Touch and Go

by Patricia Wentworth

  “Yes, you’re like her,” said Sarah, and wondered again why she should have panicked and run away.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Mr. Geoffrey Hildred and his son seemed to be making a stay of some length at the Red House. They went up to town, but they came down again. Sarah concluded that she was on appro, and that Miss Marina hadn’t felt equal to vetting her alone. It is fairly grim to have the eyes of a whole family earnestly focussed upon all that you say, or do, or are, from the way you eat your breakfast banana, through your reactions to (a) a practical joke, (b) winding interminable balls of wool, (c) being accidentally banged over the head by Ricky at tennis, down to your capacity for staying the course of Aunt Marina’s reminiscences without going to sleep as ten o’clock approached. Sarah hoped that she was comporting herself as well as was to be expected, and that the family interest would shortly become less intense. Miss Marina was becoming attached, and Uncle Geoffrey very assiduous and admiring. But she thought Ricky didn’t like her, and she didn’t much care whether he did or not. He inclined to moon about after Lucilla, and was probably jealous. Sarah had been extremely glad to hear that it was poisonously dull to marry a cousin.

  It was on the third evening that Mr. Hildred mentioned Mr. John Brown. Miss Marina was knitting a grey and white striped muffler, and Lucilla was being taught how to play bridge by the other three. They had finished a rubber and Ricky was shuffling for a new deal, when his father remarked.

  “There’s a client of mine just come down into this part of the world.”

  Miss Marina dropped a stitch. This always happened if she took her attention off the row she was knitting. She said “Oh dear, dear!” in a perfunctory manner; and then, “What did you say, Geoffrey?”

  Ricky let the cards fall with rather a bang, and Lucilla kicked him under the table.

  “I said a client of mine had just come down to Holme, Marina.”

  “Why?” said Miss Marina, her knitting in mid air.

  Sarah was also wondering why. There did not seem to be any particular reason why anyone should come to Holme. It had a church, a cemetery, a general shop, some thirty cottages, and an inn called the Cow and Bush.

  Mr. Hildred supplied the reason.

  “He’s an artist and he wants to paint the autumn tints, and he’s also a great hand with his camera—does studies of wild life and all that sort of thing.”

  “Oh!” said Miss Marina in a worried voice. “Lucilla my dear, I think there are three stitches down. If you wouldn’t mind—”

  “It’s such foul wool!” said Lucilla.

  “My dear—what a word! Thank you so much. What is this gentleman’s name, Geoffrey?”

  Ricky dropped the cards again. His long pale face looked as sulky as a long pale face can look.

  “His name is Mr. John Brown,” said Geoffrey Hildred—“Mr. John C. Brown. He has, I believe, written a number of books about birds and animals. He’s an American over on a visit, and the more money he spends here the better. He seems to be very well off. It’s astonishing what some of these writers make. He was consulting me as to his liability to income tax if he stayed on this side. I was perfectly amazed.”

  “There’s nowhere for him to stay at Holme,” said Miss Marina. “Thank you, my dear, I shall be able to get on nicely now. Oh dear, there’s another stitch gone! You left them rather far up the needle. Perhaps Miss Trent—”

  The comforter passed to Sarah.

  Mr. Hildred replied to the first part of his cousin’s speech.

  “He’s at the Cow and Bush. He says he wants to sample an English village inn, but I should think he would soon have enough of it. I think we might ask him to dine. He’s a very pleasant fellow. And Lucilla, my dear, I’ve given him permission on your behalf to go where he likes on your property. He is hoping to get some good photographs of migratory birds. It’s a queer taste, but he seems very keen about it.”

  Sarah handed back the comforter with the stitches rammed well down.

  “I say, are we going to play another rubber or aren’t we?” said Ricky Hildred crossly.

  Lucilla giggled a good deal over her lesson. She ran her fingers through her hair and said “Marvellous!” when she had three aces. She scowled and informed the table that her hand was “putrid” when its highest card was a knave. And she revoked whenever it was humanly possible to revoke. She seemed to enjoy the game very much, and was more than loth to go to bed.

