Fear by Night (24 page)

Was it Charles?

Just now she had been sure, and now she wasn't sure. After the shock and certainty of grief there was a faint reaction. The voice that says, “
This is too dreadful to be true
,” spoke in her now: “It can't be Charles. He can't be dead—not just when everything was coming right.” And low and very insistent the voice of her own inmost self: “
This can't happen to me
.”

It was here that she remembered the old stair which ran down to the kitchen. If she went down that way, she might see without being seen. The prospect of being able to do something steadied her.

She went back to her room and put on her dressing-gown. It was of a deep shade of blue and would hide her light nightgown. She fastened it round her waist with a cord and, leaving her feet bare, began to feel her way across the landing and down the passage to the back part of the house.

The stair came up into a little room like a cupboard that was next to Mary's room. The space was so small that it seemed as if it was just a slice taken off the passage to enclose the stair head. Perhaps in the old three-bottle days the laird had taken this precaution against falling down into the kitchen after his potations.

The stair was the old stair of the house, winding with steep, uneven steps about a central pillar. Ann had never been down it until she came down bare-foot in the dark, feeling for each crumbling step and holding to the wall. She went down into silence. The walls were too thick to let in the sound of the wind.

The door at the foot of the stair was shut. There was no line of light beneath it, and no mutter of voices from the farther side. She leaned against the rough panelling and held her breath to listen, but there was no sound at all. Very slowly and with cold, stiff fingers she lifted the latch.

The door opened outwards into the kitchen. She got the latch clear and felt the door begin to move away from her of its own weight. She held it with both hands, letting it go a very little at a time, with her heart beating so hard that she was afraid someone would hear it. If there was a light in the kitchen, she ought to be able to see it now.

The door slipped from her hands and swung out with a creak.

The kitchen was dark and empty.

Ann stood on the threshold looking into the darkness and listening. There was no sound at all except the sound of the wind passing high up over the house. After a minute or two she came out from the shelter of the door. She could see a least faint glow from the embers on the hearth, and moonlight on the hill beyond the dark yard. Now that her eyes were accustomed to it, the kitchen was not quite dark after all. The moonlight showed the window and the corner of the kitchen table, and the glimmering embers gave her the position of the hearth.

She went to the back door, tried it, and found it fast, the key in the lock. With the cold iron against her palm, she thought, “Charles—what have they done to him—where is he—where are they?” The key hurt her hand and she let go of it. One thing was certain—they were not here. The kitchen held no one but herself, and the door was locked on the inside. Yet only a very few minutes ago she had stood at the top of the stairs and had seen a light flicker past and heard men's feet go down the old passage to the kitchen. It was just as if they had walked into the darkness and vanished there.

With a long-drawn breath of relief she remembered the wash-house. The door was there on her right. It was open, for she could see it as a black oblong in the shadowed wall. If they were there, they were very still. If they were there, she would have heard them. She felt suddenly very much afraid. But there was the black doorway, and she must go through it. “Not without a light! I won't—I just
won't
!” There must be matches somewhere—there are always matches in a kitchen. She went over to the hearth and felt along the narrow shelf above it. There was a box there, but it was a very light one, only three matches left in it, so that she had to decide whether she could risk one of them on the chance of finding a candle. She wouldn't dare to light the lamp, because it would betray her if anyone were to come. You can snuff out a candle in a moment, but a lamp is another matter. She thought she would look into the wash-house first. Even a match would show her whether Charles was there, and if he wasn't there, she had no need of any more light.

She crossed to the dark doorway with the stone flags cold under her feet, stepped over the threshold, and struck a match. It went up with a little flare that dazzled her and then tried to go out. She had to hold it head downwards, and twist it about until the flame got hold of the soft wood. Such a small, brief flame. She looked about her by the light of it and saw the copper, and the wash-tubs, and a soft black rush of shadows. Blackest of all, a yawning pit of shadow in the corner with something standing over it.

The flame burnt her fingers and she dropped the match. Her hand shook a little as she struck another. It fizzed like a tiny rocket. The burning head flew off and the useless stump went to join it on the floor. There was only just the one more match. She struck it carefully, shielding it with her hand till it burned with a steady yellow flame. It showed her a tall barrel pushed aside from the corner and, where it had stood, a black hole in the floor. Then with a splutter the match burned blue and went out. Ann let the box fall from her hand. The hand was trembling violently.

She had been in the wash-house before. The barrel always stood in the corner Now it had been moved, and in the place where it had stood there was a square black hole as if one of the flagstones had been taken away—no, not taken away, tilted up. The match-light had shown it tilted back against the wall. It left that square black hole like the mouth of a pit, and the men had gone down into it with the thing which they were carrying.

It couldn't be Charles—taken down into some unimaginable black vault for burial—or to be left there hurt, alive. Ann could have cried out in the extremity of her fear, but before the sound could leave her lips it froze and died. The black hole in the corner was not black any longer. It showed against the darkness of the room as a lighted window shows against a dark house, and as she stared at it with a fixed and terrified gaze, the sound of voices came to her. She looked wildly round her. The men were coming back. She might gain the stair by which she had come, but she would not have time to reach the top, and Hector would be more likely to come up that way than not. If she went the other way, she could not be sure of any safety. The other two might make for the dining-room, the parlour, or the stairs. There was no time to get back to her bedroom.

She might have stood there numb with fright until the light of the advancing lantern discovered her if it had not been for the thought of Charles. She had to find out where Charles was. She had to know whether he was alive. And if he was alive, she had to help him. A rush of courage came to her. It swept away the numb, icy feeling, and in a moment she knew what she must do. The copper—if only it was empty she could hide there.

