Touch and Go (11 page)

It was all very well, but how was she going to convey the necessary information to Mr. Brown, or to whoever else the owl might be? She hadn't altogether excluded Ricky from her suspicions, and he was of the age for a practical joke of a rather clumsy kind. You can't just burst into a conversation about plays (this was Uncle Geoffrey, who seemed to have a passion for the theatre), picnics (Ricky, Lucilla, and Ran), and the horrid prevalence of jazz (Aunt Marina)—you can't just burst in on all these things with a bald “I slept in the blue room last night, but Lucilla's going to sleep there to-night.”

What made it all the more difficult was that Uncle Geoffrey and Aunt Marina were both addressing their conversation to Mr. Brown, who replied to them alternately. He seemed to be keeping his head, but it was not to be supposed that he could have much attention to spare for any observation that Sarah might make. Yet in the end it was he who gave her her chance. The three-cornered conversation languished. Uncle Geoffrey was appealed to by Lucilla, and Aunt Marina became occupied with the teapot. Whereupon Mr. Brown turned to Miss Trent and asked her if she were an early riser.

“There was such an uncommonly fine sunrise this morning.”

“Ah, that means rain,” said Geoffrey Hildred, striking in.

Mr. Brown persisted gently.

“Did you see it? The colours were really wonderful. But perhaps your windows look the wrong way?”

Here was Sarah's chance, but it was offered to her in such a way as to strengthen all her suspicions. She said, smiling sweetly,

“I might have seen it if I'd been awake.”

Geoffrey Hildred intervened again.

“Oh, hardly, I think. Your windows—”

“Oh, but I've been sleeping in Lucilla's room, which has a window to the east. I should have seen the sunrise beautifully if I hadn't been asleep. I'm the world's best sleeper, you know.”

Miss Marina looked across the table with a worried frown.

“But, my dear, wasn't your own room comfortable?”

“Oh yes, lovely,” said Sarah. “We just thought we'd change for a night or two. I'm going back to my own room to-night.”

“But, my dear—”

“It was too, too blue,” said Lucilla plaintively. “I felt a little pinkness would do me good. I was getting the blues all over—like the mould on a cheese. You know, they always say on the lids of things, ‘Mould does not impair contents,' but I don't like it terribly myself.”

Miss Marina looked completely bewildered.

“My dear child,
mould
? Are you feeling ill? Would you like me to send for Doctor Drayton?”

Ricky burst out laughing. It was rather a rude laugh. Sarah gave him a black mark for it. She didn't find herself liking Ricky Hildred very much. He mooned about after Lucilla, gave himself possessive airs towards her, and sulked when she snubbed him. It was quite obvious that he had no love for Miss Trent, and Miss Trent, who was unaccustomed to being disliked by young men, found herself a good deal irritated. She also considered him ill-bred, ill-mannered, and a dreep. She conveyed as much of this as it was possible to convey with a pair of finely expressive eyes, and devoted her attention to soothing Aunt Marina. In this she was ably assisted by Mr. Brown. If it hadn't been for her suspicions, she would have found herself liking him a good deal for his courteous manner and pleasant talk.

When they went up to bed that night, Lucilla came into the pink room with her and said,

“Are you really going to turn me out? I very nearly screamed at tea when you said we had changed rooms and were going to change back again. Why did you?”

“I want to find out who's trying to frighten you,” said Sarah.

That bright, strange flush came into Lucilla's face. She looked eagerly at Sarah, opened her mouth as if to speak, and then shut it again. After a moment she said,

“What are you going to do?”

Sarah shook her head.

“I didn't say I was going to do anything. When you're ready for bed, draw back the curtains, and stand up in the window with the light on. If anyone's watching, they'll know that you are there, and then we shall see whether the owl comes again or not.”

Lucilla averted her eyes. She was pale again. She said in a small, uneven voice, “It isn't an owl,” and ran quickly out of the room.

Sarah sat down and read for half an hour. Then she took off the dress which she had worn for dinner and put on a soft dark brown woolly suit and dark shoes and stockings. She switched off the pink-shaded light, opened the door a little, and looked out.

