Black Heather

by Virginia Coffman

  I took a deep breath, calmed myself, and slipped across the intervening space between the out-buildings and the scullery of the kitchen. I was not an instant too soon. I had scarcely reached the door, which stood ajar, before I heard someone approaching the door. Then Sir Nicholas appeared. There was nowhere to hide except behind the door, and I only prayed that he would not slam it shut, exposing me in my hiding-place. I was shocked at his face, of which I had caught a glimpse as he stepped out onto the path. His normal healthy pallor was accentuated by the darkness of his eyes. He looked exactly as he had when I first met him in this house—strange, forbidding and quite capable of terrifying me if he ever turned that look upon me.

  He must have quarreled with Mrs. Sedley after all, and if so, why did we hear nothing from her?

  I could scarcely wait until he had disappeared around the corner of the old building before I went inside, first through the scullery, and then across the ancient kitchen with its scattered foods, as though the rats had been busy among the flour and salted meats. Gypsies must have been camping in the house since I was through these regions a day before. There were signs everywhere of foods that had been carelessly used, the remains left for the rats. I made out Sir Nicholas’s footprints through the spilled flour, but when I stepped into the hall there were no longer any signs of his having been here. And what was even more alarming, there was, as yet, no sign of Mrs. Sedley.

  I moved quickly along the hall, seeing myself, windblown and stiff with apprehension, in that pier glass set against the staircase in the distance. It was on that staircase, I remembered suddenly, that Macrae and I had seen the Hag, or what we thought was the Hag, the last sight poor Macrae ever looked upon.

  Perhaps I should wait outside until Elspeth came. My steps slowed. I felt quite cowardly about venturing further. Was it possible that Sir Nicholas had left Mrs. Sedley somewhere in the upper regions of the Hag’s Head after their quarrel? If so, her silence could mean only one dreadful thing. Why must he have this abominable murderous temper, this cold, white fury? I felt sure that but for his temperament, he would be a kindly and greathearted man, well suited to the position he occupied as justice of the peace. But if he had, indeed, committed crimes here in the parish, how much more shocking that he should be in command of such power!

  I was sick with dread of the quarrel that must have occurred between him and Mrs. Sedley to produce that look upon his face; yet there was nothing for it but to go outside and wait like a sensible person. I was not a Bow Street runner. I did not intend that any evidence of mine should be used against him. It was even possible—no, probable—that Mrs. Sedley had not reached the inn. I would do better to follow the one of the sheeptracks down to Seven Spinney and over to Everett Hall. It was very strange, though, if this was the case, that Sir Nicholas had not found her on his way to the inn.

  I reached the pier glass and glanced across the main passage of the inn at the open taproom where Macrae had died. At this moment my reflection in the pier glass shivered. I stopped and stared.

  It did not surprise me that my reflection had caught the terror I felt within, but when I put my hand out to steady myself, I felt the mirror frame shivering in my fingers. I remained completely still and looked up at the ceiling. The pier glass, and not my image, had shivered in that odd way, indicating some movement on the floor above. I had missed the sound the first time because I myself had been walking, and the creak of the boards around me had deafened me to the slight noises above the stairs. Someone else was in the house, someone living, walking.

  She must be upstairs. Hiding? Why had she not come out when I entered? No. She was very likely hunting for the poor little cache of Megan Kelleher’s savings.

  To satisfy my nagging worry about her, I called out suddenly, paying the penalty by finding my voice soft and wavering, scarcely audible at the far end of the passage. This was nonsense. I called very loudly, “Mrs. Sedley! I know you are here. Please answer me.”

  I waited then, and it seemed to my overwrought and tense imagining that faint sounds abovestairs ceased almost at the second that my voice died away. As though, my fears told me, someone was suddenly grown cautious and secretive, hoping to lurk there unheard and unsuspected while I wandered around down here, playing the silly fool in my search. At the same time I knew that Sir Nicholas had been in this house long enough to have investigated anyone or anything upstairs and would scarcely have left something dangerous there without a guard.

