Down Under (14 page)

He reached what he took to be the main front, and considered ways and means. Hopeless to expect such a godsend as an open window. Caretakers don't leave windows open after dark on a cold November night. It is easy enough to get into a house if you don't mind breaking a window, but he would have preferred that his breaking should not be of this technical kind. Also he had a horrid feeling that there might be shutters inside the glass.

In the end he had to chance it. He selected the smallest window, wrapped his coat about a hand, and stove it in. The falling glass made a most daunting noise, and he remembered too late that all the best burglars use brown paper spread with treacle. Anyhow there was nothing to be done about it now except wait and see whether Mrs Edwards had heard the crash. He consoled himself with the reflection that it was very improbable, as the kitchen was miles away and his guilty conscience had certainly made the most of the noise.

After letting the longest ten minutes on record tick away he enlarged the hole gingerly and climbed in. He had thought of it as dark outside, but it was a great deal darker here, in a room whose size he could not guess. He had expected it to be small, but it didn't feel small. There was a wooden floor under his feet, but his second step took him bumping into a large upholstered chair, and he realised that the room was furnished. It was quite irrational, but it surprised him. He had somehow expected the deserted house to be empty too—just a shell, with bare, echoing walls and stripped rooms.

Nothing stripped about this room anyhow. You couldn't move a foot without barging into something—the glass front of a cabinet, a damp billowing sofa back, the sharp corner of a chair. And there were tables everywhere. He was no sooner clear of one than he was into another. Lord—what a room! He supposed it was the drawing-room, and his little window a mere accessory to the big ones he had rejected, but it felt more like a jumble sale. By good luck he came to the door without knocking anything over, and opened it a crack at a time upon a pitch-dark hall. There was no sound of any kind, no stirring of the cold air, no point of light. The place smelt of cobwebs, and mildew, and dust. It occurred to him that Mrs Edwards was no housewife.

He left the shelter of the doorway with reluctance, and found the hall large, and bare of any covering under foot. A board creaked, and the sound seemed to ring through the house. Then his groping hand touched the newel-post of the stair, and as it did so he saw it, and the line of the baluster running upwards, and the other newel the width of the stair away.

Light—light shining down, very faint, but getting brighter. And not only light, but sound—the sound of footsteps somewhere overhead, coming nearer. The stair ran up some dozen steps and divided, going away to right and left of a wide landing. The light came from the left. Someone was coming along a corridor towards the stair, someone who was carrying a light, and who almost certainly intended coming down into the hall. The light was like candle-light, very faint and flickering. It served to show him where he was—too far from the half open drawing-room door to get back to safety there. He retreated along the side of the staircase as the footsteps began to descend.

Every properly constituted stair has a cupboard under it—but of course the door might be on the other side. He had begun to think that his luck had petered out, when his hand found the knob it was feeling for. A door swung in, and Oliver followed it, praying inwardly that the place wasn't a receptacle for empty bottles or old fire-irons. It seemed to be quite empty. He left the door ajar, and waited for the steps and the candle-light to go past overhead.

That was just where they were now, right over his head, only instead of passing they stood still, and there came to him through the chink which he had left the most undoubted sound of a sob. And then Florrie's voice whispering, “I don't want to—oh, I don't want to.”

It surely wasn't Florrie with the candle. He had only just time to feel surprised, when another voice said, “Come along now, there's a duck—Auntie'll be waiting tea.”

Oliver pricked up his ears, because he knew this voice very well. If he wasn't mistaken, this was Fanny Garstnet. That is to say, she had been Fanny Garstnet, and as he didn't know her married name, he thought of her as Fanny Garstnet still. She had rather a nice voice, round and full, with none of Mabel's finnicky accent. Well, here was Fanny trying to pacify her little half-sister, and to judge by the bump he had just heard, Florrie had sat herself down on the stair and was refusing to budge.

“Oh, Florrie, you promised you'd be a good girl.”

He heard another of those sobs.

“If I'm good, you'll go away.”

“Oh, Florrie!”

Florrie drummed with her heels on the stair.

“When I'm good, I don't get nothin'. I cried and cried and cried, and then you came. You wouldn't have come if I hadn't. If I'm good, you'll go away again.” Then, with a change of voice, “Oh, Fanny, I
want
you.”

