Fear by Night: A Golden Age Mystery

by Patricia Wentworth

  Presently he went on round the house and found something else. On the side farthest from the track the roof had been roughly repaired, and what might have been the kitchen looked now uncommonly like a garage. Rough wooden doors had been fitted, and a padlock fastened them. Charles made a complete circuit of the house and then sat down on a bit of broken wall. The moon ought not to be long now.

  Ann met Mary in the dark of the upper landing with a candle. She looked more wraith-like than ever. She came close and pressed Ann’s arm.

  “Ma man’s hame.”

  “Your husband?”

  “Ay.”

  Ann was faintly startled. They were so cut off, it seemed strange that anyone should come to them from the outside world.

  “Are you glad, Mary?”

  There was no gladness in Mary’s tone, nor in the way she threw out her hands at the question.

  “Glad?” Then, coming very close, she said with her lips at Ann’s ear, “Mind yersel, lassie,” and slipped away.

  No one else mentioned Mary’s husband.

  Ann went to bed and slept. She left the blind up so that if she woke she would see the moon go up the sky. There were stars when she leaned from the window after blowing out her candle. They were not very bright, because the sky was still so full of light. It would not be really dark all night in those reaches of the upper air. The hills were dark, and the trees were dark, but the sky would not be dark all night.

  Ann left the blind up, and fell asleep with her face to the window.

  She didn’t know how long she had been asleep, when she began to dream that it was raining—heavy, plopping rain that hit the ground like hail. It wasn’t rain at all; it was hail—gold and silver hail, coming down out of a clear sky and bouncing all round her. She woke up and found herself in the moonlight with the sound of the hail in her ears, and as she sat up and shook back her hair, it came again—the plop of something falling just inside the window.

  She threw off the clothes and stared at the window. The thought of hail was still in her mind, but the sky was clear in the moonlight.

  Plop. Something fell again, as a pebble falls.

  Ann slipped out of bed and felt on the floor. She found a small dark pebble and, picking it up, she went to the window and looked out. The moon was just above the trees. The moonlight shone on her. It made her feel pale and unsubstantial, and as if it would be quite easy to float away out of the window and disappear into a dream. Anything in the world might happen on such a night as this. She leaned out over the sill, and Charles Anstruther said,

  “Ann—”

  For a moment she really did wonder if she was dreaming. And then she remembered that in a dream she would not have wondered, because nothing is too strange to happen in a dream. She looked down and saw Charles on the near edge of the lawn looking up.

  “Ssh! Ann—”

  “Charles—ssh!”

  “Come out!” said Charles in a penetrating whisper.

  Ann’s heart began to beat wildly. Anyone might hear, anyone might come—and Charles was right in the eye of the moon. She made a vehement sign in the direction of the trees, nodded her head, and put a warning finger to her lips.

  As Charles ran across the lawn, she turned back into the room and groped for her clothes. Suppose someone waked. Suppose someone heard her. Well, suppose they did—they couldn’t do anything, could they? There wasn’t anything criminal about landing on an island at night, even if it was a private island. She remembered with comfort that trespassers couldn’t be prosecuted unless they damaged something. Mrs. Halliday’s sense of propriety was the only thing that was in danger of being damaged.

  Ann went down the stairs, carrying her shoes as she had done before, but this time she got out of the parlour window. She ran across the lawn with a breathless sense of adventure. The shadow was very black under the trees. She blinked at it, and had begun to say, “Where are you?” when Charles’ arms came round her and she was lifted up and kissed.

  “Oh, Charles!”

  “Ann, darling!”

  “Oh, Charles—you mustn’t!”

  “Why mustn’t I? Ann—kiss me! You’re letting me do it all.”

  “I’m not letting you!”

  “Liar!”

  “You’re just doing it.”

  “Do it too! Ann!”

  Ann kissed him, and then she pushed him away.

  “Come farther under the trees—come where we were before. This isn’t safe. If anyone came down to the boat-house—”

  “They’d find my boat,” said Charles coolly.