  Sarah went up when she did. She was feeling pleased with life. Uncle Geoffrey had held her hand in a lingering clasp, and Aunt Marina had called her my dear when she said good-night. Ricky could look as much of a cross spoilt child as he liked; it didn’t matter in the least to Sarah Trent.

  She was just going to get into bed, when the door was opened with a sort of quick push and Lucilla came in without knocking. She shut the door as quickly as she had opened it and stood with her back to it, her left hand still on the handle. She seemed to be trying for her impudent grin, but it trembled and broke. She caught her lower lip between her teeth and stared defiantly at Sarah.

  “What on earth’s the matter?” said Sarah.

  The child was in her nightgown—blue, to match her room. Her fair hair stood up, and her feet were bare. She went on staring for a moment, and then she relaxed, let go of the handle, and took a running jump on to Sarah’s bed, where she snuggled down with the pink eiderdown pulled round her.

  Sarah said, “Well!” and Lucilla nodded. She was smiling now, but she didn’t speak. It struck Sarah that the reason she didn’t speak was because she couldn’t. There had been no colour at all in her face, but either a little pink was coming back to it now, or else the eiderdown which she was clutching round her gave her some reflected colour. It was bright enough in all conscience.

  “Well!” said Sarah again.

  This time Lucilla spoke. She echoed Sarah’s “Well!” in a voice with a catch in it.

  “What’s the matter?” said Sarah. The child was giving her cold feet.

  “Nothing.”

  “Lucilla, has anything frightened you?”

  The pale arch of Lucilla’s eyebrows lifted a little.

  “Of course not!” The eyes under the lifted brows were wide and innocent. She pushed back the eiderdown and stretched.

  Sarah had an odd sense of relief from strain. The impudent smile was back again as Lucilla cocked her head on one side and said,

  “Isn’t this all too pink for words?”

  “Why did you come?” said Sarah, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

  “An urge,” said Lucille trippingly—“just an urge. A sort of “If I don’t see my darling Sarah this minute, I shall pass right out’ kind of feeling. Don’t you ever get an urge like that?”

  “No, I don’t,” said Sarah. “And you ought to be asleep.”

  “‘Macbeth hath murdered sleep, the innocent sleep,’” Lucilla’s voice was suddenly a rather creepy whisper.

  Sarah put a hand on her shoulder and shook it.

  “Dry up! I don’t want to have nightmares, if you do.”

  “Ow!” said Lucilla. “That hurt! All right, we won’t talk about Shakespeare any more. It just shows you’re not a governess, because any proper govvy would be most frightfully pleased at my knowing that quotation. We’ll talk about your lovely pink room instead. Do you love it passionately?”

  “Do you?” said Sarah dryly, but behind the dryness she was wondering, and a little afraid.

  Lucilla giggled.

  “Strike me pink I do! I believe if I had this room instead of mine that it might have a real effect on my moral character. You know—rose-coloured spectacles and all that sort of thing. I could have lovely rosy dreams about the good deeds I was going to do next day, and then when Annie called me in the morning I should just bound out of bed and do them before the pinkness evaporated.”

  Sarah looked at her pretty straight.

  “You mean you want to change rooms?”

  Her arm was caught and squeeze
d. Lucilla’s hands were cold and urgent.

  “Darling Sarah—would you like to? You’re here to cheer me up, you know, and how can I possibly cheer in a blue, blue room? If I have to undress in it, and sleep in it, and get up in it—well, it means I’m in the blues half my time, doesn’t it?”

  “What was behind all this nonsense? Sarah felt that she would very much like to know. A single fact emerged with unmistakable plainness—Lucilla didn’t want to sleep in her own room, and she did want to sleep in Sarah’s. Well, Sarah had no objection. She preferred blue to pink, and that was about all there was to it. She said so, and the colour came back into Lucilla’s face with a rush. The cold hands gripped her hard for a moment and then let go.

  “Darling Sarah! And you won’t tell anyone? They’re such fusses, and Aunt Marina would want to know why and all that sort of thing.”

