Anna, Where Are You? (20 page)

In the country it is no uncommon thing to hear a shot, even in the middle of the night. If Miss Silver had been country born and country bred she might have thought very little of that muffled sound. She might not have thought about it at all. But it came near enough to the subject of her thoughts to be arresting. She was a town-dweller, but she had often stayed in the country, and while not accepting a shot with the indifference born of custom, her ear was fine enough to prompt the thought that this shot had not been fired in the open. It had lacked sharpness and clarity. She thought that it had been fired within the four walls of one of the rooms of Deepe House. She opened her door and stood there listening.

A faint light burned on the landing at the head of the stair. Beyond it the passage which led to the main block was deeply shadowed. And there was silence over all.

And then the second shot.

This time there was no doubt of its direction. It came from beyond the dividing wall between this wing and the deserted house. There was a movement behind her, and Jennifer’s hand on her arm. She said in a quiet, firm voice,

“Go back to bed, my dear. Your mother is asleep.”

The hand gripped hard.

“That was a shot.”

“I expect it was Mr. Robinson. He is often out at night, is he not?”

“He doesn’t shoot.” There was scorn in the whispering voice. “He doesn’t kill things, he watches them. That shot came from the house. What are you going to do?”

“I am going to see whether anything is wrong.”

Jennifer said with a sort of hushed vehemence,

“You can’t get in. He locks the door. He keeps it locked. I’ve got a key. I found it. He left it sticking in the lock. He never knew where it had gone. I went in—once.”

The hand that gripped Miss Silver’s arm was as hard and cold as ice. It was too rigid to shake. Very slow and chill, Jennifer’s voice said,

“I—saw—the—hand.” And then again, “Clarice’s hand— the one that was cut off—I saw it.”

“If you have a key, will you get it for me, my dear? Quickly.”

In the same strained tone Jennifer said,

“He thought he must have dropped it out of his pocket. He asked me if I had seen it, and I told a lie.”

“My dear, the key! And I said quickly! You must not delay me now!”

The grip on her arm relaxed. Without a sound Jennifer was gone, and without a sound she was back again. She held out the key and said,

“You can’t go in!”

Miss Silver took it from her.

“Oh yes, I can, my dear. And I want you to help me. Will you slip into your mother’s room and just stay with her until I come back. It would not be at all good for her to be disturbed. Pray do not leave her alone. And take an eiderdown to wrap round you, so that you will not be cold.”

She fetched the eiderdown herself, opened Mrs. Craddock’s door, and saw Jennifer inside. There was a night-light on the washstand, and a small electric fire. The room was warm and quiet. Mrs. Craddock slept her exhausted sleep. Miss Silver shut the door, crossed the landing, and went down the dusky passage to the door which led into the deserted house. She had in the pocket of her dressing-gown the excellent torch which she always took with her when she went into the country. In these old places the current sometimes failed at such extremely inconvenient moments. She would certainly take no risk of meeting with an accident in a bomb-damaged house.

She turned the key in the door and went through, leaving it open behind her. There was no light-switch, but her torch showed a short passage leading to a small landing and a descending stair. As she went down, her felt slippers making no sound, she was aware of dust and dilapidation everywhere—walls where the paper hung in strips, gaps in the plaster, and a smell which suggested damp and spiders and mice. She had a firm spirit and a good deal of cheerful courage, but she had no affection for spiders. There were several very large ones upon these damp disintegrating walls, and as she left the last step and advanced along one of the ground-floor passages, something squeaked and scuttered. She hoped very much that it was only a mouse.

The passage came out into a hall. There were other passages. There were doors. She put out her torch and stood looking into the darkness. At first it seemed absolute, a black curtain before the eyes. Then a slight, a very slight, thinning of the gloom. She was facing the back of the hall, and there was a place where the darkness thinned. A faint glow was coming from one of the passages which ran away to the right. Since the floor had appeared to be perfectly solid, she made her way towards this glow, her finger on the switch of her torch.

She had about twenty steps to take before she reached the entrance to the passage. The glow, at first very faint, became a little stronger, the light more concentrated. She took another step, and saw what caused it. There, halfway down the passage, was a faintly luminous shape. It hung in the air, and it moved. It had the shape of a hand—a groping hand.

Miss Silver pushed down the switch of her torch and turned its light upon the floating hand. Her own hand was firm and steady.