  “Oh, they mustn’t!”

  “I don’t suppose they will—I don’t care a damn if they do. Look here, darling—”

  “Ssh! Come down here.”

  She guided him as she had done before. The path was too narrow for them to go abreast, but when they came to the clearing which showed the moonlit sky above, Ann stopped.

  “How did you come? Did you say you had a boat? How did you get it here? Did you come all round by sea? They all say it’s fearfully dangerous.”

  “It’s a collapsible boat,” said Charles with pride. “I went to Glasgow and got it.”

  “Glasgow?”

  Charles kissed her.

  “I’m the world’s non-stop speed merchant. I’ve got simply loads to tell you. Do you know that you’re an heiress, and that I’m going to marry you for your money?”

  “Am I—are you?”

  “I am—you are. And if I was the sort of noble-minded hero you read about in books, I should say, ‘Woman, unhand me! I am but a poor broken-down land-owner with a blighted ancestral property which will probably land us all in the workhouse some day. Who am I to ask a rich heiress to join her fate to mine? Tempt me not, but let me go my way—alone!’”

  “Charles, if you make me laugh, someone will hear us.”

  “You—not us,” said Charles. “You’ve got one of those ringing laughs—pleasing to the ear but noticeable. I am not laughing—I’m telling you the sort of bilge I’d talk if I had a heroic nature. I haven’t. I’m going to marry you even if you turn out to have a million. Only don’t get all buoyed up, darling, because shipping isn’t what it was. Anyhow, whatever it is, you’re bound to marry me, because I’ve compromised you like anything, luring you out to a secret assignation by throwing gravel in at your window. I say, darling, I thought you were never going to wake up. You must have a frightfully good conscience to sleep like that.”

  “I’ve got a lovely conscience—pure as the driven snow. Charles, how did you know it was my window you were throwing gravel through? Just suppose it had been Mrs. Halliday you had lured to a secret assignation. You’d have been strewed all over the lawn in bits by now. It was marvellous of you to guess right the very first time. How did you do it?”

  “There was only one open window. Oh, my sainted aunt—only one in the whole blessed house, on a night like this! I plumped for you as the fresh air fiend.” His arms tightened round her. “Ann—what are we going to do? How soon will you marry me?”

  “I haven’t said I’ll marry you,” said Ann with a quiver in her voice that was only half a laugh.

  Charles shook her.

  “I do wish you wouldn’t keep on saying the same thing over and over again! It’s just like a gramophone record. You ought to be encouraging me like anything. You told me to look out for an heiress—you know you did.”

  Ann put a hand across his lips.

  “Don’t, Charles!… No, let me speak—please. Do you mean I’m really going to have some money? I heard them say something about it here.”

  “Who?” said Charles sharply; and then, “What did they say?”

  Ann pinched his arm rather hard.

  “It was little bits and no names—something about a will, and a girl, and a lot of money, and its being a pity that Gale Anderson couldn’t marry her, and perhaps she’d have a boating accident, and things like that.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t li
ke it,” said Ann. “I—I hate it—it’s rather frightening. And now you come and say I’m an heiress. Was it a joke? Because I don’t feel like joking.”

  “No—it wasn’t a joke,” said Charles in rather an odd tone of voice. He was remembering that Hilda Paulett had said that she wouldn’t go into mourning if Ann had an accident.

  “Ann,” he said—“one minute. Who said all those things about the boating accident, and the money, and the will?”

  “It was Gale Anderson and Jimmy Halliday.”

  “They didn’t know that you could hear what they were saying?”

  “No. Please tell me what you know about it.”

  “You remember you told me you had an uncle called Elias Paulett, and I said I knew a girl called Hilda Paulett. Do you remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I ran into her in a tea-shop in Glasgow yesterday afternoon. I had tea at her table, and she started talking. She’s the most awful babbler, and before I knew where I was she was telling me she was secretly married to her uncle’s secretary. She called the fellow Gale.”

  “Gale Anderson,” said Ann quickly.

