127


ENDLESS NIGHT

Then I asked sharply, "Tou haven't seen our Esther lately,
have you? Not when you are out riding?"
"The gipsy woman? No."
"You don't sound quite sure, Ellie," I said.
"I think I've caught glimpses of her," said Ellie. "You
know, standing among the trees peering out but never near
enough for me to be sure."
But Ellie came back from a ride one day, white and shaking.
The old woman had come out from in between the trees.
Ellie had reined up and stopped to speak to her. She said the
old woman was shaking her fist and muttering under her
breath. Ellie said: "This time I was angry. I said to her:
"'What do you want here? This land doesn't belong to
you. It's our land and our house.'"
The old woman had said then,
"It'll never be your land and it'll never belong to you. I
warned you once and I've warned you twice. I shan't
warn you again. It won't be long now--I can tell you that.
It's death I see. There behind your left shoulder. It's death
standing by you and it's Death will have you. That horse
you're riding has got one white foot. Don't you know that
it's bad luck to ride a horse with one white foot? It's death
I see and the grand house you've built falling in ruins?
"This has got to be stopped," I said angrily.
Ellie didn't laugh it off this time. Both she and Oreta
looked upset. I went straight down to the village. I went
first to Mrs. Lee's cottage. I hesitated for a moment but there
was no light there and I went on to the police station. I
knew the Sergeant in Charge, Sergeant Keene, a square,
sensible man. He listened to me, then he said:
"I'm sorry you've had this trouble. She's a very old
woman and she may be getting tiresome. We've never had
much real trouble with her up to now. I'll speak to her and
tell her to lay off."
"If you would," I said.
128


ENDLESS NIGHT

	lie hesitated a minute and then said:
"I don't like to suggest things--but as far as you know, Mr.
Rogers, is there anyone around here who might--perhaps
for some trivial cause--have it in for you or your wife?"
"I should think it most unlikely. Why?"
	"Old Mrs. Lee has been flush of money latelym! don't
know where it's coming from
	"
	"What are you suggesting?"
"It could be someone is paying her--someone who wants
you out of here. There was an incident--a good many
years ago. She took money from someone in the village--to
frighten a neighbour away. Doing this same sort of stuff--threats--warnings--evil
eye business-- Village people are
superstitious. You'd be surprised at the number of villages
in England that have got their private witch, so to speak.
She got a warning then and so far as I know she's never tried
it on since--but it could be like that. She's fond of money--they'll
do a lot for money "
But I couldn't accept that idea. I pointed out to Keene
that we were complete strangers here. "We've not had time
to make enemies," I said.
I walked back to the house worried and perplexed. As
I turned the corner of the terrace, I heard the faint sound
of Ellie's guitar, and a tall figure, who had been standing by
the window looking in, wheeled round and came towards
me. For a moment I thought it was our gipsy, then I
relaxed as I recognised Santonix.
"Oh," I said with a slight gasp, "it's you. Where have
you sprung from? We've not heard from you for ages."
He didn't answer me directly. He just caught my arm
and drew me away from the window.
"So she's here!" he said. "I'm not surprised. I thought
she'd come sooner or later. Why did you let her? She's
dangerous. You ought to know that."
	"You mean Ellie?"
129


ENDLESS NIGHT

"No, no, not Ellie. The other one! What's her name?
Greta."
I stared at him.
"Do you know what Greta's like or don't you? She's come, hasn't she? Taken possession! You won't get rid of
her now. She's come to stag,."
"Ellie sprained her ankle," I said, "Greta came to look
after her. She's--I suppose she's going soon."
"You don't know anything of the kind. She always
meant to come. I knew that. I took her measure when she
came down while the house was building."
"Ellie seems to want her," I muttered.
"Oh yes, she's been with Ellie some time, hasn't she?
She knows how to manage Ellie."
That was what Lippincott had said. I'd seen for myself
lately how true it was.
"Do you want her here, Mike?"
"I can't throw her out of the house," I said irritably.
"She's Ellie's old friend. Her best friend. What the hell
can I do about it?"
"No," said Santonix, "I suppose you can't do anything, Cai1 yOU."
He looked at me. It was a very strange glance. Santonix
was a strange man. You never knew what his words really
meant.
"Do you know where you're going, Mike?" he said.
"Have you any idea? Sometimes I don't think you know
anything at all."
"Of course I know," I said. "I'm doing what I want to.
I'm going where I wanted."
"Are you? I wonder. I wonder if you really know what
you want yourself. I'm afraid for you with Greta. She's
stronger than you are, you know."
"I don't see how you make that out. It in't a question
of strength."
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ENDLESS NIGHT

"Isn't it? I think it is. She's the strong kind, the kind
that always gets her way. You didn't mean to have her here.
That's what you said. But here she is, and I've been watch-Lug
them. She and Ellie sitting together, at home together
chattering and settled in. What are.you Mike? The outsider?
Or aren't you an outsider?"
"You're crazy, the things you say. What do you mean--I'm
an outsider? I'm Ellie's husband, aren't I?"
"Are you Ellie's husband or is Ellie.your wife?"
"You're daft," I said. "What's the difference?"
He sighed. Suddenly his shoulders sagged as though
vigour went out of him.
"I can't reach you," said Santonix. "I can't make you
hear me. I can't make you understand. Sometimes I think
you do understand, sometimes I think you don't know anything at all about yourself or anyone else."
"Look here," I said, "I'll take so much from you, Santonix.
You're a wonderful architect--but "
His face changed in the queer way it had.
"Yes," he said, "I'm a good architect. This house is the
best thing I have done. I'm as near as possible satisfied with
it. You wanted a house like this. And Ellie wanted a house
like this, too, to live in with you. She's got it and you've
got it. Send that other woman away, Mike, before it's too
late."
"How can I upset Ellie?."
"That woman's got you where she wants you," said
Santonix.
"Look here," I said, "I don't like Greta. She ets on my
nerves. The other day I even had a frightful row with her.
But none of it's as simple as you think."
"No, it won't be simple with her."
"Whoever called this place Gipsy's Acre and said it had
a curse on it may have had something," I said anily.
*'We've It gipsies who jump out from behind trees and
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ENDLESS NIGHT

shake fists at us and warn us that if we don't get out of here,
some awful fate will happen to us. This place that ought to b
good and beautiful."
They were queer words to say, those last ones. I said
them as though it was somebody else saying them.
"Yes, it should be like that," said Santonix. "It should be.
But it can't be, can it, if there is something evil possessing
it?"
"You don't believe, surely, in "
"There are many queer things I believe .... I know
something about evil. Don't you realise, haven't you often
felt, that I am partly evil myself?. Always have been. That's
why I know. I know when it's near me, although I don't
always know exactly where it is .... I want the house I built
purged of evil. You understand that?" HIS tone was menacing.
"You understand that? It matters to me."
Then his whole manner changed.
"Come on," he said, "don't let's talk a lot of nonsense.
Let's come in and see Ellie."
So we went in through the window and Ellie greeted
Santonix with enormous pleasure.
Santonix showed all his normal manner that evening.
There were no more histrionics, he was his own self, charm-Lug,
light-hearted. He talked mostly to Greta, giving her as
it were the especial benefit of his charm. And he had a lot of
charm. Anyone would have sworn that he was impressed by
her, that he liked her, that he was anxious to please her. It
made me feel that Santonix was really a very dangerous
man, there was a great deal more to him than I had ever
glimpsed.
Greta always responded to admiration. She showed
herself at her best. She could on occasion dim her beauty
or else reveal it and to-night she looked as beautiful as I'd
ever seen her. Smiling at Santonix, listening to him as
though spellbound. I wondered what lay behind his manner.
132


I go safely
ERie,


ENDLESS NIGHT


You never knew with Santonix. ERie said she hoped he was
staying for several days but he shook his head. He had to
leave on the following day, he said.

"Are you building something now, are you busy?"

He said no, he'd just come out of hospital.

"They've patched me up once more," he said, "but it's
probably for the last time."

"Patched you up? What do they do to you?"

"Drain the bad blood out of my body and put some good,
fresh red blood in," he said.

"Oh." ERie gave a little shudder.

"Don't worry," said Santonix, "it will never happen to
you."

"But why has it got to happen to you?" said ERie. "It's
cruel."

"Not cruel, no," said Santonix. "I heard what you were
singing just now.


Man was made for Joy and Woe
And when this we rightly know
Thro' the World we safely go.


because I know why I'm here. And for you,


Every Morn and every Night

Some are born to Sweet Delight.


That's yo."

"I wish I could feel safe," said ERie.

"Don't you feel safe?"

"I don't like to be threatened," said ERie. "I don't like
anyone to put  curse on me."

"You're talking about your gipsy?"

"Yes."

"Forget it," mid Santonix. "Forget it for to-night. Let's
be happy. ERie--your health-- Long life to you-- and a

13B


ENDLESS NIGHT

quick and merciful end to me--and Good Luck to Mike
here "He stopped, his glass raised towards Greta.
"Yes?" said Greta. "And to me?"
"And to you, what's coming to you! Success, perhaps?"
he added, half quizzically with an ironic question' in his tone.
He went away next morning early.
"What a strange man he is," ERie said. "I've never
understood him."
"I never understand half of what he says," I answered.
"He knows things," said ERie thoughtfully.
'"You mean he knows the future?"
"No," said ERie, "I didn't mean that. He knows people.
I said it to you once before. He knows people better than
they know themselves. Sometimes he hates them because of
that, and sometimes he's sorry for them. He's not sorry for
me, though," she added meditatively.
"Why should he be?" I demanded.
"Oh, because "said ERie.

134


CHAPTER XVI

It was the next day in the afternoon that as I was walking
rather rapidly in the darkest part of the wood where the
shade of the pine trees was more menacing than anywhere
else, I saw the figure of a tall woman standing in the drive.
I took a quick impulsive step off the path. I'd taken it for
granted that she was our gipsy but I stopped in sudden
recoil when I saw who it actually was. It was my mother.
She stood there tall and grim and grey-haired.
"Good lord," I said, "you starfied me, Mum. What are
you doing here? Come to see us? We've asked you often
enough, haven't we ?"
We hadn't actually. I'd extended one rather lukewarm
invitation, that was all. I'd put it, too, in a way which made
it pretty sure that my mother wouldn't accept. I didn't
want her here. I'd never wanted her here.
"You're right," she said. "I've come to see you at last.
To see ali's well with you. So this is the grand house you've
built, and it is a grand house," she said, looking over my
shoulder.
I thought I detected in her voice the disapproving acidity
that I'd expected to find.
"Too grand for the likes of me, eh?" I said.
"I didn't say that, lad."
"But you thought it."
"It wasn't what you were born to, and no good comes
from getting out of your station in life."
"Nobody'd ever get anywhere if they listened to you."
135


ENDLESS NIGHT

"Aye, I know that's what you say and think, but I don't
know what good ambition's ever done to anybody. It's
the kind of thing that turns to dead sea fruit in your
mouth."
"Ah, for God's sake don't croak," I said. "Come on.
Come along up to see our grand house for yourself and turn
up your nose at it. And come and see my grand wife, too,
and turn up your nose at her if you dare."
"Your wife? I've seen her already."
"What do you mean, you've seen her already?" I demanded.
"So she didn't tell you, eh?"
"What?" I demanded.
"That she came to see me."
"She came to see you?" I asked, dumbfounded.
"Yes. There she was one day standing outside the door,
ringing the bell and looking a little scared. She's a pretty
lass and a sweet one for all the fine clothes she had on. She
said 'You're Mike's mother, aren't you?' and I said 'Yes, and
who are you?' and she said Tm his wife.' She said 'I had to
come to see you. It didn't seem right that I shouldn't know
Mike's mother .... ' And I said 'I bet he didn't want you to'
and she hesitated, and I said: 'You don't need to mind telling
me that. I know my boy and I know what he'd want
or not want'. She said 'You think--perhaps he's ashamed
of you because he and you are poor and I'm rich, but it isn't
like that at all. That isn't like him at all. It isn't, really it
isn't.' I said again, 'You don't need to tell me, lass. I know
what faults my boy has. That's not one of his faults. He's
not ashamed of his mother and he's not ashamed of his
beginnings.
"'He's not ashamed of me.' I said to her, 'He's afraid of
me if anything. I know too much about him, you see.' And
that seemed to amuse her. She said: 'I expect mothers
always feel like that--that they know all about their sons.
136


ENDLESS NIGHT

And I expect sons always feel embarrassed just because of
that I'
"I said in a way that might be true enough. When you're
young, you're always putting on an act to the world.
mind myself, when I was a child in my aunfie's house. On
the wall over my bed there was a great big Eye in a gilt
frame. It said 'Thou God seest me.' Gave me the creeps it
did all up my spine before I went to sleep."
"Ellie should have told me she'd been to see you," I said.
"I don't see why she should keep it such a secret. She
should have told me."
I was angry. I was very angry. I'd had no idea that Ellie
would keep secrets like that from me.
"She was a LITTLE scared of what she'd done, maybe, but
she'd no call to be frightened of you, my boy."
"Come on," I said, "come on and see our house."
I don't know whether she liked our house or not. I think
not. She looked round the rooms and raised her eyebrows
and then she went into the terrace room. Ellie and Greta
were sitting there. They'd just come in from outside and
Greta had a scarlet wool cloak half over her shoulders. My
mother looked at them both. She just stood there for a
moment as though rooted to the spot. Ellie jumped up and
came forward and across the room.
"Oh, it's Mrs. Rogers," she said, then turning to Greta,
she said, "It's Mike's mother come to see our house and us.
Isn't that nice? This is my friend Greta Andersen."
And she held out both her hands and took Mum's and
Mum looked at her and then looked over her shoulder at
Greta very hard.
"I see," she said to herself, "I see."
"What do you see?" asked Ellie.
"I wondered," said Mum. "I wondered what it would
all be like here." She looked round her. "Yes, it's a fine
house. Fine curtains and fine chairs and fane pictures."
137


ENDLESS NIGHT

"You must have some tea," said Ellie.
"You look as if you've finished tea."
"Tea's a thing that need never be finished," said Ellie,
then she said to Greta, "I won't ring the bell. Greta, will
you go out to the kitchen and make a fresh pot of tea?"
"Of course, darling," said Greta and went out of the room
looking over her shoulder once in a sharp, almost scarcd
way at my mother.
My mother sat down.
"Where's your luggage?" said Ellie. "Have you come to
stay? I hope you have."
"No, lass, I won't stay. I'm going back by train in half
an hour's time. I just wanted to look in on you." Then she
added rather quickly, probably because she wished to get it
out before Greta came back, "Now don't worry yourself,
love, I told him how you came to see me and paid me a
visit."
"I'm sorry, Mike, that I didn't tell you," said Ellie firmly,
"only I thought perhaps I'd better not."
"She came out of the kindness of her heart, she did," said
my mother. "She's a good girl you've married, Mike, and
a pretty one. Yes, a very pretty one." Then she added hal
audibly, "I am sorry."
"Sorry," said Ellie, faintly puzzled.
"Sorry for thinking the things I did," said my mother and
added with a slight air of strain, "Well, as you say, mothers
are like that. Always inclined to be suspicious of daughters-in-law.
But when I saw you, I knew he'd been lucky. It
seemed too good to be true to me, that it did."
"What impertinence," I said, but I smiled at her as I
said it. "I always had excellent taste."
"You've always had expensive taste, that's what you
mean," said my mother and looked at the brocade curtains.
"I'm not really the worse for being an expensive taste,"
said Ellie, smiling at her.
138


ENDLESS NIGHT

"You make him save a bit of money from time to time,"
said Mum, "it'll be good for his character."
"I refuse to have my character improved," I said. "The
advantage of taking a wife is that the wife thinks everything
you do is perfect. Isn't that so, Ellie?"
ERie was looking happy again now. She laughed and
said,
"You're above yourself, Mike! The conceit of you."
Greta came back then with the teapot. We'd been a little
ill at ease and we were just getting over it. Somehow when
Greta came back the strain came on again. My mother
resisted all endeavours on ERie's part to make her stay over
and F.11ie didn't insist after a short while. She and I walked
down together with my mother along the winding drive
.through the trees and to the gateway.
"What do you Call it?" my mother asked abruptly.
ERie said, "Gipsy's Acre." . ..
"Ah," said my mother, "yes, you've got gipsies arotnd
here, haven't you?" .
"How did you know that?" I asked.
"I saw one as I came up. She looked at me queer, she
did."
"She's all right really," I said, "a little half baked, that's

"Why do you say she's half baked? She'd a funny look
to her when she looked at me. She's got a grievance against
you of some kind?"
"I don't think it's real," said ERie. "I think she's imagined
it all. That we've done her out of her land or something like
that."
"I expect she wants money," said my mother. "Gipsies
are like that. Make a big song and dance sometimes of
how they've been done down one way or another. But
they soon stop when they get some money in their itching
palms."
139


ENDLESS NIGHT


"You don't like gipsies," said Ellie.

