Колесо крутится - Леди исчезает

Ethel Lina WHITE

THE WHEEL SPINS

The Lady Vanishes

DETECTIVE STORY

УДК 372.8:821.111
ББК 81.2 Англ 
 
У13

ISBN 978-5-9925-1492-6

Уайт, Этель Лина.

У13     Колесо крутится — [Леди исчезает] : книга для 

чтения на английском языке. / Э. Л. Уайт. — СанктПетербург : КАРО, 2020. — 256 с. — (Detective story).

ISBN 978-5-9925-1492-6.

Этель Лина Уайт — мастер психологического детек
тива, один из любимейших авторов у кинорежиссера Альфреда Хичкока. Роман «Колесо крутится» неоднократно 
экранизировался под названием «Леди исчезает».

В поезде, который мчится на полном ходу, переполох: 

бесследно исчезла пассажирка миссис Фрой. Поверит ли 
кто-нибудь ее соседке по купе, утверждающей, что она 
ехала не одна? Почему никто не заметил таинственного 
исчезновения? Это заговор, кто-то сошел с ума, или произошло убийство?

УДК 372.8:821.111 

ББК 81.2 Англ 

© КАРО, 2020
Все права защищены

Chapter one
Without regret

The day before the disaster, Iris Carr had her first 

premonition of danger. She was used to the protection 
of a crowd, whom—with unconscious flattery—she 
called “her friends.” An attractive orphan of independent means, she had been surrounded always with 
clumps of people. They thought for her—or rather, she 
accepted their opinions, and they shouted for her—since 
her voice was rather too low in register, for mass social 
intercourse.

Their constant presence tended to create the illusion 

that she moved in a large circle, in spite of the fact that the 
same faces recurred with seasonal regularity. They also 
made her pleasantly aware of popularity. Her photograph 
appeared in the pictorial papers through the medium of a 
photographer’s offer of publicity, after the Press announcement of her engagement to one of the crowd.

This was Fame.
Then, shortly afterwards, her engagement was broken, by 

mutual consent—which was a lawful occasion for the reproduction of another portrait. More Fame. And her mother, who 
died at her birth, might have wept or smiled at these pitiful 

flickers of human vanity, arising, like bubbles of marsh-gas, 
on the darkness below.

When she experienced her first threat of insecurity, Iris 

was feeling especially well and happy after an unconventional health-holiday. With the triumph of near-pioneers, 
the crowd had swooped down on a beautiful village of 
picturesque squalor, tucked away in a remote corner of 
Europe, and taken possession of it by the act of scrawling 
their names in the visitors’ book.

For nearly a month they had invaded the only hotel, to 

the delighted demoralisation of the innkeeper and his staff. 
They scrambled up mountains, swam in the lake, and sunbathed on every available slope. When they were indoors, 
they filled the bar, shouted against the wireless, and tipped 
for each trifling service. The proprietor beamed at them 
over his choked cash-register, and the smiling waiters gave 
them preferential treatment, to the legitimate annoyance 
of the other English guests.

To these six persons, Iris appeared just one of her 

crowd, and a typical semi-Society girl—vain, selfish, and 
useless. Naturally, they had no knowledge of redeeming 
points—a generosity which made her accept the bill, as a 
matter of course, when she lunched with her “friends,” and 
a real compassion for such cases of hardship which were 
clamped down under her eyes.

But while she was only vaguely conscious of fugitive 

moments of discontent and self-contempt, she was aware 
of a fastidious streak, which kept her aloof from any tendency to saturnalia. On this holiday she heard Pan’s pipes, 

but had no experience of the kick of his hairy hind quarters.

Soon the slack convention of the crowd had been re
laxed. They grew brown, they drank and were merry, while 
matrimonial boundaries became pleasantly blurred. Surrounded by a mixed bag of vague married couples, it was 
a sharp shock to Iris when one of the women—Olga—suddenly developed a belated sense of property, and accused 
her of stealing a husband.

Besides the unpleasantness of the scene, her sense of 

justice was outraged. She had merely tolerated a neglected 
male, who seemed a spare part in the dislocated domestic 
machine. It was not her fault that he had lost his head.

To make matters worse, at this crisis, she failed to no
tice any signs of real loyalty among her friends, who had 
plainly enjoyed the excitement. Therefore, to ease the tension, she decided not to travel back to England with the 
party, but to stay on for two days longer, alone.

She was still feeling sore, on the following day, when 

she accompanied the crowd to the little primitive railway 
station. They had already reacted to the prospect of a return to civilisation. They wore fashionable clothes again, 
and were roughly sorted into legitimate couples, as a natural sequence to the identification of suitcases and reservations.

The train was going to Trieste, which was definitely on 

the map. It was packed with tourists, who were also going 
back to pavements and lamp-posts. Forgetful of hillside 
and starlight, the crowd responded to the general noise 

and bustle. It seemed to recapture its old loyalty as it clustered round Iris.

“Sure you won’t be bored, darling?”
“Change your mind and hop on.”
“You’ve simply got to come.”
As the whistle was blown, they tried to pull her into 

their carriage—just as she was, in shorts and nailed boots, 
and with a brown glaze of sunburn on her unpowdered 
face. She fought like a boxing-kangaroo to break free, and 
only succeeded in jumping down as the platform was beginning to slide past the window.

Laughing and panting from the struggle, she stood and 

waved after the receding train, until it disappeared round 
the bend of the gorge.

She felt almost guilty as she realised her relief at parting 

from her friends. But, although the holiday had been a success, 
she had drawn her pleasure chiefly from primeval sources—
sun, water, and mountain-breeze. Steeped in Nature, she had 
vaguely resented the human intrusion.

