Weekend with Death by Patricia Wentworth Read Free Book Online Page A

writing, you know—most, most enthralling, but just a little bit disconnected, so I thought perhaps some other method. And if you and I and Sarah were to sit together and try with planchette, I do believe we should get results. Oh, Morgan—if you would !”
    He stood looking down at her with a comical, half-laughing face.
    â€œWell, well, well—what a to-do! Why, Jo, you needn’t look at me like that. Bring out your hocus-pocus and we’ll have a stab at it. But I warn you I’m no good. Wilson—now I expect Wilson’s a dab at all this jiggery-pokery.”
    Joanna was all smiles.
    â€œOh, no, he despises it, and the pencil won’t write at all when he is in the room. But you—oh, I have always felt that you would be marvellous! Sarah dear, you will join us, won’t you?”
    When they were seated round the table, Morgan looked doubtfully at the little heart-shaped board.
    â€œWhat do we do with it?”
    â€œPut our hands on it. No, no, only the finger-tips. And you mustn’t push or guide it at all—just sit quite still and wait to see what happens.”
    He frowned.
    â€œWhat does happen—what does it do?”
    â€œSometimes nothing at all. But you see, it runs on wheels and there is a pencil underneath. It writes if there’s a message coming through.”
    Sarah sat back in her chair.
    â€œDo you know, I think I’ll just watch. It’s really only meant for two people.”
    She had all at once a great distaste for the whole thing. Their hands would be so close together. She could imagine Morgan taking advantage of that. “A cockroach,” she thought—” that’s what he is—cockroach to Wilson’s ant. Revolting!”
    Rather to her surprise, neither of the Cattermoles made any demur. They leaned towards each other across the green-topped table, Joanna brittle and eager, Morgan uneasy. His boisterous joviality seemed to have fallen away. He took a hand from the board to fumble for a handkerchief and wipe a shiny forehead.
    â€œIt gives me the jitters,” he said. “Sure it doesn’t bite, Jo?”
    â€œMorgan— dear !” She pulled his hand back to the board. “Now keep perfectly still, and remember not to press, or push, or anything like that. Just keep still and relax, and wait to see if a message comes through.”
    Silence fell upon the room. Sarah, her chair pushed back, watched it and them—an L-shaped London room with two tall windows looking to the street and one to a narrow strip of ground behind. All three were curtained with a velvet so dark that only the line of the folds disclosed a shade of sombre green. The carpet stretched drearily from wall to wall with an endless pattern of blue and green and brown, all the colours dimmed and lost in a general effect of gloom. As in every other room in the house, there was too much furniture. Chairs, couches, small occasional tables, jostled one another for floor space. Pictures and engravings crowded together upon the walls. A profusion of small ornaments littered every table. An entire tea-set was displayed upon the mantelpiece. A dismal room, made more dismal by the new chair-covers of which Miss Joanna was so proud. Sarah shuddered as she looked at them. Joanna must have searched London to find anything so ugly, and as she said, the stuff would never wear out—a mustard and brown damask, practically indestructible.
    Her focus narrowed to the faces of the two at the table—Morgan’s still half scared, Joanna’s vacant. She looked down at the hands stretched out to the heart-shaped board. Startlingly alike, those two pairs of hands—and so like Wilson’s too. Unexpected for Morgan to share those thin, nervous hands which belonged of right to Wilson and Joanna. His should have been coarser—stronger—blunt-fingered and insensitive.
    Just as she thought that, the board began to move. She leaned