Fear by Night: A Golden Age Mystery Read online

  Ann jumped up with a beating heart. It couldn’t be Jimmy Halliday. It might be Charles. She opened her bedroom door, took off her shoes, and, carrying them, went down in her stockinged feet. She had got the front door open and was out on the rough grass of the lawn, when something inside her said in a small, cold voice, “Suppose it isn’t Charles.” Ann rounded on the voice. “If it isn’t Charles, who is it?” It might be—something else. She had a spurt of anger like a flaring match. “What?” she said. “Something,” said the voice, and died away.

  Ann’s spurt of anger carried her across the lawn and into the first shadow of the trees. They hung over her like a wave just waiting to break. She could see nothing, and she could hear nothing except her own pulses. And then out of the darkness Charles Anstruther said,

  “Ann!”

  “Oh!” said Ann with a sharp-caught breath, and in a moment Charles’ hands touched her face, groping. His hands were wet. She stepped back and said his name.

  “Charles!” And then, “You’re wet!”

  “Only my hands.”

  “How did you come?”

  “I swam of course.”

  “Then you must be wet.”

  “I’m not. I rolled my clothes up in a mac and tied them on my head. It’s what they always do in books, but I’d hate to do any distance with a wobbley bundle like that. If I’d had a bathing-suit, I’d have swum over this afternoon. But I told you I was coming back. You knew I’d come—didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t think you’d come to-night. Charles, there’ll be a most awful row—you’d better come farther away from the house.” She touched him then for the first time, slipping her hand inside his arm and drawing him down the path.

  Just above the beach a track went off to the left. Ann followed it for some twenty or thirty yards till it opened into a tiny clearing. Above them, ringed by the trees, was a rift in the clouds and a patch of moonlit sky.

  Charles put an arm about her.

  “Ann—are you all right?”

  Ann did not find the arm at all unpleasant, but she wasn’t going to let it undermine her. Now that Charles had come, everything was all right. The things that she had had to push out of sight no longer needed pushing. They had gone back into the bottomless pit which produces nightmares, and a nightmare is a thing without existence. She said briskly,

  “Of course I’m all right. Why shouldn’t I be?”

  “Why are you on this damned island?”

  “It isn’t—it’s a very nice island.”

  “Friendly, hospitable place—isn’t it? Do all your callers have to swim?”

  “We don’t have any. We lead the simple life. Presently I shall know all about all Mrs. Halliday’s relations from their cradles to their having their pictures in the papers because they’ve been hanged or lived to be a hundred. She’s got more relations than anyone I’ve ever heard of, and most of them had twenty children at least, so you see there isn’t a dull moment.”

  “Do you think I’ve come here to talk about Mrs. Halliday’s relations? I’ve come here to talk about you.” His other arm came round her. “Ann, aren’t you glad to see me?”

  They were standing in deep shadow like deep; dark water.

  “I can’t see you,” said Ann in rather a small voice.

  “You can feel me. Can’t you—can’t you? Ann!”

  Whether what she felt was the beating of her own heart or his, Ann could not have said. She was held so close that her breath was gone, and when Charles kissed her she kissed him back. But only for a moment. Then she pushed him away and stamped her foot.

  “How dare you?”

  “Ann—”

  “I never said you could kiss me!”

  “Ann—”

  “I’m not the sort of girl who kisses people! I’m not! I think it’s horrible, and vulgar, and cheap!”

  “Ann!” Charles had her by the shoulders. He shook her a little. “I kissed you because I love you, and there’s nothing vulgar and cheap about that! Now will you stop talking nonsense?”

  “No,” said Ann—“I won’t! It’s not nonsense—it’s true! You’re not to kiss me—you’re not to touch me! I won’t have it!”

  Her thoughts hurried and were out of breath. If Charles kissed her again, she would let go. She was holding on desperately, but if he kissed her again, she wouldn’t be able to hold on any longer. She would let go, and when it was too late she would be sorry ever after. Charles was in love, but that world well lost sort of business didn’t last, and when he was sane again he would remember that he might have kept Bewley if he hadn’t married Ann Vernon without a penny. And all his relations would remember it all the time. No—no—no—no—no!

