Someone looked down at her and laughed, an oddly ringing laugh. Meg looked through her lashes and saw Miss Cannock’s bright blue dress, Miss Cannock’s floating scarf, Miss Cannock’s fussy fringe, Miss Cannock’s face.
XXV
Meg lay in the dark, and was thankful for it. They had put out the light, locked the door on her, and gone away. She was alone, and she could relax, move her stiff limbs, and sit up if she wanted to. She found that she didn’t want to—yet. Her head swam and she felt giddy. But she mustn’t give way to that. She propped herself against the end of the sofa and tried to think.
Uncle Henry was on the island, and she was here. She could get out of the window, and she could swim over to the island, but that wouldn’t be any good, because she wouldn’t be able to land when she got there. The wall encircled it, high, blank, and unclimbable. No, the only way to the island was by the covered bridge, and it was locked at both ends. It was locked, and Miss Cannock had the keys. Was Uncle Henry a prisoner on the island then? Yes, he was—he must be. Oh, he was. She ought to have suspected something when he didn’t come out, and she never saw him.
Only two days ago she had been in Ledlington. She had actually rung Bill up. She had talked to him. If she had suspected something then, she could have said, “Oh, Bill, come down!” and he would have come. He would have come. She would have been safe. But she hadn’t suspected anything, and now it was too late.
But how could she have suspected? It was so like Uncle Henry. Even at Way’s End it had been the most awful business getting him to come to meals when he was working. If he had had a place like the island where he could get away from everyone and lock himself in, he might have behaved in just the way he was supposed to be behaving there.
He was a prisoner. But since when? He had met her on the evening she arrived, and she had walked up from the gates with him.
Had she?
Was it Uncle Henry who had met her?
She sat up trembling under the impact of this new idea, but with her head clear and her thoughts racing.
Was it Uncle Henry who had met her? It was dusk, but she had seen—What had she actually seen? An ulster, a hat, and a limp. That was what she had seen, and her mind had said Uncle Henry, and then, as far as the question of identity went, it had stopped functioning. Bill said the Professor had grown a beard, and she had just added the beard to her preconceived idea of Uncle Henry and taken him for granted. But she had spoken to him, and he had answered her. And anyone with the least gift for acting could mimic Henry Postlethwaite. His voice, soft and hesitating, the marked mannerisms of his speech, his way of withdrawing into an impenetrable silence, all made him the easiest man in the world to impersonate. He had hardly spoken at all on their walk to the house. She had been hurt about it at the time, but now she was sure that it was not Henry Postlethwaite who had walked beside her. She remembered how he had stalked past her into the house and vanished. And then—and then Miss Cannock had come—not at once—no, it was some time after. The woman who could play Miss Cannock so perfectly, so convincingly, without a single false note, was clever enough to play another part—any other part.
Meg let her feet down on to the floor and stood up. It was no use trying to get away yet, but the effect of the drug was wearing off. She would wait until Miller had been to have a look at her, and then as soon as he had gone again she would try and get away. She had no plan. The woman who had played Miss Cannock had her plan all cut and dried and her dreadful time-table set, but Meg hadn’t any plan.
Suddenly, irrelevantly, it came to her that Miss Cannock had tried to kill her two days ago in Ledlington. She had tried to push her under the tram. Meg hadn’t any doubt at all that she had tried to kill her, and she hadn’t brought it off. And if she hadn’t brought it off then, why should she bring it off now? This was a very heartening thought, and she made the most of it.
She moved about the room a little to get the stiffness out of her limbs, and then lay down on the couch again to wait until Miller came. Presently the clock in the hall struck eight. She hadn’t known it was as late as that, and she counted the stroked with surprise. She must have been unconscious for much longer than she had thought, and that meant less time to escape, less time before that horrible time-table came into operation. She thought it must be more than half an hour since they had gone away and left her. Miller was to come back in half an hour. If only Miller would come and go away again. She began to feel the strain of waiting for him to come. Suppose he didn’t come at the half hour. Suppose he didn’t come at all until he came with Miss Cannock to “put her in the water.” Was she to go on waiting for that? But if she didn’t wait, if she got up and went to the window, then that would be the time when he would be sure to come. She would be half way across the room in the dark, or pushing back the stiff old-fashioned catch, or trying to lift the heavy sash, and the door would open and the light come on, and she would be caught. Her courage failed at the thought of it. No—whatever happened, she must stay here and wait until Miller came.
The clock had struck the quarter before she heard footsteps in the hall, but they were not slow or heavy enough to be Miller’s footsteps. They came hurrying to the door and stayed there whilst a hand fumbled at the key and at the door fcneb. Even after the door was open there was a dragging pause before the light went on. Meg heard a woman catch her breath, and realized with relief that it was Milly who had been sent to look at her, and that she wasn’t liking the job. She came slowly and reluctantly up to the sofa and peered down at Meg. Then she went back to the door and shut it.
Meg kept her lids down and waited for what would happen next. The door had shut, but the light was on. Had Milly forgotten it, or was she still in the room? There was that catching breath again, and then Milly had crossed the room with a run and was bending down over the sofa.
