Fear by Night (23 page)

CHAPTER XXVI

Ann came to herself gasping and shivering in the bottom of Jimmy Halliday's boat. Jimmy was holding her head over the side, thumping her on the back, and adjuring her to “cough it up.” Her first emotion was one of unnatural anger towards her preserver. She said,

“Don't do that!” choked in the middle of saying so, and over her head heard Jimmy address an encouraging remark to her, and all in the same breath, a volley of objurgations which she found startling until she realized that they were addressed to Gale Anderson. She pushed Jimmy away and sat up.

Gale Anderson had disappeared. She hoped that if out of sight, he was not out of ear-shot. It would have been a pity if he had missed any of Jimmy's remarks. They contained so may words which Ann had never heard before that she felt sure that they must be very abusive.

Her anger against Jimmy died. She pushed back her hair and said between chattering teeth,

“Thanks most awfully for saving my life. He was trying to kill me.”

Jimmy said, “Murdering scum!” and then begged her pardon with a return to his drawing-room manner. After which he took up the oars and rowed her round to the landing-beach in silence.

Mrs. Halliday had judged the day to be too foggy for her to leave the house. At all times a little suspicious of fresh air, the moment it contained even the faintest trace of mist she considered it to be definitely dangerous. She attributed her excellent health in no small measure to the fact that she had never give in to the crazy new-fangled practice of sleeping with her window open.

She was sitting at the parlour window—closed of course—when she saw Ann emerge dripping upon the lawn, closely followed by her son. She stared in unmixed surprise for a moment, and then made her way into the passage to find out what had happened.

Jimmy told her what he thought good and no more, whilst Ann dripped and said nothing.

Mrs. Halliday's reactions were of an extremely complicated nature. She gathered that Ann had fallen from the cliff and had been nobly rescued by her Jimmy. This naturally inflated her maternal pride and at the same time roused her maternal suspicions. There was the case of Fanny Lintott who sprained her ankle right in front of the shop where her cousin Jane Selby's William was apprenticed, and the even more sinister affair by which Rose Tappit induced old Mr. Moggridge to offer her marriage by pretending that he had run over her on his way back from Shepperton market—“And him so drunk he wouldn't have known if he'd run over a steer let alone a young woman.” On the other hand, Ann did ought to be in bed with a warm drink inside of her and a hot brick to the feet. A confusing business being a proud mother, a jealous mother, and a decent old woman—“all under one,” as she herself would have put it.

She sent Ann to bed, with Riddle to see that she was rolled in blankets and Mary to take her a hot drink, and then, bursting into tears, asked Jimmy whether he intended to break her heart, yes or no, because if he did, the sooner she was laid in her grave the better for all concerned.

It took Jimmy quite a long time to pacify her. He had to listen to the story of William Treddle—“And him not so old as you by a twelve-month, that married a good-for-nothing 'ussy, which Lottie Dibbs was 'er name, and getting on for thirty years younger than him. And what happened?”

Jimmy patted her shoulder.

“There, old lady—don't take on.”

“What
h
appened?” said Mrs. Halliday on a rising note and with an aspirate that fairly blew the word out of her mouth.

“I don't know, I'm sure,” said Jimmy, who knew very well.

Mrs. Halliday twitched her shoulder away.

“I'm a-telling you, aren't I? And a shame it is that I've got to, and a worse shame for William Treddle and that good-for-nothing Lottie of his—as turned his mother out of doors and let 'er go to the workhouse infirmary, and the 'ole parish talking about it!”

“Come, come, old lady!” said Jimmy.

Mrs. Halliday gave one of her most intimidating snorts.

“It's ‘Come, come' now, but by-and-bye it'll be ‘Go and we don't want you back again,' when you've married a slip of a bit of a thing that'll think 'erself a sight too grand for your pore old mother!”

Jimmy put in another half hour's soothing and then went away to have a heart-to-heart talk with Mr. Gale Anderson. Life wasn't any too easy at the moment.

