Georgette Heyer

by Why Shoot a Butler?

  It had been cloudy all day, and the omnibus had not gone very far when a fine rain began to fall, rather like a Scotch mist. The light was fading quickly, and the landscape seen on either side of the omnibus looked grey and dreary. Shirley gave a little shiver at the prospect of flat, wet fields and was impelled by some inward suspicion to glance round at the other occupants of the bus. She thought she must be suffering from nerves, a complaint she despised, for she had had an unaccountable feeling that she had been followed from the Boar’s Head.

  Her fellow-travellers seemed ordinary enough. There were two farmers discussing the weather in broad Sussex accents; a red-faced man who might have been a gamekeeper, who sat all over a seat meant for two perusing Our Dogs; and several women, who had been doing the week’s shopping in the town. On the route several others were picked up and hailed by those already in the bus. Behind Shirley an Irishwoman poured into the ear of a credulous and apparently interested acquaintance every detail of some unknown person’s operation for appendicitis.

  At the first village of any size most of the people left the bus, and the driver got down to deliver a parcel at the inn. Shirley and the red-faced man were left alone. Still with the uncomfortable sensation of being followed she took a surreptitious look at him. He was absorbed in his paper and did not seem to be interested in her. A mile beyond the village the bus stopped to set him down outside a kennels for gun dogs. Shirley settled herself more comfortably and sneered at her own qualms.

  The bus stopped several more times to pick up passengers and once to set down another parcel. Unaccustomed to the leisurely progress of country omnibuses Shirley began to get impatient and to look at her watch. There was very little daylight left, and the driver had switched on the electric lights. Raindrops glistened on the windows; an unpleasant draught swept over the floor of the omnibus.

  The driver drew in to the side of the road and pulled on his brake. ‘Here you are, miss. Wet evening.’

  Shirley took out her purse. ‘Beastly,’ she agreed. ‘What time is the next bus back, please?’

  ‘I shall be coming back in an hour,’ replied the driver, indicating that there was only one bus. ‘Will you have a return ticket, miss? A shilling, that’ll be.’

  ‘No. I might miss it,’ Shirley said.

  ‘Sixpence then, please, miss.’

  She handed over the money, and he leaned sideways to pull the lever that opened the door of the bus. She climbed down onto the road and stood for a moment watching the omnibus disappear round the bend.

  She was provided with a torch, but there was still sufficient light for her to see her way. She was standing at a crossroads. A signpost above her head pointed the road to Norton, and pulling up the collar of her coat to keep the rain from trickling down her neck, she set off at a brisk pace down the lane.

  It was apparently a second-class road but in quite good repair. It wound between straggling hedges, passing an occasional cottage or farmstead. Two or three cyclists overtook her, and one car, but the road seemed to be little used. Once she saw a pedestrian ahead and rapidly overhauled him. A bucolic voice bade her good evening in the friendly fashion of country folk. She returned the greeting and pressed on.

  A mile from the main road a cluster of twinkling lights showed where a small hamlet lay in a slight hollow. Beyond that the habitations were few. There seemed to Shirley, peering through the dusk, to be nothing but fields stretching sombrely to a far horizon that still showed faintly grey in the distance. About half a mile past the hamlet some trees broke the monotonous landscape, and presently these grew more thickly. Shirley could smell pines and see in the waning light the silver-grey bark of birch trees. The leaves were sodden and dripped onto the tarred road. No life seemed to be stirring. Perhaps it was too wet, Shirley thought, for the rabbits that were usually to be seen at this hour scuttling across the road, to venture out of their burrows.

  She had no means of measuring the distance she had walked, but she supposed that she must have covered nearly a couple of miles, and began to look out for a gate. Half in anger at herself, half in a kind of scornful amusement, she blamed the weather and the twilight for her nervousness. The rain fell softly, steadily; there was no wind to stir the leaves of the trees; there did not seem to be a soul abroad. Yet several times she had caught herself straining her ears to catch the sound of – she scarcely knew what. Footsteps, perhaps; perhaps the hush of tyres on the wet road. Once she thought she heard a car purring in the distance, but nothing passed her, and she concluded that she had either been mistaken or that another road ran somewhere near at hand.