They had all been together too closely and too inti
mately. At times, she had been conscious of jarring notes—a 
woman’s high thin laugh—the tubby outline of a man’s body, 
poised to dive—a continual flippant appeal to “My God.”

It was true that while she had grown critical of her 

friends she had floated with the current. Like the others, 
she had raved of marvellous scenery, while she accepted 
it as a matter of course. It was a natural sequence that, 
when one travelled off the map, the landscape improved 
automatically as the standard of sanitation lapsed.

At last she was alone with the mountains and the si
lence. Below her lay a grass-green lake, sparkling with diamond reflections of the sun. The snowy peaks of distant 
ranges were silhouetted against a cornflower-blue sky. On 
a hill rose the dark pile of an ancient castle, with its five 
turrets pointing upwards, like the outspread fingers of a 
sinister hand.

Everywhere was a riot of colour. The station garden 

foamed with exotic flowers—flame and yellow—rising 
from spiked foliage. Higher up the slope, the small wooden  
hotel was painted ochre and crimson lake. Against the 
green wall of the gorge rose the last coil of smoke, like 
floating white feathers.

When it had faded away, Iris felt that the last link had 

been severed between her and the crowd. Blowing a derisive kiss, she turned away and clattered down the steep 
stony path. When she reached the glacier-fed river, she lingered on the bridge, to feel the iced air which arose from 
the greenish-white boil.

As she thought of yesterday’s scene, she vowed that she 

never wanted to see the crowd again. They were connected 
with an episode which violated her idea of friendship. She 
had been a little fond of the woman, Olga, who had repaid 
her loyalty by a crude exhibition of jealousy.

She shrugged away the memory. Here, under the limit
less blue, people seemed so small—their passions so paltry. They were merely incidental to the passage from the 
cradle to the grave. One met them and parted from them, 
without regrets.

Every minute the gap between her and them was 

widening. They were steaming away, out of her life. At 
the thought, she thrilled with a sense of new freedom, as 
though her spirit were liberated by the silence and solitude.

Yet, before many hours had passed, she would have 

bartered all the glories of Nature to have called them back 
again.

Chapter two

The threat

Some four hours later Iris lay spread-eagled on a slope 

of the mountain, high above the valley. Ever since she had 
left the chill twilight of the gorge, at a shrine which marked 
a union of paths, she had been climbing steadily upwards, 
by a steep zigzag track.

After she had emerged from the belt of shadow, the sun 

had beat fiercely through her, but she did not slacken her 
pace. The fury of her thoughts drove her on, for she could 
not dislodge Olga from her mind.

The name was like a burr on her brain. Olga. Olga had 

eaten her bread, in the form of toast—for the sake of her 
figure—and had refused her salt, owing to a dietetic fad. 
This had made trouble in the kitchen. Olga had used her 
telephone, and mis-used her car. Olga had borrowed her 
fur coat, and had lent her a superfluous husband.

At the memory of Olga’s Oscar, Iris put on a sprint.
“As if I’d skid for a man who looks like Mickey Mouse,” 

she raged.

She was out of breath when, at last, she threw herself 

down on the turf and decided to call it a day. The mountain which had challenged her kept withdrawing as she 
advanced, so she had to give up her intention to reach 
the top.

As she lay with her eyes almost closed, listening to the 

ping of the breeze, her serenity returned. A clump of harebells, standing out against the skyline, seemed hardened 
and magnified to a metallic belfry, while she, herself, was 
dwarfed and welded into the earth—part of it, like the pebbles and the roots. In imagination she could almost hear 
the pumping of a giant heart underneath her head.

The moment passed, for she began to think of Olga 

again. This time, however, she viewed her from a different 
standpoint, for the altitude had produced the usual illusion 
of superiority. She reminded herself that the valley was 
four thousand feet above sea-level, while she had mounted 
about five thousand feet.

On the basis of this calculation she could afford to be 

generous, since she was nine thousand feet taller than her 
former friend—assuming, of course, that Olga was obliging 
enough as to remain at sea-level.

She decided to wash out the memory as unworthy of 

further anger.

“But never again,” she said. “After this, I’ll never help 

any one again.”

Her voice had the passionate fervour of one who dedi
cates herself to some service. With the virtuous feeling of 
having profited by a lesson, for which heavy fees had been 
paid, she smoked a cigarette before the return journey. The 
air was so clear that mountains she had never seen before 
quivered out of invisibility and floated in the sky, in mauve 
transparencies. Far below she could see an arm of the lake—
no longer green, but dimmed by distance to a misted blue.

Reluctantly she rose to her feet. It was time to go.
The descent proved not only monotonous, but painful, 

for the continual backward jolt of her weight threw a strain 
on unexercised muscles. Her calves began to ache and her 
toes were stubbed on the stony path.

Growing impatient, she decided to desert the zigzag, in 

favour of a direct short-cut down the face of the mountain. 
With the lake as a guide to direction, she hurled herself 
down the slope.

It was a bold venture, but almost immediately she 

found that the gradient was too steep. As she was going 
too quickly to stop, her only course was to drop down to a 
sitting posture and glissade over the slippery turf—trusting to luck.

From that moment things happened quickly. Her pace 

increased every second, in spite of her efforts to brake with 
her feet. Patches of blue and green sped past her, as the 
valley rushed up to meet her, and smashed into the sky. 
Bumping over the rough ground, she steered towards a belt 
of trees at the bottom, in the hope that they might save her 
from a complete spill.