  “Well, the girl who calls us will know,” said Sarah.

  Lucilla nodded.

  “I’ll square Annie. She won’t give it away if I tell her not to. We can change over again to dress if you like, so you needn’t move any of your things. Ouf! I’m so sleepy! I don’t suppose I shall wake till the tea comes. Good-night, darling Sarah.”

  The two rooms were next to each other, but there was no connecting door. Sarah came out of her own room into a long passage with a glimmering light at the far end. Half a dozen steps took her to Lucilla’s door, which stood ajar. She pushed it open and found that the light in the ceiling had been left on. It shone through a pale blue bowl, which gave rather the effect of moonlight. What a stupid woman Mrs. Raimond must have been!

  Sarah shut the door and looked about her. She could imagine wanting to scream with rage if she had to live for ever surrounded by nothing but pale blue, but there didn’t seem to be anything to be frightened of. Yet Lucilla had certainly been frightened.

  Sarah looked under the bed after the time-honoured manner of the nervous spinster. Lucilla’s deserted slippers stood there side by side, pale and fluffy and blue. She opened a couple of cupboards and rummaged in them. They contained nothing more alarming than Lucilla’s frocks.

  The room was about the same size as the one she had left, but since it occupied the corner of the house, it had an additional window. Both rooms had two windows looking upon the garden, but Lucilla’s room had a window to the side as well. All the windows here had blue and white striped curtains, and all the curtains were drawn. Sarah pulled them back and discovered that behind the blue and white stripes all the windows were shut and latched. Surely to goodness the child didn’t sleep with her windows shut! This would have to be gone into. They were old-fashioned sash windows, very large and heavy, but as they were fitted with pulleys there was no difficulty about moving them. Sarah ground her teeth with rage to find that even the pulley ropes were blue. She could imagine Mrs. Raimond saying, “How sweet!”

  She opened the two windows that looked on the garden, switched out the lights, and got into Lucilla’s bed. She was sleepy, but behind the sleepiness there was a curious puzzled feeling just touched with fear. If she hadn’t been so sleepy, she would have laughed at herself, because there was of course nothing to be afraid of. It was the unreasoning fear which tinges the air of a dream with a murky something which will neither show itself nor yet be gone. Mist—fog—sleep—fear—

  Sarah was never sure whether she had really been asleep or not. If she had not crossed the line, she had been very deep in that foggy borderland where thought and feeling are blurred and nothing is very real. The first sound came to her by way of this blurred thought. It may have called her back from actual sleep; she did not know. The first thing she knew was the sound, and it seemed as if it were a very long way off. She began to come back out of the foggy country, waking slowly and reluctantly. Then all at once she was really awake and listening.

  There was nothing to listen to in that first waking minute. She thought that she had been wakened by a sound. She rose on her elbow to listen, and the room was as still as if everything in it were asleep except herself. The open windows let in a very faint murmur of leaves moved by some light passing air, but that was not the sound which had called her back from sleep. Yet she did not know what sound it was that had called her back.

  It was at this point that Sarah told herself firmly that she had been asleep. The sound wasn’t a real sound at all. She had dreamed it and so waked startled from her dream. She sank back on to the pillow again. The light air went to and fro outside, the leaves rustled, and she began to go down into the misty places of sleep.

  Then the sound came again.

  She waked sharply. One moment she was very nearly off, and the next she was broad awake. This time the sound did not stay behind in any dream. It was in the room. No, not in the room—at the window—at the shut window which looked to the side of the house. Sarah’s first coherent thought was one of thankfulness that the window was shut. She had so nearly opened it, but the air blew cold from the east, and, with the other two windows already wide, she had let it be.

  She threw back the bed-clothes and sat up. The sound came from the shut window, and it was like the sound of claws scratching on the glass.…

  She could have laughed with relief—a cat that wanted to come in. And then a quick chill thought—relief had come too soon—a cat doesn’t scratch at a door or a window. A dog scratches when it wants to come in; a cat pats with a paddy paw.

