Black Heather

by Virginia Coffman

  I looked into my own bedchamber and out again, but the room beyond was locked, and after trying the latch vainly several times, I hurried on to the adjoining room, which proved to be nothing more than a bookroom so narrow and windowless that I could scarcely turn around in it without knocking down a dozen monstrously ancient and dusty books.

  “Nothing in here,” I whispered loudly, hearing what I took to be Elspeth’s footsteps in the gallery approaching the door. She did not reply, and I groped my way to the end of the little closet, raising my voice until it was perfectly audible to her. “Open the door wider, please. There doesn’t seem to be a window.”

  But the small amount of light drifting in from the gallery began to fade. I looked around, realized what was happening, and rushed toward the door —too late! It had closed as gently and silently as if controlled by invisible threads. I was not worried immediately. It was one of those odd and ridiculous accidents which I might have expected, and without undo excitement, but the nasty little business of feeling my way through that book-lined passage and then finding the door would not open, gave me such a chilling fear as only the masquerading Hag had produced. Trying the latch again and calling in a fierce whisper to Elspeth did not prevent me from remembering the Hag, and wondering if I was indeed alone in the intense darkness of this long, narrow, coffin-like closet.

  “Open the door! Elspeth, where are you?”

  This produced no result whatever except to make me momentarily warm and breathless in these narrow confines. But I did not remain warm long. The moment my furious activity ceased, I began to be aware of the most insidious and seeping cold. It was frightfully annoying at first, and if it had not been an accident, I could only think very poorly of Elspeth’s humor. It seemed odd to me later that I did not raise my voice to a scream for several minutes. But a scream has always appeared to me a very poor resource, and only to be used when all other means of self-rescue have failed.

  When the door did not yield to any of my pressure, I snatched up the first couple of books my groping fingers could reach and hurled them against the door, raising in the darkness a huge cloud of choking dust that seemed even more sickening because I could not see it. I coughed so much for the next few minutes that I was astonished when these sounds produced no result out in what appeared to be a peculiarly deserted corridor. I guessed by this time that these ancient walls were too thick to carry the sound of my voice beyond the dreadful little closet, for if Elspeth had deliberately shut me in here, she was not likely to open the door upon hearing my furious demands, which were beginning to carry a hint of panic, even to my own ears.

  I listened very carefully after my latest outcry. Since I could hear nothing in the gallery, not creaking floorboards or any other sign of habitation, I assumed I could not be heard either, and the only person likely to know I was in here at all was the person who had closed that door. Always assuming it had not closed accidentally under the impetus of the sudden draft of a morning breeze.

  It was time to rely upon my common sense, if any, and to do a little exploring. I gave the recalcitrant door one last angry kick, then turned my back to it and considered the Stygian darkness. No matter how often I blinked and reopened my eyes, I still beheld nothing. I moved cautiously away from the door, feeling my way along the bookshelves with one hand, while the other, for the most part, found only a blank, unadorned wall, cold to the touch.

  Suddenly, I rapped my exploring knuckles upon a metal object that proved to be a doorlatch halfway down the wall. I remembered the locked chamber next to this coffin-shape bookroom. Doubtless, this little airless cubicle had once been a powder closet for the adjoining chamber. I tried the latch several times and heard the rewarding sound of a large key rattling on the other side of the door. It would not take much effort to drop that key out, and if only one of the bodkins out of my hair was slender enough, it might serve in place of the key. Once I got into that room, at the very least, I could open the shutters and call for help from one of the servants, or anyone else who ventured into the park below.

  It was simple enough. I felt rather proud of myself when, after poking about in the lock with a hair bodkin, I dislodged the key on the other side, though I could not hear it drop, and a few minutes later, I had the enormous satisfaction of feeling the latch turn under my hand.

