She continued to talk, but Sarah was no longer listening. She therefore missed hearing how Henry had been thrown by the pony that he would ride, and that Jack had had a passion for black currant jam. She was wholly occupied in wondering how she could get John Brown to roll up his sleeve above the elbow. It would have been quite easy if it had been August instead of October. They could have bathed somewhere, and she would have been able to see whether he had an old jagged scar on either of his arms. If he was Maurice Hildred, the scar would be there. If there wasn’t any scar, he wasn’t Maurice Hildred. A line came between her brows and she tried to see him standing by Geoffrey Hildred. He was not as tall—she was quite sure of that—but she had an idea that there wasn’t much in it. Geoffrey Hildred looked taller than he really was.
The evening came to an end at last. Lucilla had completed two more orange zigzags and had begun on something that looked like a dark brown thundercloud. The finished bag would undoubtedly be quite extraordinarily ugly, but on the other hand it was so improbable that it ever would be finished that it really didn’t matter very much. When the clock struck ten, Miss Marina put away her knitting, yawned in a ladylike manner behind her white plump hand, and got up, letting her handkerchief fall upon the hearth-rug. This happened every night. Sometimes the knitting fell too, but to-night there was only the hem-stitched linen handkerchief with its scent of eau-de-Cologne for Sarah to retrieve. After which Miss Marina kissed her cousin on the cheek, patted Ricky’s shoulder with a “Good-night, dear boy,” and offered her own cheek to Lucilla. Everybody said good-night to everyone else.
At the top of the stairs Miss Marina turned to the right, and Sarah and Lucilla to the left. By the door of the pink room Sarah took Lucilla by the arm, and was met by a very reproachful gaze.
“I’m asleep, Sarah—really I am. If you don’t let me go and undress before I’m right off, I’ll never get out of this frock. It really would be a pity if they had to cut it off me.”
Sarah pulled her inside the room and shut the door.
“No, you don’t, my child! We’re going to have this out. If you’re asleep, you’ve got to wake up. How did those screws get into the pocket of your cardigan?”
Lucilla yawned without any polite screening hand. She had very white and perfect teeth.
“Darling Sarah, how do I know? I suppose someone put them there.”
“They are the screws from your bicycle, aren’t they?”
Lucilla yawned again.
“Can you answer questions about screws when you’re asleep? I can’t.”
“Lucilla, be serious. Who took those screws out of your bicycle, and who put them in your pocket?”
Lucilla drooped against the door.
“What did you say, darling?”
Sarah took her by the shoulders and gave her a shake.
“You won’t get off that way! Those are your screws.”
“One of mine was called Edward, and the other one Clementina. I don’t know that these are Edward and Clementina. Such large families and all twins, you know, and exactly alike. I wasn’t ever, ever quite sure which was Edward and which was Clementina. Have you ever tried saying ‘I wasn’t ever, ever quite sure’ ten times really quickly? I believe it’s most frightfully difficult.”
Sarah shook her quite hard.
“Lucilla, those screws didn’t come out by themselves.”
Lucilla looked at her mournfully.
“Edward is Exceptionally Enterprising and Energetic, and Clementina will always do what he does.”
“Lucilla—did you take those screws out yourself?”
Lucilla winced. Not with her body—Sarah had her hands on her and there was no movement—it was her eyes that winced. There was a look which gave Sarah a sick feeling. She had meant to startle but not to hurt like this. The look was one of a suffering momentarily too acute to be under control. It was horrible to have hurt someone as much as that. She took her hands away and said,
“Lucilla—what is it?”
But the moment had passed. Lucilla was rubbing her eyes with her knuckles like a sleepy baby and saying in a small strangled voice between yawns,
“Angel darling Sarah—I do hate talking in my sleep. I just want to tumble into your darling pink bed and go into a lovely pink dream. A real angel would peel me out of this blighted dress.”
Sarah peeled her out of it, and put her to bed very much as if she had been five years old. She snuggled down on the pink pillow with the rose-coloured eiderdown tucked about her. A sleepy blue eye looked up at Sarah. A sleepy voice said,
“Would you like to kiss me good-night?”
CHAPTER XX
Sarah went into the blue room and shut the door. She had at the very least an hour and a half to put in before it would be safe to assume that everyone else in the house was asleep. She might or might not go and meet John Brown; she hadn’t made up her mind. But whether she went to meet him or not, she wanted time to think, to straighten things out, to plan what she would say to him when they did meet, whether it was to-night or to-morrow. She locked the door, took off her evening dress, and put on a dressing-gown. Then she sat down in a very comfortable armchair covered in the same blue and white stuff as the curtains and began to try and straighten out her thoughts.
“Golly! What a day!” she said to herself. The picnic seemed to have receded into the week before last, but it really did belong to this horrible mixed bag of a day. She began to tabulate the things that had happened. She had a very clear and logical mind. The untidy odds and ends of things which had been happening filled her with anger and with a determination to get them cleared up.