  The scratching came again with a sort of scrabbling rush. A dog never made a noise like that, and no dog could be on a window ledge so high above the ground.

  Sarah got out of bed. She wondered whether it was a bat. It was a really horrid thought, because there were two wide open windows, and if it was a bat that wanted to come in, the way was clear. It would be fatal to put on the light, because bats were always attracted by a light. Without really thinking what she would do, she found herself at one of the two open windows, dragging at the pulleys. The catch went home with a little click. When she had got the second window shut, she stopped again to listen. There was no sound, and she could see nothing. The night was very dark and cloudy. From the other side of the room she had been able to see the break which the tall windows made in the solid blackness of the wall. Now that she was standing close up to them, she could discern one kind of darkness of the sky, and another of the trees. And the shadow under the trees was a deeper, blacker darkness still.

  She left the two windows which she had shut and went to the one from which the sound had come. She did not go very near it. From a yard away she stared at the dark glass and could see nothing. And then, as she stood there, something flung itself against the pane in that same scrabbling rush and there was the sound of claws against the glass. She gave an involuntary cry, and in a flash the thing was gone.

  She went and sat on the edge of the bed. She wanted to get away from the window, and she wanted to think. She felt as if she would be able to think better if she got away from the window, and if her legs stopped shaking. It was pleasant to think that all the windows were shut and hasped. Presently she would go over to them and draw the curtains. Just now she wanted to sit still and think.

  The Thing which had dashed itself against the window within a yard of her was certainly neither cat nor bat. The ledge was narrow. A cat must have overbalanced and fallen, and the Thing was too big to be a bat. The scrabbling claws had struck the pane about half way up and so swept down it and across. An owl—it might have been an owl. But Sarah had stood within a yard of the glass and seen nothing that was lighter than the dense blackness and shadow of the trees which fringed the drive on this side of the house. She was used enough to owls, but they commonly hunt by moonlight. She had never heard of an owl trying to get into a house. The Thing had dashed itself with force against the pane, and she had seen nothing except a stirring of the darkness. If it had been an owl, she thought she would have seen its eyes, or at the very least some blurring of the glass where the wings and the breast feathers must have been pressed up against it.


  How did she know what she would have seen? She thought she would have seen something. She thought the ruffled breast feathers of an owl and the under side of the wings would show light against the glass, and she thought there would have been some green or tawny gleam from the fierce, startled eyes. But she didn’t know—she didn’t know anything at all. Then she laughed to herself a little angrily. She did know one thing. She knew why Lucilla had wanted to change her room.

  She sprang to her feet and switched on the ceiling light. It was like coming out of a nightmare—the dark—and the unknown scrabbling Thing—and her own scaremongering thoughts—and then the silly blue room with its artificial moonlight streaming down from the ceiling.

  Sarah went boldly to the windows and drew the striped curtains across them. She left the side window to the last. If the creature was attracted by the light and came dashing against the glass again, she might get a sight of it. She stood, as she had stood before, about a yard away and waited.… Five minutes—ten—she didn’t know how long, but it was a slow, dragging time. She heard a clock strike in the house below. An old wall clock, striking solemnly in the sleeping house. She counted twelve strokes. Then she went forward and pulled the curtain across the window.

  CHAPTER IX

  Sarah slept until Annie came in with the tea. She woke with the feeling that she had had a great many dreams, but she could not remember what they were. She saw Annie looking at her with round eyes of surprise, and told her to open all the windows and let in some air. She hadn’t slept with her windows shut like that since those very far off nursery days before the crash when old Nanna was an undisputed autocrat and didn’t hold with letting the night air in.

  The open windows admitted a fresh, soft air and a stream of sunlight.

  Annie had hardly gone before Lucilla trailed in, clutching Sarah’s pink eiderdown in one hand and a wobbling cup of tea in the other. Just as she reached the bed, she began to giggle and the cup slid. Lucilla shrieked, made an acrobatic recovery in the course of which she dropped the eiderdown, and finished up by thrusting the cup and saucer at Sarah, who was glad enough to get them away from her.