  Having fortified myself with this reasoning I further built up my courage by stepping into the taproom and picking up the bottle I had broken the day Macrae died. Was that only yesterday? An eon ago! And then with this weapon I began to mount the stairs. They creaked underfoot, and I remembered Sir Nicholas’s warning to me the first time we met, when he had frightened me by speaking out of the darkness of the old building. These stairs did seem old and untrustworthy, and I had no desire to fall into that cellar below.

  I paused, instinctively looked behind me, and saw that spot where Macrae had died in my arms. Several steps more brought me to that shadowy and uncertain area at the top of the steps where Macrae and I had both fancied we saw the Hag regarding us in that silent, malevolent way. I saw nothing on the landing that could arouse such fancies, and I felt that this was because the real Hag did not exist beyond the dreadful skill of Sir Nicholas, and I had seen him leave the building. Still, I looked around before taking the upstairs corridor to my right, where I had heard the sounds, and I called out, losing my temper over my own uneasiness, “Mrs. Sedley! I hear you and I mean to show Elspeth where you are! You may as well show yourself.”

  Up here in this part of the house which had received some of the smoke from that ancient fire, I found the echo of my voice much more unnerving than it had been downstairs. And because the ceilings were permeated with that smoke along with twelve years’ accumulation of dust, I began to fancy faint floating images everywhere at a distance from me. I opened the first door on my right. It was dark inside, because the shutters were closed, and being on the west side of the building, it did not catch the bright morning light. But when I had stared into the room a few seconds, I was able to make out various articles of furniture, shrouded by some good Samaritan after the fire. The room itself, I thought, might serve very well for a school bedchamber, providing we could exorcise the nasty feeling up here of ghosts and other unwanted visitors. I could see that the room had formerly been a bedchamber for guests of the inn, and although I removed only the nearest cover from a ladder-backed chair by the door, I thought even some of the furniture might be put to use. However, my removal of the cover had caused such a flurry of dust, and the running of tiny feet, which I hoped were only those of mice, that I left the room in haste and went on through the passage.

  In every room it was the same, but now I could see a man’s bootprints in the dust and assumed these were either Sir Nicholas’s or those Patrick Kelleher had left yesterday. There were other dusty prints, but they were indefinable, and when I remembered the many times during the past twelve years that this place had been used as a haven by gypsies and other wanderers, besides those searching for Megan’s savings, I was not surprised at the marks.

  I was standing in the passage with the door of an east room open so that the sunlight would illuminate those dusty dark areas on the floor of the hall, when I became distinctly aware of those tapping sounds again, just as I had heard that first day when Timothy and I had been so very much aware of moving things that existed abovestairs. I could not place the sound, and began to suspect that Mrs. Sedley was leading me some kind of chase through the house, higher and higher until I should, perhaps, corner her in one of the attics. It was an unsavory thought. When I could not hear the tap-tap sound again, I crossed the east room and looked out, hoping to catch sight of Elspeth and the horse and gig.

  There was nothing in sight. I paused, taking a deep breath, aware of a peculiar crawling sensation over my body as though all the silent, evil things of darkne
ss were crowding in upon me. As I turned away from the window and for a second was blinded by the darkness behind me after the bright sunlight, I thought a mist floated in the air past the doorway and along that dark, musty corridor I had just quitted. If this was Mrs. Sedley, playing off some fantastic game with me, I meant to tell her what I thought of her tricks and leave this place and this countryside forever!

  With this furious intention I ran through the room to the passage. It was so dark, after the light I left behind me, that I made out nothing, and I groped my way along the passage to the next easterly room, trying the latch and throwing the door open. Nothing was there, of course, but by now I had summoned up enough courage to cross the passage and look into the rest of the dark rooms on the west side of the building.

