“Yes, I did, but I forgot what I went for.”
“You looks a bit pale, Miss.”
“I—I imagined I saw a man in the garden just now. It startled me.”
Mrs. Barchard’s dark eyebrows rose until they almost disappeared into her untidy top-knot of grey hair.
“A man in the garden, Miss? He’s up to no good at this time of night! I’ll go out with a bicycle lamp if you like and see if he’s still there.”
“Oh no, don’t bother! He was just taking a short cut, I expect; but it startled me.”
A short cut. Jeanie saw again in her mind’s eye the slow movement of that dark figure in the darkness, balanced on the grass verge as on a high wall, walking like a child who has taken a whim to touch heel to toe and toe to heel all the way from his nursery to Timbuctoo. What sort of a short cut led along the grass verge of her kitchen garden Jeanie could not imagine! But it did not matter. Had she not been in an overwrought state, the antics of a trespassing boy would not have worried her. She made light of the matter, seeing that Mrs. Barchard was disposed to take it with deadly seriousness.
“Well, but you looks real white, Miss. You isn’t well, I’m sure. How about a fresh pot of tea made good and strong instead of that weeshy stuff you drinks?”
When she was alone again with her pot of strong tea and her cosy fire, Jeanie tried to settle down happily and enjoy them both. But she found herself continually looking uneasily over her shoulder. Dear little room that she loved, it looked surely as usual. But it did not give her quite the reassurance she had expected. The cottage piano had an odd, dumpy and sullen look, retiring in the corner out of the lamp’s rays. There was a folding screen standing beside the piano, and it had a secretive appearance. Under the round gate-leg table there was dense darkness.
Jeanie was still gazing into the fire with her tea going cold beside her when Mrs. Barchard came in, hatted and coated for her homeward journey.
“Oh, Mrs. Barchard, off already?”
“It’s past my time, Miss. And it’s starting to snow, too, bother it, as if we hadn’t had enough slummocky stuff out of the sky this autumn.”
“Well, you’ll be along in the morning.”
“As usual, Miss. Don’t you come to the door, you’ll catch cold.”
A few flakes came in at the door as Jeanie opened it. It was beginning to snow, with small flakes very lightly drifting.
“Nasty stuff!” said Mrs. Barchard, stamping on a wet flake as though it were a noxious insect alighting on the floor.
Jeanie watched her down the path and out of the garden and stood for a moment listening to her brisk footsteps making off down the road. The land, the sky had that peculiar darkness and stillness that come with filling snow. By to-morrow it would perhaps have fallen-snow’s peculiar luminousness. The air was very still. There was not a sound among the high-up branches.
It was so still that a crackling rustle in the garden hedge startled Jeanie. She peered out.
“Is anyone there?” she asked quietly.
There was no reply. Weasels and stoats and other nocturnal hunters cannot, after all, be expected to reply to questions in the human language. Jeanie smiled a little at this reflection. But she was careful to bolt and chain her front door, and then did the same for both back doors. Then she gave Petronella the remains of the milk, went round the cottage, making sure of the window fastenings, filled a hot-water bottle, raked out the parlour fire, wound the clock, and taking a book and Petronella under her arm went upstairs to her bed. It was a quarter-past seven. It was one of the advantages of living alone that one could go to bed at strange hours without inviting curious comment.
Jeanie had thought at Cole Harbour that she wanted to be alone. Now, going upstairs with the docile kitten purring sweetly against her neck and her hot-water bottle burning her arm, she was not so sure.
Chapter Twenty-Three
NOISES IN THE NIGHT
From the sleep into which, after a couple of hours’ reading, at last she fell, Jeanie awoke slowly, with an oppressed sensation. Something—what was it?—was the matter. Petronella, in the manner of spoilt kittens, was lying across her neck, and that might account for the oppression. She shifted Petronella, who purred and snuggled down again. The window showed a square of lightness upon the darkness of the room. Was it dawn already?
Shifting Petronella again, more firmly this time, Jeanie pulled out the luminous-faced watch from under her pillow. Dawn, indeed! It was ten minutes past twelve. It was the snow that made that soft sub-luminousness in the window-frame. It would not be dawn for another seven hours, and Jeanie had better go to sleep again as quickly as possible.