"They're a thieving lot. They don't work steady and
they don't keep their hands off what doesn't belong to
them."

"Oh well," Ellie said, "we--we don't worry any more
I1OW."

My mother said good-bye and then added, "Who's the
young lady that lives with you?"

Ellie explained how Greta had been with her for three
years before she married and how but for Greta she would
have had a miserable life.

"Greta's done everything to help us. She's a wonderful
person," said Ellie. "I wouldn't know how to--how to get
on without her."

"She's living with you or on a visit?"

"Oh well," said Ellie. She avoided the question.' "She--she's
living with us at present because I sprained my ankle
and had to have someone to look after me. But I'm all right
again now."

"Married people do best alone together when they're
starting," my mother said.

We stood by the gate watching my mother march away
down the hill.

"She's got a very strong personality," said Ellie thought-funy.

I was angry with Ellie, really very angry because she'd
gone and found out my mother and visited her without tell-ing
me. But when she turned and stood looking at me with
one eyebrow raised a little and the funny half-timid, half-satisfied
little girl smile on her face, I couldn't help relent

"What
a deceitful little thing you are," I said.

"Well," said Ellie, "I've had to be sometimes, you


"That's like a Shakespeare play I once saw. They did it

140


ENDLESS NIGHT

at a school I was at." I quoted rather self-consciously,
"'She has deceiv'd her father and may thee'."
"What did you play---Othello?"
"No," I said, "I played the girl's father. That's why I
remember that speech, I suppose. It's practically the only
thing I had to say."
"'She has deceiv'd her father and may thee',"
said Ellie thoughtfully. "I didn't ever deceive my father as
far as I know. Perhaps I would have later."
"I don't suppose he would have taken very kindly to your
marrying me," I said, "any more than your stepmother did."
"No," said Ellie, "I don't suppose he would. He was
pretty conventional I think." Then she gave that funny
little girl smile again, "so I suppose I'd have had to be like
Desdemona and deceived my father and run away with you."
"Why did you want to see my mother so much, Ellie?" I
asked curiously.
"It's not so much I wanted to see her" said Ellie, "but l
felt terribly bad not doing anything about it. You haven't
mentioned your mother very often but I did gather that she'a
always done everything she could for you. Come to the
rescue about things and worked very hard to get: you extra
schooling and things like that. And I thought it seemed so
mean and purse-proud of me not to go near her."
"Well, it wouldn't have been your fault," I said, "it
would have been mine."
"Yes," said Ellie. "I can understand that perhaps you
didn't want me to go and see her."
"You think I've got an inferiority complex about my
mother? That's not true at all, Ellie, I assure you it isn't.
It wasn't that."
"No," said Ellie thoughtfully, "I know that now. It was
because you didn't want her to do a lot of mother stuff."
"Mother stuff?" I queried.
141


ENDLESS NIGHT

"Well," said Ellie, "I can see that she's the kind of person
who would know quite well what other people ought to
do. I mean, she'd want you to go in for certain kinds of
jobs."
"Quite right," I said. "Steady jobs. Settling down."
"It wouldn't have mattered very much now," said Ellie.
I dare say it was very good advice. But it wouldn't have
been the right advice ever for.you, Mike. You're not a settler
down. You don't want to be steady. You want to go and see
things and do things--be on top of the world."
"I want to stay here in this house with you," I said.
"For a while, perhaps .... And I think I think you'll
alway want to come back here. And so shall I. I think we
shall come here every year and I think we shall be happier
here than anywhere else. But you'll want to go places too.
You'll want to travel and see things and buy things. Perhaps
think up new plans for doing the garden here. Perhaps
we'll go and look at Italian gardens, Japanese gardens,
landscape gardens of all kinds."
"You make life seem very exciting, Ellie," I said. "I'm
8OITy I WaS cro."
"Oh, I don't mind your being cross," said Ellie. "I'm
not afraid of you." Then she added, with a firown: "Your
mother didn't like Greta."
"A lot of people don't like Greta," I said.
"Including you."
"Now look here, Ellie, you're always saying that. It's
not true. I waS just a bit jealous of her at first, that was all.
We get on very well now." And I added, "I think perhaps
he makes people get rather on the defensive."
"Mr. Lippincott doesn't like her either, does he? He
thinks she's got too much influence over me," said Ellie.
"Has she?"
"I wonder why you should ask that. Yes, I think perhaps
she has. It's only natural, she's rather a dominant personal142



ENDLESS NIGHT

ity and I had to have someone I could trust in and rely on.
Someone who'd stand up for me."
"And see you got your own way?" I asked her, laughing.
We went into the house arm in arm. For some reason i
seemed dark that afternoon. I suppose because the sun had
just left the terrace and left a feeling of darkness behind it.
Ellie said,
"What's the matter, Mike?"
"I don't know," I said. "Just suddenly I felt as though
someone were walking over my grave."
"A goose is walking over your grave. That's the real
saying, isn't it ?" said Ellie.
Greta wasn't about anywhere. The servants said she'd
gone out for a walk.
Now that my mother knew all about my marriage and had
seen Ellie, I did what I had really wanted to do for some
time. I sent her a large cheque. I told her to move into a
better house and to buy herself any additional furniture she
wanted. Things like that. I had doubts of course as to
whether she would accept it or not. It wasn't money that
I'd worked for and I couldn't honestly pretend it was. As
I had expected, she sent the cheque back torn in two with
a scrawled note. "I'll have naught to do with any of this,"
she wrote. "You'll never be different. I know that now.
Heaven help you." I flung it down in front of Ellie.
"You see what my mother's like," I said. "I married a
rich girl, and I'm living on my rich wife's money and the old
battleaxe disapproves of it!"
"Don't worry," said Ellie. "Lots of people think that
way. She'll get over it. She loves you very much, Mike,"
she added.
"Then why does she want to alter me all the time? Make
me into her pattern. I'm myself. I'm not anybody else's
pattern. I'm not my mother's little boy to be moulded the
way she likes. I'm myself. I'm an adult. I'm mt!"
143


ENDLESS NIGHT

"You're you," said Ellie, "and I love you."
And then, perhaps to distract me, she said something
rather disquieting.
"What do you think," she said, "of this new manservant
of ours?"
I hadn't thought about him. What was there to think?
If anything I preferred him to our last one who had not
troubled to conceal his low opinion of my social status.
"He's all right," I said. "Why?"
"I just wondered whether he might be a security
man."
"A security man? What do you mean?"
"A detective. I thought Uncle Andrew might have
arranged it."
"Why should he?"
"Well--possible kidnapping, I suppose. In the States,
you know, we usually had guards--especially in the country."
Another of the disadvantages of having money that I
hadn't known about!
"What a beastly idea I"
"Oh, I don't know .... I suppose I'm used to it. What
does it matter? One doesn't really notice."
"Is the wife in it, too?"
"She'd have to be, I think, though she cooks very well. I should think that Uncle Andrew, or perhaps Stanford
Lloyd, whichever one of them thought of it, must have paid
our last ones to leave, and had these two all lined up ready
to take their place. It would have been quite easy." "Without telling you?" I was still incredulous.
"They'd never dream of telling me. I might have kicked
up a fuss. Anyway, I may be quite wrong about them."
She went on dreamily. "It's only that one gets a kind of
feeling when one's been used to people of that kind always
being around."
144


ENDLESS NIGHT


"Poor little rich girl," I said savagely.

Ellie did not mind at all.

"I suppose that does describe it rather well," she said.

"The things I'm learning about you all the tim% Elli%"
I said.


145


CHAPTER XVII


What a mysterious thing sleep is. You go to bed worrying
about gipsies and secret enemies, and detectives planted in
your house and the possibilities of kidnapping and a hun-dred
other things; and sleep whisks you away from it all.
You travel very far and you don't know where you've
been, but when you wake up, it's to a totally new world. No
worries, no apprehensions. Instead, when I woke up
on the x7th September I was in a mood of boisterous excite-ment.

'A wonderful day,' I said to myself with conviction.
'This is going to be a wonderful day.' I meant it. I was like
those people in advertisements that offer to go anywhere
and do anything. I went over plans in my head. I had
arranged to meet Major Phillpot at a sale at a country
house about fifteen miles away. They had some very nice
stuff there and I'd already marked down two or three items
in the catalogue. I was quite excited about the whole thing.

Phillpot was very knowledgeable' about period furniture
and silver and things of that kind, not because he was
artistic--he was entirely a sporting man--but simply
because he knew. His whole family was knowledgeable.

I looked over the catalogue at breakfast. Ellie had come
down in a riding habit. She rode most mornings now--sometimes
alone, sometimes with Claudia. She had the
American habit of drinking coffee and a glass of orange
juice and nothing much else for breakfast. My tastes now
that I hadn't got to restrain them in any way, were very
146


ENDLESS NIGHT

much those of a Victorian squire! I liked lots of hot dishe.
on the sideboard. I ate kidneys this morning and sausages
and bacon as well. Delicious.
"What are you doing, Greta?" I asked.
Greta said she was meeting Claudia Hardcastle at the
tation at Market Chadwell and they were going up to
London to a white sale. I asked what a white sale was.
"Does there really have to be white in it?" I asked.
Greta looked scornful and said that a white sale meant a
sale of household linen and blankets and towels and sheets,
etc. There were some very good bargains at a special shop
in Bond Street of which she had been sent a catalogue.
I said to Ellie, "Well, if Greta is going to London for the
day, why don't you drive in and meet us at the George in
Bartington. The food there's very good, so old Phillpot said.
He suggested you might come. One o'clock. You go through
Market Chadwell and then you take a turning about three
miles after that. It's sign-posted, I think."
"All tight," said Ellie, "I'll be there."
I mounted her and she went off riding through the trees.
Elie loved tiding. She usually rode up one of the winding
tracks and came out on the Downs and had a gallop before
returning home. I left the smaller car for Ellie as it was
easier to park and took the big Chrysler myself. I got to
Baxtington Manor just before the sale began. Phillpot was
there already and had kept a place for me.
"Some quite nice stuff here," he said. "One or two good
pictures. A Romney and a Reynolds. I don't know if
you're interested?"
I shook my head. My taste at the moment was entirely
for modern artists.
"Several dealers here," Phillpot went on, "a couple down
from London. See that thin man over there with the
pinched lips? That's Cressington. Pretty well known. Not
brought your wife?"
147


ENDI1LE; SS NIGHT

"No," I said, "she's not awafully keen on salea.

didn't particularly want hr to come ths xnaOrg.,, Y,

"Oh? Why not?"

"There's going to be a u. prise for Elli,e," I aicl. "Did

you notice Lot 4?"

He took a glance at the cagalogue and tlen lked %ross

the room.

"Hm. That papier mdcht*' daesk? Yes. R:athet bed,. ....

little piece. One of the best examples of apiac,vU;

seen. Desk rather rare too. pJenty of hand clesk%

tables But this is an early erample. Nevex se%neu on
	
	,,
	uite

like it before.
	The little piece was in!ait with a design 0I
Castle and the sides of it had bouquets of roses-- :asor
d thistles
and shamrock.

		condition," sicl. Phillpot.itTMI-Ie lo0ked t me

	"Beautiful,,I
curiously,
	shouldn't kaa,./e thought
	0ttr taste
but "
	"Oh, it isu't," I said. "It' a LITTLE too flowerynd

	like for me ut Ellie loves th: stuff. It's her binhdavdY'

	week and i want it as a rcseat for her. A surpre. ?ex.t
	P
	. .
	.
why I didn't want her to kor I was bddxsg forit to!

But I know there's nothing I :ould give her thathe,uaY
	,
	' d"
	like
more. She Il be really surp
We went in and took seatS nd the sale beg.an. &ct,

the piece I ;anted was run Lip lretty high. 15.tthe Lo

dealers seemed keen on it although one o e

nractised and reserved abou. t i that you could hardl.. a so
r
	.
	.
	Y ' '
the almost infinitesimal mo toa of his catalogue hich race

auctioneer was observing closely. I bought a c'.the

Chippendale chair as well which I thought would l0'v,ed

in our hall and some enormoUs brocade curtains in

condition.

