She took a deep breath as she lifted the curtain aside and held her arm holding the clock high above her, ready to strike.
Out walked Mrs Priestley’s cat.
She sobbed, a mixture of crying and relieved laughter. The cat looked alarmed, its eyes black as it too showed its fear. Talking soothingly, suppressing the fear-filled laughter that threatened to overwhelm her, she picked it up and went downstairs.
Putting a coat over her nightdress she unbolted and unlocked the front door. Outside, the moon was giving some light and she saw a figure bending down, calling softly.
‘Mrs Priestley,’ Rosemary whispered. ‘If you’re looking for your cat, then she’s here. And a fine fright she gave me!’ Mrs Priestley seemed not to hear her and Rosemary stepped out and walked to where Mrs Priestley crouched with one hand outstretched to entice her cat to come to her.
Rosemary followed the woman on, across the footbridge to the other side of the stream. She didn’t put the cat down but instead followed her neighbour, after her fright, wanting, needing, to talk to another human being.
She ran soundlessly over the damp grass on her slippered feet and called again when she reached the bridge. She didn’t want to give Mrs Priestley a fright too.
‘My dear!’ Mrs Priestley said, reaching for the cat. ‘Where did you find her? Queenie! You naughty, naughty girl. Hiding from me like that!’
Leaning on the handrail of the bridge. Rosemary explained what had happened.
‘She must have come in just before I went to bed. I remember putting some rubbish in the dustbin last thing. It must have been then,’ Rosemary explained.
‘And I’ve been searching for her for ages! Naughty girl,’ Mrs Priestley scolded the purring cat. ‘Come on, it’s a bit late for your supper but I suppose you still want it.’
Saying their goodnights, the two women separated, Mrs Priestley, still scolding Queenie, walked to number four and Rosemary, hurrying, conscious of the chill night air, into number two.
She was smiling as she rebolted the door and went back up stairs. She was shivering so much her teeth were chattering uncontrollably. Having been standing outside in only a thin nightdress and a coat thrown casually over her shoulders, she decided that a shower might be a good idea, to warm her, if she weren’t to lie sleepless for hours.
The shower, hot and fast, revived her and she walked, naked, into her bedroom and found a fresh nightdress. She thought she would need to read for a while after the fright of finding her ‘intruder’, but her eyes grew heavy and she soon slept.
* * *
A shrouded figure moved slowly up the stairs and stood looking at the sleeping girl. Barely visible, just a deeper shadow in the doorway of the room, it didn’t move for several minutes then melted away, leaving only a slight smell of perspiration that was soon dissipated and which didn’t touch the nostrils of the sleeper.
Rosemary slept on in the silent room.
* * *
When she next glanced at the clock, now returned to its place on the bedside table, she saw that it was three o’clock. She wondered what had woken her. Then she became aware of music. Music? At three in the morning? She got out of bed and looked out of the window. Surely there wasn’t anyone out there with a radio on at such an unearthly hour?
The night was still, a rime of ice showed sparkling on the window sill. No moving shadow disturbed the silent scene before her. The music had stopped. It must have been someone walking past carrying a radio, she decided.
As she slipped back into the welcoming warmth of the bed, she heard it again. Louder now and quite definitely near. As she listened with bated breath she realised that, even allowing for her fanciful mood, the sound must be here, in the house.
It was Ravel’s Bolero, a favourite of hers. Then her flesh began to creep as if thousands of insects were crawling over her, as she became aware of an added sound. Someone was accompanying the melody by whistling.
A smell teased her senses. The smell of cooking. She reached for the clock again, stared briefly and disbelievingly at its face, then hurriedly pulled on her slippers and a dressing gown; the need for clothing as important as a weapon. The vulnerability of being scantily clad making the precious moments spent adding clothes an unconscious essential.
As she opened the bedroom door the sound increased. There was no doubt now. It was definitely coming from downstairs. The sound of Ravel’s Bolero soared up to meet her. The whistling had stopped.
