“What a fool Mildred is!” she finished. “She must have been messing about trying to get water again—I told her it was impossible—and forgotten to put the stone back. No, Freddy, don’t start trying to put it back in the pitch dark; you’ll only break your neck. We’ll go past it carefully, and warn Mildred not to come past this way till morning—not that she ever does go out after dark, she’s too frightened. Come on; I’m going to give her the telling off of a lifetime; she might have killed the lot of us.”
But, as it turned out, it was quite a long time before Mildred was in a fit state to be told anything. They found her cowering in the darkness of the parlour, in such a state of cringing terror that she seemed, at first, not even to recognise Meg’s voice. It was not until the lamp had been relit, and both Freddy and Meg had encouraged and reassured her, that she became capable of explaining why she was here, and what it was that had terrified her so.
She had come, she explained, in a taxi, while it was still daylight, to fetch some of her things. The trouble had started when the taxi had reached the place where the track to the cottage led off from the main road. Mildred had insisted that the taxi could, and should, take her right up to the cottage; the driver had insisted that no tyres could stand it, and he would do no such thing. In the end, of course, Mildred had had to give in; but by that time the driver (“a stupid, obstinate type of man”—Mildred seemed to be more herself again) was so enraged that he refused to wait for her return, and drove off. “And good riddance, too,” Mildred had thought —until she reached the cottage and realised that she had no means of summoning another taxi for her return. By this time, Mildred explained, it was growing dark, and she no longer dared to venture out even as far as the lane. So she had lit the lamp, and then simply sat there and waited, growing more and more nervous as the darkness deepened.
“And then,” she finished, “I heard footsteps—your footsteps of course it must have been, but I didn’t know that. It was silly, I know, but when I heard them stopping at the gate I just simply panicked. I put the light out so that—whoever it was—would think the cottage was empty—and—well—that’s all,” she finished, rather lamely.
It all sounded sufficiently silly and Mildred-like, and Meg could not help smiling a little. But all the same, silly or not, Mildred had had a fright, there was no doubt of that at all. Those staring eyes, those white, wobbling cheeks as the lamplight first flared up could not have been counterfeited by the best actress in the world. Meg decided forthwith not to upset her still more by reproaching her for her carelessness with the well. Tomorrow would be time enough for that—or so she thought.
CHAPTER XVII
HALF AN HOUR later, Freddy was gone. He hadn’t wanted to go, but Mildred had insisted, brusquely and ungraciously, that there was no room for him. His suggestion that she should let him have her room while she shared Meg’s big bed was rejected by Mildred with such a display of horror and outrage as even Meg, accustomed as she was to her half-sister’s moods, could hardly account for.
So he went; with a shrug of the shoulders and a rueful smile addressed to both of them.
“Now I’ll never know whether I’m good at rescuing damsels in distress, or slaying dragons, or anything,” he complained. “I’d have liked to have a go—really I would. That’s the only thing I’ve never yet done with a damsel—rescued her from distress. And I’ve never slain any dragons, either,” he continued reminiscently. “They’re usually landladies, you see, and I have to be nice to them. You have to, you know, if you want to play the piano all night and not pay your rent.” With which melancholy reflection he turned away into the night, whistling light-heartedly, and seeming surprisingly sure-footed in the darkness of an unfamiliar garden.
After he had gone, it became very quiet in the lamplit room. Several books and magazines had by now found their way to the cottage, and Meg, after one or two attempts at conversation, settled down to finishing Isabel’s library book. Or, rather, tried to settle down to it. But the antics of the heroine on the Riviera seemed remote and disjointed—the more so because the binding was full of sand by now, and the pages flipped over of their own volition as soon as you took your hand off them. She was disturbed, too, by the certainty that Mildred was not really reading the fashion magazine over which her head was so assiduously bent. It is a curious fact that by doing nothing in complete silence a person can cause far more disturbance than they could by practising the trombone or moving furniture about the room.