  “I won’t!” said Ann, and did not know whether she said it aloud or not.

  Charles’ voice came from a yard away. The pale moony patch of sky overhead made the shadow between them seem darker. He wasn’t Charles—he was danger. He was something she must hold her own against, even if it hurt—like this. He was saying, in a different voice,

  “I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to—you needn’t be afraid.”

  “I don’t know why you came,” said Ann, her voice stumbling on the words and a panic fear sweeping her when they were said, because now he would go and never come back any more. Relations looking down scornful noses didn’t seem to matter when she thought about Charles going away for ever. But they ought to matter, they must matter, they would matter. She pinched her own arm very hard indeed and said, “It’s no use your coming here. I didn’t want you to come.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Charles. He didn’t sound sorry; he sounded angry. “I wouldn’t have come if I’d known.”

  “You ought to have known!”

  “I only wanted to make sure you were all right.”

  “Why shouldn’t I be all right?”

  “I don’t know,” said Charles. “But if you are, I’ll be going.”

  It hurt more every minute. If it went on hurting like this, she couldn’t bear it. She couldn’t bear him to go like this. She couldn’t bear him to stay. Waves of pain, and anger, and fear broke in her. She said in a polite, careful voice,

  “It was good of you to come.”

  “Oh, damnably!” said Charles.

  Why didn’t he go? How could she bear it if he went? Oh, why didn’t he go quickly?

  And a yard away Charles, ragingly angry, was also wondering why he didn’t go—and why he had come. And he would take his oath that she had kissed him. He broke into furious speech.

  “I’m going! You needn’t be afraid I’ll bother you any more—unless you want me! I don’t suppose you will, but you might! And if you do—is it any use asking you to write?”

  “No,” said Ann—“it isn’t.”

  She didn’t mean her voice to sound mournful, but it did. She saw in her mind the torn scrap of the letter which she had written to Charles, and which wasn’t any use because it never reached him.

  If her voice had sounded different, Charles would have turned on his heel and gone down to the water. As it was, he fired a “Why?” at her.

  If she said that they had torn her letter up, he wouldn’t go away at all. And he must go away—only not irretrievably.

  “Letters don’t always get posted here,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They don’t always get posted.”

  The anger that had swept between them like a sudden squall had died as suddenly.

  “Ann, what do you mean? You must tell me what you mean. Do you mean you wrote to me?”

  With a very little breath Ann said,

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t get it.”

  “No.”

  “Why didn’t I get it?”

  “It didn’t get posted,” said Ann.

  “Then how am I to know if you want me? Ann, you might want me.”

  Deep inside her Ann said, “Yes,” and then, very urgently, “Yes, yes, yes.” But she couldn’t
say it aloud. She could only say, “I don’t know.”

  There was a silence between them. The clouds had moved overhead. The rift was out of sight. Everything was much darker. Then Charles said,

  “Could you show a signal somewhere if you wanted me?”

  “I don’t know—I might.”

  “If you put a branch on the boat-house roof or anywhere on that beach, I should see it, and it’s not a thing that anyone else would notice. It wouldn’t be any use at night of course.”

  It came to Ann that if she were to need Charles suddenly, desperately in the night, she would be past helping. A kind of black gulf opened in her thoughts, and a shudder ran all over her. It was nothing. It was the dark. It was wanting Charles, and having to send him away. She said,

  “Yes, I can do that. But I won’t want anyone. Mrs. Halliday’s very nice to me.”

  “And Halliday?” Charles’ voice was rough.

  “He’s away fishing nearly all the time.”

  Suddenly it was quite easy to laugh—and oh, such a blessed relief! Charles—putting on a jealous voice for Jimmy Halliday!

  “Darling Charles,” she said, “you needn’t worry about that. He’d take a lot more interest in me if I was a bit of bait or a dead fish.”

  It was nice to have got back to being friends again. She drew her breath more easily. The horrible tension was gone.