From the sounds above him Oliver thought that Fanny had sat down on the stair and taken Florrie on her lap. It sounded as if she were rocking her to and fro.

“Flo darling, I can't stay. I'm—wanted.”

“Who wants you? I want you too. Is it—Miss Rose Anne?”

The name came in a whisper. The stair creaked. Fanny Garstnet said in a hurry,

“Florrie, whatever put such a thing in your head? You mustn't say things like that.”

She made a movement to get up, but Florrie began to sob again.

“If you go away, I'll cry, an' I'll go on cryin' all day, an' all night, an' all of next day till you come back again, so I will.”

“Oh, come along with you and have your tea! There's Ernie waiting for his, and me waiting for mine, and Auntie waiting for hers.”

Florrie gave another sob.

“I don't care about Auntie—I don't care about whether she gets any tea.”

“Well, if that isn't naughty!” said Fanny, but he heard the sound of a kiss. And then quite suddenly there was a torrent of sobs, and Florrie's voice gasping out,

“Don't let her—open—the black hole an'—put me in! Oh, Fanny, don't let her!”

Fanny was kissing the child and petting her.

“Why, duck, of course she wouldn't. Whatever made you think of such a thing?”

But Florrie's sobs increased.

“Oh, Fanny—she said it—she did. I cried—in the night—like I told you—an' she came—an' I said it was acause of the black hole—what I saw—up home—an' I thought they'd put Miss Rose Anne in it—an' she said if I didn't hold my noise—I'd find there was a—black hole here too—an' if I ever said a word—about Miss Rose Anne—they'd put me in it—oh,
Fanny!
”

Horror touched Oliver's heart with ice. The broken words and their possible meaning came into his mind and froze there. A black hole—a grave—Rose Anne—hidden away—buried.… The dreadful word murder spoke itself in the cold places of thought.

Then Fanny Garstnet's kind, comfortable voice:

“Honey duck, hush! What are you talking about? Miss Rose Anne isn't in any black hole.”

“Oh, Fanny—but she is! I seed the hole! That's what—frightened me—only—I wouldn't—never say. Whisper an' I'll—tell you—” Her voice went away and he lost it. That is, he lost the words. The faint sound of sobbing breath went on, and every now and then he heard Fanny say,

“No, lovey,” and, “You didn't,” and then again, “Oh lord, Florrie, don't you say such things!”

Oliver stood in the dark and listened. He knew now why he had come to this house. It was to hear a death sentence—not his, but Rose Anne's. And faintly among his frozen thoughts there rang the tune which had been ringing there for hours: “Last night as I lay on my pillow … I dreamed that my Bonnie was dead—”

Overhead Florrie's frightened murmurings rose again into words.

“She said—she'd put me—in it—Oh, Fanny, she did!”

“Well, she won't,” said Fanny Garstnet with decision. “What an idea, to be sure! Now look here, honey duck, can you keep a secret?”

Florrie gave a great sob.

“Yes—I can.”

There was the sound of a kiss.

“You always was a close little thing. If I tell you something, will you promise you won't tell no one at all—never? Cross your heart?”

“Cross my heart, I won't, Fanny.”

“Well then, come close and I'll whisper.”

Oliver pushed back the cupboard door and leaned out. He'd got to hear what Fanny Garstnet was whispering now—he'd got to hear it. He heard her say close to Florrie's ear,

“So you see it's nothing to be frightened of—only a door. Why, Ernie and I come through it regular. We come through it today. It's nothing to be frightened of, honey duck, only you mustn't say a word, not ever.”

Florrie gave a deep satisfied sigh.

“You're sure it's not a hole?”

“Ssh—ssh! Don't you talk about it—ever!
Mind!”

“Cross my heart, I won't,” said Florrie. She gave another sigh. Then, in a voice that was suddenly brisk and interested, “Will there be currant buns for tea?”

Oliver heard Fanny laugh.

“Well, his mother does make them for Ernie, but he'll eat them all if we don't hurry. Ernie's terrible hard on buns.”