Meg forced her attention on to the story again. If only the hero’s silly uncle would come in more often; and if only they wouldn’t all sit round in bars fingering their glasses … perhaps, if she skipped a chapter—
“For goodness sake, can’t you stop that noise?”
For a second Meg was flabbergasted. Had she been playing a trombone? Or was Mildred dreaming …?
“That book of yours!” Mildred’s voice was trembling. “You keep rustling the pages—it’s driving me crazy!”
Meg still stared, uncomprehendingly. Then, slowly, she began to understand. Mildred, as she sat so quietly, had not exactly been doing nothing. She had been listening; listening with a terrible intensity, and every slight movement of Meg’s pages had rasped intolerably across the blank canvas of the silence on which her attention was so dreadfully fixed.
She must be imagining footsteps again, out on the cinder track. And yet, something in Mildred’s pose seemed to suggest that she was listening for something at closer quarters than that; something in the cottage itself … something in one of the upstairs rooms….
Meg spoke authoritatively.
“Listen, Mildred. You must pull yourself together. You’re letting your nerves get the better of you. I know—we all know—that you had a bad time once; but it’s all been over and done with for years now, and it’s absurd to let it haunt you like this. It’s this place that’s upsetting you—you should never have come back here. I wish you’d gone back to the hotel with Freddy just now. Or we could have asked him to send a taxi for you.”
“Gone back with him? At this time of night?” Mildred laughed harshly. “And as to a taxi—how do I know who would be driving it? Queer things can happen in taxis. And besides”—the change in Mildred’s voice at this point almost made Meg laugh—“I’ve told you already, the taxi-drivers won’t come up this lane. Like all trades people nowadays, they consider nothing but their own convenience—”
Meg welcomed the familiar tirade. Nothing could dispel Mildred’s morbid fancies so effectively as a grievance. She continued in the same vein for the best part of ten minutes, progressing from taxi-drivers to dressmakers, from dressmakers to daily women, and from daily women to hotels, with special reference to the Sea View Hotel; till at last Meg grew too sleepy even to say “Did they?” and “What a shame!” and proposed going to bed.
Was this a mistake? For a moment Meg feared that all Mildred’s terrors were returning with a rush at the suggestion.
But no: the sudden pallor that had passed over her face must have been just a trick of the uneven yellow glare from the lamp. For now Mildred got to her feet quite calmly, and without a word set about locking up the cottage.
She was not content merely with locking up the outside doors; she insisted, gravely, that Meg must be sure to bolt her bedroom door before getting into bed.
“Will you promise me?” she said; and Meg, half amused, half uneasy, replied, “Well, all right; but I should have thought it would be enough if you bolt your door. You’re the one who’s frightened. Bolting my door isn’t going to keep your fears away.”
Mildred looked at her strangely.
“You’re very confident, Meg. I know it’s no use warning you, but you’re in danger here, in terrible danger, and each night you stay in that room the danger grows greater. Don’t say I didn’t tell you”—her voice was rising now to a shrill, harsh note that Meg had never heard before—“I never asked you to stay here—never wanted you to. You’re doing it of your own free w
ill, and I can’t stop you. I can’t! I can’t!”
She turned and ran, clattering on her high heels up the short wooden stairs, and the last “I can’t” merged with the staccato slam of her bedroom door.
As Meg followed, puzzled and unsure, she heard the click of the bolt across Mildred’s door; and then, turning, found her own door bolted on the outside. She had never noticed before that the door even had a bolt; feeling both amused and dismayed at the absurd lengths to which Mildred’s caution had taken her, she undid the bolt and pushed open the door.
The chill, motionless quality of the air struck her, as always, on entering this room; but tonight there seemed—or was it her imagination?—some indefinably different quality to it. Was it warmer? Or colder? Or was it some scent? A scent neither pleasant nor unpleasant; too faint, indeed, to describe at all, and yet different; and unspeakably alien.