  I distinctly recollect taking two steps into the locked chamber before a cloud of soft, suffocating darkness fell upon me. As I raised my hands, scratching frantically at this new threat, the cloud caught under my arms, and I had much ado to keep from strangling. I began to choke, still confused in my half-conscious state and believing that by some inexplicable means a bed tester and curtains had fallen upon me. I still believed it when my head was bursting with my effort to breathe and I felt consciousness floating away from me like a dimming red ball of fire.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Some minutes afterward, I knew better than to believe all this an accident, for I awoke to find myself entangled in a thick coverlet still permeated with dust. How could Elspeth be guilty of such treacherous behavior—first to lock me into that bookroom, then to lie in wait in this chamber, only to attempt my death? I was so furious over this treachery that I scarcely felt any bad effects from my recent near-strangulation, although I heard myself cough with annoying regularity while I got to my feet and examined the room. As I had thought, it was an out-of-fashion bedchamber, decently furnished but not dusted in some time. There was a broken place in one of the shutters, and the morning light prevented me from resting my hand upon a heap of melted tallow on the table at the foot of the four-poster bed. But as I slipped my hand away quickly, I recalled the liquid warmth in the center of the tallow and passed my palm above it again. My attacker had calmly waited in this room, with a candle for light, until I forced my way in, thinking myself so very clever.

  I went to the windows, wincing at the pain caused by any movement of my head, and forced open one of the shutters. Now I could see that though the room was not usually inhabited, someone had been waiting in here very recently. I examined the marks in the dust of the uncarpeted floor and found them exceedingly curious. Not one of the women in this house, including the servants, wore gowns whose hems swept the floor. Even Mrs. Sedley was very modern in her style of dress, and though I had never seen her walk, I had noted that her gowns were never below ankle length. Still, I thought, those sweeping marks of the dust could very well have been made by Mrs. Sedley’s bed-wrapper. Or they might be the signs of...

  I did not want to think of the Hag. Even now, when I knew that the Hag must be a mere masquerade of Sir Nicholas, I shivered at the thought of having been trapped in that little room all the while the incredibly ancient creature waited, patient as a spider, for me to break into her web. I wondered nervously where the creature had got to, now, at this moment.

  I had now reached the door, which was locked as I had expected, but this time when I rattled the latch and banged my fists upon the panels, I felt the latch move against my fingers, and a key turned in the lock. As the door swung open, I saw Mrs. Hardwicke standing in the gallery, looking a trifle grim, though she was polite enough.

  “Well now, ma’am, it is a surprising thing, altogether. How came you to be locked inside an unused chamber?”

  Elspeth came running along the gallery. I had never seen her more nervous.

  “Is it Grandmama?”

  “No,” I said. “It is only Kate. And where might you have got to?”

  I was satisfied, from Mrs. Hardwicke’s expression, that she shared my suspicion. For before Elspeth could answer she cut in rather sharply, “Aye, there’ll be a matter for wonder. What with Mr. Patrick showing his face at the front door like as if he’d be that welcome.”

  Elspeth rushed to me, breathless and more concerned than I would ever have suspected. It could not be my sudden appearance that so excited her.

  “Kathleen! You vanished so very oddly. Where did you get to? I looked everywhere. And then I saw Patrick out on
the Heatherton High Road and called to him. I was desperate, Kate, believe me. Desperate! Even Mrs. Hardwicke thought me quite out of my senses. First Grandmama to vanish, and then you!”

  “Where is Patrick now?” I demanded suspiciously, aware that the recent unpleasantness had given me the headache again.

  “He is searching for Grandmama, with Hardwicke, through the mistal and the laithe.”

  I took this to refer in Yorkish fashion to the outbuildings, but I could not imagine why the men thought Mrs. Sedley would be found there.

  Mrs. Hardwicke took me by the arm. “Be you feeling right, Miss? You’re looking a wee mite pale.”

  “I’m quite all right,” I said with an irritation I could not explain. “You’ve not yet found Mrs. Sedley, I take it. Mrs. Hardwicke, how do you account for her odd disappearance ? She seems to have walked off in her bedwrapper and a pair of shoes. It is quite possible I met her in that locked bedchamber.”