“Are you awake?” she said in a shaken voice not much above a whisper. And then her hand came down on Meg’s shoulder and shook it. “You’d better be. Do you hear? Come along—wake up if you’re ever going to.”
Meg had a moment of horrible indecision. Could she trust Milly? It might be a trap—it was her life and Uncle Henry’s in the balance.… No, she couldn’t. She made an indistinguishable groaning sound and let herself go limp.
“If you won’t, you won’t,” said Milly. She let go of Meg, and made that odd choking sound again, and ran out of the room, snapping out the light as she went. Then Meg heard the key turn and the footsteps go away, running, as if Milly was in haste to be gone from something which frightened her.
Well, Milly was gone, and now a horrid doubt sprang up in Meg’s mind. Had Milly come because she had been sent, or had she come on her own? Had she come instead of Miller, or was Miller still impending? She thought she would just have to take it that he had sent Milly instead of coming himself. She wondered if Milly was his wife. She was a frightfully bad cook, but she seemed to have some human feelings. Meg felt a little sorry for her—poor Crooked Sue.
She made up her mind that she would county sixty and then open the window. What she was going to do when she had it open, she did not know. They would look for her. If she couldn’t find the place where she could climb the wall—and what chance would there be in the dark?—she would have to try and hide from them till daylight came, and with it the slender, solitary hope of a passing car or of someone from the village. It wasn’t really a hope at all. The house was at a dead end and no cars passed it, and no one from the village would have any possible errand that would bring them within hailing distance at that hour in the morning. Well, it was no good thinking ahead. It was better to get out of the room than to wait in it until they came to truss her up and drown her. Anything would be better than that.
She felt her way across the room to the window and pushed back the catch. The sash was most stubbornly heavy to raise, and it took all her strength to lift it a couple of feet. She was still panting when she heard a sound which came near to stopping her breath altogether. Someo
ne was coming across the hall. Miller was coming across the hall. And he was coming here—now, at once.
If she hadn’t opened the window, she would just have had time to get back on to the sofa, but the window would give her away. If she dropped over the sill and ran for it, how fast could she run, and how far? Not very far, not very fast. He would catch her before she was round the corner of the house. Her heart jumped, and her head swam. She saw these alternatives in a flash, like two pictures. They didn’t take any time at all—she just saw them. And then, as the key turned in the lock, she acted purely on instinct and without thinking at all. She had opened the left-hand window, but she had not drawn the curtains back. She jerked one now with all her might, and ran behind the curtains which screened the other window.
The sound of the opening door was lost in the loud knocking of her heart, but she saw the light shine blue through the stuff she had chosen long ago—before she had married Robin. It wasn’t the long ago of time, but the long ago of change. There was nothing left of the things that had made her life then except chairs, and tables, and these lengths of blue stuff which she had thought so pretty when she bought them. These thoughts were in the shadows of her mind like the pattern on a dark tapestry picked out by firelight, but against this background she was sharply aware of Miller’s crossing the room. At the same moment he discovered the empty couch and the open window. The startled exclamation had hardly left his lips before he vaulted the sill and disappeared into the darkness.
What should she do now? He had left the door open. Would she have time to cross the hall and hide in one of the other rooms? Would they search the house? She didn’t know the answer to any of these things. She only knew that the instinct which had brought her here held her pressed into the angle between wall and window unable to move and scarcely able to breathe. He would come back. He wouldn’t try and look for her alone. He would be bound to come back. She thought this when she began to think again, and close on her thought there came the sound of running feet, and Miller was scrambling back into the room. The drop was greater on the outside. He made some noise. She could hear that he was out of breath. And then he ran across the room and out of the door, leaving the light on.
There was a horrible cold interval of waiting. He would have to go and tell Miss Cannock. No, she wasn’t Miss Cannock, Miss Cannock was only a part which she had played, but there was no other name to call her by. Miller would have to tell her, and she would come. But would they search the room? Or would they take it for granted that she was gone through the open window?
Meg had just to wait, her head thrown back into the angle, pressed back as far as it would go and straining, her hands on either side of her, palm outwards, pressing back too, as if she would force the wall and make it hide her. The moment was stretched intolerably by her fear—the old fear of the creature who is trapped, and waits for the trapper.
And then they came, all three of them—Miller, Miss Cannock, Milly. They came running, with a confusion of words—questions, answers, denials, protests. And then, not a yard from Meg, Miss Cannock stopped, and when she spoke the other two fell silent.
“She can’t have gone far if Milly had just been in. Now, Milly—you’re sure she was there?”
“I take my dying oath.”
“Oh, we haven’t come to that yet. Milly, if you cry, I’ll slap you—I swear I will! Now, Bob, how far did you go?”
“Only to the corner of the house. It was no good going on alone, and I hadn’t my torch. She might have been a yard away and I wouldn’t have seen her.”