  A gleam of white ahead of her attracted her attention. She went on and found a gate leading into the wood to her right. It stood half-open on to a grassride cut through the trees. She hesitated and searched for a name on cracked posts.

  With a wry little smile she reflected that she brought a suburban mind into the country. Of course there was no name; country people always knew who lived where; you never found names on any gateposts. It was little tiresome for strangers, all the same.

  She went on a few yards, feeling herself rather at a loss, but after five minutes’ walking she saw a big iron gate ahead and the lights of a lodge. These must certainly belong to the manor; she turned and went quickly back towards the first gate.

  The wood looked dark and mysterious; there was a good deal of undergrowth, bracken standing three feet high turning brown with the fall of the year, and blackberry bushes. Under Shirley’s feet the ground was slippery with wet; in the wheel-ruts of the ride there were muddy puddles.

  She walked forward cautiously, peering through the gathering darkness for a cottage. A little way from the gate the ride forked; she saw a light at the end of the shorter fork and bore onwards, leaving it on her right.

  She smelled pines again, and a few steps brought her to clearer ground. The earth grew more sandy under her feet; a carpet of pine needles deadened the sound of her footsteps. Fallen cones were scattered over the ride; the undergrowth had come to an end; slim tree-trunks, gleaming with wet, surrounded her, stretching away, line upon line of them, into the mist and the enveloping gloom.

  The silence was almost eerie; the rain which was falling soundlessly and fast, seemed like a blanket, cutting off all small, ordinary noises of the wood. Shirley gritted her teeth together and felt, in the big pocket of her coat, the reassuring butt of her automatic.

  The ride took a turn, and immediately lights became visible in the distance. Shirley had come to the lake, an artificial sheet of water set at the end of a broad avenue that had been cut to the south of the manor. There were little glowing lights in the distance; she could just discern the outline of the manor against the sky and see the sweep of a lawn running to meet the edge of the wood.

  On the opposite side of the lake from the manor, forming part of the view to be had from the south windows, was a white pavilion built in the classical style so much in favour during the eighteenth century. It stood like a ghost in the darkness, its windows blank and uncurtained.

  Shirley was aware of a pulse that throbbed in her throat. The pavilion, waiting for her amongst the trees, looked deserted and strangely forbidding. She had an instinct to tiptoe away from it, and for several moments she stood in the shadow of the trees staring at the quiet building with a queer sense of foreboding hammering at her brain.

  She stood so still that her very heartbeats seemed to thud in the silence. Somewhere not far distant the unmistakable cry of a pheasant broke the dead calm, and she heard the whirr of wings. She jumped uncontrollably and waited, listening. No other sound succeeded the startled bird’s flight; she decided, but uneasily, that some prowling fox had disturbed the pheasant.

  She drew the gun out of her pocket and cocked it. The snap of the breech sounded comfortingly in her ears; she thumbed the safety-catch up and walked quietly toward the pavilion.

  The door was not locked; the handle squeaked nastily as she turned it. She pushed the door inwards, standing backed
against the wall. After a moment, since not the tiniest sound came to betray the presence of any living creature, she pulled her torch out of her pocket and switched it on.

  The pavilion was empty. Some garden furniture was placed in it, wicker chairs and a table, several gaily coloured boating cushions. Shirley’s torch travelled slowly round it, lighting every corner. She went in, closing the door behind her, and forced herself to sit down in one of the chairs and to switch off the torch.

  As her eyes grew accustomed to the dim light she was able to distinguish, vaguely, the various objects in the room. The warning instinct that had urged her not to approach the pavilion prompted her to draw her chair back to the wall. The windows, grey oblongs in the darkness, seemed to be all round her. She had to assure herself that no one could see her from outside without the aid of a lamp.