  That upset both women.

  “Miss! Whatever will ye mean by that?”

  “Kathleen! How could you play tricks upon us so? If Grandmama is in there ... Well, let’s look!”

  I said no more but let them rush away into that horrid chamber. As for me, I went abruptly to the wide staircase and sat down. It was a dizzying flight. I had never noticed this quality about the stairs before. I had the most curious sensation that when I went out the great front door of Everett Hall, I would see that the entire park fell under the shadow of the distant Hag’s Head Inn.

  It did not, though. I stepped out into the park and, shading my eyes from the bright morning light, gazed off across the rolling moorland, which looked all mauve and dun color in the reflected sunlight. There was the dark, sunken spot like a slit in the landscape that I recognized as Seven Spinney, whose peculiar red mud had first given me the clue to the Hag’s identity. And beyond, well beyond and to the west, its ancient dirty windows catching the orange sun, was the huddled mass of the Hag’s Head Inn.

  It was curious, but a while ago, before my experience in those locked chambers abovestairs, I had looked out across the moors and seen a light in the Hag’s Head that had appeared to be quite different from this reflection of the sunrise. It had been a flickering, faint little gleam, no bigger than a single candle. Such a light would be completely blotted out now, by the greater glow of those reflections. What person would be so brave or so foolish as to court the ghosts in that unhappy place, when it was still dark? I could scarcely believe that Megan Kelleher’s small savings was the cause of such havoc, and of so many unusual and even criminal acts.

  I pulled myself together, assuring myself that my recent imprisonment had made me merely angry, not frightened, and that in any case, I knew now that Sir Nicholas was responsible for my fear. Having satisfied myself, as I thought, upon that score, I was about to return to the house and renew the search with Mrs. Hardwicke on the upper floors, when the housekeeper came rustling along behind me in the doorway, muttering, “He must be got away before the master returns. There is sure to be trouble, and for His Ludship more than the Kelleher.”

  I believed her.

  “Do you see him? Sir Nicholas, I mean. I know how he feels about the Irishman.”

  “Aye! We seen him from the attic window, off yon, hard by the trail across the moor from Heatherton. Let me by, Miss. He is sure to pass the stables, and I’ve no mind to have Hardwicke caught betwixt the two of them.”

  “Where is Elspeth?” I asked, following after her in great haste.

  “We was making search of the upper floors, with Ezra taking view of the cellars, and found not a thread out of place. Not a hair of her that’s missing. But young Miss has gone back to the lady’s bedchamber looking after more signs.”

  Or to plant another ambush, I thought resentfully. I had not yet forgiven Elspeth Sedley for taking so long to find me behind those locked doors. There was in my mind the suspicion that without Mrs. Hardwicke, I might not have been let out properly, by the door, at all.

  Still, none of this brought us any closer to finding the vanished old lady. If only one could trust Sir Nicholas, he was the man to accomplish wonders. If he were innocent, how comforting to go to him and assign him the task! I felt reasonably sure he would have Mrs. Sedley back in a trice—except that it was very likely he who had spirited her away.

  “Where be you, man?” cried Mrs. Hardwicke to her husband, who came limping out of the stable to find out what had so overset his calm and capable wife.

  “Master Kelleher is thinking he’s found traces of the old lady. He’s got it in mind that His Lordship carried her off someplace.”

  “Get you gone, the both of you,” commanded Mrs. Hardwicke, dashing much more rapidly at the stables than I had ever thought possible to her stiff-packed bulk.

  Patrick came out, rubbing bits of red mud between his fingers and dangling something else that, upon sight of me, he stuffed into his jacket pocket. The sun lighted upon his still-tawny hair, giving him a kind of halo effect he ruined by his mischievous wink at me.

  “Pretty Kate, we’re about to play the fox-catcher with your guytrash friend.”

  “What do you mean?” I had the most idiotic hope that he did not mean what he plainly indicated, that his evidence was the kind admissible in court against Sir Nicholas. If only some miracle would make all right again, and His Lordship back in his safe seat as magistrate of the parish!