  Thus I came to the last room on the southwest corner of the building, a room larger than the others, with windows facing both the south and the west, although the shutters were still locked. The room was sparsely furnished, and I could see only a large, unwieldy wardrobe of heavy dark wood and, across the room, a four-poster bed whose hangings looked as though the rats had been at them, all chewed and shredded into lace. A bar of light came through one of the south shutters, which had warped with the many years of disuse and foul weather, and through that bar of light I could see the spider webs, attaching the fourth post to the window. I knew that the sly woman who was apparently giving me this chase throughout her daughter’s house was not in this room, for I could see that although the bed clothing was still on the bed in a great, jumbled heap, she herself was nowhere around. I half expected her to jump out at me from behind the door and peered around in a gingerly way, but there was nothing.

  With a firm pace that helped me to hide my growing uneasiness, I crossed the room to the big wardrobe, set down the wine bottle that had been my weapon, and with a mighty gesture swung the two doors open at once. No one was hiding in there. I ransacked the clothing, finding several gowns and coats of a style common to young ladies, including my mother, around 1800 or thereabouts, which I supposed had belonged to poor Megan Sedley, and I realized this room must have been the master bedroom. There was no object of furniture in the room except the bed, but that was so dusty and so entwined with cobwebs that I felt I could scarcely breathe without opening one of the windows, even though the shutters beyond were still locked. I crossed the room, putting my hands ahead of me to avoid cobwebs, and beside the large, disheveled bed I started to open the window. I did not immediately complete the act. Staring at me from the top of those disheveled, yet somehow carefully arranged, bedclothes, were the enormous, dead eyes of Clara Sedley, their gaze reflecting the same vision that must have given the rest of her too-sweet, too-round face its bloated look of indescribable horror.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  For the first minute or two I was aware only of a most intense fear that I would be overwhelmed, bound and held prisoner by these spider webs which dangled from the rotting tester of the bed. There were no spiders though, and the webs had all been broken. Broken by whoever had placed Mrs. Sedley upon this bed. Or had she died on the bed, her heart failing her at the last, when she saw ... what?

  Then I began to feel alive again. It seemed that the faint warmth of my blood returned to my veins, and with a great effort I turned away from the bed, reached for the window in the other wall, and tried to open it. But the lock was rusted, and with an access of fury I had not even suspected in myself, I slipped off one of my shoes and hammered outward at one of the small window panes. When it was open, the edges jagged and catching the light, I pushed open the shutters through the space afforded by that broken pane and breathed the crisp, sharp air. I felt an extraordinary faintness, not like myself at all. I thought, If I do not look at the bed, it will not be there...

  How she must have suffered, this poor, crippled old woman trying to defend her right to the little horde left by her daughter! As long as I lived, I knew, I would never forget that dying look on her face and in her pale eyes or the careful way she had been laid out among the bedclothing—doubtless by Sir Nicholas, as I thought—with her gnarled hands folded just under the edge of the coverlet.

  I reasoned it out as I leaned against the window frame, shaking and dreadfully weak. The passage outside this room creaked oddly, as old houses creak when exposed to sudden air, and I screamed, and before I could control myself, I screamed again. When I could get hold of myself, I made my way across the room, feeling my knees buckle but reaching the door so that I could lean against it and stare into that musty half-dark. A large, fat, long-tailed rat scurried across my stocking, and I screamed again.

  After what seemed a very long time I became aware of the freezing-cold sweat upon my face. I could not find my handkerchief and took my coat sleeve and passed its welcome roughness over my face. Then I did what I should have done immediately. I fumbled my way out through the long, dim corridor toward the main staircase, intending to wait there for Elspeth. All the while, I was confusedly debating in my mind what I should tell her, whether I must mention having seen Sir Nicholas here and departing in that odd way, with that dreadfully guilty look. But, of course, I must tell her. And the Bow Street runners.