Her legs felt like wood as she forced them to move down the stairs; one hand gripping the banister like a lifeline, the other holding the small clock. A draught shook her nightdress as if someone had just opened a door or a window. She stayed perfectly still, afraid to move, yet more afraid not to. Her back felt chill. What if someone had been hiding upstairs and was watching her from behind? Slowly, looking both ways in turn, she moved down the stairs.
She reached the small hallway and looked at the front door. It was unbolted. She knew with utmost certainty that she had been careful to rebolt it after after returning the cat to Mrs Priestley. Since then, someone had been inside.
While she had stood talking to Mrs Priestley, within yards of her house, someone had entered. He had been in the house while she had showered, and walked around naked. He had watched her as she slept. She felt sick and waves of faintness threatened to overwhelm her.
Her face was stiff with fear as she moved on. The living rooms were empty of any presence but her own. The newspaper she had read was still on the armchair. She went cautiously into the kitchen. There, unbelievably, a kettle was just coming to the boil. She sobbed and looked all around her but there was no one there. She stared at the kettle like someone in a dream. Perhaps she was dreaming? Just then a sharp snap behind her made her scream. She covered her head with her arms, but the sound wasn’t repeated. Turning, expecting something to be about to descend on her head, she saw that the toaster had just delivered two perfectly browned rounds of bread.
* * *
She ran to the front door and threw the bolt across. The music was reaching its manic crescendo, filling the house with its intense, swaying rhythm. She pushed a chair so her back was to the wall, and sat. Too terrified for sleep, too terrified to do anything except sit there and wait for the night to pass. At six o’clock she rang Megan.
Her explanations were too hysterical for Megan to understand at first, but as Rosemary calmed down, and she understood what had happened, she said, ‘Why didn’t you call the police?’
‘They didn’t believe me last time. They think I’m a hysterical woman who makes up stories to draw attention to herself.’
‘That’s nonsense, love, and you know it,’
Megan argued briskly. ‘Who would think that of someone like you?’
‘Whoever is doing this must look normal! Not the type to play such terrible tricks! Someone, sometime, will say, “Who’d have believed it of him!” Won’t they?’
‘I’ll be with you in half an hour.’
‘Thank you. I don’t think I can face leaving this chair unless you come.’
To Rosemary’s surprise, she felt hungry. She was afraid to touch the toaster. Her imagination gave it a mind of its own. She couldn’t eat a slice of bread that had been near it. Nor, she decided with a shiver, could she touch the loaf of bread that her visitor had left on the bread-board after he had cut the two slices for the toaster. Nor the kettle that had joined in the weird, middle-of-the-night ghost’s picnic!
She boiled some milk in a saucepan and made a milky coffee, and while it cooled she ate two apples, biting into them with uncharacteristic greed. Then she sat and waited for Megan.
Only ten minutes had passed since she had telephoned so she was surprised, then frightened, when she heard someone at the door. It wasn’t Megan. The caller was too furtive.
She heard a key being inserted. Definitely not Megan. It must be the midnight prowler! The man, who ever he was, was trying to come back in!
Instinctively she hid. Fir
st flat against the wall then foolishly behind the door. Then, as she calmed from the immediate panic, she knew he could not possibly see inside, the heavy curtains were tightly drawn, and with the bolt once more firmly in place, couldn’t open the door. She ran to the back door to make sure that was bolted although she had looked at least three times since she had come downstairs.
Fingers tapped the window and she covered her mouth to hold back a scream, then she sobbed with relief as Larry’s voice called, ‘Rose Mary? Honey, it’s me. Are you awake?’
She was crying with relief as she pulled back the bolt and opened the door to him. She threw herself at him and sobbed uncontrollably so he had to carry her back inside.
‘Bolt the door,’ were the first words she uttered that made any sense. Not letting go of her, he did so, and then he guided her back to sit beside the dead ashes of last night’s fire.