"Well, you seem to have enjoyed yourself all fight" -

Phillpot, rising to his feet when the auctioneer c0rl.aid
	14 IS
	r'ted


ENDLESS NIGHT

the morning's sale. "Want to come back tills afternoon?"
I shook my head.
"No, there's nothing in the second half of' the sale that I
want. Mostly bedroom furniture and carpets and things like
that."
"No, I didn't think you'd be interested. Well--" he
looked at his watch, "we'd better be getting along. Is Ellie
meeting us at the George?"
"Yes, she'll be there."
"And--er--Miss Andersen?"
"Oh, Greta's gone to London," I said. "She's gone to
what they call a white sale. With Miss Hardcastle, I
believe."
"Oh yes, Claudia said something about it the other day.
Prices of sheets and things are fantastic nowa. days. Do you
know what a linen pillow case costs? Thirt3r-five shillings.
Used to buy 'em from six bob."
"You're very knowledgeable on household purchases,"
I said.
"Well, I hear my wife complaining about them." Phill.
pot smiled. "You're looking in the pink of condition, Mike.
Happy as a sandboy."
"That's because I've got the papier m&hdesk," I said, "or at any rate that's partly it. I just woke up feeling happy
this morning. You know those days when everything in the
world seems right."
"Mm," said Phillpot, "be careful. That's what's known
as being fey."
"Fey?" I said. "That's something Scottish, isn't it?"
"It comes before disaster, my boy," said Phillpot.
"Better curb your exuberance."
"Oh, I don't believe those silly superstitions," I said. "Nor in gipsies' prophecies, eh?"
"We haven't seen our gipsy lately," I said. "Well not for
a week at least."
149


ENDLESS NIGHT

"Perhaps she's away from the place," said Phillpot.
He asked me if I'd give him a lift in my car and I said I
would.
"No use taking the two of them. You can drop me here
on your way back, can't you? What about Ellie, will she
be bringing her car over?"
"Yes, she's bringing the LITTLE one,"
"Hope the George will put on a good meal," said Major
Phillpot. "I'm hungry."
"Did you buy anything?" I asked. "I was too excited to
notice.'
"Yes, you've got to keep your wits about you when you're
bidding. Have to notice what the dealers are doing. No.
I made a bid or two but everything went fax above my
price."
I gathered that although Phillpot owned enormous
quantities of land round about, his actual income did not
amount to much. He was what you might describe as a poor
man though a large landowner, Only by selling a good portion
of his land would he have had money to spend and he
didn't want to sell his land. He loved it.
We got to the George and found a good many cars
standing there already. Possibly some of the people from the
auction. I didn't see Ellie's, though. We went inside and
I looked around for her but she hadn't turned up yet. However,
it was only just past one.
We went and had a drink at the bar while we were waiting
for Ellie to arrive. The place was pretty crowded. I looked
into the dining-room but they were still holding our table.
There were a good many local faces that I knew and sitting
at a table by the window was a man whose face seemed
familiar to me. I-was sure I knew him but I couldn't
remember when and where we'd met. I didn't think he was
a local, because his clothes didn't fit in with these parts.
Of course I've knocked up against a great many people in
150


ENDLESS NIGHT


my time and it is unlikely that I can remember them all
easily. He hadn't been at the sale aa far as I could
remember, though, oddly enough, there had been one face
that I thought I'd recognised but couldn't place. Faces
are tricky unless you can connect up when and where you'd
seen them.

The presiding goddess of the George, rustling in her
usual black silk of affected Edwardian style which she
always wore, came up to me and said,

"Will you be coming to your table soon, Mr. Kogers?
There's one or two waiting."

"My wife will be here in a minute or two," I said.

I went back to rejoin Phillpot. I thought perhaps that
Ellie might have had a puncture.

"We'd better go in," I said, "they seem getting rather
upset about it. They've got quite a crowd to-day. I'm
afraid," I added, "that Ellie isn't the most punctual of
people."

"Ah," said Phillpot in his old-fashioned style, "the
ladies make a point of keeping us waiting, don't they? All
right, Mike, if that's all fight by you. We'll go in and start
lunch."

We went into the dining-room, chose steak and kidney
pie off the menu and started.

"It's too bad of Ellie," I said, "to stand us up like this."
I added that it was possibly because Greta was in London.
"Ellie's very used, you knows" I said, "to Greta helping her
to keep appointments, reminding her of them and getting
her off in time and all that."

"Is she very dependent on Miss Andersen?"

"In that way, yea," I said.

We went on eating and passed from the steak and kidney
pie to apple tart with a self-couscioua piece of phoney
pastry on top of it.

"I wonder if she's forgotten all about it," I said suddenly.

151


ENDLESS NIGHT

"Perhaps you'd better ring up."
"Yes, I think I'd better."
I went out to the phone and rang. Mrs. Carson, the cook,
answered.
"Oh, it's you, Mr. Rogers, Mrs. Rogers hasn't come home
yet."
"What do you mean, hasn't come home. Home from
where?"
"She hasn't come back from her ride yet."
"But that was after breakfast. She can't have been riding
the wbole morning."
"She didn't say anything different. I was expecting her
back."
"Why didn't you ring up sooner and let me know about
it?" I asked.
"Well, I wouldn't know where to get at you you see. I
didn't know where you'd gone."
I told her I was at the George at Bartlngton and gave
her the number. She was to ring up the moment Ellie
came in or she had news of her. Then I went back to join
Phillpot. He saw from my face at once that something was
wrong.
"Ellie hasn't come home," I said. "She went off riding
this morning. She usually does most mornings but it only
lasts half an hour to an hour."
"Now don't worry before you need to, boy," he said
kindly. "Your place is in a very lonely part, you know.
Maybe her horse went lame and she might be walking it
home. All that moorland and downs above the woods.
There's nobody much in that part to send a message by."
"If she decided to change her plans and ride over and see
anyone, anything like that," I said, "she'd have rung here.
She'd have left a message for us."
"Well, don't get het up yet," Phillpot said. "I think we'd
better go now, right away, and see what we can find out."
152


ENDLESS NIGHT


As we went out to the car park, another car drove away.
In it was the man I had noticed in the dining-room and
suddenly it came to me who it was. Stanford Lloyd or some-one
just like him. I wondered what he could be doing down
here. Could he be coming to see us? If so, it was odd he
hadn't let us know. In the car with him was a woman who
had looked like Claudia Hardcastle, but surely she was in
London with Greta, shopping. It all floored me rather ....

As we drove away Phillpot looked at me once or twice.
I caught his eye once and said rather bitterly,

"All right. You said I was fey this morning."

"Well, don't think of that yet. She may have had a fall
and sprained an ankle or something like that. She's a good
horsewoman, though," he said. "I've seen her. I can't feel
an accident is really likely."

I said "Accidents can happen at any time."

We drove fast and came at last to the road over the
downs above our property, looking about us as we went.
Now and again we stopped to ask people. We stopped a
man who was digging peat and there we got the first news.

"Seen a riderless horse I have," he said. "Two hours
ago maybe or longer. I would-a caught it but it galloped
off when I got near it. Didn't see anyone though."

"Best drive home," suggested Phillpot, "there may be
news of her there."

We drove home but there was no news. We got hold of
the groom and sent him off to ride over the moorland in
search of Ellie. Phillpot telephoned his own house and sent
a man from there too. He and I went up a path together
and through the wood, the one that Ellie often took, and
came out on the downs there.

At first there ;vas nothing to be seen. Then we walked
along the edge of the wood near where some of the other
paths came out and so--we found her. We saw what looked
like a huddled heap of clothes. The horse had come back

153


ENDLESS NIGHT

and was now standing cropping near that huddled heap. I

began to run. Phillpot followed me faster tha I'd lmve

thought a man of his age could have kept up.

She was there--lying in a crumpled up heap, her little

white face turned up to the sky. I said,
	"I can't--I can't
	"and turned my face away.
Phillpot went and knelt down by her. He got up almost at once.
	"We'll get hold of a doctor," he said. "Shaw. He's the
nearest. But--I don't think it's any use, Mike."
	"You mean--she's dead?"
	"Yes," he said, "it's no good pretending anything else."
"Oh God? I said and turned away. "I can't believe it.
Not ELlie."
	"Here, have this," said Phillpot.
	He took a flask out of his pocket, unscrewed it and handed
it to me. I took a good deep pull at it.
	"Thanks," I said.
The groom came along then and Phillpot sent him off to
fetch Dr. Shaw.

154


CHAPTER XVIII

Shaw came up in a battered old Land-Rover. I suppoitqt
was the car he used for going to visit isolated farms in 1M
weather. He barely looked at either of us. He went straight
and bent over Ellie. Then he came over to us.
"She's been dead at least three or four hours," he sd.x.
"How did it happen?"
I told him how she'd gone off riding as usual after brek%
fast that morning.
"Has she had any accidents up to this time when
been out riding?"
"No," I said, "she was a good rider."
"os I know she's a rood rider I've seen her once0
twice. She's ridden since she was a child, I understandx
I wondered if she might have had some accident lately anc
that that might have affected her nerve a bit. If the hon
had shied "
"Why should the horse shy? It's a quiet brute .."
"There's nothing vicious about this particular hors,"
said Major ?hillpot. "He's well behaved, not nervy. E
she broken any bones?"
"I haven't made a complete examination yet but
doesn't eem physically injured in any way. There may
some internal injury. Might be shock, I suppose?"
"But you can't die of shock," I said.
"People have died of shock before now. If she'd had
weak heart "
"They said in America that she had a weak heart--sofa%
kind of weakness at least."
155


ENDLESS NIGHT

"Hm. I couldn't find much trace of it when I examined
her. Still, we didn't have a cardiograph. Anyway no point
in going into that now. We shall know later. After the
inquest."
He looked at me considcringly, then he patted me on the
shoulder.
"You go home and go to bcd," he said. "You're the one
who's suffering from shock."
In the queer way people materialise out of nowhere in
the country, we had three or four people standing near us,
by this time. One a hiker who had come along from the
main road seeing our LITTLE group, one a rosy-faced woman
who I think was going to a farm over a short cut and an old
roadman. They were making exclamations and remarks.
"Poor young lady."
"So young too. Thrown from her horse, was she?"
"Ah well, you never know with horses."
"It's Mrs. Rogers, isn't it, the American lady from The
Towers ?"
It was not until everyone else had exclaimed in their
astonished fashion, that the aged roadman spoke. He gave
us information. Shaking his head he said,
"I must-a seen it happen. I must-a seen it happen."
The doctor turned sharply on him.
"What did you see happen?"
"I saw a horse bolting across country."
"Did you see the lady fall?"
"No. No, I didn't. She were riding along the top of
the woods when I saw her and after that I'd got me back
turned and I was cutting the stones for the road. And then I heard hoo and I looked up and there was the horse
galloping. I didn't think there'd been an accident. I
thought the lady perhaps had got off and let go of the horse
in some way. It wasn't coming towards me, it was going in
the other direction."
156


ENDLESS NIGHT

"You didn't see the lady ling on the ground?"
"No, I don't see very well far. I saw the horse because
it showed against the sky line."
"Was she riding alone? Was there anyone with her, or
near her?"
"Nobody near her. No. She was all alone. She rode
not very far from me, past me, going along that way. She
was bearing towards the woods, I think. No, I didn't see
anyone at all except her and the horse;"
"Might have been the gipsy what frightened her," said
the rosy-faced woman.
I swung round.
"What gipsy? When?"
"Oh, must have been--well, at must have been three or
four hours ago when I went down the road this morning.
About quarter to ten maybe, I saw that gipsy woman. The
one as lives in the cottage in the village. Least I think it was
she. I wasn't near enough to be sure. But she's the only
one as goes about hereabouts in a red cloak. She was walking
up a path through the trees. Somebody told me as she'd
said nasty things to the poor American young lady. Threatened
her. Told her something bad would happen i she
didn't get out of this place. Very threatening, I hear she Was."
"The gipsy," I said. Then, bitterly, to myself, though out
loud, "Gipsy's Acre. I wish I'd never seen the place."

157


CHAPTER XIX

It's cxtraordinar how difficult it is for me to remember what
happened after that. I mean, the sequence of it all. Up to
then, you see, it's all clear in my mind. I was a little doubtful
where to begin, that was all. But from then on it was as
though a knife fell, cutting my life into two halves. What I
went on to from the moment of Ellie's death seems to me now
like something for which I was not prepared. A eonfusion
of thrusting people and clements and happenings where I
wasn't myself in control of anything any more. Things
happened not to me, but all around me. That's what it
seemed like.
Everybody was very kind to me. That seems the thing I
remember best. I stumbled about and looked dazed and
didn't know what to do. Greta, I remember, came into her
element. She had that amazing power that women have to
take charge of a situation and deal with it. Deal, I mean,
with all the small unimportant details that someone has to
see to. I would have been incapable of seeing to them.
I think the first thing I remembered clearly after they'd
taken Ellic away and I'd got back to my house-our house-- the house--was when Dr. Shaw came along and talked to
me. I don't know how long after that was. He was qnict,
kind, reasonable. Just explaining things clearly and gently.
Arrangements. I remember his using the word arrange-mcnts.
What a hateful word it is and all the things it stands
 for. The things in life that have grand words--Love--scx--life--death--hate--those
aren't the things that govern
existence at all. It's lots of other pettifogging, degrading
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ENDLESS NIGHT

things. Things you have to endure, things you never think
about until they happen to you. Undertakers, arrangements
for funerals, inquests. And servants coming into rooms and
pulling the blinds down. Xhy should blinds be pulled down
because Ellie was dead? Of all the stupid things!
That was whY, I remember, I felt quite grateful to Dr.
Shaw. He dealt with such things so kindly and sensibly,
explaining gently why certain' things like an inquest had to
be. Talking rather slowly, I remember, so that 1 could be
quite sure I was taking them in.

I didn't know what an inquest would be like. I'd never
been to one. It seemed to me curiously unreal, amateurish.
The Coroner was a small fussy little man with pince-nez. I
had to give evidence of identification, to describe the last
time I had seen Ellie at the breakfast table and her departure
for her usual morning ride and the arrangement we had
made to meet later for lunch. She had seemed, I said, exactly
the same as usual, in perfectly good health.
Dr. Shaw's evidence was quiet, inconclusive. No serious
injuries, a wrenched collar bone and bruises such as would
result from a fall from the horsemnot ora very serious nature,
and inflicted at the time of death. She did not appear to
have moved again after she had fallen. Death, he thought,
had been practically instantaneous. There was no specific
organic injury to have caused death, and he could give no
other explanation of it than that she had died from heart
failure caused by shock. As far as I could make out from
the medical language used ElIie had died simply as the result
of absence of breath--of asphyxia of some kind. Her organs
were healthy, her stomach contents normal. -
Greta, who also gave evidence, stressed rather more
forcibly than she had done to Dr. Shaw before,that Ellie
had suffered from some form of heart malady three or four
years ago. She had never heard anything definite mentioned
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ENDLESS NIGHT


but Ellie's relations had occasionally said that hex heart was
weak and that she must take care not to over-do things. She
had never heard anything more definite than that.

Then we came to the people who had seen or been in the
vicinity at the time the accident happened. The old man
who had been cutting peat was the first of them. He had
seen the lady pass him, she'd been about fifty yards or so
away. He knew who she was though he'd never spoken to

her. She was the lady from the new house.

"You knew her by sight?"

"No, not exactly by sight but I knew the horse, sir. It's
got a white fetlock. Used to belong to Mr. Gaxey over at
$hettlegroom. I've never heard it's anything but quiet and
well behaved, suitable for a lady to ride."

"Was the horse giving any trouble when you saw it?
Playing up in any way?"

