She walked slowly down the drive lest she should displace a stone or break a dry branch under her feet and be heard by Rosamond or-a much more dreadful thought-Aunt Lydia. She went slowly. There was no sound, and no one waked.
Going over the road was like crossing a river. She waded into it and swam, and climbed out over the stile on the other side and into Mr. Johnson’s field. There was a footpath close along under the hedge, and if everyone was asleep, there wouldn’t be anyone to see her if she made patterns on the ground with the torch and danced to keep them company.
At the corner of the field the path turned away from the road, and two fields farther on there was another stile coming out upon Vicarage Lane. Jenny switched off her torch, crouched down by the hedge, and listened. There wasn’t a sound of anything at all except that soft air moving overhead. This was where she had had her dream last night. She had crawled right up to the stile and looked through. And there had been sounds in the dream-people moving-and the brightness of a torch upon the sack. She hadn’t really seen what was under the sack. She hadn’t seen the fingers of a hand. Not last night-oh, no, not last night. It was only tonight when she was asleep in her bed that the hand had come into the dream.
And now there wasn’t anything at all. That was what she had come here for-to know for certain-to see for herself with her very own eyes that there wasn’t anything here. There hadn’t ever been anything. It had all been nothing but a dream. That was the worst of having a lot of imagination. You had to have it, or you couldn’t make up stories that anyone would want to read. But sometimes the stories made themselves up and came banging into your mind whether you wanted them there or not. This had been a horrid one and she hadn’t wanted it at all. She wanted to push it out and lock the door so that it couldn’t come back. Something lying on the grass at the edge of Vicarage Lane -something that was covered with a sack, and a torch shining down on it. It wasn’t her torch. Two people there in the lane, whispering together. One of them had a torch, and the beam shone down on the sack-
She made herself get up and put on her torch and look over the stile. There wasn’t anybody there. There hadn’t ever been anybody there. She made herself get over the stile and walk along the grass edge. Mrs. Maple’s cottage was behind her on the other side of the lane. It looked like a dark hump breaking the line of the hedge. The Selbys’ bungalow was before her at the end of the lane. After that there was only a footpath. She sent the beam of the torch along the grass to make a little light path for her feet. She walked on this path right up to the Selbys’ gate, and then she turned and went back. There wasn’t anything lying at the edge of the lane. There wasn’t anything to dream about any more. She could go home and get into bed and sleep. She set the round light at the end of the beam skipping and dancing. Everything inside her felt light and happy.
She had almost reached the stile when the dancing light picked up a golden spark. It was like a little gold point pricking up through the pale moony beam. It was there, and it was gone again. She flicked the light to and fro, but she couldn’t find it. She tried again, and she saw part of a little round thing like the half of an orange, or an apple, or the moon before it is full. Only much, much smaller. Just a little round thing pushed down into the grass and the mud at the side of the lane-a little thing no bigger than her thumbnail. She wanted to leave it lying there and get over the stile and run all the way home, but something wouldn’t let her.
She stooped down and picked it up. There was mud on it, but it wasn’t broken. It was a round glass bead, the colour dim in the light of the torch, but she knew very well that it was a bright sky blue and that there were little flakes of gold and silver mixed with the glass. It was one of the gold flakes which had been caught in the beam like a spark. It was dull and dirty now in the palm of her hand, but she had seen it too often not to know what it would look like if it was clean. She had been seeing it for more than two years, day in, day out, with a lot more like it on a string round Miss Holiday’s neck.
CHAPTER 20
Florrie was a quarter of an hour late with the early morning tea next day. She brought it in with the air of one who serves a funeral feast and said,
“If it’s Mrs. Maple’s well, she never done it herself.”
Mrs. Merridew was awake but not so much awake as not to find this both startling and enigmatical. As the curtains went rattling back, she blinked at the light and said,
“Mrs. Maple’s well? What do you mean, Florrie?”
It was at this point that Miss Silver came in through the door which Florrie had left open behind her. She wore her blue dressing-gown and the black slippers with the blue pompons, and, as always, she was immaculately neat. Her slight murmur of apology was lost in Florrie’s loud repetition.
“If it’s Mrs. Maple’s well, she never done it. That’s what I’ve said, and that’s what I’ll hold to, Melbury police, or London police, or anyone. She’d as soon have flown over the moon, and you can’t get me from it.”
Miss Silver had the advantage of Mrs. Merridew. In the light of last night’s conversation with Frank Abbott, she was able to clarify Florrie’s remark.
“Mrs. Maple’s well is being investigated by the police?”
Florrie gave a jerky nod.
“That’s what I said. And she never done it.”
Mrs. Merridew was sitting up in bed. She reached under her pillow for the old fleecy shawl which had served her for so many years and survived so many washings that it was now the colour of old ivory. She said in a horrified voice.
“Oh, surely no one could suspect Mrs. Maple!”
Florrie said angrily,
“There’s no knowing what the police will say! But it was Miss Holiday I had in my mind. If she went down that well, it wouldn’t be because she threw herself in-no one’s going to make me believe that! She may be there, or she may not, poor thing, but she won’t be there without someone put her there- and I’m not saying who that someone might be. And I’d like to know what good the police are! They didn’t find poor Maggie, did they? All they could say was she’d run off to London -and anyone that knew her could tell them different to that! And as likely as not, they’ll be saying the same about poor Miss Holiday. What would Maggie go to London for? I say she never, nor Miss Holiday neither! And when they find her murdered somewhere, maybe they’ll believe me!” She marched out of the room and shut the door with something that was very nearly a bang.
Mrs. Merridew was arranging the shawl about her shoulders. When she had finished doing this she picked up her cup of tea and said in an agitated manner,
“You don’t really think that poor thing-oh dear, I never did like wells! Maud, you don’t suppose-”
Miss Silver said with composure,
“We have no grounds for supposition at present. If there is a well in Mrs. Maple’s garden, the police would, I think, feel obliged to investigate it.”
Mrs. Merridew sipped from her cup. There were tears in her eyes, and the tea was certainly not hot enough to account for them. She said,
“Oh dear!”
The two ladies were both dressed and downstairs, when Frank Abbott walked up the path to the front door and used the knocker. Miss Silver, meeting him on the threshold, took it upon herself to conduct him into the drawing-room, Mrs. Merridew being already in the dining-room and about to make the tea. As he shut the door behind them Frank said,