  She could hear her watch ticking and pulled down her glove to look at it. The luminous hands stood at twenty minutes past six; Collins was late. A fear that he might be going to play her false dispelled for a moment her growing sense of foreboding. Her lips tightened; she began to listen for the sound of an approach-footstep.

  She heard nothing, not so much as the snap of a twig, until the scrape of the door-handle made her heart give a frightened jump. She got up, pressing down the safety-catch of her gun.

  A man stood in the doorway; she could not distinguish his features. She waited, hardly breathing.

  ‘Are you there, miss?’ The words were spoken so softly that she barely heard them. The voice was the valet’s.

  ‘Yes. You’re very late,’ she said, and switched on her torch.

  He seemed to leap towards her. ‘Put it out! Don’t show a light!’ he whispered urgently.

  She obeyed him but said as coolly as she was able: ‘Take care. You’re likely to get shot if you dash at me like that. What’s the matter?’ The torch-light had given her a brief glimpse of his face, unnaturally pallid, sweat glistening on his forehead. He sounded out of breath and seemed to be listening intently, his head a little bent.

  He moved to her side and grasped her left wrist. ‘For God’s sake, get away from here!’ he whispered. ‘I shouldn’t have let you come. I warned you it wasn’t safe. Someone followed me. Get out quickly!’

  Almost without meaning to she lowered her voice, trying to keep it steady. ‘You’re trying to put me off. I’m not having any. We’re here to talk business.’

  He spoke with a kind of suppressed venom. ‘You know what happened to your brother. Do you want to go the same road? I tell you I’m being watched. Come away from here quickly!’

  He pulled her towards the door. Realising that his agitation was not feigned she went with him and allowed him to hurry her back into the shelter of the trees. He stopped to listen again. She could hear nothing, but he drew her still farther into the shade.

  He let her go. ‘I daren’t stop. I swear I’m on the level. I’ll meet you, but not here. It’s getting too hot for me. You ought never to have rung me up.’ He broke off to listen again. ‘He’s on to me,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll have to go. For God’s sake, miss, go back to London! You’re in much worse danger than you know. I’ll meet you – on my word, I will!’

  ‘You’d better,’ she said. ‘You know what I’m holding.’

  He gave a soundless chuckle. ‘Half a loaf, miss. That’s not enough.’

  ‘Enough to make things unpleasant for you,’ she said harshly.

  ‘Do that and you’ll never get your other half,’ he said. His tone held a menace. ‘You were mad to come here. You’re not safe. I can’t be on the watch all the time. You’re not safe a moment.’

  She said steadily: ‘I shall stay at Upper Nettlefold till I get what I came for.’

  His hand closed on her wrist again compellingly. With his lips almost touching her ear he breathed the one word: ‘Listen!’

  The wood seemed all at once, to her overwrought nerves, to be alive with tiny, nameless sounds. The fallen leaves rustled, perhaps a rabbit stirred amongst them; a twig cracked; the shadow of a tree seemed to move.

  The man’s fear communicated itself to Shirley. She felt that hidden eyes watched her and suddenly wanted only to get away from this haunted spot. Her hand shook in the valet’s hold. He let it go and gave her a little push. ‘Go! You mustn’t be seen with me. For God’s sake, go!’

  He moved away softly as a ghost. The night seemed to close in on Shirley, full of unknown perils. For a moment she knew a feeling of sheer panic that held her as though by force where she stood, her knees shaking. She threw it off and managed to take a step forward on to the ride. It had grown so dark that nothing was clearly distinguishable any longer. Not daring to switch on her torch she began to walk quickly away from the pavilion, restraining an impulse to break into a run.

  She was brought up short by a circle of light that suddenly appeared a little way to the left of the ride, moving uncannily over the ground. There was someone else in the wood, searching.

  She turned and made for the cover of the trees, hardly caring what direction she took. A great beech tripped her with its long roots; she fell, and looking back, saw the light moving towards her. She scrambled up, thankful in the midst of her fright that the safety-catch on her Colt was up. She broke into a run, heading for the thickest part of the wood.

