Blindfold (9 page)

She got out of bed, rummaged in her drawer, and got back again with the beads in her hand. She began to count from the clasp, slipping her fingers from one smooth bead to another in the dark. Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two … fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two … a hundred … two hundred and fifty … two hundred and ninety-five, ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight—it was much better than counting sheep—ninety-nine … two hundred and ninety-nine … three hundred.…

There were three hundred beads in her string … three hundred beads … three hundred pearls.… Flossie was asleep, with the string of three hundred beads clasped tightly under the bed-clothes.

Kay Moore woke in the darkness of her basement bedroom at 16 Varley Street. She woke with a start, and she was afraid, but she didn't know why she was afraid or what had waked her. She thought it was a sound, but she didn't know what sort of sound.

She lit her candle and looked round the room with relief. It was a very ugly room, and in the daytime very dark, but it contained nothing more frightening than a large window which looked upon the area, and the battered washstand, chest of drawers, bedstead and chair which furnished it. The bedstead was of chipped enamelled iron, and the rest of the furniture had once been painted a hideous shade of mustard yellow, but it was now so dirty and so old that the colour was gone away into a general ochreish drab. The pattern of the linoleum on the floor had long since been worn out by the feet of all the girls who, according to Mrs Green, had come to No. 16 and left at their month. Kay looked round this dreadful little room and was reassured. There was nothing that could have startled her.

She slipped out of bed, opened the door a little way, and looked out into the passage. There were the stairs going up, the kitchen door opposite, Mrs Green's door on the same side as her own, and the door leading into the area at the end of the passage on her right. From Mrs Green's room there came the sound of Mrs Green's deep and steady snoring. But it wasn't Mrs Green who had waked her; she felt quite sure of that. It was some sharp little sound, and she had heard it half in and half out of her sleep, but she couldn't quite remember what it was.

She took her candle, opened the kitchen door, and looked in. Warmth and a smell of cooking came to meet her. The fire was low in the range, but not dead. The air was sleepy-still. A mouse turned bright inquisitive eyes upon her from the white-washed hearth. The sound had not come from here.

She shut the door and looked doubtfully at the stairs. Suddenly she saw that the candle flame was shaking. Her hand was shaking. And the reason it shook was because she really did think that the sound had come from the stairs—from the top of the stairs. It was the thought that she must go up the stairs and open the door at the top which made Kay's hand shake. Yet she knew that she couldn't go back to bed without going up those stairs and opening that door.

She began very slowly to go up one step at a time with the candle in her left hand and her right hand following the wall. When she got to the top, she stopped. There was the door right in front of her—an ordinary painted door with an old-fashioned wooden knob. Kay looked at the knob. The candle-light shook.

At last she put out her right hand, took hold of the wooden handle and turned it back as far as it would go, pushing outwards so as to open the door.

But the door didn't open.

Kay's heart began to beat with a sudden violence. The door didn't open because it was locked on the other side. It was open when they went to bed, but since then someone had come down and locked it. Someone? Nurse Long. There wasn't anyone else. That was the sound she had heard—the little sharp, clicking sound of the key being turned in the lock. She and Mrs Green were locked in on the basement floor. Why should anyone want to lock them in?

Kay hadn't any answer to that. She went back to bed, blew out her candle, and lay down in the dark. She was shivering a little. She didn't like the feel of 16 Varley Street, and she didn't like that locked door at the top of the stairs. She had said her prayers before she went to sleep, but she said them again now. At the end she said, “I don't like this place very much, but You can keep me safe—can't you? Please do, because I haven't anywhere else to go. Amen.”

It wasn't Mrs Moore who had taught her to say her prayers. It was Eleanor Clayton. There was one halcyon period in Kay's life when for six months she was under Eleanor Clayton's care. Mrs Moore, taken suddenly ill, had had to go to the hospital, and much against her will had accepted her next-door neighbour's offer to take care of Kay. It was to be for a month only, but the month stretched to six, and for that time Kay had a family and a home. She was twelve years old, and she had never had a home before or been allowed to play with other children. Aunt Rhoda demanded all her time, her attention, her very thoughts.