"No, it was quiet enough. It was a nice morning."
There had not been many people about, he said. He
hadn't noticed many. That particular track across the moor
wasn't much used except as a short cut occasionally to one
of the farms. Another track crossed it about a mile farther
away. He'd seen one or two passers-by that morning but not
to notice. One man on a bicycle, another man walking.
They were too far away for him to see who they were and
he hadn't noticed much anyway. Earlier, he said, before
he'd seen the lady riding, he'd seen old Mrs. Lee, or so he
thought. She was coming up the track towards him and
then she turned off and went into the woods. She often
walked across the moors and in and out of the woods.

The Goroner asked why Mrs. Lee was not in Court. He
understood that she'd been summoned to attend. He was
told, however, that Mrs. Lee had left the village some days
ago--nobody knew exactly when. She had not left any
address behind. It was not her habit to do so, she often went
away and came back without notifying anyone. So there

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ENDLESS NIGHT


was nothing unusual about this. In fact one or two people
said they thought she'd already left the village before the
day the accident happened. The Coroner asked the old
man again.

"You think, however, that it was Mrs. Lee you saw?"
"Couldn't say, I'm sure. Wouldn't like to be certain. It
was a tall woman and striding along, and had on a scarlet
cloak, like Mrs. Lee wears sometimes. But I didn't look
particular. I was busy with what I was doing. Could
have been she, it could have been someone else. Who's to
say?"

As for the rest he repeated very much what he had said
to us. He'd seen the lady riding nearby, he'd often seen her
riding before. He hadn't paid any particular attention.
Only later did he see the horse galloping alone. It looked
as though something had frightened it, he said. "At least,
it could be that way." He couldn't tell what time that was.
Might have been eleven, might have been earlier. He saw
the horse much later, farther away. It seemed to be return-ing
towards the woods.

Then the Coroner recalled me and asked me a few more

questions about Mrs. Lee. Mrs. Esther Lee of Vine Cottage.
"You and your wife knew Mrs. Lee by sight?"
"Yes," I said, "quite well."
"Did you talk with her?"

"Yes, several times. Or rather," I added, "she talked to


"Did she at any time threaten you or your wife?"

I paused a moment or two.

"In a sense she did," I said slowly, "but I never
thought "

"You never thought what?"

"I never thought she really meant it," I said.

"Did she sound as though she had any particular grudge
against your wife?"

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ENDLESS NIGHT

"My wife said so once. She said she thought she had some'
special grudge against her but she couldn't see why."
"Had you or your wife at any time ordered her off your
land, threatened her, treated her roughly in any way?"
"Any aggression came from her side," I said.
"Did you ever have the impression that she was mentally
unbalanced?"
I considered. "Yes," I said, "I did. I thought she had
come to believe that the land on which we had built our
house belonged to her, or belonged to her tribe or whatever
they call themselves. She had a kind of obsession about it."
I added slowly, "I think she was getting worse, more and
more obsessed by the idea."
"I see. She never offered your wife physical violence at
any time?"
"No," I said, slowly, "I don't think it would be fair to
say that. It was all--well, all a sort of gipsy's warning
stuff. 'You'll have bad luck if you stay here.' 'There'll be
a curse on you unless you go away'."
"Did she mention the word death?"
"Yes, I think so. We didn't take her seriously. At least,"
I corrected myself, "I didn't."
"Do you think your wife did?"
"I'm afraid she did sometimes. The old woman, you
know, could be rather alarming. I don't think she was
really responsible for what she was saying or doing."
The proceedings ended with the Coroner adjourning the
inquest for a fortnight. Everything pointed to Death
being due to Accidental Causes but there was not sufficient
evidence to show what had caused the accident to occur.
He would adjourn the proceedings until he had heard the
evidence of Mrs. Esther Lee.

165


CHAPTER XX

The day after the inquest I went to see Major Phillpot and I told him point-blank that I wanted his opinion. Someone
whom the old peat-cutting man had taken to be Mrs.
Esther Lee, had been seen going up towards the woods that
morning.
"You know the old woman," I said. "Do you actually
think that she would have been capable of causing an
accident by deliberate malice?"
"I can't really believe so, Mike," he said. "To do a
thing like that you need a very strong motive. Revenge for
some personal injury caused to you. Something like that.
And what had Ellie ever done to her? Nothing."
"It seems crazy, I know. Why was she constantly appearing
in that queer way, threatening Ellie, telling her to go
away? She seemed to have a grudge against her, but how
could she have a grudge? She'd never met Ellie or seen her
before. What was Ellie to her but a perfectly strange American?
There's no past history, no link between them."
"I know, I know," said Phillpot. "I can't help feeling,
Mike, that there's something here that we don't understand.
I don't know how much your wife was over in England
previous to her marriage. Did she ever live in this part of
the world for any length of time?"
"No, I'm sure of that. It's all so difficult. I don't really
know anything about Ellie. I mean, who she knew, where
she went. We just--met." I checked myself and looked at
him. I said 'You don't know how we came to meet, do you?
No," I went on, "you wouldn't guess in a hundred years
166


ENDLESS NIGHT

how we met." And suddenly, in spite of myself, I began
to laugh. Then I pulled myself together. I could feel that I was very near hysteria.
I could see his kind patient face just waiting till I was
myself again. He was a helpful man. There was no doubt of
that.
"We met here," I said. "Here at Gipsy's Acre. I had
been reading the notice board of the sale of The Towers and
I walked up the road, up the hill because I was curious
about this place. And that's how I first saw her. She was
standing there under a tree. I startled her---or perhaps it
was she who startled me. Anyway, that's how it all began.
Thafs- how we came to live here in this damned, cursed,
unlucky place."
"Have you felt that all along? That it would be unlucky?"
"No. Yes. No, I don't know really. I've never admitted
it. I've never wanted to admit it. But I think she knew. I
think she's been frightened all along." Then I said slowly,
"I think somebody deliberately wanted to frighten her."
He said rather sharply, "What do you mean by that?
Who wanted to frighten her?"
"Presumably the gipsy woman. But somehow I'm not
quite sure about it .... She used to lie in wait for Ellie, you
know, tell her this place would bring her bad luck. Tell
her she ought to go away from it."
"Tcha!" He spoke angrily. "I wish I'd been told more
about that. I'd have spoken to old Esther. Told her she
couldn't do things like that."
"Why did she?" I asked. "What made her?"
"Like so many people," said Phillpot, "she likes to make
herself important. She likes either to give people warnings
or else tell their fortunes and prophesy happy lives for them.
She likes to pretend she knows the future."
"Supposing," I said slowly, "somebody gave her money.
I've been told she's fond of money."
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ENDLESS NIGHT

"Yes, she was very fond of money. If someone paid her--that's
what you're suggesting--what put that idea into your
head?"
"Sergeant Kcene," I said. "I should never have thought
of it myself."
"I see." He shook his head doubtfully.
"I can't believe," he said, "that she would deliberately
try to frighten your wife to the extent of ca-sing an
accident."
"She mayn't have counted on a fatal accident. She might
have done something to frighten the horse," I said. "Let
off a squib or flapped a sheet of white paper or something.
Sometimes, you know, I did feel that she had some entirely
pcrsonai grudge against Ellic, a grudge for some reason
that I don't know about."
"That sounds very farfetched."
"This place never belonged to her?" I asked. "The land,
I mean."
"No. Gipsies may have been warned off this property,
probably more than once. Gipsies are always getting turned
off places, but I doubt if they keep up a life-long resentment
about it."
"No," I said, "that would be far-fetched. But I do
wonder if for some reason that we don't know about
She was paid "
"A reason we don't know about--what reason?"
I reflected a moment or two.
"Everything I say will just sound fantastic. Let's say that,
as Keene suggested, someone paid her to do the things she
did. What did that someone want? Say they wanted to
make us both go away from here. They concentrated on
Ellie, not on me, because I wouldn't be scared in the way
Ellie would be. They frightened her to get her--and through
her both of us--to leave here. If so, there must be some
reason for wanting the land to come on the market again.
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ENDLESS NIGHT

Somebody, shall we say, for some reason wants our land." I
stopped.
"It's a logical suggestion," Phillpot said, "but I know of
no reason why anyone should."
"Some important mineral deposit," I suggested, "that
nobody knows about."
"Hm, I doubt it."
"Something like buried treasure. Oh, I know it sounds
absurd. Ormwell, say the proceeds of some big bank
robbery."
Phillpot was still shaking his head but rather less vehemently
now.
"The only other proposition," I said, "is to go one step
farther back as you did just now. Behind Mrs. Lee to the
person who paid Mrs. Lee. That might be some unknown
enemy of Ellie's."
"But you can't think of anyone it would be likely to be?"
"No. She didn't know anyone down here. That I'm sure
of. She had no links with this place." I got up. "Thank you
for listening to me," I said.
"I wish I could have been more helpful."
I went out of the door, fingering the thing that I was
carrying in my pocket. Then, taking a sudden dcclsion, I
turned on my heel and went back into the room.
"There's something I'd like to show you," I said. "Actually,
I was going to take it down to show to Sergeant Kccne
and see what he could make of it."
I dived into my pocket and brought, out a stone round
which was wrapped a crumpled bit of paper with printed
writing on it.
"This was thrown through our breakfast window this
morning," I said. "I heard the crash of the glass as I came
down the stairs. A stone was thrown through the window
once before when we first came here. I don't know if this ia
the same person or not."
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ENDLESS NIGHT

I took off the wrapping paper and held it out to him. It
was a dirty, coarse bit of paper. There was some printing
on it in rather faint ink. ?hillpot put on his spectacles and
bent over the piece of paper. The message on it was quite
short. All it said was, "It was a woman who killed your w/."
Phillpot's eyebrows went up.
"Extraordinary," he said. "Was the first message you
got printed?"
"I can't remember now. It was just a warning to go away
from here. I can't even remember the exact wording of it
now. Anyway, it seems pretty certain that that was hooligans.
This doesn't seem quite the same."
"Do you think it was thrown in by someone who knew
something?"
"Probably just a bit of silly cruel malice in the anonymou
letter class. You get it, you know, a good deal in villages."
He handed it back to me.
"But I think your instinct was right," he said, "to take
it to Sergeant Keene. He'll know more about these anony-mom
things than I should."
I found Sergeant Keene at the police station and he was
definitely interested.
"There's queer things going on here," he said.
"What do you think it means?" I asked.
"Hard to say. Might be just malice leading up to accusing
some particular person."
"It might be just accusing Mrs. Lee, I suppose?"
"No, I don't think it would have been put that way. It
might be--I'd like to think it was--it might be that someone
saw or heard something. Heard a noise or a cry or the
horse bolted right past someone, and they saw or met a
woman soon afterwards. But it sounds as though it was a
different woman from the gipsy, because everyone thinks the
gipsy's mixed up in this anyway. So this sounds as though
another an entirely different woman was meant."
170


ENDLESS NIGHT


"What about the gipsy?" I said. "Have you had news of
her, found her?"

He shook his head slowly.

"We know some of the places she used to go when she left
here. East Anglia, that way. She'd friends there among the
gipsy clan. She's not been there, they say, but they'd say
that anyway. They clam up, you know. She's fairly well
known by sight in those parts but nobody's seen her. All
the same, I don't think she's as far away as East Anglia."

There was something peculiar about the way he said the
words.

"I don't quite understand," I said.

"Look at it this way, she's scared. She's got good reason
to be. She's been threatening your wife, frightening her,
and now, say, she caused an accident and your wife died.
The police'll be after her. She knows that, so she'll go to
earth, as you might say. She'll put as big a distance between
herself and us as she possibly can. But she won't want to
show herself. She'd be afraid of public transport."

"But you'll find her? She's a woman of striking appear-ance.''

"Ah yes, we shall find her eventually. These things take
a little time. That is, if it was that way."

"But you think it was some other way."

"Well, you know what I've wondered all along. Whether
somebody was paying her to say the things she did."

"Then she might be even more anxious to get away," I
pointed out.

"But somebody else would be anxious too. You've got to
think of that, Mr. Rogers."

"You mean," I said slowly, "the person who paid her."
Yes."

"Supposing it was ama woman who paid her."

"And supposing somebody else has some idea of that.
And so they start sending anonymous messages. The woman

171


ENDLESS NIGHT

would be scared too. She needn't have meant this to happen,
you know. However much she got that gipsy woman to
frighten your wife away from this place she wouldn't have
meant it to result in Mrs. Rogers's death."
"No," I said. "Death wasn't meant. It was just to
frighten us. To frighten my wife and to frighten me into
leaving here."
"And now who's going to be frightened? The woman who
caused the accident. And that's Mrs. Esther Lee. And so
she's going to come clean, isn't she? Say it wasn't really
her doing. She'll admit even that she was paid money to do
it. And she'll mention a name. She'll say who paid her.
And somebody wouldn't like that would they, Mr. Rogers?"
"You mean this unknown woman that we've more or
less postulated without even knowing there's any such
person?"
"Man or woman, say someone paid her. Well, that someone
would want her silenced pretty quickly, wouldn't
they?"
"You're thinking she might be dead?"
"It's a possibility, isn't it?" said Keene. Then he made
what seemed quite an abrupt change of subject. "You know
that kind of Folly place, Mr. Rogers, that you've got up at
the top of your woods?"
"Yes," I said, "what of it? My wife and I had it repaired
and fixed up a bit. We used to go up there occasionally but
not very often. Not lately certainly. Why?"
"Well, we've been hunting about, you know. We looked
into this Folly. It wasn't locked."
"No," I said, "we never bothered to lock it. There was
nothing of value in there, just a few odd bits of furniture."
"We thought it possible old Mrs. Lee had been using it but
we found no traces of her. We did find this, though. I was
going to show it to you anyway." He opened a drawer and
took out a small delicate gold-chased lighter. It was a
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ENDLESS NIGHT


woman's lighter and it had an initial on it in diamonds. The
letter C. "It wouldn't be your wife's, would it?"

"Not with the initial C. No, it's not Ellie's," I said.
"She hadn't anything of that kind. And it's not Miss
Andersen's either. Her name is Greta."

"It was up there where somebody had dropped it. It's a
classy bit of goods--cost money."

"C," I said, repeating the initial thoughtfully. "I can't
think of anyone who's been with us whose initial is O
except Cora," I said. "That's my wife's stepmother. Mrs.
van $tuyvesant, but I really can't see her scrambling up to
the Folly along that very overgrown path. And anyway she
hasn't been staying with us for quite a long time. About a
month. I don't think I've ever seen her using this lighter.
Perhaps I wouldn't notice anyway," I said. "Miss Andersen
might know."

"Well, take it up with you and show it to her."

"I will. But if so, if it's Cora's, it seems odd that we've
never seen it when we've been in the Folly lately. There's
not much stuff there. You'd notice something like this
lying on the floor--it was on the floor?"

"Yes, quite near the divan. Of course a,/body might
use that Folly. It's a handy place, you k xow, bra couple of
lovers to meet any time. The locals I'r. talk'ag about. But
they wouldn't be likely to have an ex ens e thing of this
kind."