Meg lit a second candle. A third. Everything was in order, the room exactly as she had left it in the morning. It even, she assured herself, seemed positively homelike on this her third night here. Only last night she had resolved not to allow herself to be upset by Mildred’s foolish but curiously infectious fears, and as a result had slept soundly. All she need do was to make the same resolution again tonight; to get quickly into bed and force herself to think of something pleasant and ordinary. Resolutely to keep out of her mind all disturbing thoughts….
Such as the open well shaft in the darkness of the weed-choked garden. Such as Mildred’s last, hysterical words tonight. Such as the dark, narrow crack in the wardrobe. And now this faint, strange scent as she entered the room. It was easy to forget this last, because now, growing drowsy, her head under the bedclothes, she noticed it no more.
It was the crack of the wardrobe door that first intruded itself into her dream. Until then, the dream had been neutral, shadowy, devoid of feeling. Merely a wandering along some dim road, for no reason and to no destination, with someone —was it Freddy?—by her side. And now, suddenly, the wardrobe was close upon her, huge like a building at the side of the road. The door, just as in real life, was ajar, and somehow, in her dream, Meg knew that she must knock on it.
The knocks made no sound, and yet Meg knew that they had been heard; so she stood and waited, first with the unsurprise, the lunatic unconcern of dreams; and then, though still nothing had happened, with a growing consciousness of fear. Even in her dream she knew that she slipped over that distinct and terrible frontier between dream and nightmare.
She had knocked, and now she was to be answered. The crack was widening, and in her dream Meg tried to close her eyes so as not to see what would be inside.
But it is useless to close one’s eyes in a dream. The ghastly and superhuman powers of the sleeping mind are not dependent on the senses, and Meg knew, even before she felt the ice-cold touch across her face, that it was fingers, long and limp as rope, that were reaching through the crack towards her….
She awoke gasping, as if half-suffocated, her throat contorted with the effort of a soundless scream. For one second relief flooded her; sobbing, senseless gratitude at having escaped back into the real world; and then, as suddenly, the relief froze—stiffened—and she seemed to be hovering again on the brink of nightmare.
For something had touched her cheek. The feeling of it was with her still. Desperately she tried to grasp the fading sensation—to define it, scrutinise it—a sort of chill weal across her face—but fading now … shapeless … shadowy … merging already into the memory of the nightmare that was gone….
With an agonising effort at self-control, Meg struggled up into a sitting position and lit the candle by her bed.
The room was quiet and empty. The door, she could see even in this flickering light, was bolted, just as she had left it.
But had the wardrobe door been ajar like that when she went to sleep? Meg could not be sure. Always, so far, she had made sure it was shut before going to sleep; but perhaps tonight, in her determination to pay no attention to anything alarming, she might have omitted to do so. Or it might have come open by itself—it would not lock, and the latch was ill-fitting and insecure. The lightest touch—perhaps even a draught of air—could set it creaking open. Well, she would shut it now, anyway. That gaping line of darkness was unnerving.
She reached out her hand towards it—and stopped. Just so, in her dream, had she reached out to knock on this same door—and had been answered from within.
And it was then, as she sat with hand poised, that she heard a stirring among the hidden garments behind the door.
All pretence of self-control was gone. Meg was at the door of the bedroom, struggling with the bolt.
“Mildred! Mildred!” she screamed, all reason, all consideration swamped in panic. “Mildred! Help! Help!”
There was no answer from across the stairway; and it was now, when her shaking fingers had at last undone the bolt, that Meg discovered that her door was bolted on the outside as well.
CHAPTER XVIII
MEG DID NOT know how long she crouched, stupid with terror, by that locked door. But slowly, as the hours or minutes passed and nothing happened, her brain began to work again; began to try and grapple with the events of the night.
But had there in fact been any events? Had she really heard any sound in the wardrobe at all? Or was it just her over-active imagination, half waking and still shadowed by nightmare? For there were no sounds now—had not been for all this time while she had been listening—listening with a strained intensity which surely would have detected so much as a fly settling.