He didn’t ask any questions, but talked soothingly to her, holding her tight and kissing her face and her hair, telling her he loved her and wouldn’t leave her alone again.
The roar of an engine broke the silence of the early morning, the M.G. sports car slowing and coming to rest on the opposite side of the footbridge. There were footsteps then a knock at the door and Rosemary tensed, then remembered and said, ‘That will be Megan.’
* * *
Gradually Rosemary told them the whole of the night’s bizzarre events. Larry and Megan examined the toaster, the record player and the kettle and announced that so far as they could tell, there was no electronic skills used. They had simply been turned on before the intruder had left. What Rosemary had told them seemed to have been the truth.
They tried all the combinations of people to work out who was responsible.
‘Huw Rees could be helped by Mrs Priestley,’ Larry suggested. ‘She could easily be involved. What looks more innocent if she had been seen, than calling the cat in? She could have used the cat to distract you for Huw or Richard to come in and do these things to frighten you. Or, Gethyn, he could have been watching and simply taken advantage of a situation that offered itself. He’s always at that front window.’
‘Or you, Larry?’ Megan looked at him quizzically. ‘What about you?’
‘Hell, why would I want to frighten Rosemary? Besides, I’ve just come from the airport. I landed at Heathrow some time after nine o’clock then I caught a train to Aberystwyth where I picked up my car.’
‘We saw you in Aberystwyth when you were supposed to be in New York. Gethyn has seen you driving through the village.’ Megan was quietly insistent, her voice strong and firm. She was staring at Larry, willing him to tell them the truth.
‘You’re mistaken,’ he said. ‘I didn’t leave New York until yesterday.’ He ran his fingers through his hair in that familiar gesture and looked at Rosemary. ‘Surely you don’t believe that I’d – ? Hell, there’s more than one Citroen in the country for heaven’s sake!’
‘You were driving it,’ Rosemary’s voice was almost a whisper.
‘Rosemary, it wasn’t me! You’ve gotta believe it!’ Both women looked at him, Megan, tight-lipped and defiant and Rosemary almost pleading, wanting to believe him but they said nothing further.
‘I’m making coffee, anyone want one?’ he asked and went into the kitchen.
Rosemary was tired and her head ached intolerably.
‘I think I’d like to sleep, as long as you stay here,’ she said. Both Larry and Megan nodded agreement and she went upstairs and slept the moment she rested her head on the pillow.
Downstairs Megan looked at Larry and waited.
‘What are we going to do about all this?’ Larry said.
‘You could tell the truth for a start!’
‘I swear to you this wasn’t my doing.’
‘Come off it. The moment you appeared things began to happen. You didn’t come from the airport tonight, did you?’
‘You gotta believe me, I’m not responsible for what happened here tonight. I arrived just before you did and that’s the truth.’
‘Really!’ she said sarcastically.
‘Really!’ he insisted. He stood up and walked away from her, anger in his expression, to check on Rosemary.
* * *
‘Why didn’t you call me?’ Gethyn asked a few days later when Rosemary met him on her way back from the village shop. ‘Mrs Priestley told me what had happened when she brought me some cakes. I don’t mind being woken at night, not if you need me, Rosemary.’
‘I was afraid to go outside,’ she explained, not liking to tell him that it hadn’t occurred to her to seek help from any of the neighbours. That Megan, so far from the scene, was the only one from whom she felt she could ask help.
Huw Rees was friendly and charming but an unknown quantity, and his friend Richard Lloyd had made no effort to be either friendly or charming! Mrs Priestley, with her wandering cat, was a possible suspect, although in her calmer moments Rosemary thought the idea was ridiculous. And Gethyn, although he would have been supportive and kind, would only use the opportunity to reinforce his dislike and suspicion of Larry.
‘Come in and tell me all about it,’ Gethyn invited. He went to his house and held the door open for her, hoping she’d be unable to refuse. She showed him her shopping.