The passage was dark, but there was a thread of light under Lucilla's door, and when she came to the corner and looked round the turn, there was another bright line under Ricky Hildred's door.

She went back and sat in the dark for the most interminable time. Looking for threads of light is a game that more than one can play. If Ricky was playing tricks, he might want to be sure that she was asleep before he got going.

After what felt like several months Sarah looked out again.

There was no light under Lucilla's door.

There was no light under Ricky's door.

She took her shoes in her hand and went in her stocking feet to the head of the stair. It was as dark as it could be without being pitch dark. She could see the shade of the window that lighted the staircase, and she could discern the black well of the stair. She began to go down with her left hand on the baluster rail, slowly, one step at a time, until she came down into the empty hall. When she had passed the baize door which led to the kitchen premises she breathed more easily. She had planned to get out of the house by way of the servants' sitting-room, because if anyone was playing tricks outside Lucilla's window, she wanted to catch him at it. She only wished she had a better torch. She would have liked the one the burglar had been using at Holme Fallow—a really useful torch. She didn't know whether there would be a moon or not, but if there was one there was, and if there wasn't there wasn't—she couldn't do anything about it.

She groped her way to the door of the servants' room. As soon as she was inside she put on her torch. A warm flavour of cigarette smoke hung upon the air. Sarah wondered whether Mercer smoked, and what on earth Aunt Marina would say if she knew. She tried to picture Mercer with a cigarette, and failed. It simply wouldn't fit in with her neat fussy fronts, her discreet voice, and her air of keeping herself to herself. Watson smoked of course, and probably the cook. She thought Mercer would get a good deal of quiet pleasure out of disapproving of them and telling Miss Marina how much she disapproved. She laughed a little as she opened the window and got out over the ledge.

She drew the sash down to within about an inch of the sill, put her torch in her pocket, and began to make her way round the house.

CHAPTER XIV

The servants' wing was screened off by a shrubbery. Sarah blundered into a holly bush and pricked herself. Presently she was clear of the shrubs and moving along the terraced walk between the house and the garden. Uncle Geoffrey's window looked this way. Aunt Marina's windows looked this way, her bedroom first, and then her sitting-room, with the glazed-in balcony which marked the middle of the house. These had been Mrs. Raimond's rooms. She glanced up as she passed. The house stood black above her, and all the windows were blank and dark. A spare room came next, with its dressing-room. Then her own room. Then Lucilla's.

She came to the corner of the house, and hesitated. The window she wanted to watch was round the corner, looking east. There was an open gravelled space with a belt of trees and shrubs beyond. Gravel is the most abominable stuff to walk on if you want to move quietly. This particular gravel was of the malignantly crunchy kind, and she blenched at the idea of crossing it. Instead, she felt her way down the stone steps at the end of the terrace and took a narrow path which led to the back of the shrubbery.

It was while she was standing at the corner of the house making up her mind what to do next that she realized that there was a moon. The sky over the trees showed light, with a dappled mass of cloud banked up almost to the zenith, and she was only half way down the steps, when the cloud-wrack rifted, and the moon came out. The shadow of a tall yew lay black as ink across her way, and the terrace, the upper half of the steps, and she herself were all bathed in moonlight. Sarah jumped three steps, scrambled the rest, and plunged into the shadow of the yew. There must be a wind high up to move the clouds like that. It had been quite dark when she climbed out of the window. It was all rather disconcerting, and she found herself breathing quickly. She could have been seen on the steps from any of the windows which looked this way. Well, who was there to see her? Aunt Marina wouldn't be hanging out of her window at midnight, and Uncle Geoffrey looked as if he would be one of your strong, persevering sleepers. That rosy complexion and that bright blue eye didn't suggest a burning of the midnight oil. The spare room was empty, and there remained only Lucilla's windows and her own.

She began to make her way along the shrubbery path. It was a narrow path, heavily shaded by great mounds of yew, and holly, and laurustinus, but between the shadows there were disconcertingly bright patches. Sarah had to keep reminding herself that there was nothing criminal about walking in the garden at an unorthodox hour. She would really have given anything to run back to her room—“And you're not going to do that, Sarah my girl, so it's not the slightest use bleating.”

