The lock clicked on my front door.
One gets to know the noises of one’s own house so well that sight is unnecessary for interpretation. I heard the unmistakeable sound of the hinges, and the gritty sound of a shoe on the bare flagstones of the entrance hall. Then there were quiet noises in the sitting room itself, and low voices, and the squeak of the door to the kitchen. They had come back in a way that would not bring Mrs Morris.
I sat rigidly, wondering whether to slide down into the smaller space and risk them hearing my movements, or stay with head and shoulders above floor level and risk them searching my clothes’ cupboard yet again. If I coughed or sneezed, or as much as knocked the chipboard with my elbow as I slid down into the safer hiding place, they would hear me. I sat immobile, stretching my own ears and wondering despairingly how long they would stay.
Breathing evenly was difficult: controlling my heartbeat was impossible. Acute anxiety over a period of hours was highly shattering to the nerves.
From time to time I could hear them moving and murmuring, but could no longer distinctly hear their words. I supposed that they too were hiding, waiting out of sight for me to come home. It was almost funny when one thought of it: them hiding behind the furniture and me within the walls.
Unfunny if they found me. More like unfaceable.
I took a deep shaky breath, one of many.
Someone began to come quietly upstairs. The familiar creaks of the old treads fizzed through my body like electric shocks. The risk of moving had to be taken. I tucked my elbows in and bent my knees, and eased myself back under the floor. The flap came down hard on my hair and I thought wildly that they must have heard it: but no one arrived with triumphant shouts, and the awful suspense just went on and on.
I got pains from being bent up, and I got cramps, but there was nothing I could do about that except surrender.
One of them spent a good time in my bedroom. I could hear his footfall through the floorboards, and the small thuds of drawers shutting. Guessed he was no longer looking for me, but at what I owned. It didn’t make his nearness to me any safer.
The fear seemed endless; but everything ends. I heard them murmuring again in the sitting room, and shutting the kitchen door. The man upstairs went down again. More murmurings: a chorus. Then silence for a while. Then a step or two in the hall, and the click of the front door closing.
I waited, thinking that only one of them had gone out.
Their car started. Shifted quietly into gear. Drove off.
I still lay without moving, not trusting that it was over, that it wasn’t a trick: but the absolute quietness persisted, and in the end I pushed up the flap of the floor and levered myself with much wincing and pins-and-needles onto my bedroom carpet.
The lights were still on, but the black square of window was grey. The whole night had passed. It was dawn.
I threw a few things into one of the suitcases and left the cottage ten minutes later.
The Yale lock on the front door showed no signs of forcing, and I guessed they must have opened it with a credit card, as I myself had done once when I’d locked myself out. My car stood untouched where I’d left it, and even my half-drunk glass of Scotch was still on the sitting-room table.
Feeling distinctly unsettled I had a wash, shave and breakfast at the Chequers Hotel, and then went to the police.
‘Back again?’ they said.
They listened, made notes, asked questions.
‘Do you know who they were?’
‘No.’
‘Any evidence of a forced entry?’
‘No.’
‘Anything stolen?’
‘No.’
‘Nothing we can do, sir.’
‘Look,’ I said, ‘these people are trying to abduct me. They’ve succeeded once, and they’re trying again. Can’t you do a damn thing to help?’
They seemed fairly sympathetic, but the answer was no. They hadn’t enough men or money to mount a round-the-clock guard on anyone for an indefinite period without a very good reason.
‘Isn’t the threat of abduction a very good reason?’
‘No. If you believe the threat, you could hire yourself a private bodyguard.’
‘Thanks very much,’ I said. ‘But if anyone reports me missing again, I won’t have gone by choice, and you might do me a favour and start looking.’
‘If they do, sir, we will.’
I went to the office and sat at my desk and watched my hands shake. Whatever I normally had in the way of mental and physical stamina was at a very low ebb.
Peter came in with a cable and his usual expression of not quite grasping the point, and handed me the bad news. CAR BROKEN DOWN RETURNING WEDNESDAY APOLOGIES TREVOR.
‘You read this?’ I asked Peter.
‘Yes.’
‘Well, you’d better fetch Mr King’s list, for next week, and his appointment book.’
He went on the errand and I sat and looked blankly at the cable. Trevor had sent it from some town I’d never heard of in France, and had given no return address. He wouldn’t be worried, wherever he was. He would be sure I could take his extra few days in my stride.
Peter came back with the list and I laced my fingers together to keep them still. What did people take for tranquillisers?
‘Get me some coffee,’ I said to Peter. His eyebrows rose. ‘I know it’s only a quarter past nine,’ I said, ‘but get me some coffee... please.’
When he brought the coffee I sent him to fetch Debbie, so that I could share between them the most urgent jobs. Neither of them had a good brain, but they were both persistent, meticulous plodders, invaluable qualities in accountants’ assistants. In many offices the assistants were bright and actively studying to become accountants themselves, but Trevor for some reason seemed always to prefer working with the unambitious sort. Peter was twenty-two, Debbie twenty-four. Peter, I thought, was a latent homosexual who hadn’t quite realised it. Debbie, mousy-haired, big-busted, and pious, had a boyfriend working in a hardware shop. Peter occasionally made jokes about screws, which shocked her.
They sat opposite my desk with notebooks poised, both of them looking at me with misgiving.
‘You really look awfully ill,’ Debbie said. ‘Worse even than yesterday. Grey, sort of.’ There seemed to be more ghoulish relish in her voice than concern.
‘Yes, well, never mind that,’ I said. ‘I’ve looked at Mr King’s list, and there are a few accounts that won’t wait until he gets back.’ There were two he should have seen to before he went, but no one was perfect. ‘Certificates for the solicitors, Mr Crest, and Mr Grant. I’m afraid they are already overdue. Could you bring all the papers for those two in here, Debbie? Later, I mean. Not this instant. Then there are the two summonses to appear before the Commissioners next Thursday. I’ll apply for postponements for those, but you’d better bring all the books in here, Debbie, anyway, and I’ll try and make a start on them.’
‘That’s the Axwood stables, is it? And Millrace Stud?’
‘Not the stud; that’s the week after. Mr King can deal with that. The Axwood stables, yes, and those corn merchants, Coley Young.’
‘The Coley Young books aren’t here yet,’ Peter said.
‘Well, for crying out loud, didn’t you do what I said two weeks ago, and tell them to send them?’ I could hear the scratch in my voice and did my best to stop it. ‘O.K.,’ I said slowly. ‘Did you ask them to send them?’
‘Yes, I did.’ Peter tended to look sulky. ‘But they haven’t come.’
‘Ring them again, would you? And what about the Axwood stables?’
‘You checked those yourself, if you remember.’
‘Did I?’ I looked back as if to a previous existence. The two summons to appear before the Commissioners were not particularly serious. We seldom actually went. The summonses were issued when the Inland Revenue thought a particular set of accounts were long overdue: a sort of goad to action. It meant that Trevor or I asked for a postponement, did the accounts, and sent them in before the revised date. End of drama. The two summonses in question had arrived after Trevor had left for his holidays, which was why he hadn’t dealt with them himself.