They had picnicked. They had played games. Someone had taken the screws out of Lucilla’s bicycle. The brakes being out of action, Lucilla had had the narrowest possible shave of being killed on Burdon Hill. No one could have expected her to survive that hill without brakes. Well, who had taken out the screws? It was Ricky who suggested that they had fallen out. If they had fallen out, they wouldn’t have been in the pocket of Lucilla’s cardigan. Someone had taken them out and put them in the cardigan pocket.
Who? And when?
As to who had taken them out, it lay between Lucilla herself and any one of half a dozen other people. Had Lucilla taken them out herself? It looked as if she had. But had she? To take them out, and then to ride the hill was tantamount to suicide. But if Lucilla had wanted to go over the edge, she could have done so anywhere on the bends. Only an unshakable nerve and courage had taken her safely through. If someone else had removed the screws, it amounted to an attempt on Lucilla’s life—an attempt that was to look like an accident. Any one of the picnic party would have had the opportunity of tampering with the bicycle. But the screws might have been taken out before they ever started for the picnic. There was nothing to brake for on the outward journey—only a road that ran along the flat or climbed a rolling down, and then the long ascent of Burdon Hill.
Sarah frowned impatiently. It might have been Lucilla, or it might have been anyone else, and at any time that day. But the screws—something flashed into her mind about the screws. If someone else had put them in Lucilla’s pocket, she thought she could guess when it was done. Not before that horrible ride down the hill without brakes, because that was to look like an accident. No one would have worried about a couple of screws if Lucilla and the bicycle had been smashed, as they might have been smashed, on the rocks below the bends, but when the attempt had failed, when the loss of the screws had been noticed, then they might have been slipped into Lucilla’s cardigan pocket.…
Sarah counted over the people who could have put those screws into Lucilla’s pocket. Herself—Ricky—Bert rand Darnac—John Brown—and, after their return to the Red House, Aunt Marina and Uncle Geoffrey. She and Lucilla had gone upstairs together and come down together. She was quite sure that no one else had been within touching distance. No one else—unless there had been someone in the dark at Holme Fallow.… There might have been.… She couldn�
�t get farther than that—there might have been … But then this unknown person must have had the opportunity of removing the screws, and must have known that they were going up to Holme Fallow to play Devil-in-the-dark. But they had gone up to Holme Fallow on a sudden impulse. Lucilla had suggested it herself. There were no servants in the room. That narrowed the list again to Aunt Marina and Uncle Geoffrey, Ricky, Bertrand, herself, and John Brown.
Which of them had tried to kill Lucilla?
She recoiled from the thought with a shudder. Had Lucilla tried to kill herself? Frankly, Sarah did not believe it. She remembered Geoffrey Hildred’s story of the fires in Lucilla’s room at school. She remembered Lucilla plunging down from the bank in front of The Bomb. And still she didn’t believe it. To believe it involved believing that Lucilla was mentally unbalanced. Sarah’s mind closed sharply against the thought. Lucilla was as sane as she was herself. She considered a comforting alternative. Were all the things that had happened a succession of dare-devil practical jokes? The jump from the bank, the sensational ride without brakes, and a pretended stumble over the low baluster rail at Holme Fallow. It was a comforting theory, but it wasn’t a true one. She didn’t believe it, because she couldn’t believe it. She had seen the sick terror in Lucilla’s eyes. The practical joke theory went by the board.
Except for the one moment when she had been considering that theory, Sarah had kept her thoughts away from what had happened at Holme Fallow. She must see John Brown before she let herself think about it. She knew by now that she was going to meet him. She put her face in her hands to shut out the sham blue moonlight and stayed quite still for a long time. There were sounds in the house, and with one part of her mind she was conscious of them—Geoffrey Hildred and Ricky coming upstairs—Ricky coming along the passage to his room—then the house settling into silence, going to sleep—time going by—Sarah herself a long, long way off—thinking her own thoughts—new, strange thoughts—
She came back at last, and got up. It was a quarter to twelve. She put on the dark woollen suit which she had worn the night before and went down. It wasn’t like the first time. It was odd. She felt as if she had done it a hundred times before, and she wasn’t afraid that anyone would wake. She knew they wouldn’t.
She got out of the window, and found that the rain had stopped. She had not thought about it till now, but when she dropped from the window ledge she remembered that it had been raining when they came back from Holme Fallow. The sky was cloudy, and the air was very damp and mild. It was much darker than it had been the night before. She followed the same path as she had done then, skirting the house and descending the steps at the corner of the terrace. The path that led into the shrubbery turned off to the left at the bottom of the steps. It was very dark indeed under the trees. She moved slowly with her hands stretched out before her. There were tall blocks of holly and yew. She pricked her hands. It got darker all the time. She went on for half a dozen steps, and then stood still. She wasn’t going to walk into a holly-bush and scratch her eyes out for any John Brown in the world. (Miss Marina at breakfast: “My dear, what singular scratches! How did you get them?”) The game wasn’t worth the candle. If John Brown could see in the dark, let him get on with it and come and find her. Sarah Trent had done as much as she was going to do, and a good deal more than she had ever done for anyone else. Sarah Trent was respectable. Sarah Trent had a job to hold on to. Midnight assignations were not in her line at all. She stood in the dark and told Sarah Trent just what kind of a fool she thought her.
