Fear by Night: A Golden Age Mystery

by Patricia Wentworth

  Presently Mary looked in.

  “What’ll ye tak?” she said. “The auld leddy’s speirin’.”

  “What is there?” said Ann.

  “There’s guid broth, and fush.”

  Ann gave a little shiver. The thought of fish took her back to the scene on the cliff—Mary throwing three big silver fish out into the loch and saying, “Haud aff, deil!”

  “I don’t want any fish. I’d like some soup,” she said. And then, “I’m quite well, you know. I could get up and come down, but—I think I won’t.”

  Mary nodded.

  “Ye’re safer in yer bed,” she said, and went away again.

  The time dragged most dreadfully. Ann had her broth, and then Riddle came and asked her if she was all right, and when Mrs. Halliday came up to bed she paid Ann a state visit, sitting bolt upright on a hard wooden chair and narrating several cheering stories of people who had caught their deaths through a sudden immersion in cold water. This led her to one of her favourite subjects—the present generation’s wanton indulgence in baths.

  “Clean’s one thing, and taking off all your clothes and setting in hot water constant is another and what I don’t hold with, nor my mother didn’t before me, and a cleaner woman never stepped. I’d like some of these young ’ussies to see how she kep’ ’er brass—see your face in it you could, and ’er copper pans as bright as a new penny. And a bath on Saturday night we all ’ad, in a wooden tub in front of the kitchen fire, and the rest of the week we washed our faces and our ’ands and made do with that. My grandfather he didn’t hold with ’aving baths at all. He said he hadn’t never had a bath in his life and wasn’t going to. He said so much washing was right down hurtful, and I’m not so sure as he wasn’t right, seeing as how he lived to be getting on for a hundred and never had nothing the matter with ’im that ever I heard tell about.”

  She presently bade Miss Vernon a majestic goodnight and swept out of the room, returning half way through Ann’s sigh of relief to stand in the doorway and lecture her upon the immodesty of scrambling up and down cliffs and falling off them under the eyes of a steady, respectable, hard-working man.

  “Not,” said Mrs. Halliday, “as he’s one as ’ud take any notice if a score of girls was to throw themselves at his ’ead. If he was that sort, he wouldn’t be single to-day, Miss Vernon, so don’t you go ’aving your hopes raised nor thinking that he means anything—which he don’t. And I’ll wish you good night, and don’t you go opening that window again or it’s a funeral you’ll be ’aving and not a husband.”

  “Golly!” said Ann when she had gone.

  She waited five minutes, and then leapt out of bed and opened the window which Mrs. Halliday with many ejaculations of horror had closed immediately upon entering the room. She stood there in her nightdress looking out. It was not very cold, but the fog was thick and clammy. The air was dead still. There was no sound from land or sea. The thought of Charles which had lain at her heart like a cold lump of fear became suddenly a sharp stabbing pain. He was somewhere on the other side of that curtain of fog and silence. Or was he? She was shaken by a most dreadful terror. Suppose he wasn’t anywhere any longer. Suppose he had gone out of the living world and left her …

  She caught her breath, and immediately upon that sound of her own making she heard another sound. Very, very faintly there came to her through the deadening fog the sound of oars. There is no other sound quite like it. Lip, lap, splash—lip, lap, splash, with a regular rhythm that was quite unmistakeable.

  She wondered who could have gone out in the boat on a night like this. A most comforting answer presented itself. It was Gale Anderson going away after such a frightful row with Jimmy that, fog or no fog, he simply couldn’t stay in the house any longer. Ann frowned in the dark. It was a beautiful explanation, but there were too many holes in it. There had been hours of daylight for Jimmy and Gale to have their row in. If Gale had been going to shake the dust of the island off his feet, he wouldn’t have waited for the fog to thicken and the dark to come down. He was a knave and a would-be murderer, but he wasn’t a fool.