Or a moth settling, of course. “It’s moths—I can hear them eating.” With a half hysterical little laugh Meg recollected Freddy’s light-hearted comment—was it only yesterday morning? And was it light-hearted? Now, in the silence and the dark, the remark seemed macabre rather than funny. And he had said something else, too; something about keeping the family skeleton in the wardrobe. He had laughed as he said it in the bright morning, and Meg had laughed too; but now, remembering the long flabby fingers of her dream she could not laugh again. Instead, she switched her mind hastily to what must be the real, practical possibilities.
It could have been a mouse, of course; or some small bird that had blundered stupidly in by daylight and was now trying, in the darkness, to blunder stupidly out again. Though it was odd that either a mouse or a bird should have remained so silent after that single bout of rustling. And there was another puzzle, too. How was it that Mildred had not heard her screams? Surely she must be there, in the other room? Was it conceivable that she might have decided, belatedly, to follow Meg’s advice about staying elsewhere? That she might have set off, at midnight or later, to walk across the desolate cliff back to the town? Mildred, who was too nervous even to walk down the garden by herself after dark?
But of course; there was a much more plausible explanation. Meg remembered the array of bottles in Mildred’s room, and recalled Mildred’s habit of taking sleeping pills. No doubt last night she had taken an extra large dose “to soothe her nerves”. She had done this on other occasions, and Meg knew by experience that in that case no power on earth would wake her for the next ten or twelve hours.
But people who have taken heavy doses of drugs usually snore. Meg listened, uneasily. The silence was unnatural. And why, above all, was the door bolted like this on the outside? Had Mildred, in a sudden accession of senseless caution, got up and bolted it all over again during the night? But then, if she was so concerned for her young sister’s safety, why had she then proceeded to drug herself so heavily that even Meg’s loudest screams had failed to wake her?
Meg thought and thought; and gradually, as the uneventful minutes passed, her thoughts began to seem tiring rather than alarming. The problems, endlessly revolving, seemed now to be actually making a whirring noise in her brain, stupefying and to no purpose, like a machine into which no material is being fed. Events—fears—nightmares—all seemed equally unreal now; and afterwards Meg would have found it hard to
recall just when or by what decision it was that she had abandoned her pointless vigil by the door and had crept stiffly back to bed.
When she woke again it was late. The morning blazed with cramped brilliance, like a bedside lamp, through the little deep-set square of the window. At once Meg remembered everything, with almost unnatural clarity and completeness, and she jumped out of bed determined to do what she should, of course, have done last night—that is, to force the bolted door and to go and see if Mildred was all right.
It was a real physical shock to her braced muscles to find that the door was no longer bolted. Feeling a little foolish, she stepped across the awkward top of the stairs towards Mildred’s room.
Mildred’s door was ajar; and the room was empty. The bed had been slept in, and there was the usual muddle of clothes, cosmetics, medicine bottles and magazines that Mildred scattered behind her wherever she went, in the confidence—usually not misplaced—that someone would tidy them up for her.
Meg did not tidy them up. But for a few minutes she searched among them, in the anxious but desultory way of one who does not know what she is looking for. A rumpled nightdress; a delicate angora cardigan dropped on the dusty floor; a clinking jumble of bottles and jars. What clue could be hoped for here?
Clue to what, anyway? To Mildred’s whereabouts? Well, that was probably quite simple—she must have gone back to the hotel. One need not even postulate any startlingly early rising either—Meg had no watch with her, but from the height of the sun it could easily be eleven by now. Probably Mildred, finding Meg still asleep, had decided that she couldn’t face on her own the rigours of making a cup of tea here, and had gone back to the hotel to bully them into giving her a late breakfast there.
Uneasy, not quite satisfied with this explanation, Meg turned slowly from the room, and found herself face to face with the clue.
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