Twelve
The clock ticked loudly.
"I wonder," Courtney said aloud.
Guesses, all without shape or reason, drifted in his mind. The atmosphere of the kitchen was warm and damp, with a prevalent ghost of lamb stew.
"You'll excuse us, I know," he told Mrs. Propper, shutting away his thoughts. "Miss Browning wants to get home."
"And so she should, if she'll take my advice," declared the cook, flinging open the back door. "It's little enough sleep any of the rest of us will be getting in this house tonight. Good night to you, Miss Ann. Good night to you, sir."
"Good night, Mrs. Propper."
As they went down two steps, and the door closed behind them, they were momentarily blinded by the contrast between the moonlight and the light from the unshaded kitchen windows.
They found themselves on a concrete walk which ran along the back of the house, parallel with it, to a garage at the other end. A gravel path at right angles to the concrete one led straight out into the rose-garden. Passing a garden shed, they had gone a little way down the gravel path when Ann spoke.
"Why did H.M. ask about that?"
It was as though he could feel the alert, searching intelligence working beside him. The scent of the rose-garden, without color yet with its suggestion of hot color, closed in around them.
"Is there something in grapefruit," she said, "that would be bad for — well, for lockjaw poisoning?"
"I don't know. Grapefruit's an acid. Or is it an alkaloid? Anyway, it's strong stuff."
Beyond the garden lay a stretch of open lawn with a few apple and plum trees. A gate in the high stone wall led out into the lane of grass. As he opened the gate, Ann turned round.
"Please. It's awfully kind of you to offer to go home with me. But I'd rather you didn't."
— He felt a rush of disappointment.
"It's not that I don't want you to," she told him quickly. "I'd love you to. It's just that there's something I've got to think out. Now. Something I can't talk about, even to you. And then maybe I shall be better company. You don't mind?"
"Of course not."
"Then good night." She extended her hand.
He took the hand. "Good night, and try not to worry too much. You're sure you'll be all right?"
"All right?" She half laughed at him, her eyes widening. "Why on earth shouldn't I be all right?"
"Nothing. Probably just a psychic fit like one of Frank Sharpless's. Pay no attention to it. But I'd hate anything to happen to you."
"You're nice," said Ann, after a pause, and pressed his hand.
Then she left him.
Courtney latched the iron gate, leaned over it, and glanced to his left up the lane. Its soft, unkempt grass deadened footsteps. On one side it was closed in by stone walls like one continuous wall, with the heads of fruit trees drooping above. On the other side, a line of elms closed it in as well, with a screen of bushes and stinging-nettles underneath. An apple had fallen here and there, to rot. It was a narrow little lane, in daytime haunted by wasps and at night full of an eerie oppressiveness.
Courtney watched her print frock move away from him and disappear.
He moved back from the gate, and felt in his pocket after his pipe. Hot tonight. Uncomfortably hot. He hadn't noticed this before.
Far away to his left, Leckhampton Hill rose against the moonlit sky, with the clay face of the quarry along its upper ridges. It was the beginning of the Cotswolds, and from it you could see Cheltenham like a gray toy town in the valley. Through Courtney's mind, incongruously, ran lines of verse her remembered having read in an anthology long ago…
Well, it wasn't November now. No; it was hot. Infernally hot, and the little grass-carpeted lane lay like a tunnel under the over-ripe fruit along the walls.
Phil Courtney filled and lighted his pipe. The little core of light from the match startled him, like a pigmy explosion, when he struck it. He turned back towards the house, realizing that when a match flame made you jump there must be something wrong with your nerves.
Subdued activity seemed to be pulsing in the house. He could tell that, even at this distance away.
He thought of Vicky Fane, pretty, healthy Vicky, with her jaw-muscles rigid as though in a cast, the skin drawn back in the agony of the risus sardonicus, lying on a bed which must not be disturbed or even creak in case it brought on the convulsions.
And he had taken a few more steps when he stopped. He heard, distantly, a sound which carried clearly on the still air in these still streets. It might have been a symbol. It was the hurrying clang of an ambulance-bell.
Simultaneously, from somewhere far up the grass lane, a woman began to scream.
Sparks and fire from his pipe spilled to the ground. He tried to knock it out, but thrust it into his pocket without thinking further of it. Subconscious fear returned. The screams, shrill and terrified, were choked off as though by a hand. Then silence, and one more scream.
His fingers were so clumsy that it seemed minutes before he could get the gate open. But he did not hesitate about the direction in which to go. He ran towards the left, his foot sending flying a spongy apple as he ran.
"Ann!" he called. "Ann!"
No reply.
"Ann!"
Somewhere ahead of him, he thought he heard a movement; then a pause of what can only be called awareness, and a tearing sound as though of bushes or stinging-nettles.
Only patches of moonlight penetrated the dank, spongy-soft tunnel. He was some hundred yards or more along the lane when he saw her, or at least a huddle in a print frock, leaning on hands and knees near the stone wall to the left. As she seemed to hear his footfalls swish in the grass, she scrambled up and began to run as though blindly in the other direction.
"Ann! It's me! Phil Courtney!"
The figure hesitated, stumbled, tottered, and then stood still. She was standing with her back to him, hardly recognizable in the splintered moonlight, when he reached her.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing. N-nothing!"
He could hear her thin, harsh breathing, shaking the words and stumbling on them with the accents of terror. He struck a match and held it up.
At first she refused to turn round and face him. When she did so, after the first match had burnt down and another was struck, she was smiling — but not very convincingly.
Her thin frock had been ripped down partly from the left shoulder, exposing the white silk slip and outlining the breast. A bruise was beginning to show on her neck under the left ear. Her thick hair, which she wore bound round her head, was slightly loosened; hairpins showed in it. There were grass-stains on her dress at the knees, and on the rumpled tan silk stockings underneath. She was bedraggled, grimy, obviously frightened — but trying to carry it off as though nothing had happened.
"Don't make a noise!" she urged. "I'm p-perfectly all right. Do put out that match. No, don't. Light another."
"But what—"
"It was someone. A man."
"What man?"
"I d-don't know." She passed the back of her hand across her forehead. "He caught me from behind and put his hand over my mouth. He — anyway, I fought loose and yelled. He got his hand on my mouth again. I think I bit his hand, but I'm not sure. When he heard you coming, he must have…"
"Where did he go?"
"A-across there, most likely. Towards the fields. It's open fields. No, don't! Don't! Come back!"
The darkness was dense, the stinging-nettles a formidable brush. Striking still another match, he held it above his head. There was nothing else here except the unkempt grass and a decayed plum or two.