  There were other answers. The boat might be returning, not going. Gale Anderson might have been put across some time ago. Or Jimmy might have taken him out and dropped him in the loch.

  No—the boat wasn’t coming back, it was going away. The lip, lap, splash was growing fainter all the time.

  Ann gave it up and went back to bed. After all, what did it matter who came or went, since Charles did neither? She buried her face in her pillow and wept scalding tears of anguish. Then suddenly slipped away from it all into sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Ann woke with the moonlight on her face. She started up and stared at the window. The fog was gone, and the moon, very clear and bright, stared back at her. There was a sound of wind in the trees. Mary had been right after all when she said that the wind was getting up and the fog would lift before morning. She had said it when she brought that horrible hot drink and stood there waiting for Ann to finish it—“The fog’ll lift afore mornin’. There’s wind comin’—I ken the sound o’t.” There had been no sound of it then for any ears except Mary’s, but anyone could hear it now. The trees of the island made a queer hushing sound which came, and went, and came again a little louder.

  It was in one of the pauses when the wind seemed to be holding its breath that Ann heard another sound—the tramp of feet on grass. In a moment she was out of bed crouching down beside the window. There were three men coming across the lawn. The moon shone down on them, and she could see quite clearly enough to recognize Jimmy, and Hector, and Gale Anderson. They came out of the shadow of the trees with Jimmy going ahead and the other two carrying something between them—some thing or some one.

  Ann’s heart began to knock against her side. She couldn’t see what they were carrying, and she must see. Two of them, a man’s length apart—carrying something. She must see what it was that they were carrying. She pressed her hands down hard upon her breast, as if the pressure would stop that heavy knocking. If it was a man they were carrying, why couldn’t she see his face? There was something dark thrown over what they were carrying—a dark covering that fell down almost to the ground on either side—like a pall. The three words dropped heavily into her mind. A dead man’s face would be covered like that. For a moment she was so cold with fear that she could not move. Then, as she made a convulsive effort to lean out of the window and look down, she heard the door below her open and saw the men and what they carried pass out of sight.

  She got to her feet and crossed the room, she hardly knew how. At the top of the stairs she stood to listen, and heard the sound of feet going past and down into the kitchen. A light flickered and was gone again. She could see nothing, and now that the door into the old part of the house was shut, she could not hear anything either. She stood in darkness and silence and was wrenched by terrible thoughts. It was Charles whom they were carrying, and he was dead. Perhaps they had killed him. Or perhaps Gale Anderson had killed him and the others were helping to cover it up. If he wasn’t dead, then why had they covered his face?

  By this time she had no doubt at all that it was Charles whom she had seen carried up from the loch. There had been no drip of water on the ground, so he had not been drowned. But if he wasn’t dead, then why had they covered his face? This thought kept coming back and back, and every time it came it hurt a little more.

  She sat down on the top step of the stair and laid her head upon her knees. She was giddy with grief and pain.

  She might have sat there for a long time if it had not been for her torn hands. She had them clutched together, and the pain startled her out of her giddiness. For a moment she couldn’t remember why they should hurt her so, and then her head was clear again. She got to her feet and began to think what she must do. If she were sure that Charles was there in the kitchen hurt or dead, she would be brave enough to go down the stairs, and along the old dark passage, and through the door, and so
come in upon them. It wouldn’t matter what happened to her if Charles was dead.

  Was it Charles?

  Just now she had been sure, and now she wasn’t sure. After the shock and certainty of grief there was a faint reaction. The voice that says, “This is too dreadful to be true,” spoke in her now: “It can’t be Charles. He can’t be dead—not just when everything was coming right.” And low and very insistent the voice of her own inmost self: “This can’t happen to me.”

  It was here that she remembered the old stair which ran down to the kitchen. If she went down that way, she might see without being seen. The prospect of being able to do something steadied her.

