There was a silence. Then Rachel said in a mere ghost of a voice,

“Oh, Louie!”

Louisa stood up. She stood up, tall and fierce, and said in a hard even voice,

“You don’t ask me if it’s true.”

“Is it true, Louie?”

She threw up her head.

“I’m going to tell you what’s true.” She turned as if she was looking for something and snatched up a square old-fashioned Bible from the table beside the bed. “I’ll tell you the truth, and the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God-and I’ll swear it on that woman’s Bible. But I can’t make you believe me if so be she’ve stopped your ears with her lies.”

“Are they lies, Louie?”

“It’s a lie for anyone to say I’d hurt you! I’ve never wanted nothing but to see you happy, and I’ve never done nothing but to keep you safe. But I couldn’t get you to believe me.”

“Tell me what you did and why you did it, Louie.”

Louisa sat down on the side of the bed again. She clasped her hands over the Bible and said,

“If she can read anyone like a book, then she’ll know I’m speaking true. I’ve heard of such, but how she does it passes me. And if she can read everyone so clever, why don’t she tell you who it is doing the devil’s work in this house? For this is what I’ll tell you, and it’s true. There was someone polished the step before ever I did it. And it wasn’t that day-it was the Sunday evening, and Miss Rachel come in late. Everyone knew it, and knew she was bound to be late for dinner. So there they all were, waiting for Miss Rachel to come hurrying down so as not to keep them. And one of them knew that when she come hurrying she’d be bound to fall because the top step was polished like glass. But, Miss Rachel, you sent me down to tell them not to wait, and I wasn’t hurrying myself for them, so I’d time to take hold of the banisters and save myself. And I took hot water and washed the stuff off and never said nothing because it wasn’t no use. But in the night it come to me that I’d got to show you. I thought if you saw it with your own eyes, maybe you’d believe me, so I did the three stairs when you were washing Noisy the next Saturday, but you wouldn’t take no heed. And I did the curtains like she says, and the chocolates, and the adders. But don’t you never think I’d have let you step into that there bed, my dear. Adders is stupid in the winter, and I reckoned they’d stay in the warmth by the hot water bottle. And what I was going to do was turn the bed right back and see something. And call out, like I did, and strip the bed. But I got a fright, for I didn’t reckon on their being so lively. It must have been the heat. They were like dead things when I bought them.”

Rachel leaned her head on her hand.

“Noisy killed them clever enough, and I put them on the fire with a good heart. I thought now you’d believe there was someone trying to do you a mischief.”

“And it was you all the time! Only you, Louie!”

Louisa leaned forward, gripping the Bible.

“You’re not going to believe that, my dear!” She turned to Miss Silver. “Are you going to let her believe that? If you can’t tell lies from truth, what’s the good of you? I’m telling you the truth. I didn’t mean to do nothing to those chocolates-it never came into my head. But whilst Miss Rachel was in her bath I went in and had a look at them. The soft ones was in a bag separate, and I thought I’d see if I couldn’t get them into the box. I’d about finished, when one of them rolled over, and there, underneath, you could see it had been meddled with. I put it straight in the fire before I stopped to think, and then it come to me I’d thrown away my chance to make Miss Rachel believe. So I looked to see if that was the only one, and it was. I looked quick and careful, but there wasn’t any more. So then I thought what I could do, and I done it with the ammoniated quinine, like she says.”

Miss Silver’s eyes brightened, sharpened.

“One of the chocolates had been tampered with? You’re quite sure of that?”

The defiant dark eyes met hers. The defiance went out of them.

“I’m sure,” said Louisa-“certain, certain sure-and I’ve got the Book in my hand that I’ve sworn on to tell the truth. And I’ll say more than that. If there’s any plague in this Book, from the plagues that come on the Egyptians to what come on Judas that was a traitor, let them be nothing to what I’m willing to have come on me if I’ve taken anything away from the truth or put anything to it.”

Rachel looked at her and looked away. She lifted her head from her hand and said in a low, steady voice,

“Who pushed me over the cliff?”

Chapter Nineteen

Louisa moved with the Bible in her clasp. When she had laid it down on the little table beside the bed she came back and put a hand on Rachel’s shoulder.

“Do you think I pushed you, my dear?” The voice was deep and gentle, the words simply spoken as to a child.

Rachel looked up at her and then down again. She said,

“No, Louie. You do love me.” Then, after a pause, “But someone pushed me.”

“I think you should go to bed now,” said Miss Silver. “We will talk about it in the morning.”

Rachel got wearily to her feet.

“Yes-I can’t think-I can’t talk about it any more tonight. Louie, I can’t talk to you. You must go to your room.”

“Miss Rachel-”

“Not tonight. I can’t. Please go.”

She turned back at the door herself because Miss Silver beckoned her.

“I won’t keep you, Miss Treherne, but-will you change rooms with me tonight?”

Rachel smiled faintly.

“No, I won’t do that.”

“Then will you lock the doors-the two on the corridor and the communicating door from the sitting-room?”

“Yes-I was going to.”

“Your little dog sleeps in your room? Would he bark if anyone came in?”

“Yes, I think he would. At least he growled horribly when Ella Comperton put her head in one night.”

“Why did she do that?”

“She wanted to know if I had any aspirin.”

“And had you?”

“No. I never take things like that. She ought to have known.”

“And when was this?”

“About a fortnight ago. So I think that Noisy would live up to his name.”

Back in her own room, Rachel thought again how peaceful it looked. Noisy had opened one eye when she came in, but he was now fast asleep again with his blanket thrown off and one ear flapped back. Rachel put it straight, felt him move against her hand, and thought, “How simple to be a dog. You love someone very much, and they love you.”

She slipped off her dressing-gown, turned out the light, and lay down in bed. She sank through a kind of mist of fatigue into drowning depths of sleep and stayed there.

Much later in the night she rose to the surface, and was visited by dreams which changed continually. In one she saw herself walking like a prisoner across a waste of snow. Her wrists and ankles were chained with heavy links of gold, and she was quite alone. Then Gale Brandon came rushing over the snow in a sleigh and caught her up in the wind of his flight and swept her on. His arms were warm and strong.

Then she was running from something she could not see. She ran right up the Milky Way, and the stars flashed in her eyes and dazzled her, until they changed into cars with burning headlights, and the Milky Way into a concrete road. Someone blew a horn right in her ear, and she began to run again. Gale Brandon said, “You’re quite safe now,” but she couldn’t find him because all the lights went out. Miss Silver said, “Simple faith is a great deal more uncommon than Norman blood.” But it was Louisa who was crying as if her heart would break. The sound of her sobs turned into the noise of waves. Rachel hung on the cliff again, but it was daylight now. If she could look up she would see who it was that had pushed her over. But she couldn’t look up. She had to look down at the rocks which were waiting for her. She heard Gale Brandon call her name, and woke.