"There's Claudia Hardcastle," I said, Out I doubt if
she'd have anything as fancy as this. And v, t would she be
doing in the Folly?"

"She was quite a friend of your wife's, wam't she?"
"Yes," I said, "I think she was Ellie's best friend down
here. And she'd know we wouldn't mind her using the
Folly any time."

"Ah," said Sergeant Keene.

I looked at him rather hard. "You don't think Claudia

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ENDLESS NIGHT

/Hardcastle was a--an enemy of Ellie's do you? That would
be absurd."
"Doesn't seem any reason why she should be, I agree, bu!
you never know with ladies."
	"I suppose "I began and then stopped because what
I was going to say would seem perhaps raI,her odd.
	"Yes, Mr. Rogers?"
"I believe that Claudia Hardcstle was originally married
to an AmericanaA'nerican named Lloyd. Actually
Bthe name of my wife's principal trustee in America is
Stanford Lloyd. Bu. there must be hundreds of Lloyds and
anyway it would only be a coincidence if it was the same
person. And what would it have to do with all this?"
	"It doesn't seem likely. But then
	"he stopped.
	"The funny thing is that I thought I saw Stanford Lloyd

	down here on the day of the--the accident--Having lunch in

	the George at Bartington "

	"He didn't come to see you?"

	I shook my head.

	"He was with someone who looked rather like Miss Hard
	castle.
But probably it was just a mistake on my part.

	You know, I suppose, that it was her brother who built our

	house?"

	"Does she take an interest in the house?"

	"No," I said, "I don't think she likes her brother's type

	of architecture." Then I got up. "Vell, I won't take any

	more of your time. Try and find the gipsy."

	"We shan't stop looking, I can tell you that. Coroner

	wants her too."

	I said good-bye and went out of the police station. In

	the queer way that so often happens when you suddenly meet

	someone you've been talking about, Claudia Hardcastle

	came out of the post office just as I was passing it. We both

	stopped. She said with that slight embarrassment that you

	have when you meet someone that's been recently bereaved,

		174


ENDLESS NIGHT

"I'm so terribly sorry, Mike, about Ellie. I won't say any
more. It's beastly when people say things to you. But I
have just--just to say that."
"I know," I said. "You were very nice to Elli. You
made her feel at home here. I've been grateful."
"There was one thing I wanted to ask you and I thought
perhaps I'd better do it now before you go to America. I
hear you're going quite soon."
"As soon as I can. I've got a lot to see to there."
"It was only--if you were putting your house on the
market I thought it might bca thing you'd set in motion
before you went away .... And if so--if so, I'd rather like to
have the first refusal of it."
I stared at her. This really did surprise me. It was the
last thing I'd expected.
"You mean you'd like to buy it? I thought you didn't
even care for that type of architecture?"
"My brother ludolfsaid to me that it was the best thing
he'd done. I dare say he knows. I expect you'll want a very
large price for it but I could pay it. Yes, I'd like to have it."
I couldn't help thinking it was odd. She'd never shown the
faintest appreciation of our house when she'd come to it. I
wondered as I'd wondered once or twice before what her
links with her half-brother really were. Had she really a
great devotion to him? Sometimes I'd almost thought that
she disliked him, perhaps hated him. She spoke of him certainly
in a very odd way. But whal :vet her actual emotions
	were, he meant something to her.
	Meant something im	portant.
I shook my head Slowly.
"I can see that you might think I'd want to sell the place
and leave here because of Ellie's death," I said. "But actually
that's not so at all. We lived here and were happy and this
is the place I shall remember her best. I shan't sell Gipsy's
Acre--not for any consideration! You can be quite sure of
that."
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ENDLESS NIGHT


Our eyes met. It was like a kind of tussle between us.
Then hers dropped.

I took my courage in both hands and spoke.

"It's no business of mine, but you were married once.
Was the name of your husband Stanford Lloyd?"

She looked at me for a moment without speaking. Then
she said abruptly:

"Yes," and turned away.


176


CHAPTER XXI

Confusion That's all I can remember when I look back.
Newspapermen asking questions--wanting interviews--masses
of letters and telegrams--Greta coping with them--
The first really startling thing was that Ellie's family
were not as we had supposed in America. It was quite a
shock to find that most of them were actually in England.
It was understandable, perhaps, that Cora van Stuyvesant
should be. She was a very restless woman, always dashing
across to Europe, to Italy, to Paris, to London and back
again to America, to Palm Beach, out West to the ranch;
here, there and everywhere. On the actual day of Ellie's
death she had been not more than fifty miles away still pursuing
her whim of having a house in England. She-had
rushed over to stay in London for two or three days and gone
to fresh house agents for fresh orders to view and had been
touring round the country seeing half a dozen on that
particular day.
Stanford Lloyd, it turned out, had flown over in the same
plane ostensibly for a business meeting in London. These
people learnt of Ellie's death, not from the cables which
we had dispatched to the United States but from the public
press.
An ugly wrangle developed about where Ellie should be
buried. I had assumed it was only natural that she'd be
buried here where she had died. Here where she and I had
lived.
But Ellie's family objected violently to this. They wanted
the body brought to America to be buried with her fore177


ENDLESS NIGHT

bears. Where her grandfather and her father, her mother
and others had been laid to rest. I suppose it was natural,
really, when one comes to think of it.
Andrew Lippincott came down to talk to me about it. He
put the matter in a reasonable way.
"She never left any directions as to where she wished to
be buried," he pointed out to me.
"Why should she?" I demanded hotly. "How old was
she--twenty-one? You don't think at twenty-one you're
going to die. You don't start thinking then the way you
want to be buried. If we'd cver thought about it we'd
assume we'd be buried together somewhere even if we didn't
die at the same time. But who thinks of death in the middle
of life ?"
"A very just observation," said Mr. Lippincott. Then he
said, "I'm afraid you'll also have to come to America, you
know. There's a great deal of business interests you'll have
to look into."
"What sort of business? What have I got to do with
business?"
"You could have a great deal to do with it," he said.
"Don't 'you realise that you're the principal beneficiary
under the vail?"
"You mean because I'm Ellie's next of kin or something?"
"No. Under her will."
"I didn't know she ever made a will."
"Oh yes," said Mr. Lippincott. "Ellie was quite a
businesslike young woman. She'd had to be, you know.
She'd lived in the middle of that kind of thing. She made a
will on coming of age and almost immediately after she was
married. It was lodged with her lawyer in London with a
request that one copy should be sent to me." He hesitated
and then said, "If you do come to the States, which I advise,
I also think that you should place your affairs in the hands
of some reputable lawyer there."
178


ENDLESS NIGHT

"Because in the case of a vast fortune, large quantities of
real estate, stocks, controlling interests in varying industries,
you will need technical advice."
"I'm not qualified to deal with things like that," I said.
"Really Fm not."
"I quite understand," said Mr. Lippincott.
"Couldn't I place the whole thing in yofir hands?"
"You could do so."
"Well then, why don't I?"
"All the same, I think you should be separately represented.
I am already acting for some members of the family
and a conflict of interests might arise. If you will leave it in
my hands, I will see that your interests are safeguarded by
your being represented by a thoroughly able attorney."
"Thank you," I said, "you're very kind."
"If I may be slightly indiscreet--" he looked a little un-comfortable--it
pleased me rather thinking of Lippincott
being indiscreet.
"Yes?" I said.
"I should advise you to be very careful of anything you
sign. Any business documents. Before you sign anything,
read it thoroughly and carefully."
"Would the kind of document you're talking about mean
anything to me ffI do read it?"
"If it is not all clear to you, you will then hand it over to
your legal adviser."
"Are you warning me against somebody or someone?" I
said, with a suddenly aroused interest.
"That is not at all a proper question for me to answer,"
said Mr. Lippincott. "I will go this far. Where large sums of
money are concerned it is advisable to trust nobody."
$o he was warning me against someone, but he wasn't
going to give me any names. I could see that. Was it
against Cora? Or had he had suspicionstperhaps sus-
179


ENDLESS NIGHT


picions of some long standing--of Stanford Lloyd, that
florid banker so full of bonhomie, so rich and carefree, who
had recently been over here "on business"? Might it be
Uncle Frank who might approach me with some plausible
documents. I had a sudden vision of myself, a poor innocent
boob, swimming in a lake surrounded by evilly disposed
crocodiles, all smiling false smiles of amity.

"The world," said Mr. Lippincott, "is a very evil place."

It was perhaps a stupid thing to say, but quite suddenly
I asked him a question.

"Does Ellie's death benefit anyone?" I asked.

He looked at me sharply.

"That's a very curious question. Why do you ak
that?"

"I don't know," I said, "it just came into my head."
"It benefits you," he said.

"Of course," I said. "I take that for granted. I really
meant--does it benefit anyone else?"

Mr. Lippincott was silent for quite a long time.

"If you mean," he said, "does Fenella's will benefit
certain other people in the way of legacies, that is so in a
minor degree. Some old servants, an old governess, one or
two charities but nothing of any particular moment. There's
a legacy to Miss Andersen but not a large one for she has
already, as you probably know, settled a very considerable
sum on Miss Andersen."

I nodded. Ellie had told me she was doing that.

"You were her husband. She had no other near relations.
But I take it that your question did not mean specifically
that."

"I don't know quite what I meant by it," I said. "But
somehow or other, you've succeeded, Mr. Lippincott, in
making me feel suspicious. Suspicious of I don't know whom

or why. Onlymwell suspicious.
		I don't understand

finance," I added.

	180


ENDLESS NIGHT

"No, that is quite apparent. Let me say only that I have
no exact knowledge, no exact suspicions of any kind. At
someone's death there is usually an accounting of their
affairs. This may take place quickly or it may be delayed
for a period of many years."
"What you really mean," I said, "is that some of the others
quite likely might put a few fast ones over and ball up
things generally. Get me perhaps to sign releases--what-ever
you call the things."
"If Fenella's affairs were not, shall we say, in the healthy
state they ought to be, then--yes, possibly her premature
death might be, shall we say, fortunate for someone, we will
name no names, someone perhaps who could cover his
traces more easily if he had a fairly simple person, if I may
say so, like yourself to deal with. I will go that far but I do
not wish to speak further on the matter. It would not be
equitable to do so."
There was a simple funeral service held in the LITTLE
church. If I could have stayed away I would have done so.
I hated all those people who were staring at me lining up
outside the church. Curious eyes. Greta pulled me through
things. I don't think I'd realised until now what a strong,
reliable character she was. She made the arrangements,
ordered flowers, arranged everything. I understood better
now how Ellie had come to depend upon Greta as she had
done. There aren't many Gretas in the world.
The people in the church were mostly our neighbours--some,
even, that we had hardly known. But I noticed one
face that I had seen before, but which I could not at the
moment place. When I got back to the house, Carson told
me there was a genfieman in the drawing-room waiting to
see me.
	"I can't see anyone to-day. Send him away.
	You

shouldn't have let him in!"

	"Excuse me, sir. He said he was a relation."

		181


ENDLESS NIGHT


"A relation?"

Suddenly I remembered the man I'd seen in the church.
Carson was handing me a card.

It meant nothing to me for a moment. Mr. William R.
Pardoe. I turned it over and shook my head. Then I
handed it to Greta.

"Do you know bY any chance who this is?" I said.
"His face seemed familiar but I couldn't place it. Perhaps
it's one of Ellie's friends."

Greta took it from me and looked at it. Then she said,
"Of course."
"Who is it?"

"Uncle Reuben. You remember. Ellie's cousin. She's
spoken of him to you, surely?"

I remembered then why the face had seemed familiar to
me. Ellie had had several photographs in her sitting-room
of her various relations carelessly placed about the room.
That was why the face had been so familiar. I had seen

it so far only in a photograph.

"I'll come," I mid.

I went out of the room and into the drawing-room.
Mr. Pardoe rose to his feet, and mid,

"Michael Rogers? You may not know my name but your
wife was my cousin. She called me Uncle Reuben always,
but we haven't met, I know. This is the first time I've been
over since your marriage."

"Of course I know who you are," I said.

I don't know quite how to describe Reuben Pardoe. He
was a big burly man with a large face, wide and rather
absent-looking as though he were thinking of something else.
Yet after you had talked to him for a few moments you got
the feeling that he was more on the ball than you would
have thought.

"I don't need to tell you how shocked and grieved I was
to hear of Ellie's death," he mid.

182


ENDLESS NIGHT

"Let's skip that," I said. "I'm not up to talking about
it."
"No, no, I can understand that."
He had a certain sympathetic personality and yet there
was something about him that made me vaguely uneasy. I
said, as Greta entered,
"You know Miss Andersen?"
"Of course," he said, "how are you, Greta?"
"Not too bad," said Greta. "How long have you been
over?"
"Just a week or two. Touring around."
Then it came to me. On an impulse I went on. "I saw
you the other day."
"Really? Where?"
"At an auction sale at a place called Bartington Manor."
"I remember now," he said, "yes, yes I think I remember
your face. You were with a man about sixty with a brown
moustache."
,"Yes," I said. "A Major Phillpot."
"You seemed in good spirits," he said, "both of you."
"Never better," I said, and repeated with the strange
wonder that I always felt, "Never better."
"Of course--at that time you didn't kill r what had
happened. That was the date of the as.cide, wasn't it?"
"Yes, we were expecting Ellie to join us for lunch."
"Tragic," said Uncle Reuben. "Really ts' xgic..."
"I had no idea," I said, "that you were in England. I
don't think Ellie had any idea either?" I p:used, waiting
for what he would tell me.
"No," he said, "I hadn't wri. tten. In fact, l didn't know how much time I should have over here, but actually I'd
concluded my business earlier than I thought and I was
wondering if after the sale I'd have the time to drive over
and see you."
"You came over from the States on busine?" I asked.
183


ENDLESS NIGHT

"Well, partly yes and partly no. Cora wanted some
advice from me on one or two matters. One concerning this
house she's thinking of buying."
It was then that he told me where Cora had been staying
in England. Again I said,
"We didn't know that."
"She was actually staying not far from here that day," he
said.
"Near here? Was she in a hotel?"
"No, she was staying with a friend."
"I didn't know she had any friends in this part of the
world."
"A woman called--now what was her name?---Hard--something.
Hardcasfie."
"Claudia Hardcastle?" I was surprised.
"Yes. She was qaite a friend of Cora's. Cora knew her
well when she was in the States. Didn't you know?"
"I know very little," I said. "Very little about the family."
I looked at Greta.
"Did you know that Cora knew Claudia Hardcastle ?"
"I don't think I ever heard her speak of her," said Greta.
"So that's why Claudia didn't turn up that day."
"Of course," I said, "he was going with you to shop in
London. You were to meet at Market Chadwell stationm"
"Yes--and she wasn't there. She rang up the house just
after I'd left. Said some American visitor had turned up
unexpectedly and She couldn't leave home."
"I wonder," I said, "if the American visitor could have
been Cora."
"Obviously," said Reuben Pardoe. He shook his head.
"It all seems so confused," he said. He went on, "I understand
the inquest was adjourned."
"Yes," I said.
He drained his cup and got up.
"I won't stay to worry you any more," he said. "If
184


ENDLESS NIGHT

there's anything I can do, I'm staying at the Majestic Hotel
in Market Chadwell."
I said I was afraid there wasn't anything he could do and
thanked him. When he had gone away, Greta said,
"What does he want, I wonder? Why did he come over?"
And then sharply: "I wish they'd all go back where they
belong."
"I wonder if it was really Stanford Lloyd I saw at the
George--I only got a glimpse."
"You said he was .with someone who looked like Claudia
so it probably was him. Perhaps he came to see her and
Reuben came to see Clora--what a mix upi"
"I don't like it--all of them milling .round that day."
Greta said things often happened that way--as usual she
was quite cheerful and reasonable about it.