  “Honest, Charles—you’d better go. Mrs. Halliday would have a fit if she found I wasn’t in the house. It—it was nice of you to come—it was really. But there isn’t anything you can do. It’s a good job and good pay, and I can’t afford to lose it. You will go—won’t you?”

  “I’ll go—but I shall come back. You won’t forget about the branch?”

  “It’s all nonsense, really,” said Ann. She laughed again. “We’re being romantic—knight-errant, distressed damsel, and all the rest of it! But there’s nothing in it, and if you get me the sack, I shall sue you for damages. It would make a nice up-to-date ending—wouldn’t it?”

  “I prefer the old one,” said Charles. “All right, I’m going. Good-bye.”

  Ann heard him going away along the path. She stood where she was for some minutes, and then she followed him. When she came to the turning which led to the beach she hesitated and then went down that way. Charles would be in the water by now. She thought she would wait until he was across. There would be plenty of warning if the boat came in.

  It was very dark on the beach. The two headlands enclosed it and the island rose up behind. But out on the loch there was a little moonlight which came and went as the clouds moved overhead. In the last hour it had turned warmer. There must be a breeze high up, because the clouds flowed past without ceasing, but here, at sea-level, the air was perfectly still—still, warm air and warm, calm water. The clouds were not nearly so thick as they had been. They made an opal veil across the moon and parted to show deep stretches of blue-black sky. Ann could see a dark blur that was Charles’ head with the bundle on it, and every now and then a little spray that caught the light as he swam, and then he was out of the water and shaking himself. And then he was gone. After a little while she thought she could hear the sound of his car going away behind the fold in the hills.

  Ann went on looking at the water. She didn’t want to go in. There were bright ripples in a wide path across the loch. The moon was not quite overhead. The clouds kept coming and going, and the ripples sparkled and dimmed and darkened. The stillness gave her a feeling of expectation. It was like the hush before something happens. Ann felt as if something was going to happen, but she did not know what.

  Under the veiled half light she saw something that moved among the ripples—something without shape, a darkness in the water, a darkness that moved. The clouds above were denser, and the half light failed. She couldn’t see. She couldn’t see at all. She felt a cold and dreadful terror of the dark. And Mary had said, “Keep away frae the water or it’ll get ye.” She couldn’t see, but she thought that she could hear the wash of that dark, moving thing. The cold fear broke into panic, and she ran, scrambling and slipping, up the steep path to the house. Half way up she looked back and saw that the clouds had shifted. The water lay bare and open to the moon. There was nothing there.

  Chapter Twelve

  Gale Anderson came back next day. Ann did not know when he came or how, but when she got down to breakfast he was there, and so was Jimmy Halliday.

  She had heard Jimmy Halliday come back just as the light began to change towards the dawn. At first she had not slept, and then she had slept to dream that she was running across a desert of black sand with something coming after her like the wind. However fast she ran, she could never get away from it. The sand began to heave under her feet, and it wasn’t sand at all, but water. And then, just as her heart stopped with terror, she heard footsteps come clumping over the lawn, and she was awake in bed, with her face half buried in the pillow and Jimmy Halliday swearing muffled oaths under the window because he couldn’t find the key.

  She wondered if he had brought Gale Anderson back with him. Perhaps he had. They certainly seemed to take each other very much for granted and made no attempt to talk.

  No one talked except Mrs. Halliday, who was quite able to sustain the whole conversation. She went on pouring herself out cups of tea, each one weaker and more heavily sugared than the last. By the time she had reached six lumps in a pale straw-coloured fluid, she had told them all about Jimmy’s great-grandfather Pointer, who was first mate on a sailing vessel, and who swore to seeing a ship with nothing but ghosts aboard her and all sail set in a gale that was fit to tear the solid land up by the roots and break it into islands—“And his mother says to him when he come home, ‘If it’s ghosts you want, you can see ’em as well at ’ome as abroad, any day. So you stay ’ome. And there’s a haunted ’ouse right next the Jug and Bottle,’ she says—‘if you’re set on such.’ And Ned Pointer, he turned as red as a turkey-cock, and if she hadn’t been his mother he’d have told her to shut her mouth, for he’d been sweet on Martha before she married Jem Ricketts that was landlord of the Jug and Bottle. And his mother ups and says, ‘It’s all right,’ she says, ‘Jem’s been took, and if you’re not afraid of his ghost, I dare say Martha’ll take you into the business for the matter of a wedding-ring.’ And that’s how you come by your great-great-grandmother—and a nice bit of money she had in her stocking foot.”