The six months passed like a flash, but they influenced her profoundly. She gave her whole heart to the Clayton family. Kitty was only a year older than herself, gay and pretty; George a cadet at Sandhurst, a jolly, teasing boy; and Miles just down from Oxford. As for Eleanor the mother, loving idealistic and romantic, she opened to Kay all the worlds from which her strange upbringing had debarred her.

At the end of six months Mrs Moore returned, more gaunt of frame, more hard of feature, and more fiercely possessive than before. She had no gratitude for the care which Kay had received, and when the child clung silently to Eleanor in a farewell which tore them both, her jealousy broke out in a frantic scene. Kay's last recollection was of Eleanor Clayton, white-lipped but still gently courteous in the face of Aunt Rhoda's crazy reproaches. Then the Eden gates were shut and they went back to the wandering wilderness life again. But Eleanor Clayton remained as a standard, an inspiration, a gracious presence which was never quite removed. When, years afterwards, she heard that Eleanor was dead, Kay had very little sense of loss.

Now, lying in the dark, her prayer said, her thoughts quieted, she went back over those six lovely months again. She and Kitty reading aloud by turns. Eleanor singing in the twilight. George putting a key down her back to make her jump. And Miles swinging her up and up in the swing which was fastened to an apple-tree. It was very good of Miles, because he was so much older. The sunshine, and the apple-blossom, and a bit of blue sky began to blot out the darkness of the basement room. The swing went to and fro, to and fro.… It was very kind of Miles.… Sunshine … apple-blossom … blue … Kay swung off into a dream.

Lila Gilmore woke for the space between one happy dream and the next. It was only a drowsy waking as she turned a little in bed. Nice dream … nice sleep … nice, happy sleep … lovely sleep.… Freddy wasn't angry … please don't let him ever be angry … my Freddy … lovely to know that if she put out her hand, it would touch him … Freddy … quite near—always … Freddy … Lila slipped deep into her dream again.

CHAPTER XII

Neither the Wednesday nor the Thursday post brought any answer to the advertisements in which Miles Clayton had appealed for information about Mrs Agnes Smith and her former maid, Ada. Miles sent the advertisements in again, and wrote a long letter to James Macintyre in New York giving him the result of his preliminary enquiries. He didn't say anything about Flossie Palmer or the house in Varley Street. Perhaps it was on this account that he thought about them the more. Flossie's story was such a very, very odd one, and perhaps the oddest thing about it was that it seemed to him that it rang true. That is to say, it did seem to him that Flossie thought she was speaking the truth. He thought her intelligent, and he thought her honest, and he was absolutely dead sure that she was frightened. Whether she had any real cause to be frightened was another matter. She might have had a nightmare, or she might be subject to delusions, or somebody might have played her a trick. He discarded the possibility that she might be playing a trick on him, because he did feel so absolutely sure that she was frightened. He did not think that any merely acted fear would have touched his own thought and given him that momentary feeling of dread. It had gone over him like a shiver and passed, but the chill which had caused it was the authentic cold of fear. He thought he would go and have a look at Varley Street after lunch.

He came into the bottom end of it as the clock of St Barnabas' struck three. It was a quiet street of dingy houses whose brickwork, now almost black, had been red and fresh in a bygone Georgian day. It had a very decided air of having come down in the world. None of the brass was very bright, and most of the paint was shabby. The windows kept their secrets behind close-hung curtains of muslin, lace, or net.

He walked slowly up the street, noticing as he did so that the numbers began at 70 on his own side and 71 on the other. It certainly was a very quiet street. No traffic seemed to pass, and so far the only living creature he had seen was the tortoiseshell cat which dozed with folded paws upon the step of No. 69.

When he had gone a little way he crossed over so as to be able to observe No. 16 from the opposite side. There was really nothing at all to mark it out. The paint was perhaps a shade fresher and the brass certainly cleaner than the paint and the brass on either side, and it had old-fashioned lace curtains on the ground floor and the floor above it, as against cream net curtains at No. 14, and blue net curtains at No. 18.