185


CHAPTER XXII

There was nothing more for me to do at Gl?: "s Acre. I
left Greta in charge of the house while I sailed o New York
to wind up things there and to take part in what I felt with
some dread were going to be the most ghastly gold-plated
obsequies for Ellie.
"You're going into the jungle," Greta warned me. "Look after yourself. Don't let them skin you alive."
She was right about that. It was the jungle. I felt it
when I got there. I didn't know about jungles--not that
kind of jungle. I was out of my depth and I knew it. I
wasn't the hunter, I was the hunted. There were people all
round me in the undergrowth, gunning for me. Sometimes,
I expect, I imagined things. Sometimes my suspicions were
iustificd. I remember going to the lawyer supplied for
me by Mr. Lippincott (a most urbane man who treated me
rather as a general practitioner might have done in the
medical profession). I had been advised to get rid of certain
mining properties to which the title deeds were not too
clear.
He asked me who had told me so and I said it was Stanford
Lloyd.
"Well, we must look into it," he said. "A man like
Mr. Lloyd ought to know."
He said to me afterwards,
"There's nothing wrong with your title deeds, and there
is certainly no point in your selling the land in a hurry, as
he seems to have advised you. Hang on to it."
186


ENDLESS NIGHT


I had the feeling then that I'd been right, everybody was
gunning for me. They all knew I was a simpleton when it
came to finance.

The funeral was splendid and, I thought, quite horrible.
Gold-plated, as I had surmised. At the cemetery, masses of
flowers, the cemetery itself like a public park and all the
trimmings of wealthy mourning expressed in monumental
marble. Ellie would have hated it, I was sure of that. But I
suppose her family had a certain right to her.

Four days after my arrival in New York I had news from
Kingston Bhop.

The body of old Mrs. Lee had been found in the disused
quarry on the far side of the hill. She had been dead some
days. There had been accidents there before, and it had
been said that the place ought to be fenced intbut nothing
had been done. A verdict of Accidental Death had been
brought in and a further recommendation to the Council to
fence the place off. In Mrs. Lee's cottage a sum of three
hundred pounds had been found hidden under the floor
boards, all in one pound notes.

Major Phillpot had added in a postscript "I'm sure you
will be sorry to hear that Claudia Hardcasfle was thrown
from her horse and killed out hunting yesterday."

Claudiatkilled? I couldn't believe it! It gave me a very
nasty jolt. Two people--within a fortnight, killed in a
riding accident. It seemed like an almost impossible co-incidence.


I don't want to dwell on that time I spent in New York. I
was a stranger in an alien atmosphere. I felt all the time
that I had to be wary of what I said and what I did. The
Ellie that I had known, the Ellie that had belong.ed pecul-iarly
to me was not there. I saw her now only as an ;American
girl, heiress to a great fortune, surrounded by friends and
connections and distant relatives, one of a family that had
187


ENDLESS NIGHT

lived there for five generations. She had come from there
as a comet might have come, visiting my territory.
Now she had gone back to be buffed with her own folk,
to where her own home was. I was glad to have it that way.
I shouldn't have been easy feeling her there in the prim
little cemetery at the foot of the pine woods just outside the
village. No, I shouldn't have been easy.
"Go back where you belong, Ellie," I said to myself.
Now and again that haunting little tune of the song she
used to sing to her guitar came into my mind. I remembered
her fingers gently twanging the strings.
Every Morn and every Night
Some are born to Sweet Delight
and I thought 'That was true of you. You were born to
Sweet Delight. You had Sweet Delight there at Gipsy's
Acre. Only it didn't last very long. Now it's over. You've
come back to where perhaps there wasn't much delight,
where you weren't happy. But you're at home here anyway.
You're among your own folk.'
I wondered suddenly .where I should be when the time
came for me to die. Gipsy's Acre? It could be. My mother
would come and see me laid in my grave--if she wasn't
dead already. But I couldn't think of my mother being dead.
I could think more easily of death for myself. Yes, she'd
come and see me buffed. Perhaps the sternness of her face
would relax. I took my thoughts away from her. I didn't
want to think of her. I didn't want to go near her or see
her.
That last isn't quite true. It wasn't a question of seeing her. It was always with my mother a question of her seeing
me, of her eyes looking through me, of an anxiety that swept
out like a miasma embracing me. I thought: 'Mothers
are the devil! Why have they got to brood over their
children? Why do they feel they know all about their
children? They don't. They don't! She ought to be proud
188


ENDLESS NIGHT


Of me, happy for me, happy for the wonderful life that I've

	achieved. She ought
	' Then I wrenched my thoughts

	away from her again.

How long was I over in the States? I can't even remember.
It seemed an age of walking warily, of being watched by
people with false smiles and enmity in their eyes. I said to
myself every day 'I've got to get through this. I've got to get
through this--and then.' Those were the two words I used.
Used in my own mind, I mean. I used them every day
several times. And then-- They were the two words of the
future. I used them in the same way that I had once used
those other two words. I want....

Everyone went out of their way to be nice to me became
I was rich! Under the terms of Ellie's will I was an ex-tremely
rich man. I felt very odd. I had investments I
didn't understand, shar, stocks, property. And I didn't
know in the least what to do with them all.

The day before I went back to England I had a long
conversation with Mr. Lippincott. I always thought of him
like that in my mind--as Mr. Lippincott. He'd never be-come
Uncle Andrew to me. I told him that I thought of
withdrawing the charge of my investments from Stanford

.loyd.

"Indeed!" His grizzled eyebrow rose. He looked at me
with his shrewd eyes and his poker face and I wondered
what exactly his "indeed" meant.

"Do you think it's all right to do that?" I asked anxiously.
"You have reasom, I presume?"

"No," I said, "I haven't got reasons. A feeling, that's all.
I suppose I can say anything to you?"

"The communication will be privileged, naturally."
"All right," I said, "I just feel that he's a crook?

"Ah." Mr. Lippincott looked interested. "Yes, I should
say your instinct was possibly sound."

$o I knew then that I was right. Stanford Lloyd had been

189


ENDLESS NIGHT

playing hanlcy-panky with Ellie's bonds and investments
and all the rest of it. I signed a power of attorney and gave
it to Andrew Lippincott.
"You're willing," I said, "to accept it?"
"As far as financial matters are concerned," said Mr.
Lippincott, "you can trust me absolutely. I will do my best
for you in that respect. I don't think you will have any
reason to complain of my stewardship."
I wondered exactly what he meant by that. He meant
something. I think he meant that he didn't like me, had
never liked me, but financially he would do his best for me
because I had been Ellie's husband. I signed all necessary
papers. He asked me how I was going back to England.
Flying? I said no, I wasn't flying, I was going by sea.
"I've got to have a little time to myself," I said. "I think a
sea voyage will do me good."
 "And you are going to take up your residence--where ?"
"Gipsy's Acre," I said.
"Ah. You propose to live there."
"Yes," I said.
"I thought perhaps you might have put it on the market for sale."
"No," I said, and the no came out rather stronger than I
meant. I wasn't going to part with Gipsy's Acre. Gipsy's
Acre had been part of my dream, the dream that I'd cherished
since I'd been a callow boy.
"Is anybody looking after it while you have been away
in the States?"
I said that I'd let Greta Andersen in charge.
"Ah," said Mr. Lippincott, "yes. Greta."
He meant something in the way he said "Greta" but I
didn't take him up on it. If he disliked her, he disliked her.
He always had. It lift an awkward pause, then I changed
my mind. I felt that I'd got to say something.
"She was very good to Ellie,' I said. "She nursed her
190


ENDLESS NIGHT

when she was ill, she came and lived with us and looked
after Ellie. I--I can't be grateful enough to her. I'd like you
to understand that. You don't know what she's been like.
You don't know how she helped and did everything after
Ellie was killed. I don't know what I'd have done without
her."
"Quite so, quite so," said Mr. Lippincott. He sounded
drier than you could poss'lbly imagine.
"So you see I owe her a lot."
"A very competent girl," said Mr. Lippincott.
I got up and said good-bye and I thanked him.
"You have nothing for which to thank me," said Mr.
Lippincott, dry as ever.
He added, "I wrote you a short letter. I have sent it by
air mail to Gipsy's Acre. If you are going by sea you will
probably find it waiting there on arrival." Then he said,
"Have a good voyage."
I asked him, rather hesitantly, if he'd known Stanford
Lloyd's wife--a girl called Claudia Hardcastle.
"Ah, you mean his first wife. No I never met her. The
marriage I believe broke up quite soon. After the divorce,
he remarried. That too ended in divorce."
So that was that.
When I got back to my hotel I found a cable. It asked me to come to a hospital in California. It said a friend of
mine, Rudolf Santonix had asked for me, he had not long to
live and he wished to see me before he died.
I changed my passage to a later boat and flew to San
Francisco. He wasn't dead yet, but he was sinking very fast.
They doubted, they said, if he would recover consciousness
before he died, but he had asked for me very urgently. I sat
there in that hospital room watching him, watching what
looked like a shell of the man I knew. He'd always looked
ill, he'd always had a kind of queer transparency about him,
a delicacy, a frailness. He lay now looking a deadly, waxen
191


ENDLESS NIGHT

figure. I sat there thinking: 'I wish he'd speak to me. I
wish he'd say SOmething. Just something before he dies.'
I felt so alone, so horribly alone. I'd escaped from
enemies now, I'd got to a friend. My only friend, really.
He was the only person who knew anything about me, except
Mum but I didn't want to think of Mum.
Once or twice I spoke to a nurse, asked her if there wasn't
anything they could do, but she shook her head and said
noncommittally,
	"He might recover consciousness or might not."
I sat there. And then at last he stirred and sighed. The
nurse raised him up very gently. He looked at me but I
didn't know whether he recognised me or not. He was just
looking at me as though he looked past me and beyond me.
Then suddenly a difference came into his eyes. I thought
'He does know me, he does see me.' He said something very
faintly and I bent over the bed SO as to catch it. But they
didn't seem words that had any meaning. Then his body
had a sudden spasm and twitch, and he threw his head back
and shouted out:
	"You damued fool 	Why
didn't you go the other
way?"
	Then
he just collapsed and died.
I
don't know what he meant---or even if he knew himself what
he was saying.
So
that was the last I saw of $antonix. I wonder if he'd have
heard me if I had said anything to him? I'd like to have
told him once more that the house he'd built me was the
best thing I had in the world. The thing that mattered most
to me. Funny that a house could mean that. I suppose it
was a sort of symbolism about it. Something you want. Something
you want so much that you don't quite know what
it is. But he'd known what it was and he'd given it to me.
And I'd got it. And I was going home to it.
	Going
home. That's all I could think about when I got
192


ENDLESS NIGHT


on the boat. That and a deadly tiredness at first .... And
then a rising tide of happiness oozing up as it were from the
depths .... I was going home. I was going home...,


Home is the sailor, home from the sea
And the hunter home from the hill..,


193


CHAPTER XXIII


Yes, that was what I was doing. It was all over now. The
last of the fight, the last of the struggle. The last phase of the
journey.

It seemed so long ago to the time of my restless youth.
The days of "I want, I want". But it wasn't long. Less than
a year ....

I went over it all--lying there in my bunk, and thinking.
Meeting Ellie---our times in Regent's Park---our marriage
in the Registrar's office. The house--Santonix building it--the
house completed. Mine, all mine. I was me--me--me
as I wanted to be. As I'd always wanted to be. I'd got
everything I'd wanted and I was going home to it.

Before I left New York I'd written one letter and sent it
off' by air mail to get there ahead of me. I'd written to
Phillpot. Somehow I felt that Phillpot would understand,
though others mightn't.

It was easier to write than to tell him. Anyway, he'd got
to know. Everyone had got to know. Some people probably
wouldn't understand, but I thought he would. He'd seen
for himself how close Ellie and Greta had been, how Ellie
had depended on Greta. I thought he'd realise how I'd
come to depend upon her also, how it would be impossible
for me to live alone in the house where I'd lived with Ellie
unless there was someone there to help me. I don't know if
I put it very well. I did my best.

"I'd like you," I wrote, "to be the first one to know.
You've been so kind to us, and I think you'll be the only
194


ENDLESS NIGHT


person to understand. I can't face living all alone at
Gipsy's Acre. I've been thinking all the time I've been in
America and I've decided that as soon as I get home I'm
going to ask Greta to marry me. She's the only person I
can really talk to about Ellie, you see. She'll understand.
Perhaps she won't marry me, but I think she will .... It
will make everything as though there were the three of us
together still."

I wrote the letter three times before I could get it to
express just what I wanted to say. Phillpot ought to get it
two days before my return.

I came up on deck as we were approaching England. I
looked out as the land came nearer. I thought "I wish
Santonix was with me". I did wish it. I wished he could
know how everything was all coming true. Everything I'd
planned---everything I'd thought---everything I'd wanted.

I'd shaken off America, I'd shaken off the crooks and the
ycophants and all the whole lot of them whom I hated
and whom I was pretty sure hated me and looked down on
me for being so low class! I was coming back in triumph. I
was coming back to the pine trees and the curling dangerous
road that made its way up through Gipsy's Acre to the house
on the hilltop. My house! I was coming back to the two
things I wanted. My house--the house that I'd dreamed of,
that I'd planned, that I'd wanted above everything. That
and a wonderful woman .... I'd known always that I'd
meet one day a wonderful woman. I had met her. I'd
seen her and she'd seen me. We'd come together, A wonder-ful
woman. I'd known the moment I saw her that I belonged
to her, belonged to her absolutely and for always. I was
hers. And nowmat last--I was going to her.

Nobody saw me arrive at Kingston Bishop. It was almost
dark and I came by train and I walked from the station,
taking a roundabout side road. I didn't want to meet any
of the people in the village. Not that night ....