“No—that’s right. Go down to the lodge and get Henderson and Johnny! It’s all right, you know—she can’t get away. She’ll probably make for the gate or try and hide in the wood. There isn’t any place where she can get over the wall. There’s no need for anyone to get fussed. I’ll just go round the outside of the house with my torch. Milly, you stay here in case she doubles back! Now, Bob, off with you!”
They were gone. Their footsteps had died away. If only Milly had gone too. But Milly was to stay, and in the time it would take to make a circuit of the house Miss Cannock would be back, and then perhaps it would occur to her to search the room.
It was now or never. The instinct which had forbidden her to move now most insistently bade her go. Milly or no Milly, she must get out of this. It wasn’t a refuge any longer, it was a trap. All at once she could move again. She looked between the curtains and saw Milly crouching on the sofa with her arms thrown out across the padded end and her head down between them. She was choking with sobs. Her shoulders heaved with them. Her body writhed.
Meg slipped off her shoes and took them in her left hand. She knew exactly what she was going to do, and she knew that she could do it. She knew it so surely that she wasn’t afraid any more. She passed between the curtains and crossed the room in the most perfect silence, but even if she had tramped to the door in nail-shod boots, poor Milly’s sobs would have prevented any other sound from reaching her. She cried because she would go to prison if she didn’t do what she was told—and she would lose Bob—perhaps she had lost him already—and she didn’t hold with murder—no, she didn’t—and it was a crool shame. Whatever she did, it was going to be her fault, and as likely as not, she’d be hanged for it, when it wasn’t none of her doing, and if it wasn’t for Bob she’d have been picking pockets comfortable and not doing no harm to nobody. She choked and gulped, and got out a sooty handkerchief which left black smears across her face when she scrubbed her eyes with it.
Miss Cannock, swinging herself in over the window-sill with a noiseless agility which went very oddly indeed with the fussy fringe, the old-fashioned dress, the beaded shoes, switched off her torch and surveyed her with sarcasm. She had removed the tinted glasses, and her eyes behind the colourless lashes were bright, and pale, and cool. She turned without speaking, drew down the sash, and latched it. Then with a sudden decisive movement she went over to the other window and pulled the curtains back.
Meg’s instinct had stood her in good stead.
XXVI
Meg was half way across the hall on her stocking feet. The thing that had told her to leave her hiding-place had brought her so far, but it didn’t tell her what to do next. She went on to the foot of the stair by her own momentum, and there stayed, bewildered by the necessity for making a decision. She must hide—somewhere.… Where? … She didn’t know.…
And then, sharp upon her hesitation, there came to her through the open door of the room from which she had fled the rattle and jangle of the curtain rings as Miss Cannock flung them back. She stopped thinking and ran up the stair as silently and swiftly as if she were moving in a dream, and then, out of sight of the hall by the door of her own room, she stopped, and thought began again.
Her own room was the first place that they would search if it came to searching the house. And the last place? Miss Cannock’s room. What a perfectly horrible idea. She had a moment of sick physical recoil, and then, insistently, pressingly, the thought was driven home. It was the last place where they would look for her, the very last. And she might—yes, it was just possible she might have a chance of getting hold of the key to the bridge. It was worth any risk if there was even the slightest chance of that. But she wouldn’t be taking risks—she would be avoiding them.
She passed her own door, keeping close against the wall, and so along the gallery to the other side of the hall. Miss Cannock’s door faced hers, with the width of the hall between them. The door was ajar, the light burning, and the room just as it had been left when Miller came running up with the news that Meg was away.
Meg went in and looked for a hiding-place. The curtains were drawn, but she shuddered away from the thought of standing behind them with nothing but a length of chintz between her and Miss Cannock. Of all the topsy-turvy things that had happened this was the craziest, that her bones should be like water at the thought of the Cannock. It was as if a rabbit had suddenly become more sinister than a rattlesnake.
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br /> This passed in a flash. The curtains wouldn’t do. There was the big old-fashioned wardrobe which had stood in the spare room at Way’s End. She wouldn’t dare to hide inside it, because if the Cannock was leaving here and going abroad, she would be turning out her clothes and packing them. No, she couldn’t hide inside it, but if she could reach the top she could lie there very safely hidden and let the hunt go by, as she had heard it go a dozen times when they had played hide-and-seek at Way’s End. There was a horned canopy, and the top was sunk a foot behind it. No one had ever thought of looking there, and she had kept it as her own special hiding-place. But she had to get up there. If she stood on the chest of drawers she could manage, but it was a tall chest, and she didn’t dare move a chair to reach it. She had to use the old trick, but it brought her heart into her mouth.
You pulled out one of the drawers to make a step, and then from the top of the chest you leaned over and shut it again, and you had to be most awfully careful or the drawer squeaked. It was only the middle drawer that was any good as a step, and unless you coaxed it ever so carefully it made a noise like a skidding slate-pencil.
She got on to the chest of drawers and put her shoes out of sight on top of the wardrobe. Then she had to shut the drawer below her and keep her fingers steady against the impulse to jam it home anyhow and hide. And just as she knelt there with her hair falling forward over her face and the drawer going home by stiff, reluctant fractions of an inch, she heard the sound of voices coming nearer.
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