  “It might be. Is he here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Staying in the house?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see.… Well, Hilda went rambling on about not knowing what to do, and Gale being fed to the teeth because they’d found out that Uncle Elias had left all his money to another great-niece, and I was most awfully bored, and wondering how I could stem the tide and get away, when all of a sudden out came your name. My jaw dropped about a foot and a half, and if Hilda ever thought about anything except herself she’d have noticed it. As it was, she just went on babbling. I gathered that she’d had a peep at the old man’s will—saw he’d left everything to his great-niece and hadn’t time to turn the page. If she had, she’d have found out that the name on the other side was Ann Vernon and not Hilda Paulett. She went off as bright as a button and told this Gale fellow she’d seen the will, and that she was sole heiress. I gather that Gale said, ‘Righto—how soon can we get married?’ After which the gump Hilda fell into his arms, and everything in the garden was lovely until they found out that she wasn’t the right great-niece, and that you were. Gale cut up rough, and Hilda doesn’t quite know whether he’s going to kill her off and marry you, or do you in so that she will have the money.”

  “Charles, I don’t like it,” said Ann. Her voice sounded as if she was cold and she shivered a little.

  “Nor do I,” said Charles. “Ann darling, don’t shake like that—you’re all right. I say, you did hear them talking about a boating accident—you’re sure of that?”

  “I think so. It was all bits and scraps. Oh, I don’t know—I thought he said—”

  “Gale Anderson?”

  “Gale Anderson. I thought it was his voice. I couldn’t see either of them. I heard the voices coming up through a sort of cleft in the rock. I think they must have been in a cave underneath—” She broke off suddenly. “You see, Charles, it’s all ‘I think,’ and ‘I thought.’ I can’t be certain about anything.”

  “What did you think you heard?”

  “I thought I heard Gale Anderson say, ‘You ought to encourage her to learn to swim,’ and something about ‘Now it will have to be a boating accident.’”

  A sharp involuntary exclamation came from Charles.

  “You’re sure?”

  “No—that’s just it. It goes round and round in my head and I can’t be sure about anything. Only I think that’s what he said, and I made up my mind that nothing on earth would make me go in a boat with him.”

  “Has he asked you to?” said Charles quickly.

  “They both have,” said Ann. She gave a little shivery laugh. “Jimmy Halliday’s begun to make love to me. He’s frightfully funny over it.”

  Charles said something about Mr. Halliday.

  Ann laughed again.

  “You needn’t. He’s like a great lump of a schoolboy and desperately proper and respectful. And Mrs. Halliday told me how she’d saved him from all the girls who had wanted to marry him. It was very, very funny indeed.”

  Charles was silent. Ann thought she had heard Gale Anderson say that it would have to be a boating accident … Hilda Paulett said she was frightened because Gale talked in his sleep about a boating accident … And Hilda was such a babbling fool that nothing she said ought to have the slightest weight with any reasoning human being … And Ann wasn’t sure of what she had heard.… He said abruptly,

  “You’ve got to get out of this. I’d like you to come away with me now.”

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t!”

  “Why couldn’t you?”

  Ann caught about her for reasons. She must find some, and they must be good, strong, sensible ones that Charles would listen to, because the real reason was one that she couldn’t possibly tell him. If she ran away with Charles like this in the middle of the night, she would simply have to marry him whether she had any money or not—Charles would see to that. Even now-a-days it would make it difficult to get another job if she eloped with Charles and didn’t marry him. And she wanted to be quite sure about the money before she allowed Charles to marry her. She caught at Mrs. Halliday and played her with an air of virtue.

  “Oh, Charles—how could I? The poor old lady would have a fit. I couldn’t go off like that in the middle of the night. She’d say I was a hussy, and a great deal worse than that. No, honestly, I couldn’t do it. And there isn’t the slightest need—nothing’s going to happen to me to-night. My room is next to Mrs. Halliday’s, and Riddle’s just across the passage. It’s as safe as a Young Women’s Christian.”