  She went back to her room and put on her dressing-gown. It was of a deep shade of blue and would hide her light nightgown. She fastened it round her waist with a cord and, leaving her feet bare, began to feel her way across the landing and down the passage to the back part of the house.

  The stair came up into a little room like a cupboard that was next to Mary’s room. The space was so small that it seemed as if it was just a slice taken off the passage to enclose the stair head. Perhaps in the old three-bottle days the laird had taken this precaution against falling down into the kitchen after his potations.

  The stair was the old stair of the house, winding with steep, uneven steps about a central pillar. Ann had never been down it until she came down bare-foot in the dark, feeling for each crumbling step and holding to the wall. She went down into silence. The walls were too thick to let in the sound of the wind.

  The door at the foot of the stair was shut. There was no line of light beneath it, and no mutter of voices from the farther side. She leaned against the rough panelling and held her breath to listen, but there was no sound at all. Very slowly and with cold, stiff fingers she lifted the latch.

  The door opened outwards into the kitchen. She got the latch clear and felt the door begin to move away from her of its own weight. She held it with both hands, letting it go a very little at a time, with her heart beating so hard that she was afraid someone would hear it. If there was a light in the kitchen, she ought to be able to see it now.

  The door slipped from her hands and swung out with a creak.

  The kitchen was dark and empty.

  Ann stood on the threshold looking into the darkness and listening. There was no sound at all except the sound of the wind passing high up over the house. After a minute or two she came out from the shelter of the door. She could see a least faint glow from the embers on the hearth, and moonlight on the hill beyond the dark yard. Now that her eyes were accustomed to it, the kitchen was not quite dark after all. The moonlight showed the window and the corner of the kitchen table, and the glimmering embers gave her the position of the hearth.

  She went to the back door, tried it, and found it fast, the key in the lock. With the cold iron against her palm, she thought, “Charles—what have they done to him—where is he—where are they?” The key hurt her hand and she let go of it. One thing was certain—they were not here. The kitchen held no one but herself, and the door was locked on the inside. Yet only a very few minutes ago she had stood at the top of the stairs and had seen a light flicker past and heard men’s feet go down the old passage to the kitchen. It was just as if they had walked into the darkness and vanished there.

  With a long-drawn breath of relief she remembered the wash-house. The door was there on her right. It was open, for she could see it as a black oblong in the shadowed wall. If they were there, they were very still. If they were there, she would have heard them. She felt suddenly very much afraid. But there was the black doorway, and she must go through it. “Not without a light! I won’t—I just won’t!” There must be matches somewhere—there are always matches in a kitchen. She went over to the hearth and felt along the narrow shelf above it. There was a box there, but it was a very light one, only three matches left in it, so that she had to decide whether she could risk one of them on the chance of finding a candle. She wouldn’t dare to light the lamp, because it would betray her if anyone were to come. You can snuff out a candle in a moment, but a lamp is another matter. She thought she would look into the wash-house first. Even a match would show her whether Charles was there, and if he wasn’t there, she had no need of any more light.

  She crossed to the dark doorway with the stone flags cold under her feet, stepped over the threshold, and struck a match. It went up with a little flare that dazzled her and then tried to go out. She had to hold it head downwards, and twist it about until the flame got hold of the soft wood. Such a small, brief flame. She looked about her by the light of it and saw the copper, and the wash-tubs, and a soft black rush of shadows. Blackest of all, a yawning pit of shadow in the corner with something standing over it.

  The flame burnt her fingers and she dropped the match. Her hand shook a little as she struck another. It fizzed like a tiny rocket. The burning head flew off and the useless stump went to join it on the floor. There was only just the one more match. She struck it carefully, shielding it with her hand till it burned with a steady yellow flame. It showed her a tall barrel pushed aside from the corner and, where it had stood, a black hole in the floor. Then with a splutter the match burned blue and went out. Ann let the box fall from her hand. The hand was trembling violently.