Ann lay in bed between blankets and watched the fog thicken against the window, which Riddle had carefully shut. She was none the worse for her dip in the loch. She didn't in the least want to lie in bed and drink the queer strong-tasting stuff which Mary had brought. Goodness knew what was in it. Whisky and peppermint on a foundation of milk, with a dash of something really horrible which was like a blend of candle-grease and camphor. She was soon so hot that she felt as if she would choke. In any other circumstances she would have dressed and gone down, but bed, even with blankets and a camphor brew, was preferable to a meal at the same board as Gale Anderson. Of course he mightn't be there. Jimmy and he were bound to have a row, simply bound to. But on the other hand, in a place like this, you couldn't just push a man out and tell him to go to blazes. Or could you? Ann had a shrewd suspicion that Jimmy's affairs might be so far entangled with those of Gale Anderson as to make a complete rupture a difficult and perhaps dangerous matter.

Anyhow, if she'd got to stay in bed, it should be a decent human bed with sheets. She had had enough of these sticky, pricky blankets. She threw them off, opened the window, washed her face and hands, and remade the bed.

Presently Mary looked in.

“What'll ye tak?” she said. “The auld leddy's speirin'.”

“What is there?” said Ann.

“There's guid broth, and fush.”

Ann gave a little shiver. The thought of fish took her back to the scene on the cliff—Mary throwing three big silver fish out into the loch and saying, “Haud aff, deil!”

“I don't want any fish. I'd like some soup,” she said. And then, “I'm quite well, you know. I could get up and come down, but—I think I won't.”

Mary nodded.

“Ye're safer in yer bed,” she said, and went away again.

The time dragged most dreadfully. Ann had her broth, and then Riddle came and asked her if she was all right, and when Mrs. Halliday came up to bed she paid Ann a state visit, sitting bolt upright on a hard wooden chair and narrating several cheering stories of people who had caught their deaths through a sudden immersion in cold water. This led her to one of her favourite subjects—the present generation's wanton indulgence in baths.

“Clean's one thing, and taking off all your clothes and setting in hot water constant is another and what I don't hold with, nor my mother didn't before me, and a cleaner woman never stepped. I'd like some of these young 'ussies to see how she kep' 'er brass—see your face in it you could, and 'er copper pans as bright as a new penny. And a bath on Saturday night we all 'ad, in a wooden tub in front of the kitchen fire, and the rest of the week we washed our faces and our 'ands and made do with that. My grandfather he didn't hold with 'aving baths at all. He said he hadn't never had a bath in his life and wasn't going to. He said so much washing was right down hurtful, and I'm not so sure as he wasn't right, seeing as how he lived to be getting on for a hundred and never had nothing the matter with 'im that ever I heard tell about.”

She presently bade Miss Vernon a majestic goodnight and swept out of the room, returning half way through Ann's sigh of relief to stand in the doorway and lecture her upon the immodesty of scrambling up and down cliffs and falling off them under the eyes of a steady, respectable, hard-working man.

“Not,” said Mrs. Halliday, “as he's one as 'ud take any notice if a score of girls was to throw themselves at his 'ead. If he was that sort, he wouldn't be single to-day, Miss Vernon, so don't you go 'aving your hopes raised nor thinking that he means anything—
which he don't
. And I'll wish you good night, and don't you go opening that window again or it's a funeral you'll be 'aving and not a husband.”

“Golly!” said Ann when she had gone.

She waited five minutes, and then leapt out of bed and opened the window which Mrs. Halliday with many ejaculations of horror had closed immediately upon entering the room. She stood there in her nightdress looking out. It was not very cold, but the fog was thick and clammy. The air was dead still. There was no sound from land or sea. The thought of Charles which had lain at her heart like a cold lump of fear became suddenly a sharp stabbing pain. He was somewhere on the other side of that curtain of fog and silence.
Or was he
? She was shaken by a most dreadful terror. Suppose he wasn't anywhere any longer. Suppose he had gone out of the living world and left her …

She caught her breath, and immediately upon that sound of her own making she heard another sound. Very, very faintly there came to her through the deadening fog the sound of oars. There is no other sound quite like it. Lip, lap, splash—lip, lap, splash, with a regular rhythm that was quite unmistakeable.