The light came on very white and clear. It showed a stained ceiling and dirty walls. It showed the hand hanging from the ceiling by a flex—a hand shaped in some translucent plastic stuff and lighted from within. A clever piece of work—the fingers drawn back a little as if groping and ready to clutch, the lighting very skilfully contrived to suggest more than it revealed. A very clever piece of work, and perfectly calculated to maintain the Everly legend and frighten away intruders.

Examining the whole thing more closely, she saw that the flex was plugged in at floor level and then carried up the wall, and so to the hook from which it depended. The whole thing could therefore be moved to any part of the house where there was a point. She wondered where Jennifer had encountered it.

These thoughts were present in her mind without any passage of time. It was, in fact, no more than three minutes since she had closed the door of Emily Craddock’s room. She looked down the passage now and saw a door on the left. Behind that door someone moved. She switched off her torch again, went forward, and turned the handle.

She had promised Frank Abbott that she would run no risks. It did not really occur to her that she was running one now. Afterwards, when reproached on this head, she merely remarked soberly that she had not thought of it in that light.

“Then you were not being as intelligent as usual.”

“My dear Frank!”

“Well, what did you expect to find behind that door? Logically, it could only be one person—the murderer.”

At the time, though this probability was certainly present to her mind, it did not occur to her that it constituted a risk. She felt completely confident and able to deal with anything she might encounter.

She turned the handle and opened the door upon a lighted room. There was a writing-table, there were chairs, there were books. There were comfortable curtains, a good carpet, and a warm electric fire. The carpet showed a spreading stain of blood.

The blood came from the body of Peveril Craddock. It lay in front of the writing-table. A chair had been pushed over. There was a revolver beside the outflung right hand.

Mr. Peter Brandon was stooping over the body.

When that blinding light struck her in the face Thomasina gasped and flung up a hand to shield her eyes. Most girls would have screamed, but she had a good deal of self-control. A scream might have been heard, but not that choking gasp.

She flung up her hand, and at once someone caught her by the wrist and pulled her into the room. The person who was holding the electric lamp turned it away from her eyes and kicked the door shut. It slammed, and with the sound, sharp in the empty room and echoing from the empty walls, there came another sound, sharper, more definite, more horrifying—the sound of a shot.

At the time Thomasina did not disentangle the sounds. She was startled out of any capacity for thought. She stared, and caught her breath, and exclaimed,

“Anna!”

The grip on her wrist tightened.

“Quick—quick—we haven’t a minute!”

She was being pulled towards a door on the other side of the room. There was dust everywhere—its muffling softness under their feet, a choking cloud of it upon the air, the lamp dazzling upon a million floating specks—Anna’s voice in her ears, Anna’s hand on her wrist.

Just for a moment her mind was shocke4 into numbness. She had come here to find Anna Ball, and she had found her. It ought not to have been a shock, but it was. Afterwards she knew that she had not really thought that Anna was at Deepe House— she had not really expected to find her. She had quarrelled with Peter because he wanted her to go away. And because she wanted to stay she had built up a ridiculous imagination about Anna being shut up in a cellar. And then she had dared herself to come and see if it was true. She had taken the dare, but she hadn’t expected to find anything.

And now it was true. Not the cellar part of it, but Anna— Anna hurrying her along—Anna’s voice hard and urgent.

“Quick—quick—we can’t talk here! We haven’t a moment! We’ve got to talk!”

And then another dusty room, a passage, a door that was opened and slammed, and they were in Peveril Craddock’s garage.

Anna Ball put down the electric lamp and switched on an overhead light. They had come out of the dilapidation and decay of the house into what might have been any suburban garage—a cemented floor, fresh whitewash on the walls, a bench with tools, tins of petrol and lubricant, a couple of spare tyres, a small ordinary car. Nothing could have been more commonplace.

But when Anna turned from switching on the light everything changed. Because this was an Anna whom she had never seen before. It wasn’t only the clothes—and Anna in slacks and a flaming jersey was something very unlike anything that came to her out of the past which they had shared—it was Anna herself. The heavy, sallow, drooping creature who had hung on Thomasina like a weight was gone. Here was a taut young woman vibrant with energy, her hair standing out in a bush from a recent perm, her face made up to a smooth pallor, her mouth as scarlet as a pillar-box, and her eyes blazing. Anna’s eyes had always been her best feature. Peter had libelled them when he said they had a cast. They were good dark grey eyes with strongly growing lashes and a rather brooding way of looking at you. They were not brooding now. The thing that had smouldered in them was flaring. And it was hate—sheer ungovernable hatred.