  She had been in the wash-house before. The barrel always stood in the corner. Now it had been moved, and in the place where it had stood there was a square black hole as if one of the flagstones had been taken away—no, not taken away, tilted up. The match-light had shown it tilted back against the wall. It left that square black hole like the mouth of a pit, and the men had gone down into it with the thing which they were carrying.

  It couldn’t be Charles—taken down into some unimaginable black vault for burial—or to be left there hurt, alive. Ann could have cried out in the extremity of her fear, but before the sound could leave her lips it froze and died. The black hole in the corner was not black any longer. It showed against the darkness of the room as a lighted window shows against a dark house, and as she stared at it with a fixed and terrified gaze, the sound of voices came to her. She looked wildly round her. The men were coming back. She might gain the stair by which she had come, but she would not have time to reach the top, and Hector would be more likely to come up that way than not. If she went the other way, she could not be sure of any safety. The other two might make for the dining-room, the parlour, or the stairs. There was no time to get back to her bedroom.

  She might have stood there numb with fright until the light of the advancing lantern discovered her if it had not been for the thought of Charles. She had to find out where Charles was. She had to know whether he was alive. And if he was alive, she had to help him. A rush of courage came to her. It swept away the numb, icy feeling, and in a moment she knew what she must do. The copper—if only it was empty she could hide there.

  She pushed aside the rough wooden lid and thrust down her hand as far as it would go. The copper was dry. She scrambled up by the help of the wash-tubs and got over the edge. The voices came echoing up to her, and the light made a bright dusk in the little room. She had only just time to pull the wooden cover over her before a hand thrust the lantern up out of the hole and stood it on the floor.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Ann sat crouched down in the bottom of the copper and heard the clatter of the lantern on the floor and the footsteps of the men coming up into the wash-house. They were coming up out of that hole in the floor. Where had they been, and what had they been doing down there? She tried to think how long they had been away. It is very difficult to measure time in the dark. She didn’t really know how long she had sat at the top of the stairs, because when you think that the person whom you love most in the world is dead, time goes by and you don’t notice it. After that she had gone into her room, put on her dressing-gown, and gone down the old stair to the kitchen. That would only have taken a very few minutes—perhaps two or three, because she had had to feel her way a
nd go slowly. After that there was another break in her reckoning, because she didn’t know how long she had been lost in her fear when she found the back door locked.

  These thoughts went through her mind like flashes whilst the men were coming up out of the hole. She heard them swing the flagstone into its place and roll the barrel back into the corner. Then she heard Jimmy Halliday’s voice, speaking so close to her that she very nearly cried out. He must be standing right over the copper for his voice to sound so loud. And as she thought that, there was a bang on the wooden lid. Jimmy had set the lantern down upon it, because she could see the light coming through a crack in the wood. It looked like a gold line drawn on the dark.

  Jimmy was speaking to Hector, sending him off.

  “I’ll keep the light. You can find your way to your bed without it. And take off your boots, for I don’t want anyone waked. Take them off here, and then get along with you!”

  Ann heard Gale Anderson yawn.

  “I’m off too,” he said. “What are you going to do down here, Halliday—have a quiet wash?”

  “I’m having a quiet talk with you—that’s what I’m having, Gale. Look lively, Hector! And you can leave this door open and shut t’other one.”

  The latch of the staircase door clicked. Hector’s bare feet made no more noise on the kitchen floor than Ann’s had done.

  Jimmy leaned against the copper, shifting the lid slightly, and said,

  “Now, Gale—you’ve got to listen to me. I told Hector this afternoon that I was captain here, and I’m telling you the same thing—and there can’t be two captains. Do you hear me say that?”

  “I should think everyone in the house will hear you,” said Gale Anderson.

  His voice gave Ann the impression of a lounging, careless attitude. He was, as a matter of fact, leaning up against one of the fixed wash-tubs with his hands in his pockets. The lantern left the floor in darkness and threw black shadows up to the ceiling.