195


ENDLESS NIGHT


The sun had set when I came up the road to Gipsy's
Acre. I'd told Greta the time I'd arrive. She was up there
in the house waiting for me. At last! We'd done with sub-terfuges
now and all the pretences--the pretence of dis-liking
her--I thought now, laughing to myself, of the part
I'd played, a part I'd played carefully right from the be-ginning.
Disliking Greta, not wanting her to come and stay
with Ellie. Yes, I'd been very careful. Everyone must have
been taken in by that pretence. I remembered the quarrel
we'd faked up so that Ellie should overhear it.

Greta had known me for what I was the first moment we
met. We'd never had any silly illusions about eacl other.
She had the same kind of mind, the same kind of desires as
I had. We wanted the World, nothing less! We wanted to
be on top of the world. We wanted to fulfil every ambition.
We wanted to have everything, deny ourselves nothing. I
remembered how I'd poured out my heart to her when I first
met her in Hamburg, telling my frenzied desire for things.
I hadn't got to conceal my inordinate greed for life from
Greta, she had the same greed herself. She said:

"For all you want out of life you've got to have money."
"Yes," I said, "and I don't see how I'm going to get
it."

"No," said Greta, "you won't get it by hard work.
You're not the kind."

"Work!" I said, "I'd have to work for years! I don't
want to wait. I don't want to be middle-aged." I said
"You know the story about that chap Schliemann how he
worked, toiled, and made a fortune so that he could have his
life's dream come true and go to Troy and dig it up and find
the graves of Troy. He got his dream but he had to wait till
he was forty. But I don't want to wait till I'm a middle-aged
man. Old. One foot in the grave. I want it now
when I'm young and strong. You do too, don't you?" I
said.


ENDLESS NIGHT

"Yes. And I know the way you can do it. It's easy. I
wonder you haven't thought of it already. You can get
girls easily enough, can't you? I can see that. I can feel
it."
"Do you think I care about girls--or ever have really?
There's only one girl I want," I said. "You. And you know
that. I belong to you. I knew it the moment I saw you. I
knew always that I'd meet someone like you. And I have.
I belong to you."
"Yes," said Greta, "I think you do."
"We both want the same things out of life," I said.
"I tell you it's easy," said Greta. "Easy. All you've got
to do is to marry a rich girl, one of the richest girls in the
world. I can put you in the way of doing that."
"Don't be fantastic," I said.
"It's not fantastic, it'll be easy."
"No," I said, "that's no good to me. I don't want to
be the husband of a rich wife. She'll buy me things and
we'll do things and she'll keep me in a golden cage, but that's
not what I want. I don't want to be a fled up slave."
"You needn't be. It's the sort of thing that needn't last
for long. Just long enough. Wives do die, you know."
I stared at her.
"Now you're shocked," she said.
"No," I said, "I'm not shocked."
"I thought you wouldn't be. I thought perhaps
already--?" She looked at me inquiringly, but I wasn't
going to answer that. I had still some self-preservation left. There are some secrets one doesn't want anyone to know.
Not that they were much in the way of secrets, but I didn't
like. to think of them. I didn't like to think of the first one.
Silly though. Puerile. Nothing that mattered. I had had
a boy's passion for a classy wrist-watch that a boy--a
friend of mine at school--had been given. I wanted it. I
wanted it badly. It had cost a lot of money. A rich godfather
197


ENDLESS NIGHT

had given it to him. Yes, I wanted that, but I didn't think
I'd ever have a chance of getting it. Then there was the
day we went skating together. The ice wasn't strong enough
to bear. Not that we thought of it beforehand. It just
happened. The ice cracked. I skated across to him. He
was hanging on. He had gone through a hole and he was
hanging on to the ice which was cutting his hands. I went
across to pull him out, of course, but just as I got there I
saw the glint of the wrist-watch. I thought 'Supposing he
goes under and drowns.' I thought how easy it would
be ....
It seemed almost unconsciously, I think, that I unfastened
the strap, grabbed the watch and pushed his head
under instead of trying to pull him out 	Just
held his
	head
under. He couldn't struggle much, he was under the
	ice.
People saw and came towards us. They thought I was
	trying
to pull him out I They got him out in due course, with
	some
diculty. They tried artificial respiration on him
but
	it was too late. I hid my treasure away in a special
place
	where I kept things now and then. Things I didn't
want
	Mum to see because she'd ask me where I got them. She
came
	across that watch one day when she was fooling about
with
	my socks. Asked me if that wasn't Pete's watch? I said
of
	course it wash'trait was one I'd swopped with a boy at
school.
	I was always nervous with Mum--I always felt she
knew
	too much about me. I was nervous with her when she
found
	the watch. She suspected, I think. She couldn't know, of
	course. Nobody knew. But she used to look at me. In
a
	funny way. Everybody thought I'd tried to rescue Pete.
I
	don't think she ever thought so. I think she knew.
She
	didn't want to know, but her trouble was that she knew
too
	much about me. I felt a bit guilty myself sometimes, but
it
	wore off, fairly
soon.
	And then later on, when I was in camp. It was during
our
	military training time. Chap called Ed and I had been to
a

		198


ENDLESS NIGHT

sort of gambling place. I'd had no luck at all, lost every
thing I had, but Ed had won a packet. He changed lxi
chips and he and I were coming home and he was stuffed
up with notes. His pockets were bulged with them. Then a
couple of toughs came round the corner and went for us.
They were pretty handy with the flick knives they'd got. I got a cut in the arm but Ed got a proper sort of stab. He
went down under it. Then there was a noise of people
coming. The toughs hooked it. I could see that if I was
quick... I was quick! My reflexes are pretty good--I
wrapped a handkerchief round my hand and I pulled out the
knife from Ed's wound and I stuck the knife in again a couple
of times in better places. He gave a gasp and passed out. I
was scared, of course, scared for a second or two and then I
knew it was going to be all right. So I felt--well--naturally
I felt proud of myself for xhinking and acting quick! I
thought 'Poor old Ed, he always was a fool.' It took me no
time at all to transfer those notes to my own pocket I Nothing
like having quick reflexes, seizing your opportunity. The
trouble is the opportunities don't come very often. Some
people, I suppose, get scared when they know they've killed
someone. But I wasn't scared. Not this time.
Mind you, it's not a thing you want to do too often.
Not unless it might be really worth your while. I don't know
how Greta sensed that about me. But she'd known. I don't
mean that she'd known that I'd actually killed a couple of
people. But I think she knew the idea of killing wouldn't
shock me or upset me. I said,
"What's all this fantastic story, Greta?"
She said, "I am in a position to help you. I can bring you
in touch with one of the richest girls in America. I more or
less look after her. I live with her. I have a lot of influence
over her."
"Do you think she'd look at someone like me?" I said.
I didn't believe it for a moment. Why should a rich girl
199


ENDLESS NIGHT


who could have her pick of any attractive sexy man she
liked, go for me?

"You've got a lot of sex appeal," said Greta. "Girls go
for you, don't they."

I grinned and said I didn't do too badly.

"She's never had that kind of thing. She's been looked
after too well. The only young men she's been allowed to
meet are conventional kinds, bankers' sons, tycoons' sons.
She's groomed to make a good marriage in the moneyed
class. They're terrified of her meeting handsome foreigners
who might be after her money. But naturally she's keener on
people like that. They'd be new to her, something she's
never seen before. You've got to make a big play for her.
You've got to fall in love with her at first sight and sweep
her offher feet! It'll be easy enough. She's never had any-one
to make a real sexy approach to her. You could do
it."

"I could try," I said doubtfully.

"We could set it up," said Greta.

"Her family would step in and stop it."

"No, they wouldn't," said Greta, "they wouldn't know
anything about it. Not until it was too late. Not until you'd
got married secretly."

"So that's your idea?"

So we talked about it. We planned. Not in detail, mind
you. Greta went back to America, but she kept in touch
with me. I went on with various jobs. I'd told her about
Gipsy's Acre and that I wanted it, and she said that was just
fine for setting up a romantic story, we laid our plans so
that my meeting with Ellie would take place there. Greta
would work Ellie up about having a house in England
and getting away from her family as soon as she came of
age.

Oh yes, we set it up. Greta was a great planner. I don't
think I could have planned it, but I knew I could play my

200


ENDLESS NIGHT


part all fight. I'd always enjoyed playing a part. And so
that's how it happened. That'a how I met Ellie.

It was fun, all of it. Mad fun because of course there was
always a flak, there was always a danger that it wouldn't
come off. The thing that made me really nervous were the
times that I had to meet Greta. I had to be sure, you sees
that I never gave myself away, by looking at Greta. I tried
not to look at her. We agreed it was best that I should take
a dislike to her, pretend jealousy of her. I carried that ou
all fight. I remember the day she came down to stay. We
staged a quarrel, a quarrel that Ellie could hear. I don't
know whether we overdid it a bit. I don't think so. Some-times
I was nervous that Ellie might guess or something,
but I don't think she did. I don't know. I don't know
really. I never did know about Ellie.

It was very easy to make love to Ellie. She was very
sweet. Yes, she was really sweet. Just sometimes I was afraid
of her because she did things sometimes without telling me.
And she knew things that I never dreamt she knew. But she
loved me. Yes, she loved me. Sometimes--I think I loved
her too ....

I don't mean it was ever like Greta. Greta was the woman
I belonged to. She was sex personified. I was mad for her
and I had to hold myself in. Ellie was something different.
I enjoyed living with her, you know. Yes, that sounds very
queer now I think back to it. I enjoyed living with her very
much.

I'm putting this down now because this is what I was
thinking that evening when I arrived back from America.
When I arrived back on top of the world, having got all I'd
longed for in spite of the risks, in spite of the dangers, in
spite of having done a pretty good murder, though I say it
myself!

Yes, it was a bit tricky, I thought once or twice, but no-body
could tell, not the way we'd done it. Now the risks
201


ENDLESS NIGHT

were over, the dangers were over and here I was coming up
to Oipsy's Acre. Coming as I'd come up it that day after I'd
first seen the poster on the walls, and gone up to look at
the ruins of the old house. {3oming up and rounding the
bend--
And then--it was then I saw tier. I mean it was then I saw
Ellie. Just as I came round the corner of the road in the
dangerous place where the accidents happened. She was there in the same place just where she'd been before, standing
in the shadow of the fir tree. Just aa she'd stood, when she'd
started a little aa she saw me and I'd started, seeing her.
There we'd looked at each other first and I'd come up and
spoken to her, played the part of the young man who's
fallen suddenly in love. Played it jolly well too! Oh, I tell
you I'm a fine actor!
But I hadn't expected to see her now .... I mean, I couldn't see her now, could I? But I was seeing her .... She
was looking--looking straight at me. Only--there was
something that frightened me-omethlng that frightened
me very much. It was, you see, just as though she didn't see
me--I mean I knew she couldn't really be there, I knew
she was dead--but I sam her. She was dead and her body was
buried in the cemetery in the U.S.A. But all the same she
was standing under the fir tree and she was looking at me. No, not at me. She was looking as though she expected to see
me and there was love in her face. The same love that I had
seen one day, one day when she'd been plucking the strings
of her guitar. That day when she'd said to me, "What were
you thinking of?." And I said "Why do you ask me?" and
she said "You were looking at me aa though you loved me.'
I'd said something silly like "Of course I love you."
I stopped dead. I stopped dead there in the road. I was
shaking. I said out loud,
"Ellie."
She didn't move, she just stayed there, looking....
202


ENDLESS NIGHT


Looking straight through me. That's what frightened mo
because I knew if I thought for a minute I'd know why sh.o
didn't see me, and I didn't want to know. No, I didn't want
to know that. I was quite sure that I didn't want to know
that. Looking straight at the place where I was--not seeing
me. I ran then. I ran like a coward, up the rest of the road
to where the lights were shining in my house, until I pulled
myself out of the silly panic that I was in. This was my
triumph. I'd got home. I was the hunter home from the
hills, back to my house, back to the other thing that I'd
wanted more than anything in the world, to the wonderful
woman whom I belonged to body and soul.

And now we'd get married and we'd live in the House.
We'd get all we'd played for! We'd won--Won hands
down!

The door wasn't latched. I went in, stamping my feet,
and through the open door of the library. And there was
Greta standing by the window waiting for me. She was
glorious. She was the most glorious and the most lovely
thing I'd ever seen. She was like a Brunnehilde, a super
Valkyrie with shining golden hair. She smelt and looked and
tasted of sex. We'd denied ourselves so long except for
occasional brief meetings up in the Folly.

I came straight into her arms, a sailor home from the sea
to where he belonged. Yes, it was one of the most wonderful
moments of my life.


Presently we came down to earth. I sat down and she
shoved a small pile of letters towards me. I picked out
almost automatically one with an American stamp. It was
the air mail letter from Lippincott. I wondered what he'd
put in it, why he'd had to write me a letter.

"Well," said Greta with a deep satisfied sigh, "we've
made it."

"V-Day all right," I said.