“Oh blow you, Petronella! Go away!”
Petronella, offended, got up, yawned, stalked to the edge of the bed and jumped to the floor. The floor was uncarpeted and the joists below unplastered, and Petronella’s landing made a surprisingly loud noise for so light a creature. Jeanie was quite startled by it. She was more startled when, from somewhere in the house, from the parlour below it seemed, came an answering sound, a rough sudden sound like the moving of a chair as if somebody else in the house had been startled by Petronella. But there was nobody else in the house.
Was there? Jeanie held her breath and listened. Perhaps that stealthy scraping of a chair-leg was not the first sound that had been made in the parlour. Perhaps there had been others, which had woken Jeanie. Perhaps there was somebody in the house!
No. Silence. Of course, there were others in the house beside Jeanie and Petronella. There were mice. There was a bat, very often. And rats, horrible creatures, were frequent visitors from the barns round about. Rats, even mice, were noisy things in a house at dead of night. Let Jeanie go to sleep again and refrain, if possible, from folly. But Jeanie’s head would not relax upon her pillow. Stiff-necked, with eyes staring into the darkness, still holding her breath, she listened.
Undoubtedly, there was someone in the house. Someone was making a peculiar prolonged rustling noise in the room below. A stealthy rustling noise, as if someone were crumpling paper and did not wish to be heard doing so.
Just such a noise, in fact, as a mouse might make between the pages of a newspaper. Lie still, Jeanie, and go to sleep!
But it was not easy to lie still, and impossible to go to sleep. Petronella suddenly jumped up on Jeanie’s shoulder again, a great deal more quietly than she had descended, and Jeanie could not repress a startled gasp. Petronella settled down upon Jeanie’s shoulder with a loud purring that irritated Jeanie, since it filled her straining ears and smothered—so she fancied—sounds that might be going on below.
But why should there be sounds below? There was nothing of value to steal in Yew Tree Cottage. Who would be likely to break in? One might answer that question with another: who was the man Jeanie had seen early in the evening standing outside her cottage near the syringa bush? Oh, lie down, Jeanie, and go to sleep!
But that was, there was no doubt of it, a noise in the parlour downstairs. It was a noise Jeanie could recognise. And it was not the kind of noise that can be ascribed to rats or mice or bats. It was the quiet chink of metal being put down gently on metal.
Very cautiously, as if her lightest movement could be heard by the intruder, Jeanie sat up in bed, hugging her blankets round her. There was somebody in the house. Somebody was below in her parlour, rustling paper and chinking metals together. But what could anyone want in her house at this hour of the night? It could not be a friend, for what friendly motive could there be for such an intrusion? It could not be a mere impersonal thief, for no thief would go to the trouble of breaking into this little cottage. Must it be, then, an enemy?
As her thoughts formed this word, Jeanie’s heart started pounding rockily in her chest again. She whimpered a little to herself, in sheer fright at the word. At the same time, she called herself a nervous, fanciful fool, for she had no enemies...
It seemed quite a long time that Jeanie sat up in bed, not moving a muscle, scarcely breathing, all her spi
rit in her ears. There was no sound. And she began to feel that she would almost welcome a sound. Yet when it came it terrified her. It was the sound of something harsh and rustling being dragged softly over the floor below.
She would of course have to go down and confront the intruder. She would have to go, if only for the reason that she could not sit here in bed with the blankets huddled round her, shivering and listening, much longer. Anything was better than this staring, listening suspense. What was that soft, dragging sound? Was the intruder after all a mere burglar making off with some of her possessions? What could a burglar be moving that would make that peculiar soft dragging noise? His swag, collected in a sack of table-cloth? But a burglar’s swag would chink and clatter. It would not be soft. It would not rustle in that ghostly way, like a straw palliasse.
