Lonesome Road

by Patricia Wentworth

  When the car was in the field, they linked arms and began a search for the wicket gate which led to the house. The ruts were really deep. There was a ditch on one side of the lane, and a holly hedge on the other. They groped their way by the hedge, and found it a safe but uncomfortable guide. At last the gate clicked and let them in upon a paved stone path with rose bushes, wild and unpruned, all their summer growth upon them to fling a spray of damp against the cheek or catch at the groping hand. Rachel discovered that you may know a place quite well and yet feel lost in a fog like this. She knew that they must skirt the house, but they blundered into soft earth on the one hand and a very hard wall on the other before they succeeded in doing it. The torch was extraordinarily little help. It showed the path and nothing much besides, but when they had felt for and found the tool-shed it did pick out the key for them, hanging from a nail in the wall, all rusty-a big, old-fashioned key on a loop of tarry string.

  The back door next, and a good deal of fumbling to get the key into the lock. And all the time Rachel keeping back her own fear with the insistent thought, “There’s nobody here. No car. No light. No sound. No anything.” The key went home, and turned easily enough for all its rusty look. The door swung in. Rachel put out her hand for the torch, missed it in the dark, and heard it drop between them on the flagged step. She said “Oh!” on a quick breath, and Gale exclaimed. Their hands met, and she left the picking up to him. But the torch might just as well have been left lying on the step, since prod, poke or push as he would, Gale Brandon could get no spark out of it.

  “If I was a smoker, I’d have matches,” he said ruefully. “I’ve never fancied it somehow, but here’s where it would have come in useful.”

  “There’ll be matches on the dresser,” said Rachel- “and a candle. Stay where you are and I’ll find them. I know just where they are.” She took a step from the door and stopped, hands stretched out before her, eyes straining against the dark, ears straining too. But there was no need to strain for the sound which had stopped her. It filled the empty room-the homeliest, most comfortable sound in the world, the ticking of a clock.

  Rachel stood where she was without moving and listened to it. She knew the clock quite well-a cheap shiny anachronism which lived on the scullery dresser and gained a steady five minutes a day. She turned her head and said in a strained voice,

  “Gale-the clock-it’s ticking.”

  He laughed behind her in the dark.

  “That’s just a way they have.”

  She drew in her breath sharply.

  “Not when they haven’t been wound for a month. It’s an eight-day clock. Cosmo hasn’t been down here since the end of September. He said so yesterday-he said he hadn’t been down. But the clock’s ticking.”

  “Well, honey, anyone could get in with that key. Let’s get those matches.”

  He moved to pass her, but she caught his arm.

  “Wait! Gale, please wait. I don’t like it. I won’t go on without a light. Have you got matches in the car?”

  “Not a match. But there’s another torch-a small one I keep for a spare. Do you want me to get it? It’s a long way back to that field.”

  Rachel hesitated. To go stumbling and groping back to the car, with matches a couple of yards away on the dresser? Not reasonable. She said “No-” in a hesitating tone and took a half step forward. And then, in a rush of terror, reason was suspended.

  With that suspense what asserted itself was the oldest fear in the world-the trap, the snare, the abyss, the pit, the terror that lurks unknown in the dark. She went back, and as Gale Brandon moved to pass her, she caught him and held him.

  “I won’t go on without a light. There’s something-”

  She heard him laugh.

  “What’s wrong with this place is the damp. It smells like the inside of a well.”

  And with that Rachel knew. She said,

  “Will you stop here-quite still? Will you promise me not to move-at all?”

  “What’s this?”

  “Will you promise, Gate-will you promise?”

  “If you want me to.”

  She let go of his arm and began to feel her way round the edge of the room. First to the corner by the sink, and then to the larder door. Then to the dresser, feeling, always feeling, with her left hand on the wall and her right hand at arm’s length to grope in the empty dark.

  She came to the dresser, felt her way along it until her fingers touched the matches, and struck one. The tiny spirt of light dazzled and sputtered out, but it had shown her an old brass candlestick, the candle half burned down. With her back to the door she struck another match, and this time reached the candle wick. There was a moment whilst the flame took hold, and another when it flagged and failed. Then the wax melted and fed it, and the flame rose bright and clear. She turned with the candle in her hand and held it up. A yard from her feet on the one side, a yard from Gale’s feet on the other, was the open mouth of the well, three feet across. If she had taken the second step where she had taken the first, it would have taken her over the edge. The well was two hundred feet deep. There was twenty feet of water in it all the three years when half the wells in the country failed and dried out. There it was, as black as death, between her and Gale-the old well of the Well Corner, dug four, five, six hundred years ago for the refreshment of man and beast. Her thought stood still, and could not move from the well.

  Her hand held up the candle, stiff and steady, as if the wax, the brass and her arm were all of one piece. She stared at Gale, and for a moment he stood rigid, staring back at her. Then he came round the well, walking slowly and carefully, and took the candle from her hand and set it down on the dresser and put his arms about her.

  They stood like that, locked together, without speaking a word, hardly drawing breath, because death had been so close and life was immeasurably sweet.