  “I won’t have you staying here!” said Charles in a furious tone.

  “Darling Charles, I don’t want to stay here. Do be soothed. I’ve got a much better plan. Eloping’s too Gretna Greenish—and just think of your relations and the breath of scandal. No—you shall come along in the morning bright and early after breakfast, and we’ll both say we’re awfully sorry and we hope we’re not putting them out, but I’ve got urgent private affairs that make it absolutely necessary for me to leave at once. After all, they can’t stop me—can they?”

  Charles stood there frowning in the dark. The shadow of the trees was over them both, a warm pine-scented shadow with the moonlight bright beyond it. What Ann said was entirely reasonable. He had been driving all day over bad roads, and except as a necessity he wouldn’t choose to drive back over those same roads all night. Both for Ann’s sake and for his own he didn’t want to run away with her in the middle of the night. He wanted to marry her with as little delay as possible, and he wanted his relations to accept her and be pleasant about it. The most influential of his aunts was also one of the most strait-laced women in England. His eldest sister was married to a bishop. It would certainly not help Ann’s future relations with them if Charles and she eloped. In about seven or eight hours he could present himself openly and remove Ann with the most perfect decorum. Neither aunt nor bishop’s wife could censure a day’s run in a car. It was all superlatively reasonable and sensible—but he wanted to pick Ann up and carry her off, turn the car towards civilization, and step on the gas.

  “Ann—come now!”

  “No,” said Ann.

  “Ann!”

  “No, no, no, no, no!”

  “Ann—darling!”

  Ann snuggled up to him.

  “I won’t. And you’re wasting time. It’s such a lovely, perfect, heavenly dream of a night. Wouldn’t you like to make love to me?”

  Charles made love to her.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  At the moment when Charles Anstruther stepped out of his boat and pulled it up on to the sandy beach of the island, the man who had passed him a few hours before on a motor-cycle was lying out on the heather of the headland which overlooked the strait. It was the same headland from which Ann had watched the night before and
had seen something move in the water and leave a foaming wake behind it.

  As soon as Charles had landed, the man got up and made his way noiselessly to where the path went up to the house. He moved at the loping trot of the Highlander—a small, spare, wiry man with a forward thrust of the head and shoulders. Charles had already passed when he came to the path. He followed him, and stood in the bushes at the edge of the lawn until Ann and Charles went down the path and turned off it amongst the trees. Then he went round by the back of the house and in by the kitchen. He knocked on the dining-room door and went in without waiting for an answer.

  Gale Anderson was playing patience. Jimmy Halliday did not appear to be doing anything at all. His pipe had gone out and his glass was empty. He may have been asleep. He looked up as the man came in, and said,

  “What do you want, Hector?”

  Gale Anderson looked over his shoulder. He had the knave of clubs in his hand. When Hector said, “He’s come,” he turned back to his game and laid the knave on the queen of diamonds.

  “Who’s come?” said Jimmy Halliday. He blinked, stretched, and ran his hands through his hair.

  “Him,” said Hector.

  In the light he showed a swarthy skin and the high cheek-bones which give a look of savagery to the face. His black eyes were restless and wary as an animal’s. His right hand fidgeted at his hip as if it expected to find the hilt of a knife there.

  Jimmy stretched again.

  “He’s landed?”

  Hector nodded.

  “How did he come?”

  “He had a boat.”

  Jimmy whistled. Gale Anderson turned up the seven of spades.

  “A boat, has he? One of those canvas affairs it’ll be. That’s what he went away for. What’s he doing now?”

  “Talking with the girl among the trees.”

  Jimmy swore.

  “How did she know he was coming? I’d like to know that.”

  “He was throwing stones up at her window.”

  “And they’re in among the trees?”

  Hector nodded.

  Gale Anderson turned up the queen of hearts.

  “Then you’d better get back and watch them. He’s not to get away till you’ve heard my whistle. I don’t know how you’ll stop him, but you’re as full of tricks as a monkey—you must think of something.”