She pushed aside the rough wooden lid and thrust down her hand as far as it would go. The copper was dry. She scrambled up by the help of the wash-tubs and got over the edge. The voices came echoing up to her, and the light made a bright dusk in the little room. She had only just time to pull the wooden cover over her before a hand thrust the lantern up out of the hole and stood it on the floor.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Ann sat crouched down in the bottom of the copper and heard the clatter of the lantern on the floor and the footsteps of the men coming up into the wash-house. They were coming up out of that hole in the floor. Where had they been, and what had they been doing down there? She tried to think how long they had been away. It is very difficult to measure time in the dark. She didn't really know how long she had sat at the top of the stairs, because when you think that the person whom you love most in the world is dead, time goes by and you don't notice it. After that she had gone into her room, put on her dressing-gown, and gone down the old stair to the kitchen. That would only have taken a very few minutes—perhaps two or three, because she had had to feel her way and go slowly. After that there was another break in her reckoning, because she didn't know how long she had been lost in her fear when she found the back door locked.

These thoughts went through her mind like flashes whilst the men were coming up out of the hole. She heard them swing the flagstone into its place and roll the barrel back into the corner. Then she heard Jimmy Halliday's voice, speaking so close to her that she very nearly cried out. He must be standing right over the copper for his voice to sound so loud. And as she thought that, there was a bang on the wooden lid. Jimmy had set the lantern down upon it, because she could see the light coming through a crack in the wood. It looked like a gold line drawn on the dark.

Jimmy was speaking to Hector, sending him off.

“I'll keep the light. You can find your way to your bed without it. And take off your boots, for I don't want anyone waked. Take them off here, and then get along with you!”

Ann heard Gale Anderson yawn.

“I'm off too,” he said. “What are you going to do down here, Halliday—have a quiet wash?”

“I'm having a quiet talk with you—that's what I'm having, Gale. Look lively, Hector! And you can leave this door open and shut t'other one.”

The latch of the staircase door clicked. Hector's bare feet made no more noise on the kitchen floor than Ann's had done.

Jimmy leaned against the copper, shifting the lid slightly, and said,

“Now, Gale—you've got to listen to me. I told Hector this afternoon that I was captain here, and I'm telling you the same thing—and there can't be two captains. Do you hear me say that?”

“I should think everyone in the house will hear you,” said Gale Anderson.

His voice gave Ann the impression of a lounging, careless attitude. He was, as a matter of fact, leaning up against one of the fixed wash-tubs with his hands in his pockets. The lantern left the floor in darkness and threw black shadows up to the ceiling.

Jimmy dropped his voice.

“I'm not wanting any of your lip, my lad! I'm captain, and you'll take your orders from me same as Hector does! And if I've any more trouble with you, you'll get something you won't like!”

“Sez you,” said Gale Anderson affably.

Jimmy brought his fist down with a thump on the copper lid. The lantern jumped, and the shadows made a wild leap and then fell again.

“Now you look here, Gale—I‘ve had enough of this! If you'd killed that girl this afternoon like you tried to, where 'ud we be? I was a fool to give you the telegram to say the old man was dying, but I did think you'd got enough sense not to try on any silly game like that. Why, that telegram was sent off last night, and as like as not old Paulett was dead before you got it. Well, if he was dead, your wife was out of the running.”

“You said all this this afternoon,” said Gale Anderson.

Jimmy thumped again.

“And I'll go on saying it till I've got it into your head! If the old man was dead, it wasn't a mite of use your killing that girl.”

Gale Anderson laughed.

“It was a sporting chance.”

Jimmy's tone became a shade more conciliatory.

“Now look here, Gale, talk sense! A hundred thousand pounds or so ain't a thing you can afford to take chances over. And once and for all, there's better ways of using a pretty girl than knocking her on the head. I've said that before, and I mean it. I'm going to marry her, and you'll get your share if you behave. And if you don't, you won't get a penny, so put that in your pipe and smoke it!”

“Well, you're wrong about the period of residence,” said Gale Anderson, “I told you so all along.”

“I've got a Scotch domicile, haven't I?”

Gale Anderson laughed.

“Are you setting up to be a Scot? Why, man, you haven't a drop in your veins that isn't dirty English!”

Ann hardly recognized Jimmy's voice in the growl that said,

“Take that back!”

“Clean English then!” said Gale Anderson with a mocking inflection. “I don't think you'll get much out of your domicile—and I'm sure it's three months before you can get married, under Scots law.”

“And I say it's three weeks! And I say I don't care which it is! She's going to stand up and take me for her husband in front of you, and the old lady, and Miss Riddle, and Hector, and Mary—and she's going to live here with me as my wife, and if it takes three months we'll live here three months. Do you think she'd go back on it after that, a young lady like her, even if she could—and I tell you she couldn't. It'll be a good enough marriage by Scotch law before I'm through with it—I can promise you that. Besides”—Jimmy's voice changed and took on a tone of self-satisfaction—“long before three months are up she won't want to get out of it. There's something about me that takes the women's fancy—you ask the old lady if there isn't. You wouldn't believe how I've been run after. And only for her keeping them off I wouldn't be free to marry Miss Vernon now.”

Ann's flesh crept with horror. His fatuous voice—the picture she had of his sandy hair, light lashes, and coarse stubby hands—coarse, strong hands.… She realised with a shudder how strong they were.… The prim London room in which he had sat and made stilted conversation seemed a thousand years away—a thousand years, and a hundred thousand miles.

Gale Anderson said coolly over her head, “And suppose she won't. Suppose your fatal beauty leaves her cold.”

“What's that?” said Jimmy. “I'll thank you to mind your manners and talk respectful about a young lady that's going to be my wife!”

“I said suppose she won't,” said Gale Anderson.

His voice had come much nearer. He and Jimmy were, in fact, facing each other across the copper lid.