203


ENDLESS NIGHT

We both laughed, laughed wildly. There was champagno
on the table. I opened it and we drank to each other.
	"This place is wonderful," I said, looking round. "It's
	more beautiful than I remember it.
	Santonix-- But I
	haven't told you. $antonix is dead."
"Oh dear," said Greta, "what a pity. So he really was
ill?"
	"Of course he was ill. I never wanted to think so. I
went and saw him when he was dying."
	Greta gave a little shiver.
	"I shouldn't like to do that. Did he say anything?"
"Not really. He said I was a damned fool--I ought to
have gone the other way."
	"What did he mean--what way?"
"I don't know what he meant," I said. "I suppose he
was delirious. Didn't know what he was talking about."
"Well, this house is a fine monument to his memory,"
said Greta. "I think we'll stick to it, don't you?"
I stared at her. "Of course. Do you think I'm going to
live anywhere else?"
"We can't live here all the time," said Greta. "Not all
the year round. Buried in a hole like this village?"
"But it's where I want to live--it's where I always meant to live."
"Yes of course. But after all, Mike, we've got all the
money in the world. We can go anywhere! We can go all
over the Continent--we'll go on Safari in Africa. We'll
have adventures. We'll go and look for things--exciting
pictures. We'll go to the Angkor Vat. Don't you want to
have an adventurous life?"
	"Well, I suppose so 	But
we'll always come back here,
won't
we?"
I
had a queer eeling, a queer feeling that something had
gone wrong somewhere. That's all I'd ever thought of.
My House and Greta. I hadn't wanted anything else. But


ENDLESS NIGHT

she did. I saw that. She was just beginning. Beginning to
want things. Beginning to know she could have them. I
had a sudden cruel foreboding. I began to shiver.
"What's the matter with you, Mike--you're shivering.
Have you caught a cold or something?"
"It's not that," I said.
"What's happened, Mike?"
"I saw Ellie," I said.
"What do you mean, you saw Ellie?'
"As I was walking up the road I turned the corner and
there she was, standing under a fir tree, looking at--I mean
looking towards me."
Greta stared.
"Don't be ridiculous. You--you imagined things."
"Perhaps one does imagine things. This is Gipsy's Acre
after all. Ellie was there all right, looking--looking quite
happy. Just like herself as though she'd--she'd always been
there and was always going to be there."
"Mike I" Greta took hold of my shoulder. She shook me.
"Mike, don't say things like that. Had you been drinking
before you got here?"
"No, I waited till I got here to you. I knew you'd have
champagne waiting for us."
"Well, let's forget Ellie and drink to ourselves."
"It was Ellie," I said obstinately.
"Of course it wasn't Ellie! It was just a trick of the light
--something like that."
"It was Ellie, and she was standing there. She was lookinl
blooking for me and at me. But she couldn't see me. Greta, she couldn't see me." My voice rose. "And I know why. I
know why she couldn't see me."
"What do you mean?"
It was then that I whispered for the first time under my
breath:
"Because that wasn't me. I wasn't there. There was
2O5


ENDLESS NIGH'I

nothing for her to see but Endless Night." Then I shouted
out in a panic-stricken voice "Some are born to Sweet
Delight, and some are born to Endless Night. Me, Greta, me.
"Do you remember, Greta," I said, "how she sat on that
sofa? She used to play that song on her guitar, singing it in
her gentle voice. You must remember.
"'Every night and every morn,'" I sang it under my breath, "'Some to misery are born. Every morn and every night some are
born to sweet delight.' That's Ellie, Greta. She was born to
sweet delight. 'Some are born to sweet delight, some are born to
endless night.' That's what Mum knew about me. She knew
I was born to endless night. I hadn't got there yet. But
she knew. And Santonix knew. He knew I was heading
that way. But it mightn't have happened. There was just
a moment, just one moment, the time Ellie sang that song. I could have been quite happy, couldn't I, really, married
to Ellie? I could have gone on being married to Ellie."
"No, you couldn't," said Greta. "I never thought you
were the type of person who lost your nerve, Mike." She
shook me roughly by the shoulder again. "Wake up."
I stared at her.
"I'm sorry, Greta. What have I been saying?"
"I suppose they got you down over there in the States.
But you did all right, didn't you? I mean, all the investments
are all right?"
"Everything's fixed," I said. "Everything's fixed for our
future. Our glorious, glorious future."
"You speak very queerly. I'd like to know what Lippincott
says in his letter."
I pulled his letter towards me and opened it. There was
nothing inside except a cutting from a paper. Not a new
cutting, it was old and rather rubbed. I stared down at it.
It was a picture of a stree, t. I recognised the street, with
rather a grand building in the background. It was a street
in Hamburg with some people coming towards the photo206



ENDLESS NIGHT

grapher. Two people in the forefront walking arm in arm.
They were Greta and myself. $0 Lippincott hnov.. He'd
known all along that I already knew Greta. Somebody must
have sent him this cutting some time, probably with no
nefarious intention..Just amused perhaps to recognise Miss
Greta Andersen walking along the streets of Hamburg. He
had known I knew Greta and I remembered how particularly
he had asked me whether I had met or not met Greta
Andersen. I had denied it, of course, but he'd known I was
lying. It must have begun his suspicion of me.
I was suddenly afraid of Lippincott. He couldn't suspect,
of course, that I'd killed Ellie. He suspected something,
though. Perhaps he suspected even that.
"Look," I said to Greta, "he knew we knew each other.
He's known it all along. I've always hated that old fox and
he's always hated you," I said. "When he knows that we're
going to marry, he'll suspect." But then I knew that Lippincott
had certainly suspected that Greta and I were going to
marry, he suspected that we knew each other, he suspected
perhaps that we were lovers.
"Mike, will you stop being a panic-stricken rabbit. Yes,
that's what I said. A panic-stricken rabbit. I admired you.
I've always admired you. But now you're falling to pieces.
You're afraid of everyone."
"Don't say that to me."
"Well, it's true."
"Endless night."
I couldn't think of anything else to say. I was still
wondering just what it meant. Endless night. It meant
blackness. It meant that I wasn't there to be seen. I could
see the dead but the dead couldn't see me although I was
living. They couldn't see me because I wasn't really there
The man who loved Ellie wasn't really there. He'd entered
of his own aCcord into endless night.
	I bent my head

lower towards the ground.

	2O7


ENDLESS NIGHT

"Endless night," I said again.
"Stop saying that," Greta screamed. "Stand up! Be a
man, Mike. Don't give in to this absurd superstitious fancy,."
"How can I help it?" I said. "I've sold my soul to
Gipsy's Acre, haven't I ? Gipsy's Acre's never been safe. It's
never been safe for anyone. It wasn't safe for Ellie and it
isn't safe for me. Perhaps it isn't safe for you."
"What do you mean?"
I got up. I went towards her. I loved her. Yes, I loved
her still with a last tense sexual desire. But love, hate,
desire--aren't they all the same? Three in one and one in three. I could never have hated EIIie, but I hated Greta. I
enjoyed hating her. I hated her with all my heart and with
a leaping joyous wish--I couldn't wait for the safe ways, I
didn't want to wait for them, I came nearer to her.
"You filthy bitch!" I said. "You hateful, glorious,
golden-haired bitch. You're not safe, Greta. You're not
safe from me. Do you understand? I've learnt to enjoy--to
enjoy killing people. I was excited the day that I knew
Ellie had gone out with that horse to her death. I enjoyed
myself all the morning because of killing, but I've never got
near enough to killing until now. This is different. I want
more than just knowing that someone's going to die because
of a capsule they swallowed at breakfast time. I want more
than pushing an old woman over a quarry. I want to use my
hands."
Greta was afraid now. She, whom I'd belonged to ever
since I met her that day in Hamburg, met her and gone on
to pretend illness, to throw up my job, to stay there with her.
Yes, I'd belonged to her then, body and soul. I didn't
belong to her now. I was myself. I was coming into another
kind of kingdom to the one I'd dreamed of.
She was afraid. I loved seeing her afraid and I fastened
my hands round her neck. Yes, even now when I am sitting
here writing down all about myself (which, mind you, is a
208


ENDLESS NIGHT


very happy thing to do)--to write all about yourself and
what you've been through and what you felt and thought
and how you deceived everyone--yes, it's wonderful to do,
yes, I was wonderfully happy when I killed Grela...,


209


CHAPTER XXIV

There isn't really very much to say after that. I mean,
things came to a climax there. One forgets, I suppose, that
there can't be anything better to follow--that you've had it
all. I just sat there for a long time. I don't know when
They came. I don't know whether They all came at once ....
They couldn't have been there all along because they
wouldn't have let me kill Greta. I noticed that God was there
first. I don't mean God, I'm confused, I mean Major
Phillpot. I'd liked him always, he'd been very nice to me.
He was rather like God in some ways, I think. I mean if
God had been a human being and not something super-natural--up
in the sky somewhere. He was a very fair man,
very fair and kind. He looked after things and people. Tried
to do his best for people.
I don't know how much he'd know about me. I remember
the curious way he looked at me that morning in the sale
room when he said that I was "fey". I wonder why he
thought I happened to be fey that day.
Then where we were there with that little crumpled heap
on the ground that was ERie in her riding habit ....
wonder if he knew then or had some idea that I'd had something
to do with it.
After Greta's death, as I say I just sat there in my chair,
staring down at my champagne glass. It was empty.
Everything was very empty, very empty indeed. There was
just one light that we'd switched on, Greta and I, but it was
in the corner. It didn't give much light and the sun--I
210


ENDLESS NIGHT

think the sun must have set a long time ago. I just sat there
and wondered what was going to happen next with a sort
of dull wonder.
Then, I suppose, the people began coming. Perhaps a
lot of people came at once. They came very quietly, if so, or
else I wasn't hearing or noticing anybody.
Perhaps if Santonix had been there he would have told
me what to do. Santonix was dead. He'd gone a different
way to my way, so he wouldn't be any help. Nobody really
would be any help.
After a bit I noticed Dr. Shaw. He was so quiet I hardly
knew he was there at first. He was sitting quite near me, just
waiting for something. After a while I thought he was
waiting for me to speak. I said to him,
"I've come home."
There were one or two other people moving somewhere
behind him. They seemed to be waiting, to be waiting for
something that he was going to do.
"Greta's dead," I said. "I killed her. I expect you'd
better take the body away, hadn't you?"
Somebody somewhere let off a flash bulb. It must have
been a police photographer photographing the body. Br.
Shaw turned his head and said sharply,
"Not yet."
He turned his head round back to me again. I leaned
towards him and said,
"I saw Ellie tonight."
"Did you? Where?"
"Outside standing under a fir tree. It was the place I
first saw her, you know." I paused a moment and then
aid, "She didn't see me .... She couldn't see me because I
wasn't there." And after a while I said, "That upset me. It
upset me very much."
Dr. Shaw said, "It was in the capsule, wasn't it? Cyanide
in the capsule? That's what you gave Ellie that morning?"
211


ENDLESS NIGHT

"It was for her hay fever," I said, "she always took a
capsule as a preventative against her allergy when she went
riding. Greta and I fixed up one or two of the capsules
with wasp stuff from the garden shed and joined them together
again. We did it up in the Folly. Smart, wasn't it?"
And I laughed. It was an odd sort of laugh, I heard it
myself. It was more like a queer little giggle. I said,
"You'd examined all the things she took, hadn't you, when
you came to see her ankle? Sleeping pills, the allergy
capsules, and they were all quite all right, weren't they? No
harm in any of them."
"No harm," said Dr. Shaw. "They were quite innocent.''
"That was rather clever really, wasn't it?" I said.
"You've been quite clever, yes, but not clever enough."
"All the same I don't see how you found out."
"We found out when there was a second death, the death
you didn't mean to happen."
"Claudia Hardcastle?"
"Yes. She died the same way as Ellie did. She fell from
her horse in the hunting field. Claudia was a healthy girl
too, but she just fell from her horse and died. The time
wasn't so long there, you sec. They picked her up almost at
once and there was still the smell of cyanide to go by. If
she'd lain in the open air like Ellie for a couple of hours,
there'd have been nothing4nothing to smell, nothing to
find. I don't see how Claudia got the capsule, though.
Unless you'd left one behind in the Folly. Claudia used to
go to the Folly sometimes. Her fingerprints were there and
she dropped a lighter there."
"We must have been careless. Filling them was rather
tricky."
Then I said,
"You suspected I had something to do with FAlie's death,
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ENDLESS NIGHT

didn't you? All of you?" I looked round at the shadowy
figures. "Perhaps all of you."
"Very often one knows. But I wasn't sure whether we'd
be able to do anything about it."
"You ought to caution me," I said, reprovingly.
"I'm not a police officer," said Dr. Shaw.
"What are you then?"
"I'm a doctor."
"I don't need a doctor," I said.
"That remains to be seen."
I looked at Phiilpot then,, and I said,
"What areyau doing? Come here to judge me, to preside
at my trial?"
"I'm only a Justice of the Peace," he said. "I'm here as a
friend."
"A friend of mine?" That startled me.
"A friend of Ellie's," he said.
I didn't understand. None of it made sense to me but I
couldn't help feeling rather important. All of them there!
Police and doctors, Shaw and Phillpot who was a busy man
in his way. The whole thing was very complicated. I began
to lose count of things. I was very tired, you see. I used to
get tired suddenly and go to sleep ....
And all the coming and going. People came to see me,
all sorts of people. Lawyers, a solicitor, I think, and
another kind of lawyer with him and doctors. Several
doctors. They bothered me and I didn't want to answer
them.
One of them kept asking me if there was anything I
wanted. I said there was. I said there was only one thing
I wanted. I said I wanted a ball pen and a lot of paper. I
wanted, you see, to write down all about it, how it all came
to happen. I wanted to tell them what I'd felt, what I'd
thought. The more I thought about myself, the more interesting
I thought it would be to everybody. Because I was
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		ENDLESS NIGHT

	interesting. I was a eally interesting person and I'd done

	interesting things.

	The doctors--one doctor, anyway--seemed to t-hln it

	was a good idea. I said,

	"You always let people make a statement, so why can't I

	write my statement out? Some day, perhaps, everybody can

	read it."

	They let me do it. I couldn't write very long on end. I

	used to get tired. Somebody used a phrase like "diminished

	responsibility" and somebody else disagreed. All sorts of

	things you hear. Sometimes they don't think you're even

	]htening. Then I had to appear in Court and I wanted them

	to fetch me my best suit because I had to make a good figure

	there. It seemed they had had detectives watching me.

	For ome time. Those new servants. I think they'd been

	engaged or put on my trail by Lippincott. They found out

	too many things about me and Greta. Funny, after she was
	dead I never thought of Greta much 	After
I'd killed her
	she
didn't seem to matter any more.
I
tried to bring back the splendid triumphant feeling that I'd
had when I strangled her. But even that was gone away...
They
brought my mother to see me quite suddenly one day.
There she was looking at me from the doorway. She didn't
look as anxious as she used to look. I think all she looked
now was sad. She hadn't much to say and nor had I. All
she said was:
"I
tried, Mike. I tried very hard to keep you safe. I failed.
I was always afraid that I should fail."
I
said, "All right, Mum, it wasn't your fault. I chose to go
the way I wanted."
And
I thought suddenly "That's what Santonix said. He was
afraid fox me, too. He hadn't been able to do anything either.
Nobody could have done anything--except perhaps
I myself.... I don't know. I'm not sure. But every now 214


ENDLESS NIGHT

and then I rememberm! remember that day when Ellie said
to me 'what are you thinking of when you look at me like
that?' and I said 'like what?' She said 'aa though you loved
me.' I suppose in a way I did love her. I could have loved
her. She was so sweet, Ellie. Sweet delight .... "
I suppose the trouble with me was that I wanted things

too much, always. Wanted them, too, the easy way, the

greedy way.

That first time, that first day I came to Gipsy's Acre and

met Ellie. Az we were going down the road again we met

Esther. It put it into my head that day, the warnin$ she

gave Ellie, put it in my head to pay her. I knew she was

the kind who would do anything for money. I'd pay her.

She'd start warning Ellie and frightening her, making her feel

that she was in danger. I thought it might make it seem

more possible then that Ellie had died fxom shock. That first

day, I know now, I'm sure of it, Esther was really frightened.

She was really frightened for Ellie. She warned her, warned

her to go away, have nothing to do with Oipay'$ Acre.

She was warning her, of course, to have nothing to do

with mt. I didn't understand that. Ellic didn't understand

either.

Was it mt Ellie was afraid of?. I think it must have been

though she didn't know it herself. She knew there was

something threatening her, she knew there was danger.

Santonix knew the evil in me, too, just like my mother.

Perhaps all three of them knew. Ellie knew but she didn't

mind, she never minded. It's odd, very odd. I know now.

We were very happy together. Yes, very happy. I wish I'd
known then that we were happy 	I
had flay chance.
Perhaps
everyone has a chance. I--turned my back on it. It
seems odd, doesn't it, that Greta doesn't matter at all? And
even my beautiful house doesn't
matter.
	Only Ellie
	And Ellie can never find me again--
Endle Night... That's the end of my story----
	215


