Wilfrid, still clinging, compared Merefields unfavourably with the Morgue. Upon Sally protesting that they were, after all, still alive he replied that it was just this that put the lid on it.
“If we were dead, darling, each on our quiet marble slab, we shouldn’t even know that we were being murdered one by one and the police visiting us from dawn to midnight. As it is, only the fact that for all I know you may be marked out as the next victim prevents me from sending myself a telegram to say ‘Fly-all is discovered!’ ”
Sally looked at him ungratefully.
“I do wish you would go away and stop talking nonsense!”
“And leave you to the homicidal maniac who haunts these groves? Certainly not! Of course none of us really knows who the homicidal maniac is, which does add a spice of interest to an otherwise banal situation. I might be thinking that it may even be you, and you may be thinking that it might, strangely and impossibly, be me. How do you think I should look in the dock? Should one aim at an air of buoyant innocence, or wring the jury’s heart, if it has one, by appearing to be crushed by ‘man’s inhumanity to man’ as the poem says? If it makes all the ages mourn it might do the trick with the jury. Or do you think just plain straws in the hair and an impressive row of psychiatric experts to swear that my grandmother crossed me in my cradle?”
The day dragged on. It dragged worse than Sunday had done, because there was a horrid feeling of tension. Sunday had been boring but it hadn’t been tense, at least not until most of it had been got through, but Monday managed to combine dullness and tension to a really remarkable extent. Humanity has done the best for itself that it knows how by arranging its time on an ingenious pattern of so many seconds to the minute, minutes to the hour, hours to the day, and so on and so forth through the weeks, the months, and the years, but the something which laughs at time and its measurements steps in and makes havoc of the careful plan by stretching the unendurable second to an endless length or leaping the intervening day, week, month, or year at breakneck speed.
For no one at Merefields was there any hint of breakneck speed. Lucius and Annabel, it is true, found the hours slip away with smoothness and ease, but then they were not at Merefields, and they delayed returning there for as long as it was decently possible. As they turned in at the south drive she said,
“Lucius, why do we have to go back? We could just go on past the house and out of the other gate and up to town. I can always go to Monica Bewley, and you have got your flat. We could get married in a day or two, and then whatever happens we should be together.”
She was aware that he shook his head.
“I’ve got to get this business cleared up first. I’m not dragging you into it the way things are.”
She wanted to say, “I’m in it, I’m in it, I’m in it.” And what then? He would only try and get her to go away from him, and that she would not do.
They walked up from the garage together, and just before they came to the house he put his arms about her and held her close. They did not kiss, they only stood like that, holding one another with a feeling of nearness quite beyond the physical embrace. If this was for all the years to come, what wonderful years they were going to be. If this was their one moment never to be repeated, it must be savoured to the full.
They went in, and the tension in the house took them sharp and hard, as if they had walked into a stretched wire.
Chapter 34
THE party broke up early. Sally had made up her mind that nothing would induce her to stay another day. She took off her yellow dress. She got things out of a drawer and packed them. She laid out her London suit and the things that went with it and packed everything else. She should have felt a lot better after doing this, but she didn’t. What was the good of leaving Merefields behind her if she had to leave David there with Moira Herne? He had gone back to watching her. And he might have been thinking about Medusa, or he might have been thinking about Moira. Whichever it was she was poison, and the dreadful thing about poison was that you could get to have a liking for it-you could in fact become an addict. When Sally got to this point she took everything out of her suit-case again and put it away in drawers or hung it up. Even if she died of a combination of boredom and Wilfrid she wasn’t going to go away and leave David to become a poison addict.
Miss Silver engaged in her usual nightly routine. She removed the dark blue crepe-de-chine which was such a standby and put on the blue dressing-gown trimmed with handmade crochet, a very comfortable exchange since the evenings were chilly and though there was a fire in the drawing-room she really would have preferred to be wearing something warmer than silk. She removed her net, undid the neat plaits which disposed of her quite abundant hair, and proceeded to the thorough brushing which was her custom, after which she plaited it up, put all the pins back again, and controlled it with a net whose mesh was of dark brown silk instead of hair. From this point she would upon an ordinary night have proceeded to a more thorough undressing, to her nightly ablutions and the assumption of a cream Dayella nightgown made after a pattern some fifty years out of date and trimmed with a crochet edging similar in style but carried out in a finer thread than that which adorned her dressing-gown. But on this occasion after glancing at her watch she sat down in one of the chintz-covered chairs and composed herself for a vigil. She might be mistaken-she hoped very much that she was mistaken-but there lay heavily upon her mind the thought that during these hours of darkness some evil which had been planned was to be carried into effect. In these circumstances, she had resolved to be on the alert at any rate for some hours. Nothing of an unlawful nature would be attempted until the household had settled into sleep. It was now a little after half past ten. If the danger came from outside, it would not be set in motion whilst there was still traffic on the roads and among the lanes. If it came from inside, time would be allowed for the first and deepest slumber to lull every occupant of the house into unconsciousness. She would not, in fact, expect anything to happen on this side of midnight.
Having decided on a course of action, she set herself to occupy this time. There were letters that she could answer, amongst others a grateful one from Andrew Robinson, the husband of her niece Gladys. It appeared that Gladys was settling down again and had been talking of taking cooking lessons. This, if persevered with, would certainly add to the harmony of the Robinsons’ home. As she commended Gladys’s intention Miss Silver permitted herself to wonder how many marriages came to grief owing to the wife’s incompetence in the household arts. Gladys, who would spend hours over her hair, her face, her nails, considered herself a martyr if she was expected to expend time or thought upon preparing her husband’s meals.
The letter to Andrew was succeeded by an encouraging one to Gladys herself. By the time that Miss Silver thought it wise to put her writing things away it was close upon twelve o’clock. She opened her bedroom door and looked out into the corridor. The panelling upon the walls helped to darken it, but a low-powered bulb lighted the central landing to which the stairway rose. Miss Silver’s door, barely ajar, gave her this prospect, but only for a moment, because quite suddenly the light at the head of the stairs went out, leaving an even darkness everywhere. Standing on her own threshold, she opened the door to the length of her arm, turned off her own light, and listened.
There was no sound in all the house, no smallest sound. There were three ways in which the light could have been turned out-by a switch on the landing, by a switch in the hall below, and by turning off the current at the meter. The switch on the landing had certainly not been used. Anyone touching it would have been right under the light and directly in Miss Silver’s view. The current had not been switched off at the meter, since her own light was still burning. It followed that the landing light had been turned off by someone in the hall below.