  Brambles caught at her coat and slashed her ankles; she tore free and reached a clump of blackberry bushes growing between the slender stems of some silver birch trees. She crouched down behind them, watching the light waver through the undergrowth.

  She could hear footsteps now, deliberate steps, coming closer. A slight sound behind her brought her head round with a jerk, but she could see nothing.

  The footsteps passed the bush; she could just perceive the darker shadow of a man’s form. He stopped and stood still, listening, she guessed. The light he carried began to describe a circle; she wondered how dense the bushes were, whether dense enough to conceal her.

  The man moved; he was coming round the bush. Her thumb felt for the safety-catch; she stayed still, waiting.

  Then the boding silence was broken by a sound so incongruous that it came as a shock to her. Someone not far away was whistling ‘The Blue Danube.’

  The light disappeared; a faint rustle, the brush of a body passing through high bracken came to Shirley’s ears, followed by complete silence. The whistle died away, the shadow had gone.

  It was minutes before she dared to move. She crept forward in the direction where she judged the ride to be, stopping every few paces to stand still and listen. The light was no longer visible; it had vanished altogether, scared away by the sound of a waltz tune whistled in the distance.

  She walked on, thrusting her way through the undergrowth, still not daring to use the torch.

  No light warned her that she was still being followed. Several times she thought that she could hear the sound of a panting breath not far behind; once a twig cracked ominously, but when she stood still, peering behind her, she could see nothing and hear nothing.

  She moved forward again; again she heard the heavy breathing, closer at hand now.

  She fled on and stumbled out onto the ride. With the close turf under her feet and the dim outlines of the trees on either side to guide her she broke into a run.

  A light flashed full into her face; a tiny scream, instantly checked, broke from her. She stood still and levelled the gun.

  A cool, faintly mocking voice spoke: ‘Whither away, Miss Brown?’ it said.

  Her pistol-hand fell to her side; she drew a long, sobbing breath. ‘You!’ she gasped, dizzy with relief. ‘It’s – only – you!’

  ‘That,’ said Mr Amberley strolling towards her, ‘is not particularly complimentary. You seem to be in a hurry.’

  She put her hand out, clasping the sleeve of his coat; there was something comforting about its very roughness. ‘Someone following me,’ she said. ‘Someone following me.’

  He took her hand in a strong clasp; she was aware, throug
h her jumbled emotions, that she was no longer afraid. She held Mr Amberley’s hand gratefully and followed the beam of his torch as it swung round.

  Then a sharp exclamation rose to her lips. The torch had lit up a face for one moment, a face that shone pale in the bright light and disappeared instantly behind a bush.

  ‘Who is that man?’ she gasped. ‘Over there – didn’t you see? He was watching us. Oh, let’s get away!’

  ‘By all means,’ agreed Amberley. ‘It’s not really much of a night for a country walk.’

  ‘Did you see?’ she insisted. ‘A man by that bush. Who was he? He was following me. I heard him.’

  ‘Yes, I saw,’ replied Amberley. ‘It was Fountain’s new butler.’

  She drew closer to him instinctively. ‘I didn’t know. He was following me. I – I don’t quite – please let us go!’

  Mr Amberley drew her hand through his arm and began to walk with her down the ride towards the gate. Once she glanced back, saying nervously: ‘You’re sure he’s not still following?’

  ‘No, I’m not sure, but I’m not letting it worry me,’ said Amberley. ‘Probably he is seeing us off the premises. This happens to be private property, you know.’

  ‘You don’t think that!’ she said sharply. ‘He wasn’t following for that reason.’

  ‘No?’ said Amberley. ‘Well, suppose you tell me what the reason is?’

  She was silent. After a few moments she pulled her hand away and said: ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Getting back to your normal self, aren’t you?’ remarked Mr Amberley. ‘I thought it was too good to last. What I should like to know is, what are you doing here?’

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ she said curtly.

  ‘Won’t tell me,’ he corrected.

  ‘Perhaps. I notice you haven’t answered me.’

  ‘Oh, there’s no mystery about me,’ said Amberley cheerfully. ‘I was following you.’