Ellery Queen’s Anthology. Volume 1, 1960

Q. Patrick Little Boy Lost

Q. Patrick’s stories exploring the morbid aspects of juvenile delinquency have poignancy and macabre insight. Here is a truly harrowing tale of what goes on in the head and heart of a child.

The day his father died was chiefly memorable to Branson Foster because he was allowed to sleep in the small dressing-room off his mother’s bedroom. An end was thus made to the nights in the fourth-story attic where the little boy had lain obdurately awake, afraid of the hostile darkness, resenting the adult injustice that separated him from the mother who adored and spoiled him. It was his father who had been responsible for his exile, and now that formidable presence, whose black mustache smelt of mouthwash and the top of breakfast eggs, was gone.

His father’s death brought Branson not only comfort but freedom from the fear that had haunted him since his eighth birthday. The question of his departure to a boys’ boarding school had lapsed. Branny’s mother had given him tearful reassurance on that point as she kissed him goodnight and tucked him under the delicious warmth of the quilted eiderdown.

“You are the man of the house now, darling. You must stay and help your poor mummie run this silly old girls’ school.”

Almost certainly, the vague, bewildered Constance Foster never dreamed that her passionate adoration might be harmful for a son of nearly nine. In 1915, small English seaside resorts had not heard of mother-fixations. Nor was Dr. Sigmund Freud even a name at Oaklawn School for Girls in Littleton-on-Sea. With the death of her husband it seemed only natural to her that mother and son, sharing a common grief, should cling even closer together.

After the funeral, at which the wheezing voice of the vicar had consigned the mustache to eternal rest, Branny’s bed was put permanently in the little room adjoining his mother’s. Attics, Mrs. Foster argued, were dangerous in wartime. From then on, going to bed became a pleasure rather than a terror for Branny. He could read as long as he liked and when his mother came upstairs, he could hear her gentle movements through the quarter-opened door and bask in the warm certainty of her nearness and safety. And during her frequent spells of poorliness — for Mrs. Foster considered herself frail — he could tiptoe into her room when his anxiety for her goaded him too painfully, and satisfy himself that the fragile, cherished figure in the bed was actually alive and breathing.

Almost every day of this new life brought a major or minor delight. The older girls made much of their headmistress’s only son in his bereavement. The younger girls constituted a respectful audience for whose benefit he could strut as the only male in a household of women. And as a symbol of his importance, he was permitted full use of the front stairs, strictly forbidden to housemaids, girls, and even to junior mistresses.

Each golden day reached its climax in the evening when instead of taking plain supper in the school diningroom, he had light tea alone with his mother in his father’s erstwhile study. Often the meagre wartime fare would be augmented by a boiled egg, a tin of sardines, or some similar delicacy.

His mother would watch him devour these with a smile half-excited, half-guilty, murmuring:

“It’s naughty of me, I know, in wartime, but a growing boy really does need it.”

Luckily for the finances of Oaklawn School, she did not entertain a similar sentiment with regard to the forty or fifty growing girls under her care.

The middle weeks of the summer term passed for mother and son as an idyl. Mrs. Foster looked prettier than ever in her widow’s weeds which lent an air of pathos to the soft brown eyes and heightened the ethereal pallor of her perfect skin. She was careful to present the world with a decorous show of grief. But inwardly she, like her son, was happier than she had been in years. Her husband’s hand, heavy as his mustache, was no longer there to suppress her natural volatility. Branny spoiled her as she spoiled him. With her son she could yield to her moods of almost childish gaiety. She could also indulge the tendency to poorliness which Mr. Foster had so unimaginatively discouraged. When the responsibilities of her position became too irksome, it was delightful to pamper a mild headache in a darkened room while Branny hovered with solicitude and eau de cologne.

As sole principal of Oaklawn School, Mrs. Foster dreamily muddled the accounts, allowed the servants and tradespeople to lead her by the nose, and let institutional discipline slide.

But, halcyon as this period was, it carried in it, unknown to Branny, the seed of its own destruction. The late George Foster had bought Oaklawn School for Girls with his wife’s money and had made her joint principal. But he himself had owned two-thirds of the goodwill and knowing his Constance, had anticipated just such a situation as had now arisen. He had loved the school, built it up through his own labors, and had made testamentary precautions to preserve it.

Hence the invasion of the Aunts. This started by what, in the second World War, would have been termed “infiltration.”