  “Never you mind! But he’ll swing for it, I’m thinking, if he’s done the old dragon to death!” Elspeth Sedley, looking down at us from an upstairs window, screamed at this, and cried out, “Patrick, what is it? Have you found her?” But he merely waved at Elspeth, holding up his fingers pressed together over the fast-crumbling mud.

  While the Hardwickes were consulting together and she was explaining the approach of their employer, I reminded Patrick as calmly as possible, the better to impress him with the seriousness of his accusation, “It is you whom Mrs. Sedley hates, sir. What if someone might suspect you have made away with her?” While this gave them all pause, I went rushing on, hoping I could, at least, water down whatever evidence he had against Sir Nicholas so that the two men would have an equal chance before the law. “You know well enough that Mrs. Sedley often has been at the expense of hiring searchers of the Hag’s Head, hoping they would find your wife’s little savings before you could lay hands upon it. I should think, Master Kelleher, that you would go slowly before you bring about any accusations that may recoil upon you.”

  “Thank you, Kathleen,” said Sir Nicholas, as he came striding across the gravel path from the side gate of the park. “However, now that I am here to protect my own interests, the matter may be discharged in short order. Hardwicke, go to the east gate, open it, and usher Mr. Kelleher out upon the High Road. And lock the gate behind him.” It was an extremely uncomfortable minute for Mrs. Hardwicke and me and, I imagined, for Elspeth. She left the window hastily, and I supposed she must be running down the stairs to fend off any threatened violence against her uncle. As for me, despite all I knew or suspected, I was overjoyed by one small item of immense importance to me. If Sir Nicholas was only now appearing on his own grounds, and if Elspeth and Mrs. Hardwicke had seen him out on the moor, returning from Heatherton, then it could not have been he a few minutes ago who lay in wait for me in that locked chamber. I had far, far rather it should be Elspeth, or one of the Hardwickes.

  Hardwicke limped over toward the East Gate beyond the stables, only to have Patrick call after him in the friendliest way, “Stay a bit, Ezra. I am not so sure the Most Worshipful Justice of the Peace would wish you to dismiss me so summarily. I am persuaded he is far too well-mannered for that.”

  “Do not count upon my manners,” said Sir Nicholas with a grim smile and a light in his dark eyes that did not promise well for the intrusive Patrick. “If you are still here in ten minutes, I shall have the dogs set upon you.”

  I looked at him in astonishment, never having heard such a savage promise before except in
idle threat, but I felt nervously that he meant every word. Patrick Kelleher, however, took something out of his jacket pocket, a piece of dark goods that I could not identify, and waved it tantalizingly in front of us. I heard Mrs. Hardwicke’s gasp, close at my side, but did not know why. I guessed only that it was something that would do Sir Nicholas no good.

  “Now then, Your Worship,” Patrick continued in that insolent, laughing way of his which might seem charming at other times, but was grossly out of place here, “you’re a man of power. All the heath knows that. Quite capable of killing when it suits your purpose, and covering your crimes admirably behind your judicial robes—”

  “Eight minutes,” said Sir Nicholas, without raising his voice.

  “And because you are a man who finds force ever the shortest distance to your object, I am amazed, Your Worship, that you should rely upon poor old Hardwicke here, or your underfed hounds, to do your foul work with me,” Patrick finished, smiling boyishly and holding out the object in his hand in a way meant, I daresay, to be tantalizing. I pretended not to notice it, for I resented his trickery about revealing and concealing whatever his evidence might be. I knew he was hoping to taunt Sir Nicholas into an act which could show him in an extremely bad light later, in the courts, but he failed at this moment.

  Sir Nicholas merely raised his eyebrows and explained, “I pay my servants, and I feed my animals so that they may handle carrion ... Ezra, this carrion has six more minutes. I will not ask you how it came to be admitted, to these grounds, but it will not happen again. You understand me?” And he strode toward the house.