‘I have to get in and start cooking,’ she said. ‘Larry will be back from town in less than an hour.’
‘Then wait for him here. You don’t want to go in on your own, I’m sure.’
‘Don’t, Gethyn.’
‘Don’t do what?’ he asked.
‘Don’t unnerve me any more than I am already.’ He was at once apologetic.
‘I’m sorry. That was insensitive and stupid of me.’
‘No, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘I’ll come in with you, you can check all is well, then I’ll come away and leave you to get on cooking for the American.’ He closed his door and followed her to her own.
‘His name is Larry,’ she said wearily. ‘Why do you call him “the American”?’
‘Don’t like him, that’s why,’ he admitted with a slow, unrepentant smile.
He followed her into the kitchen and he made them instant coffee to drink while she went on with her preparation for the meal. She explained what had happened on the night that Larry had returned and he listened attentively, staring at the kettle and the toaster intently, as if they could show him something the others had missed.
‘You told him we’d seen him when he says he was in New York?’ he asked.
‘He was in New York, Gethyn. We were mistaken, there are other Citroen Dollies, as he pointed out, and the driver simply looked like him. We only had a moving view of the driver in an enclosed space, and a brief one. And we expected it to be him when we saw what we believed was his car. No, Larry was not the driver. He was in New York.’ She avoided mentioning the licence plate number.
* * *
Megan was alarmed by the most recent of the happenings in Rosemary’s house and was afraid for her. She wondered whom she could tell. Breaking her promise not to discuss it was not difficult. She was well aware of the danger Rosemary might face when the person concerned changed his tactics from mischief to deliberate harm. What was a promise compared to that?
She decided on Huw Rees. He seemed an intelligent young man and was obviously attracted to Rosemary. If only Larry weren’t there, she thought he might be more than a friend and neighbour. He would surely help her, if only to show Larry up as the trickster; because Megan was more and more convinced it was he. There were too many coincidences and although she knew they happened, it was hard to swallow so many within so small an area and in such a brief time.
When she knew Rosemary was safely at work, she arranged to meet Huw and discuss the recent events. To her surprise, Richard was with him. She frowned as she went to the table in the seaside cafe in Aberystwyth where they had arranged to meet.
‘Sorry, Megan, but I’ve told Richard everything you told me. He has so
mething to add that you’ll find interesting,’ he explained, as he held out a chair for her to join them.
Richard, who rarely spoke, said in his deep, attractive Welsh voice, ‘This man Larry, he’s obsessed with finding some relative or other and I think it’s sending him round the bend.’
‘Tell him about your father,’ Huw coaxed.
‘He approached my father and tried to tell him that I was a stolen child, not his son but Larry’s long-lost brother, would you believe!’
‘You do resemble him a little,’ Megan said, ‘fair hair and dark brown eyes and you’re about the same height and build, but surely that wasn’t enough to make him think you and he were related?’
‘The man’s cracked. My father recommends we warn Rosemary to stay well away from him. We don’t know what turn his obsession will take, do we?’
‘Larry doesn’t seem the obsessional type, but then, Rosemary and I were saying only a few days ago that when this man is found, people will almost certainly say, “Who would have thought it of someone like him?”’ She looked from one to the other and asked, ‘What can we do? If we try to tell Rosemary we think Larry is dangerous, she won’t believe us. She’ll probably stop telling me everything that happens and that would put her in greater danger. No, I think it’s best that I concentrate on remaining her friend and confidante. If she doesn’t have me to talk to she’ll really be on her own – and in greater danger!’
‘Not on her own,’ the quiet Richard said slowly. ‘That’s the touble, she’s with Larry. He shares her home, her food – and her bed.’ Megan thought the remark upset Huw. He lowered his head as if unable to face that fact.
* * *
The following weekend Rosemary had to check the proofs of her new book and on the Thursday evening while they were preparing for bed, she suggested that Larry should go off and explore some more of the Welsh hills.
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