  Presently, when he lifted her face and kissed her, she could feel that his was wet, and that moved her very much. Her own eyes were dry. The danger had been hers, not his. Her heart contracted as she thought of what he might have heard in the dark if she had taken that other step. She would have cried out, but the sound would have been swallowed up by the well… And then there would have been the splash-a long way down-a horribly long way down.

  She found words then to comfort him, as one finds words to comfort a child who has waked afraid-stumbling words, broken words, that brought tears to her eyes and a great gush of love to her heart. As he held her and kissed the tears away, they came so near that it was as if they took each other then with a true marriage vow-to love and to cherish-till death us do part-and thereto I give thee my troth.

  They drew apart slowly and reluctantly. The candlelight showed the room with the door open upon the back door step, a tin can standing in the sink, a deal table pushed against the left-hand wall, and, tilted against it, damp from the breath of the water, the wooden cover which had been taken away from the well.

  Gale let go of her and walked over to it. He touched it and looked back over his shoulder.

  ~“Do they keep the well open like this?”

  Rachel said, “Never.”

  In her mind words formed themselves-part of a verse which she knew quite well, but now she could only remember how it began: “They have digged a pit…” The words said themselves over and over. “They have digged a pit-they have digged a pit-they have digged a pit-” But she couldn’t remember how the verse should end.

  Gale came back to her.

  “Rachel-what does this mean?”

  She said, “I don’t know.” But it wasn’t true, because the answer was in those words which repeated themselves without ceasing in her mind: “They have digged a pit…”

  Chapter Thirty-six

  They stood there, very close but not touching one another. The candle behind them on the dresser threw their shadows forward across the well, and the uneven brick, and the damp stone of the doorstep beyond it. The two long shadows lay there and were still.
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  At last Gale said, “What’s in your mind? You’d better tell me.”

  She turned towards him then and spoke in an odd clear voice,

  “Someone wound the clock, and someone uncovered the well-” She turned a little more and pointed. “The clock says half past four. It gains five minutes a day. What is the right time?”

  They looked together at the watch on his wrist. The hands stood at five-and-twenty past.

  “Then it was wound yesterday,” he said.

  Rachel said, “Yes.”

  “And the person who wound it uncovered the well. Why?”

  She had no answer to that.

  “But the clock,” said Gale Brandon-“that’s what I can’t understand. If that cover was taken off the well for the only reason that I can think of, why in thunder should the person who did it wind the clock?”

  Rachel was cold to her feet. There was just one person who could never keep his hands from a clock. If Cosmo had come here yesterday he could no more have helped picking up that clock and winding it than he could have helped breathing. Because the clock would have stopped- it would have been stopped for nearly six weeks. Cosmo could never pass a clock that had stopped without winding it. But Cosmo had not been here since the end of September. He had said so yesterday.

  Someone had been here.

  Someone had wound the clock.

  The person who had wound the clock had uncovered the well.

  They had digged a pit-

  She turned slowly and looked at Gale. His eyes were horrified and stern. A most dreadful thought came to her. Her lips were suddenly dry as she said,

  “Caroline!” She could not get past the name. Her eyes said the rest, and said it with anguish. “Did she come here before us? Are we too late?”

  He said, “No-no-the door was locked. The key was in the shed.”

  Rachel’s hand went to her throat,

  “He could have put it there.”

  “Who? My God, Rachel!”

  She shook her head, tried to speak, spoke in a whisper.

  “I-don’t-know. Someone-uncovered-the well. Someone-tried-to-kill me. Perhaps Caroline-knew- who it was-”

  “Rachel, don’t look like that! She hasn’t been here-” He paused, and added, “yet.”

  “How do you-know?”

  “It’s easy. Look here-if this trap was set for Caroline and she had fallen into it, would the man who had set it lock up and go away and leave the well uncovered? You can see he wouldn’t. Why, the first thing he’d do would be to cover up the well.”

  Rachel tried twice before she said, “Unless he meant it to look-as if-she had done it herself-”

  Gale took her by the shoulders and shook her lightly.

  “Wake up, honey-you’re dreaming. If anyone was planning to make this look like suicide, he’d have to leave the door open the way it is now, with the key sticking in it. Quit frightening yourself. Caroline isn’t here.”

  “Then where is she?” said Rachel with trembling lips.

  “Well, there are a few good places besides this, honey.”

  She put a hand on his arm and stared at the well.

  “That wasn’t done-for nothing. Someone was meant to come in like we did, and to fall-Oh, Gale!-as I should have fallen if I had taken just one more step!”

  Her clasp tightened suddenly. He turned his head. They both held their breath.

  “There’s someone coming now,” he said.

  For a moment Rachel heard nothing. Then it seemed to her as if she heard too much. A vague sound without direction which might have been the sound of a car, but whether coming or going she could not tell. The drip of a fog from the eaves, from the holly hedge. The faint scuttering which some small creature would make if it were disturbed-mouse, or mole, or rabbit-any one of them might be abroad in the dark. And, first faintly and then clear and distinct, footsteps coming nearer.