It is one of the things which nobody can mistake. For a moment Thomasina felt nothing except surprise. Anna to look at her like that! When they had always been friends! When Anna had never had any other friend at all! She had carried the weight of being Anna’s only friend through all the years of being at school and college with her, through all the self-pity, the hurt feelings, the jealousies, the emotional scenes which were Anna’s idea of friendship. But that Anna should look at her like this! And for what?

She was to know. Insensibly she moved back until she stood against the wall. Anna stood where she was, a yard or two away, with the hatred in her eyes. She spoke now with something in her voice which Thomasina had never heard in it before. Enjoyment. Anna was enjoying herself—enjoying hating her, enjoying telling her about it. Because that was what she was doing.

“I always hated you—always—always—always! Why? Are you really such a fool as not to know? You had everything, and I had nothing—except your damned charity! You had all the things I wanted, and every now and then you would toss me one of them—a dress you were tired of, or a hat you didn’t want! And thinking all the time how generous you were—how grateful I ought to be!”

Thomasina lifted her head and met those hating eyes.

“No, Anna! Oh, no!”

Anna Ball laughed.

“Of course you did! It’s a lovely part to play. And it doesn’t cost too much—just a few things you don’t want, and there you are, on the top of the world, feeling ever so noble and magnanimous! ‘Poor Anna—I must be kind to her.’ Do you think I haven’t seen you thinking that a thousand times? And how nice to be poor Anna whom nobody cares about, and have rich, fortunate Thomasina being kind to you!”

“Anna—please! You don’t know what you are saying.”

Anna gave that horrid laugh again.

“My dear Thomasina, I know very well what I’m saying! I’ve had it saved up for a very long time, and I’m enjoying every minute of it! You’re going to listen to me now! I’ve had to listen to you often enough—preaching and talking pi!”

Thomasina said in a low shocked voice,

“I didn’t mean to preach.”

“Oh, no, of course not—you only did it! Now it’s my turn! It never occurred to you that poor Anna might make something out of her life after all—that she might have a lover and a life that was really worth living—excitement, adventure, and a man who could give them to her!”

“Mr. Sandrow,” said Thomasina gravely.

“I suppose that poor fool Emily Craddock talked!”

“Anna, we thought you were dead. Why did you let me think so? Why didn’t you write?”

“Because it didn’t suit me. Because Mr. Sandrow—” she gave the name a mocking twist—“Mr. Sandrow and I were having a very good time, and didn’t want you muddling and meddling in my affairs. I’ve got clothes of my own now, and money of my own, and a man of my own! Do you think that I didn’t know that you used to ask your friends to dance with me? If I forgave you for all the rest of it I’d never forgive you for that!” Her face was distorted by fury. Then the triumphant look came back to it. “But you see, you’re not wanted any more!”

It was at some time during this speech that there came the sound of the second shot. Anna heard it. It was then that her trumphant look returned. She lifted her head and let her voice ring out.

Thomasina heard it too, but she did not think about it. Not consciously. She heard it, and a cold breath touched her, but she did not think about it yet. It was a shot. She did not relate it to herself or to Anna. To Anna—her whole mind was taken up with Anna. She had been shocked in the quite literal sense of the word. She was not afraid. How could she be afraid of Anna Ball whom she had known so long and so well?

She had never known her at all. Under the dumb, sulky surface where she had thought there were sore places into which she had poured all she knew of kindness and healing, there had been a ravening jealousy and resentment. She was not afraid— not yet—but she knew now that there was something to be afraid of. She said soberly and quietly,

“I’m sorry, Anna—I didn’t know. I’ll go.”

She put her hand behind her to find the handle of the door. There was an instinct to stay facing Anna, not to turn round.