She wondered who could have gone out in the boat on a night like this. A most comforting answer presented itself. It was Gale Anderson going away after such a frightful row with Jimmy that, fog or no fog, he simply couldn't stay in the house any longer. Ann frowned in the dark. It was a beautiful explanation, but there were too many holes in it. There had been hours of daylight for Jimmy and Gale to have their row in. If Gale had been going to shake the dust of the island off his feet, he wouldn't have waited for the fog to thicken and the dark to come down. He was a knave and a would-be murderer, but he wasn't a fool.

There were other answers. The boat might be returning, not going. Gale Anderson might have been put across some time ago. Or Jimmy might have taken him out and dropped him in the loch.

No—the boat wasn't coming back, it was going away. The lip, lap, splash was growing fainter all the time.

Ann gave it up and went back to bed. After all, what did it matter who came or went, since Charles did neither? She buried her face in her pillow and wept scalding tears of anguish. Then suddenly slipped away from it all into sleep.

CHAPTER XXVII

Ann woke with the moonlight on her face. She started up and stared at the window. The fog was gone, and the moon, very clear and bright, stared back at her. There was a sound of wind in the trees. Mary had been right after all when she said that the wind was getting up and the fog would lift before morning. She had said it when she brought that horrible hot drink and stood there waiting for Ann to finish it—“The fog'll lift afore mornin'. There's wind comin'—I ken the sound o't.” There had been no sound of it then for any ears except Mary's, but anyone could hear it now. The trees of the island made a queer hushing sound which came, and went, and came again a little louder.

It was in one of the pauses when the wind seemed to be holding its breath that Ann heard another sound—the tramp of feet on grass. In a moment she was out of bed crouching down beside the window. There were three men coming across the lawn. The moon shone down on them, and she could see quite clearly enough to recognize Jimmy, and Hector, and Gale Anderson. They came out of the shadow of the trees with Jimmy going ahead and the other two carrying something between them—some thing or some one.

Ann's heart began to knock against her side. She couldn't see what they were carrying, and she
must
see. Two of them, a man's length apart—carrying something. She must see what it was that they were carrying. She pressed her hands down hard upon her breast, as if the pressure would stop that heavy knocking. If it was a man they were carrying, why couldn't she see his face? There was something dark thrown over what they were carrying—a dark covering that fell down almost to the ground on either side—
like a pall
. The three words dropped heavily into her mind. A dead man's face would be covered like that. For a moment she was so cold with fear that she could not move. Then, as she made a convulsive effort to lean out of the window and look down, she heard the door below her open and saw the men and what they carried pass out of sight.

She got to her feet and crossed the room, she hardly knew how. At the top of the stairs she stood to listen, and heard the sound of feet going past and down into the kitchen. A light flickered and was gone again. She could see nothing, and now that the door into the old part of the house was shut, she could not hear anything either. She stood in darkness and silence and was wrenched by terrible thoughts. It was Charles whom they were carrying, and he was dead. Perhaps they had killed him. Or perhaps Gale Anderson had killed him and the others were helping to cover it up. If he wasn't dead, then why had they covered his face?

By this time she had no doubt at all that it was Charles whom she had seen carried up from the loch. There had been no drip of water on the ground, so he had not been drowned. But if he wasn't dead, then why had they covered his face? This thought kept coming back and back, and every time it came it hurt a little more.

She sat down on the top step of the stair and laid her head upon her knees. She was giddy with grief and pain.

She might have sat there for a long time if it had not been for her torn hands. She had them clutched together, and the pain startled her out of her giddiness. For a moment she couldn't remember why they should hurt her so, and then her head was clear again. She got to her feet and began to think what she must do. If she were sure that Charles was there in the kitchen hurt or dead, she would be brave enough to go down the stairs, and along the old dark passage, and through the door, and so come in upon them. It wouldn't matter what happened to her if Charles was dead.