  She held on to Gale, and they watched the door.

  It was Miss Maud Silver who came out of the fog and stood looking in on them from the worn step. She was dressed with her usual dowdy neatness-a three-quarter length jacket of black cloth with some rather worn brown fur at the neck and wrists, and a curious head-dress, half cap half toque, made of the same stuff as the coat and trimmed with what was quite obviously a piece of the fur which had been left over. A black handbag with a shiny clasp depended from her left wrist. She put a hand in a black kid glove on the jamb of the door and looked in upon the candle-lit room.

  Two doors, one to the left by the sink, one to the right beyond the dresser. The open well, not flush with the rough brick floor but sunk. The cover that would bring it to the floor level leaning aginst that table on the right. But the well was open now, and the two people who stared at her across it might have been looking at a ghost instead of at Maud Silver.

  Miss Silver could not remember when she had been frightened last, but she was frightened now. Under her breath she said “Oh dear!” She then called up her courage and addressed Gale.

  “Mr. Brandon, where is Miss Caroline?”

  Gale Brandon said, “Not here.”

  Miss Silver came across the threshold and closed the door behind her.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Quite,” said Gale coolly.

  “Why?”

  He told her, using the same arguments with which he had comforted Rachel.

  “We found the door locked, and the key on its nail in the shed. This damnable thing as you see it. Rachel nearly walked into it. Someone was meant to walk into it.”

  “Miss Caroline,” said Maud Silver.

  “Well then, we got here first. If it had been meant to look like suicide and the trap had been sprung, the door wouldn’t have been locked or the key in the shed. If it was murder and meant to be hushed up, the coyer would have been put back.”

  “But she may come at any time,” said Miss Silver- “unless the plan has gone wrong. Plans do go wrong, you know. It is not in mortals to command success.”

  All this time Rachel had neither spoken nor moved, but now her hand dropped from Gale’s arm and she gave Miss Silver back her own question. Her voice was agonized.

  “Where is Caroline?”

  Miss Silver said, “I don’t know. I think she will either come here or be brought here-I feel sure of it. I have been in great anxiety lest I should get here too late, but the fog delayed us.”

  “Us?”

  “I took the liberty of employing your chauffeur and car, Miss Treherne. A most reliable man and a very careful driver. He is putting the car in a place of security, and will then report here. We may be glad of him. In the meanwhile it is of the first importance that we should show no light, and that this door should be locked and the key replaced in the shed. If you will do that, Mr. Brandon, and then come to the front door, I will admit you.”

  When he was gone Miss Silver skirted the well, picked up the candle and led the way through the kitchen to the living-room. The old beams hung low and made a trap for innumerable shadows. The front door opened directly upon the room, and a very steep, narrow stair ran up in the far corner. Here too the floor was of brick, with a rug or two to soften it. The cold of the fog and the November night was everywhere. The chill hearth was clean and bare. A draught came leaking down the stairs. A faint smell of tobacco hung stale upon the air. The three small windows, one on either side of the door and one in the left-hand wall, were curtained with a brightly patterned chintz. Behind the curtains wooden shutters fitted close and were secured by an old-fashioned iron bar.

  Miss Silver applied herself to withdrawing the bolts of the door and unlocking it. This done, she turned to Rachel.

  “Miss Treherne, we can only do our best. I think he will bring her here.”

  Rachel said in a harsh voice that was strange to her, “Why didn’t you go to the police?”

  Miss Silver looked at her steadily.

  “What could I have said to them? I know, but I have no proof. You cannot accuse a man withou
t proof. I was sure that he pushed you over the cliff last night. I was sure that he would try again in some other way. If I had come to you and accused him, would you have believed me? I think that you would not. Because I had no proof-no proof at all. It would have required more than a stranger’s word to break down the affectionate trust of years. I thought it best to remain silent, and to keep as close a watch upon you as possible. But until just before the lunch-bell rang today I did not know that Miss Caroline might be in danger too. I blame myself. I should have acted more quickly, but I was, I must confess, outwitted. He is very cunning, and he has a great deal at stake. He contrived to get her out of the house whilst we were at lunch-”

  Rachel interrupted her.

  “She has been gone for more than three hours. Miss Silver, where is she? It would have taken her no more than an hour and a half to get here-before the fog came down.”

  Miss Silver shook her head.

  “She was certainly not to come straight here. Oh, no, that wouldn’t have suited his book at all. If she was to stumble into the well in the dark, then it must be dark before she got here. The torn-off piece of the letter would have told her where she was to wait for him, and when he thought it was safe he would pick her up and bring her here-in her own car if it was meant to look like suicide. Everyone in the house would have had to say how uncertain and depressed she had been. There would be no mark of violence, no sign that anyone had laid a hand upon her-no one would have laid a hand upon her. He would have had the whole night to make his way to some station from which he could take a train to town. Yes, I think that it was meant to look like suicide.”

  The cold of the house must have got under Rachel’s skin. There was no warmth in her. The cold seeped into her bones and settled about her heart. And coldest of all-fear. She said in a dead voice, but quite calmly,