  The two men went off in the boat again after lunch. Ann watched them go from the high heathery knoll at the top of the island. There had been a mist all the morning, but the sun had drawn it up and the loch reflected the pale, cloudless blue of September. She saw the boat swing into the channel and pass out of sight under the lee of the island.

  Could it have been a boat that she had seen last night?

  No, it wasn’t a boat.

  Why wasn’t it?

  “I don’t know—but it wasn’t.”

  She put her head in her hands and tried to think why it couldn’t have been a boat. Her closed eyes gave her the scene again—half light; and water; and something breaking the surface. That was it. A boat doesn’t break the surface unless—A submarine would break the surface just like that. It would be very reassuring to think that what she had seen was only a submarine. Would it? Would it? She wasn’t sure. The cold, black terror touched her again. She threw up her head and opened her eyes wide on the sunlight. She jumped up. She was a perfect fool to sit there frightening herself.

  “I probably saw Jimmy’s boat, and there’s an end of it.”

  She looked out over the water and wondered where the boat was now. It ought to be coming into sight again if they were going out to sea.

  When she had watched for ten minutes, she was puzzled. If they had gone up the loch, she would have seen them long ago. They must be close in under the island, or she would be seeing them now.

  She went scrambling down towards the water until she came to the steep overhang, which stopped her. She worked along it in the di
rection of the house. Sometimes there was a slippery cliff, and sometimes a lot of great boulders piled cliff-high.

  Quite suddenly she stopped. She thought that someone had spoken her name, and as she turned, bewildered, to see who it might be, it came again, and this time the direction was plain enough.

  It came from under her feet.

  She was in a cleft among the great huddled boulders, with the sea below her and out of sight. The rocks were over her head on either side, and behind her they ran away to a narrow rift down which a thread of water trickled. She had swung herself round one jutting point and was wondering whether she could manage the next. And then, there was her name echoing up from under her feet. It didn’t come from the sea. After the first moment of astonishment she felt sure of that. It would have sounded clearer off the water—and different.

  She turned her back on the loch and crept as far into the cleft as she could. When she couldn’t get any farther, she bent down and listened again. A whispering of voices came indistinctly to her ear, mixed with the dropping of the tiny stream. The most devastating curiosity filled her to the brim. Whose were the voices, and where were they coming from?

  As voices they had no more individuality than the rustling of dry leaves. They were just sound. And the sound came and went. Ann cupped her hands over her ears and leaned her forehead against the rock, and at once the sound changed tone and ran into a word—a strange and awful word which set her pulses thudding. One voice said, “Murder,” and then another voice broke into laughter that crept and echoed in the unseen windings of the cleft. She felt her forehead wet, and did not know whether the moisture came from the clammy rock or whether it was the dew of sudden fear. The echo smothered whatever other words there were. She waited for it to die away, and all at once she heard Gale Anderson’s voice: “You should encourage her to learn to swim. As it is, I suppose it’ll have to be a boating accident.” And then, whether because he turned his head or because he moved, the sound fell back into confusion. Once someone said, “I won’t,” and, “What’s the hurry?” And then there was nothing but the whisper, whisper, whisper of two voices, and upon that there came to her, sharp and clear, the recollection of how she had sat in the lounge at the Luxe waiting for Charles and heard two voices whispering on the other side of a group of palms. What had they said?… “You must get her away at once.”—“And then?” And after that a silence, and she had felt afraid without knowing why. And one of the voices had said, “Well, devil take the hindmost.” And then they had gone away.…