He walked to the end of the street and came slowly back. The windows on the first floor would be the drawing-room windows—two tall windows looking down upon the street. According to Flossie, the room ran right through to the back in the L shape common to London houses, and just inside the L, facing a door which gave upon the passage, was the mirror in its broad gilt frame—the mirror which had become a gaping hole in the moment when she turned her back upon it to adjust the curtain of the window which looked out to the back. A gaping hole—and a man's head—and a clawing hand. And another man, with cruel staring eyes. An incredibly fantastic tale.

The gaping hole in the left-hand wall of the L as you faced its windows—well, that would mean a gap in the wall between No. 16 and No. 14. He thought it would be interesting to know who lived at No 14.

He had reached No. 7 on his side of the street, when a girl ran up the area steps of No. 16 and came out upon the pavement. She wore a dark blue coat and skirt and a little grey cap and scarf. She was, in fact, Kay Moore, and her heart was dancing joyfully because this was her afternoon out and the sun was shining in a pale winter-blue sky.

Kay hadn't really got accustomed to having an afternoon out. When you are a mother's help you take the children for a walk, but you don't have an afternoon to yourself—at least Kay had never had one. But a house-parlour-maid has a whole afternoon and evening, and every other Sunday. Kay's heart danced whenever she thought about it.

She stood on the pavement and looked up and down the street, partly because she wasn't quite sure which way she wanted to go, and partly because it was so nice to be out. Sometimes the basement smelt of mould, and sometimes it smelt of mice, and sometimes it smelt of food, but it always smelt of something. It was lovely to stand on the pavement and snuff up some perfectly smellless air. It was the first time she had been out since she came. If she turned to the right, it would, according to Mrs Green, take her up into the square. If she turned to the left, it would take her down to the shops. Kay decided to turn to the left, because where there are shops there are buses, and she meant to begin her afternoon out by going for a ride on the top of a bus. She would go as far as the bus went, and then she could come back and go to a cinema. She turned her back on the square and began to walk, not hurrying, because she had all the afternoon and evening before her and she didn't want to hurry over a single moment of it.

She had just passed No. 18, when a man came up beside her and lifted his hat. He said, “How do you do, Miss Moore?” and Kay looked at him with a puzzled frown. She could not remember that she had ever seen him before, and she had an instant and very strong conviction that she didn't want to see him again. Yet he would have passed for an agreeable man—well dressed, well mannered, and well enough to look at. Kay couldn't have said why she didn't like him, but she hadn't the least doubt about it. He had rather light eyes, but you don't really like or dislike people because of the colour of their eyes. Or do you? Kay wasn't sure. But she was quite sure that she wanted to get rid of the man and begin her afternoon out. She looked at him with a sort of gentle severity and said,

“You seem to know my name, but I don't know you.”

The man fell into step with her as she walked.

“That is because it is such a long time since we met. I used to know you when you were a little girl. I knew your aunt, Mrs Moore.”

Something inside Kay said, “That's true—he knew Aunt Rhoda,” but it didn't make her any better pleased with his company. She stood still and said,

“I'm afraid I don't remember you at all.”

On the other side of the street Miles had reached No. 17. He saw the man come up with Kay and speak to her, and he saw Kay flush and walk on. He thought she was very pretty, and that she didn't look as if she were accustomed to knocking about London by herself.

And then all of a sudden he thought he would cross the road. He wasn't quite sure, but it looked as if the girl was trying to get rid of the man and not finding it any too easy. He didn't want to interfere, but if the fellow was being a bit above himself, it might have a sobering effect to discover that he hadn't got the street to himself. He came up therefore on the outside of the pavement and set a pace which kept him a couple of yards behind them. Almost at once he heard Kay say “No, thank you,” and a thrill of surprise ran through him, not at the words, but at the voice of this girl who had come running up the area steps of No. 16. He had liked Flossie's little Cockney voice because it told him that he was in London again, but this was another matter. A pretty voice. But lots of voices are pretty. This one had quality and breeding. The three words had a young dignity, and the turn of her head matched them.