She pursued the path until she thought she had gone far enough, and then left it to cut through the shrubbery to a point on the edge of the gravel from which she reckoned she would get a good view of the east window of Lucilla's room. She passed between a bush of holly and a bush of bay, and at that moment the moonlight dimmed and went out. Where there had been black shadow and bright light there was only an even gloom. She moved through it with her hands stretched out before her and the oddest feeling that she was wading. It was as if she, and the trees, and the bushes had all been plunged into the sudden depths of some impalpable sea whose dark tides lifted and fell far, far above and out of reach. She could not see at all, she could only feel.

She moved on a step at a time with outstretched hands.

They felt smooth shiny leaves.

They felt rough bark.

They felt twigs.

They felt holly prickles.

They felt the cold, hard contour of a man's cheek.

Sarah stopped dead with the feel of it tingling all up her arm. Her lips parted in a gasp. And immediately before her in the darkness a voice said, “Please don't scream.”

Sarah gasped again. She recognized the voice, and she didn't recognize it. It was Mr. John Brown's voice. But Mr. John Brown had an American accent, and this voice had no accent at all. And as she steadied herself, it came to her that she had heard the voice in the dark before, when she had held up a car at the east gate of Holme Fallow and a stranger had let her have a fill-up of petrol for
The Bomb
. The voice said softly but firmly,

“It's all right, Miss Trent.”

Sarah was as angry as she had ever been in her life. How dared he lurk? How dared he tell her not to scream? She said in a whisper of passionate rage,

“What are you doing here?”

He had come nearer. He spoke from an inch or two above her left ear. He said,

“I might ask you that.”

Sarah was now quite sure that he was Mr. Brown, and almost as sure that he was the stranger whom she had stopped. She thought the American accent was creeping back again. Do you have an accent in a whisper? It wasn't really a whisper; it was a soft, uncarrying tone. Do you take an accent on and off again? Not unless you have something to conceal. If he hadn't something to conceal, why hadn't he said at once that they had met before? He had seen her all right, because she had stood right in the head-lights of his car. These thoughts whirled angrily through her mind. She said, quite low but with evident fury.

“You haven't answered me—and you've got to answer me. What are you doing here at this time of night hiding in the shrubbery?”

“Hiding?” said Mr. Brown.

“Lurking,” said Sarah. “And if I had screamed and roused the house, I should like to know what you would have had to say?”

“It would have been awkward,” confessed Mr. Brown, but there was no awkwardness in his voice, which sounded frankly amused and quite definitely American. “I'm very glad you didn't scream. You will remember that I asked you not to. I should like to congratulate you on your self-control.”

“Thank you,” said Sarah. “And now will you please tell me what you were doing here.”

There was the slightest of pauses before he said,

“Yes, I think I'll tell you. I think I should have told you to-morrow anyhow if there had been a good opportunity. If you don't mind, I'll begin at the beginning.”

“I don't mind where you begin,” said Sarah with her chin in the air.

Mr. Brown began to speak in a quiet, serious voice.

“This is Friday. I've been at the Cow and Bush since last Saturday. You, I believe, arrived on the Monday.”

“Well?”

“Well, on the Monday evening I was walking through the grounds of this house. Perhaps evening is not quite correct—it was as late as this or a little later.”

“What were you doing here?”

“Oh, just walking,” said Mr. Brown. “You know I have Mr. Hildred's permission to wander wherever I like.”

“I don't suppose he meant the Red House shrubberies at midnight.”

“I don't suppose he did. If you really want an explanation, I daresay I could find one, but it would be rather a waste of time. The actual point is that I was here on Monday night. I was standing a little nearer the house on the edge of the drive, when I heard a sound which attracted my attention. It was a sort of thud, and it was followed by a second thud, and by the sound of something scraping or clawing against glass. I looked up at the house and I saw a large black object moving against the end window of the first floor.”