Anna’s hand went into the pocket of her slacks, and came out again with a revolver—one of those little things that look like a toy and hold half a dozen men’s lives. She pointed it at Thomasina and said,

“No, you don’t! If you touch that handle, I’ll fire! I won’t kill you, because I haven’t finished with you yet. I’ll just break your shoulder. I’m a dead shot—which is one of the things you didn’t know about me. I learnt in Germany, which is where I met Mr. Sandrow. He taught me—that, and other things. I’m going to tell you some of them. If the world kicks you in the face, get up and kick it back. If you haven’t any money, take it. If anyone gets in your way, shoot him down. It’s quite easy to learn when you’ve been hating people all your life. Well, I came back to England and waited while he made his plans, and then I came down here. Of course Emily Craddock was the most tiresome bore—and those awful children! But I used to slip out and meet Mr. Sandrow.” She let her voice twist on the name again. “And then, as you know, it wasn’t for long. We staged a very good disappearance, didn’t we? Me in a red hat, going off from Dedham, and practically the whole Colony to see me go by in the car with Peveril. And then at the station I was so agitated and distressed that the stationmaster couldn’t help noticing me, and Peveril was able to explain how neurotic I was, and how glad they were to get rid of me. I didn’t go very far, you know. I just stuffed the red hat into my suit-case, tied a handkerchief over my head, and changed at the first junction. I shan’t tell you where I went, but it wasn’t a hundred miles from here. Mr. Sandrow and I had it all planned. And now, I suppose, you would like to know who he is. You’ll be surprised! But I’ll give you three guesses. It’s someone you know. There—I’ve given you a lead! Someone you know very well. Come along, Thomasina—surely you’re going to have a try!”

Thomasina’s lips said, “No.” Her mind said, “She wouldn’t tell me these things if she was going to let me go.”

When she had groped for the handle of the door she had not found it. She was near enough to the wall, but too much to one side. If she moved or tried to reach for the handle now, Anna would shoot her down. Even without being a dead shot she could hardly miss. There was nothing to do but play for time.

There was no help in that. She was alone with Anna in this deserted place, and no one knew that she was here. She thought about Peter, and he seemed like someone who had happened long ago and very far away. It seemed a silly, trivial thing that she had quarrelled with him.

Anna’s voice broke in.

“If you are not going to guess, I shall have to tell you. Someone whom you know very well indeed. Did you know what a good shot he was, or did he keep that dark? There were quite a few things you didn’t know about him, I expect. You thought you could have him any time you wanted him, didn’t you? He pretended he didn’t like me. One of the things you didn’t know was that he was such a good actor, and another was that he was mine. Not yours, my dear Thomasina, but mine—mine—mine.”

Thomasina thought, “She’s mad. It’s all frightful, but she’s mad—she doesn’t know what she is saying.” She said,

“Anna, please do stop! You are making my head go round. I don’t know what you are talking about, and I don’t believe you do either. It’s frightfully late. I’m going home to bed.”

Anna came a step nearer. If she would come nearer still, there might be a chance of catching her by the wrist, knocking the revolver out of her hand.

But Anna took only that one step. She said in a warning voice,

“Oh, no, you don’t! You’ll do just as you are told, and when I am finished with you—when I’m quite finished with you—you shall have your sleep—your good long sleep.” She laughed and changed her tone. “I was telling you about Mr. Sandrow, wasn’t I? You ought to be pleased, because you were trying to find out about him. And so are the police. They’d give their eyes to know the things I’m telling you, but you won’t be able to repeat them. Mr. Sandrow is a very clever man, and he is going to be a very rich one. He can get a few thousand pounds any time he wants to just by walking into a bank and asking for it. And do you know, they never refuse him—he’s too quick a shot for that. And we drive away together with the money— you didn’t know I was such a good driver, did you? He gets into the car and off we go, with nothing for those stupid police to track us by. That first time at Enderby Green I was a boy, made up very dark with a green muffler and a black hat. And at Ledlington I was a dazzling blonde—it’s a lovely wig. And there was a young man went by who would have liked to know me better. That was when I was waiting outside the bank. I didn’t really let him see my face of course. I had my hand up pretending to do something to my hair. And to show you how good my nerve is, it didn’t shake in the least. And then Mr. Sandrow came out of the bank, and we drove away. Come now— haven’t you guessed who he is—not yet? Do you know, I don’t believe you can be as stupid as all that. Why, he’s Peter— Peter—Peter Brandon—whom you thought you had got in your pocket! And, oh, how we’ve laughed at it together, he and I! Well, now it’s your turn to laugh. It’s a good joke, isn’t it? Laugh, Thomasina—laugh—laugh—laugh!”