Then, without any sound at all, a hand came out of the dark and took her by the arm. John Brown’s voice said,
“Nice of you to come.”
Sarah didn’t jump, because she didn’t let herself jump. A tingling ran from her shoulder to her fingertips. She said in a furious whisper,
“You call this nice?”
She thought he laughed. There wasn’t any sound; there was just the feeling that he was laughing at her.
Then he said, “We can’t talk here,” and began to walk her along the path, moving as quickly and easily as if it were noon instead of black midnight.
After a moment Sarah stopped expecting to run into a holly-bush and let herself be taken along. For some unexplained reason she no longer minded the dark. She felt exhilarated. She told herself that it was an adventure, and that she liked adventures.
They came out into the drive. She knew it was the drive by the gravel under their feet, but she couldn’t see a thing for high banks, overhanging trees, and general murk.
“Where are we going?”
“To my car. It’s just down the road. We can’t talk here.”
“I thought your car was crocked.”
“It was to be ready to-day. I walked into Ledlington and fetched it. I want to talk to you. That young fool Darnac follows me round at night—he’s probably somewhere about now.”
Sarah hoped he wasn’t. She kept quiet and walked faster. They reached the car, and she felt a good deal relieved. A scene with Ran would put the lid on everything.
The car moved off. She said again,
“Where are we going?”
“Just up on to the heath.”
When they were there, he ran off the road and switched out the lights, leaving only the glimmer on the dash-board.
“And now,” he said, “we can talk.”
Sarah sat back in her corner half turned to face him, and what she saw was a black shadow that reminded her of the burglar’s shadow at Holme Fallow. She said quickly,
“Which of us is going to talk first?”
“You can if you like.”
Sarah did like. She was bursting with things that wanted saying. They crowded in her mind and jostled one another for first place. This made her rather breathless as she said,
“There’s such a lot—I don’t know where to begin. I oughtn’t to be here, but I’ve got to talk to someone.”
“You can talk to me, Sarah.”
She took him up in a flash.
“You mean I can trust you?”
“Yes.”
She found herself giving a shaky laugh.
“I can’t think why I should, John Brown.”
“Do you?”
She evaded that.
“I’m going to talk to you—I’ve got to. These things that keep happening—what do they mean? Do you know what they mean?”
There was a pause. Then he said,
“Go on. I’ll talk presently.”
Sarah had one knee over the other. She clasped her hands tight upon it and said,
“What happened this afternoon?”
“You mean about the bicycle?”
“No, I mean at Holme Fallow. What happened?”
“You want to take that first?”
“Please.”
“All right.”
“What happened?”
John Brown said, “I told you. What I said was quite true. I can add a little to it, but not very much. I was on the second step, by the pillar, touching the balustrade with my knee. Lucilla wasn’t telling the truth when she said she was running and tripped on the top step. She came down the passage walking, and on the top step she stood and listened. Then she came on to the second step, and the third—I could hear every time she moved. She was the width of the steps away from me, by the wall. She certainly didn’t trip. When she was on the third step, she moved along it to get to the balustrade. She didn’t know I was there. If she had moved in my direction she would have touched me. She leaned over the balustrade and looked down into the hall. Then she screamed and went over. I caught her. Your light went on. And fortunately I was able to lift her back. I was only just able. It was a very near thing.”
Sarah sat silent and thought about what he had said. She was quite sure that he was telling the truth. Lucilla’s story of a running stumble had exonerated him from suspicion. He said Lucilla’s story wasn’t true. His own story positively invited suspicion. Why should he tell a story like that
if it wasn’t true?
“Is that all?” she said.
“Not quite.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s a thing I can say, but it isn’t a thing I can prove.”
“Do you mean—that she threw herself over?” Her voice went down into horrified depths.
“No, I don’t mean that. I mean that there was someone else on the stair—I think.”
“Who?” The word came suddenly loud, but it didn’t sound loud to Sarah, because the beating of her heart drowned it.
“There you have me,” said John Brown.
“Did you see anything? What did you see?”
“Nothing at all. Sarah, I don’t know anything—I’m guessing. I’m guessing there was someone below Lucilla on the stair. I heard something. Nothing to swear to, you know, but—something. There could have been someone there, crouching down so as to keep below the balustrade. If there was someone there like that, he could have taken Lucilla by the ankles and tipped her over. You didn’t see anything when your light came on?”
“No, I only saw Lucilla—and you.”
John Brown nodded.
“He would get away at once, probably down to the landing and up the other side. He must have got a fright all the same—he wasn’t expecting that torch.”
Sarah leaned towards him.
“But who—who?” she said. And then, as he didn’t answer, “Ran was in the drawing-room, and Ricky had just run into me in the hall.”
John Brown remained silent.
After a moment Sarah leaned back.
“It makes me sick.”
John Brown nodded again.
Sarah went on in a shaken voice.
“People don’t do that sort of thing without a motive. What is the motive?”
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