“Someone tied a string across the stairs. Then a bell rang in the hall. I thought it was the telephone, but it could have been an alarm clock or any electric bell. I was running to answer it, and the cord caught me just above the ankle. The mark is still there. I had my hand on the balustrade, or I couldn’t have saved myself. If I had gone down head first upon those flagstones I should probably have been killed. Don’t you think so?”
Henry looked bewildered.
“My dear Lucy!”
“Don’t you think so, Henry?”
He had taken up the fine steel instrument. He laid it down again and flexed his fingers. Perhaps they had closed upon it with a cramping pressure. He said,
“Someone must have left a piece of string lying about and you caught your foot-Nicholas-or Mrs. Hubbard. Very careless-very dangerous. I remember in Constantinople -”
She said abruptly,
“This is Hazel Green. The string was garden twine. It wasn’t left lying about. It was stretched across the stairs and fastened to the balusters. It wasn’t there when I went to bed. After that there were only two other people in the house-you and Nicholas. I want to know which of you tied that string across the stairs.”
“Lucy-”
“One of you put it there. If it wasn’t you, it was Nicholas. If it wasn’t Nicholas, it was you. I want to know why.”
“You don’t know what you are saying.”
“I ought to-I’ve had all day to think about it. Someone tried to kill me.”
“Lucy, you can’t be well! Don’t you think if you were to go to bed-perhaps a cup of tea and an aspirin-”
All at once the fear touched her again. He was just Henry messing about with his specimens. But some of the things in those little bottles were poison-A cup of tea and an aspirin- She heard him say,
“You’d much better get to bed. I’ll make you some tea and bring it up.”
There was concern in his voice. Concern about what? She didn’t know. He had never made a cup of tea for anyone else in his life. He forgot his own meals unless he was called to them. She remembered picking up a book at a railway bookstall, and it was called Death in the Cup. The row of little bottles swam before her eyes. She took hold of the edge of the table and stood up.
“Yes, I’ll go to bed. I can’t sleep. I won’t have any tea-it might keep me awake-I’ll just get to bed.”
But on her way to the door she turned.
“Why is Nicholas so late?”
Henry Cunningham was already adjusting his glasses, picking up the long sliver of steel. He said vaguely,
“Nicholas-he’s often later than this-”
“But he telephoned from Dalling Grange and said he had been kept.”
“Oh, well, he will have gone on somewhere.”
He bent forward over the table, and she went out of the room.
As she stood in the hall, it came to her that she had only to lift the telephone receiver and she could speak to anyone she liked-to Mrs. Stubbs at the Holly Tree-to Marian Merridew and her friend, that little Miss Silver-to Lydia Crewe. She could say what she chose to say-that she was ill, that she was nervous-that she had had a fall, a fainting fit. None of them lived more than a few hundred yards away-any one of them would come… Would Lydia? She turned her back on that, and in the next moment on all of it. To make herself the talk of the place- to rouse a friend from her sleep because she couldn’t sleep herself? It was too late, much too late for that. The church clock struck midnight as she went slowly up to her room.
CHAPTER 34
Miss Silver, conscious of having neglected a kind hostess, did her best to make amends. A good deal to her relief, she found on returning to the drawing-room that Mrs. Merridew had fallen into a comfortable doze from which she did not immediately awake. When at last she opened her eyes and sat up she really had no idea of the time, and it was not until quite half an hour later that she looked at the clock and exclaimed. Even after that there was some lingering conversation. By the time the round of the house had been made and doors and windows tested it was well on the way towards midnight.
Refreshed by her sleep, Mrs. Merridew was pleasurably shocked. She really didn’t know when she had been up so late. From an irresponsible past she recalled an illicit feast in the dormitory at school, and how Cecilia had so narrowly escaped being caught.
“Do you remember, Maud?”
Miss Silver remembered-disapproval tempered by indulgence.
“It is all a very long time ago.”
Mrs. Merridew sighed.
“Yes-I suppose so. But sometimes it doesn’t seem as if it were. We haven’t really changed very much, have we-any of us? Not in ourselves. Of course we don’t look the same-but then you change so gradually that you don’t notice it. But I really should have known you anywhere-and Cecilia too, though we used to call her Cissie and she has grown rather stout.”
The good-nights finally said, Miss Silver closed her bedroom door and prepared to embark upon the settled routine of undressing. Advancing to the bedside table, she took off the watch which she wore pinned to the left-hand side of her dress, wound it, and laid it down. The next step should have been the removal of the hair-net which she wore in the day and its replacement by the much stronger sort which she assumed at night. No matter at what hour alarums and excursions might occur-and Miss Silver’s experience had included some of a quite violent nature-she had never yet been seen with a single hair out of place. The arrangement at night would be different, the plaits a little tighter, but order and neatness would prevail. Tonight she had got as far as putting up a hand to remove the hairpins which controlled the net, but at that point something stopped her. The hand came down again, the hairpins remained where they were.
She stood where she was for several minutes and became immersed in thought. It might be Marian Merridew’s talk about the old days when a rule could still be a challenge, or it might be something a good deal more important than that. There was a sense of uneasiness, of urgency. She looked at the comfortable bed which was waiting for her, and knew that it could offer her no rest until this disturbance in her thought was quieted. It came to her that there was a not too difficult course which might afford relief. Marian Merridew was not at all deaf, but she did not possess the acute hearing that Miss Silver herself enjoyed. Her bedroom looked to the back of the house. It had a delightful view of the garden. There would be no difficulty about a careful descent of the stairs or the opening of the front door. It would, in fact, be perfectly possible to leave the house without having to embark upon an explanation of her movements.
At this point in her meditations Miss Silver picked up her watch and pinned it on. After which she assumed her coat, her second best hat, and a pair of outdoor shoes. Fastening the aged fur tippet, cherished companion of many winters, firmly about her neck, she extinguished the light in her bedroom and found her way down the stairs and out of the house without making any sound at all. The air was cold, but there was no sign of rain. Miss Silver felt gratitude for her tippet and for the fact that the night was fine, but even if it had been raining heavens hard, she knew now that her errand would have taken her out in it. Before she could sleep she must at any rate walk past the Dower House and look up at the windows. She did not know what she was to do when she got there. By now the house should all be dark. Darkness did not mean safety. A phrase from the Scriptures slipped into her mind-“They that are drunken are drunken in the night.” There was more than one sort of drunkenness. Men could be drunk with pride, with passion, or with power. They could be drunken with hatred, or with the lust of gain.