CHAPTER XVII

The steps died away and the light faded. Oliver came out of his cupboard and leaned against the wall of the stair. His mind, which had been cold with horror, was suddenly alive and alert again, with every thought centred on what he had just heard Fanny Garstnet say.

He went over it word by word. Florrie had seen something that frightened her at Hillick St Agnes, and that was why she had been sent away. She had seen what she called a black hole. Perhaps this was the original fright which had started the screaming fits that only Rose Anne could pacify. Perhaps there had been more than one occasion when she had seen something which she wasn't meant to see. She described it as a black hole. She associated it with Rose Anne. And she was dithering with terror because Mrs Edwards—he supposed that “Auntie” was Mrs Edwards—had threatened her with the same thing here. And then Fanny—he did his best to recall exactly what it was that Fanny had said.… She was trying to comfort Florrie, and she said, “It's nothing to be frightened of—only a door.” And she was speaking about Florrie's black hole. There was nothing else she could have been speaking about. And it wasn't a hole at all—it was a door. A door—where? Florrie's original fright had been at Hillick St Agnes, and the black hole that had frightened her—the black hole which was really a door—must be in the Angel, because Florrie had said “Up home.” But then Fanny said, “Ernie and I come through it regular. We come through it today.” Ernie and Fanny were here at Oakham Place, and Mrs Edwards, who was “Auntie” and seemed to be Ernie's mother, had threatened Florrie with a black hole here. It must be this black hole which was the door through which Ernie and Fanny came “regular.”

Ernie … One of Mr Smith's ravelled threads came suddenly to his hand, because Ernie was short for Ernest, and Amos Rennard's nephew, the young motor mechanic who had disappeared between Boulogne and Folkestone, was Ernest Rennard, and he was a widowed mother's son. Another thread fell into place beside the first. Mr Smith had suggested that Matthew Garstnet's sister-in-law Mrs Edwards was really not so much
his
sister-in-law as his sister Mrs Amos Rennard's sister-in-law, widow of the Old Fox's brother Joseph and mother of the disappearing Ernest. This would make her “Auntie” to Fanny and Florrie Garstnet in a family as clannish as the Rennards were supposed to be. Had Mr Smith mesmerised him with all these threads which kept leading to the Rennards? Or was it true that it was the Rennards who had carried off Rose Anne? He didn't know. He only knew that something had brought him to this house, and that behind reason and argument lay the deep instinct that here there was a clue to what had become of her. Florrie's black hole—Fanny's door—must be found. A hole—into what? A door—leading where? He was here to discover these things, and it came to him that two men had died on this trail already, and that Mr Smith had not been speaking lightly when he had said, “I expect you to do all that any man can do who is willing to take his life in his hands.” It seemed ridiculous to think of extreme and imminent danger in a house tenanted by a couple of women and a child, but he had a stronger conviction of it than he had ever had before in his life. Ernie—to be sure there was Ernie, the young motor mechanic with a passion for currant buns. He did not sound at all sinister, but the sense of danger persisted and increased. He arrived at the certainty that he would need all his resource and all his courage if he was to find Rose Anne.

He moved across the hall very cautiously in the direction in which the light had disappeared.

There was a door in the far corner, difficult to find because the walls were panelled and the door felt like any other panel until his hand encountered the knob. He need not have been so careful about opening it, as there was a baize swing-door on the other side of it, horrid and damp to the touch and the stuff peeling off. What sort of place was this, and what except hard necessity would drive any mother to send a delicate, nervous child here? He guessed at some strong compulsion, and wondered the less that Mrs Garstnet should have betrayed Rose Anne.

He came through the baize door into a flagged passage. This was one of those houses with a perfect warren of small rooms, cupboards, and what are usually described as offices. He looked into one in which a very old smell of apples still lingered, and another which was vaguely haunted by an aroma of boot-blacking, and presently he located the kitchen. A line of light showed under the door, and there was quite a cheerful buzz of conversation. There was the sound of a young man's hearty laughter and Fanny's voice chiming in. A pleasant time was being had by all over Mrs Joseph Rennard's currant buns—if she
was
Mrs Joseph Rennard, and not plain Mrs Edwards entertaining son and daughter-in-law in all innocence. Anything less sinister than this family tea-party could hardly be imagined.