Anna, Where Are You?

CHAPTER XXXIV

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.