She must go down. In a sort of breathless calm, summoning all her courage, Jeanie slipped silently out of bed. Once off the mat, the floor was very cold. The air was very cold. She groped for her dressing-gown and put it on, wrapping it close around her and tying the girdle with grim fingers as old warriors used to buckle on their sword-belts. She had no weapon. What weapon was there that she could lay her hands on? Switching on her little torch, she looked about her. Nothing. She switched the torch off.
Tiptoeing to the window, she very softly opened it. It was not far to the ground. At any rate she could, if the worst came to the worst, run to it and scream for help.
Scream for help! Foolish Jeanie! She would not need help! She would in a moment or two be laughing at her own fears, when she found the papers that a mouse had been dragging across the floor and trying to pull through his hole in the wainscot to make a cosy nest under the wall-plate. She had her torch in her hand. She would go very quietly out of her room and half-way down the stairs. From half-way down the stairs she could see into the parlour. She had, she remembered, left the parlour door ajar. Half-way down the stairs she would switch on her torch, direct its beams into the parlour and cry: “Who’s there?” There would be no reply. Perhaps a little scamper of mice. Then she would descend, light all the candles in the place, search the cottage, find nothing untoward, and return to bed.
She had her torch ready in her left hand and her thumb ready on the knob. With her right she very carefully pushed up the wooden latch of the door. The old wood, polished with use, lifted beautifully without a sound, and quite soundlessly she lowered it. Breath held, she waited a moment, eyes and ears straining through the open door. Had she remembered the window at the back, and how to anyone below in the darkness, she would appear silhouetted against its lesser darkness, she would, perhaps, not have stood her ground so bravely.
The landing was quite dark. With infinite caution Jeanie took two steps upon it. The boards did not creak, they were friendly to her bare feet. She felt a sort of excitement now that was not entirely unpleasurable. She was on her mettle. Anything was better than lying in her bedroom shivering and listening to imaginary noises!
As she took another cautious step towards the stair-head, something dense and firm and living blocked her way. Her scream of terror was strangled at its beginning. A heavy determined hand came over her mouth.
Chapter Twenty-Four
LADYBIRD, LADYBIRD!
Jeanie had often read, with the mind that accepts and does not ponder, the oft-used expression “to be paralysed with fright.” She knew now what it meant. Fright did paralyse one, at first. Then, when the paralysis had died off, how wild, how ill-directed, how full of panic became one’s movements as one plunged and struggled, trying vainly to make up for that lost moment! Jeanie’s struggles had availed her nothing. Her assailant had been far stronger than she, and had had the advantage of knowing exactly what he intended to do, while she was at the disadvantage of not knowing what plan she was resisting. In a very short space of time Jeanie had found herself back in her bedroom, and alone again: but securely bound hand and foot with strong bands of some soft material that not only tied her hands together but, passing round her waist, prevented her from even lifting them, and gagged with a wedge of cloth, securely tied in place, that hurt her tongue and made it difficult to swallow and added to her general terror the particular terror that she might suffocate. Lying on the cold slippery boards of her bedroom floor, in darkness, helplessness and enforced horrible silence, Jeanie heard her assailant’s stockinged feet going, carelessly now, down the stairs again.
A being larger than life, relentless, silent, animated by some purpose that was as yet unknown, evil, skilful, resourceful, above all, strong. For the rest, Jeanie had become aware of a woollen shirt and breeches of some smooth material, of a powerful forearm that seemed hard as iron under the touch of her wildly resisting hand, of a faint smell of paraffin, and of a determined, formidable silence. Not a sound, not a gasp nor a grunt had come from the intruder. No effort had been needed on his part to overcome poor, limp terrified Jeanie.
It was the gag that Jeanie could not endure. To be bound hand and foot was just endurable, but to feel that pressure upon one’s throat, that cruel constriction upon one’s mouth, to feel one’s spirit vocal with cries for help, with cries of pain and fear, and to be unable to utter a sound—that was torture! Jeanie struggled to burst her hands out of the ties that held them, so that her hands could help her mouth. She could not move them one inch. The notion came to her that if she could propel herself across the slippery floor she might find some rough edge, some semi-cutting edge on some piece of furniture against which she could rub her bound hands until the bandage wore through and freed her. She reviewed mentally all the furnishings in her bedroom. There was no such edge.