  How could he do such a thing, that man who was so kind to me and so gentle, so much the superior person I had always known I would love someday? Perhaps I loved him yet. But Mrs. Sedley was dead of that meeting between them, and I believed in justice even more than I believed in Nicholas Everett.

  I was moving down the stairs, my limbs trembling beneath me, when a shadow crossed the floor in front of the taproom, and I clutched the balustrade and cried out. A tall man stepped to the foot of the staircase from the darkness of the lower floor passage and mounted the stairs toward me.

  “Wait where you are, Kathleen. Don’t go on.”

  “I’ve d-done so,” I stammered. “I saw her.” He took the stairs then two at a time, and before I could withdraw, he drew me to him, murmuring in the most comforting way, “Don’t cry, sweetheart. Don’t cry.”

  “Why did you come back?” I demanded, crying so hard I could scarcely understand myself. He seemed to understand, though he may have wondered why I asked the question.

  “I heard you screaming, of course. And I thought—God knows what I thought! But I knew it must be you. No one else could venture into quite so many dangerous places within three days!” I thought with dread that he must be completely mad to speak in this way, as though he might almost smile at me while upstairs lay the body of the woman with whom he had fatally quarreled. Why had he not cared for her and gone for help?

  Somewhere on the heath outside the Hag’s Head, Elspeth called my name sharply, and I broke away from Nicholas, flushed and ashamed of having yielded to the temptation of his arms.

  “It’s Elspeth! She is sure to guess what happened. She was bringing the gig and the mare by the high road, in the event Mrs. Sedley was here.”

  He surprised me by saying calmly, “Yes, I know. I met her. And the gig. She had overturned it attempting to cross the moor instead of going around the Heatherton Turn.”

  “Yes, but is she...?”

  “She and the gig, and the mare, by the way, are right as trivets, but I shall have to carry Mrs. Sedley out to the high road, I’m afraid. Go on out to Elspeth while I fetch the poor creature.”

  “How did it happen? I mean, how did she die?” I asked as he pushed me gently but briskly down the stairs.

  “Of fright, I should imagine. She was carefully laid out by whatever—or whoever—frightened her.”

  I looked at him. Was he completely unaware of his own part in her death?

  “Do not think of it, Kathleen. Go along like a good child. You will hear all about it later.”

  At the bottom of the staircase I waited nervously, watching him disappear along the upstairs corridor, wondering what his thoughts were and if he would remember to conceal any signs that he himself had been responsible for what I assumed to be the heart seizure or shock that had resulted in Mrs.
Sedley’s death.

  Elspeth came to the outside door near the taproom and forced it partly open. “Is it you, Kate?”

  “Yes. You know about your grandmother?”

  There was a trifling pause. I saw Elspeth’s eyes regarding me through the narrow aperture made by the forcing of the door.

  “He told me. Where is he?”

  “Upstairs. He has gone to fetch her.”

  “I mean to return with Patrick,” she said in a cold, crisp voice that made me shiver for Nicholas’s fate. “There will be signs.”

  “Hush,” I whispered. “He is coming.”

  It was not only that which disturbed me. I did not want to hear more from her. I felt that she might well be right. There would be things, signs. He would have no chance when Patrick Kelleher brought back a runner. I was still thinking this when Sir Nicholas started down the stairs carrying the ancient, dusty coverlet carefully wrapped so that I could not see its contents. Poor Mrs. Sedley! To be brought to her coffin in these ancient trappings!

  “Come along behind me and close the door,” he ordered me as he carried the dead woman along the lower hall to the kitchen entrance.

  Then I thought of Elspeth’s remark and wondered what evidence the runner and her precious uncle Patrick would find to implicate Sir Nicholas in deliberate murder. Did Elspeth suppose he had murdered her in the night and then brought her here? But there were the mourners at the Owl of York Tavern who would testify that they had seen Mrs. Sedley climb the hill across the moor from Seven Spinney to the Hag’s Head. That would save him from condemnation.