She had better not agitate herself by any useless movements, but make up her mind to wait, to endure the long night until help came in the morning. She could endure. Her gag was painful, but it would not really suffocate her. Her throat could endure the pain. Her arms and ankles were constricted, but they could endure. Better stay as quietly as might be and count the hours away by Handleston church clock.
The intruder had not harmed her. Evidently, it was not to harm her that he had broken into her cottage. He wanted her out of the way while he got through his business, whatever it might be: but he did not mean to injure her, still less, as she had wildly at first surmised, to kill her.
Perhaps, after all, it was a chance thief, a burglar. Perhaps the news of Jeanie’s finding of that half-row of pearls had gone the round of the village, and somebody had conceived the idea of searching for the rest of the string.
Whoever it was, was moving about below with less discretion now, dragging things about, making those rustling noises she had heard before, padding heavily in stockinged feet from parlour to hall and back again He was conducting a very thorough search. But if for the pearls, why in the parlour? The half-string of pearls had been found in the cupboard under the stairs, among the empty bottles and disused andirons and old fittings which Jeanie had removed. Perhaps it was not for pearls the intruder was searching. Perhaps it was for something else. Perhaps there was hidden treasure in the cottage, and someone knew of it.
From below came a little scraping sound, the sound of a match being struck. Jeanie imagined the tall unknown standing below, dark, undelineated, vague, with immense forearms of iron, holding a match to a cigarette, blowing out a little stream of smoke, shaking the match dead. A quite disproportionate resentment and rage surged up in her. How could he, how dared he calmly light a cigarette while she lay here in such undeserved, unnecessary pain and discomfort?
Footsteps padded off. Little rustling crackling noises came next to her strained ears, noises she strove vainly to put a name to. What could be going on down there in the parlour? A faint yet pungent smell had arrived in Jeanie’s bedroom through the fire-place or from between the floor-boards. Smoke. Smoke. Something—paper or something—had caught fire. The damned careless fool downstairs had dropped his match, still alight, on paper, and the paper was catching fire while he went off and searched about in the hall. A nice t
hing if Jeanie’s house was to be burnt down while she lay helpless and he prosecuted his illegal search!
This was a furious mental figure of speech. Jeanie did not really believe that her house would be burnt down. The searcher would of course come back and put the fire out as soon as he smelt smoke.
Well, surely the man could smell it now! He could not be far away. Jeanie could hear him, in fact, moving in the passage. The smell was getting more pungent every second. Jeanie drummed with her heels violently on the floor to attract the searcher’s attention.
But suddenly she lay still. She recognised the smell of burning paraffin, and the fusty, heavy smell of burning straw. Now what an innocent figure seemed that imagined searcher after treasure! Now Jeanie would have welcomed him, visualising him as a friend and preserver! But he did not exist. There was no searcher after treasure below in the darkness of her house, but a murderer. Robert Molyneux’s murderer. Her murderer. Her house was on fire, and the man who had lit the fire would not put the fire out. Nobody would put the fire out in time to save Jeanie.
Chapter Twenty-Five
DEATH IN THE OFFING
There was a sort of ghostly faint radiance outside the window. It was the radiance of fallen snow, snow on the roof reflecting whatever little light there was in the moonless sky. Gazing upwards through the lead-diamonded windows, Jeanie could see the white line of the projecting gable covered with snow. She could see in the dark now, like a cat. All her frightened being seemed living in her senses. In her ears, that strained after every crackling, every rustling, in her nose, which breathed continuously now the oily scent of paraffin and the acrid one of burning straw, so that images kept flitting behind her throbbing eyes of the bonfires she had lit in the garden to burn packing-cases when she first arrived at Yew Tree; in her eyes which stared out upon that snow and remembered last winter in Switzerland and the red glow of the sunset upon the glittering snow-fields. Why at such a moment should she think of that red glow upon the slopes of the Matterhorn? Was it because all her senses combined to tell her that soon there would be a red glow upon these snowy Gloucestershire fields? She thought: But he can’t mean to leave me here!
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