Aunt Nellie was the first to come. There seemed nothing particularly ominous about her arrival since she appeared toward the end of the summer term, wearing dark glasses as the result of a visit to an oculist in the nearby town of Bristol. Branny had seen Aunt Nellie only once before and connected her pleasantly with strawberries and cream for tea on the lawn and a “silver penny” on her departure for India. In the dim past, an amorous purser on a P and O liner had called her a “dashed pretty woman” and the epithet had stuck, although it had long since lost any semblance of accuracy.

Aunt Nellie was discovered in the drawing room just before lunch one day. Branny’s mother said:

“Come in, darling, and say how d’you do to your pretty aunt.”

Branny stared at Aunt Nellie solemnly. She said, giggling:

“Not pretty with these awful glasses on, Constance. There, I’ll take them off.”

Branny was still unimpressed. He saw a massive woman with fluffy pinkish hair, a great deal of jewelry, light bloodshot eyes, and a high color. Since he was in love with a small, dark woman with large eyes and ivory cheeks, he had every reason to remain unimpressed. When his aunt had removed the glasses, he said gravely:

“You aren’t so very pretty even now, are you?”

Aunt Nellie laughed again and said: “Now is that a gallant thing for a little pukka sahib to say?”

And being a woman, she never forgave him.

There was no silver penny this time — and no departure.

Aunt Nellie was currently without occupation or domicile. She had made the war an excuse to get away from India where she had left a dyspeptic colonel husband to his curries and concubines. Abandoning India, however, had not made her abandon its vocabulary. Everything around Oaklawn School became pukka or not pukka. Lunch became tiffin. Mrs. Foster was a memsahib, and Aunt Nellie drove the servants almost crazy by addressing them as ayahs and giving capricious orders in bastard Hindustani. Also, owing to the demands of her elaborate toilet, she spent an indecent amount of time in the bathroom.

But at first Aunt Nellie’s visit was rather a joke to Branny. Her garrulous intrusion upon his private teas with his mother was tiresome, but she brought compensatory delights. For example, he discovered the joys of exploring her bedroom and made the younger pupils goggle incredulously at the report of his discoveries there. Once, thinking Aunt Nellie safely in the bathroom, he had bedizened himself with her cosmetics, wrapped himself in her satin peignoir, and attaching a pinkish false front to his head, had run down to the second form classroom to the hysterical delight of a bevy of little girls.

But he had paid dearly for this short-lived accolade. Aunt Nellie was lying in wait for him behind the bathroom door as he sneaked upstairs. She swooped out, a bald, outraged condor, and seized him. Snatching her property, she shook Branny till his teeth chattered, slapped his painted face several times, and banged his head against the bathroom wall so hard that Mrs. Foster, attracted by her beloved’s outcries, hovered ineffectually, screaming:

“Pas sa tête, Nellie. Pas sa tête.”

Nor did Branny’s punishment end there. For a whole week Aunt Nellie refused implacably to eat at the same table with him and he was obliged for seven days to forego his teas with his mother and to partake once again of thick slices of bread without even jam at the “kids” table in the school diningroom.

These tribulations, however, did not greatly disturb Branny for Aunt Nellie, despite the length of her stay, was a visitor and must, surely, depart in time. Soon he and his mother would be alone again and life would reassume its untarnished bloom.

He wrote Aunt Nellie a polite little note of apology which was frigidly accepted. In due course the teas were resumed.

It was on the second evening of his rehabilitation that Branny began to suspect Aunt Nellie was not a visitor after all. Over the teacups his aunt and his mother were discussing the French Mademoiselle who had been recalled by a telegram to her native Paris.

“It’s about time, Constance,” remarked Aunt Nellie, “that I started to do my war bit, n’est ce pas?”

And sure enough, when it came to the period for French next morning, there was Aunt Nellie to give the lesson, Aunt Nellie insisting on a far-too-French French accent from her pupils and making herself ridiculous by singing little French songs which no one understood.

From that day on Aunt Nellie gave up Hindustani and interlarded every sentence with a French word or phrase and embellished them with pretty Gallic gestures.

But Anglo-Indian or Anglo-French, she seemed to have become a permanency.

As the summer term drew to a close Branny continually begged his mother to deny this dreadful possibility but she put him off by references to the school’s goodwill which were meaningless to him.

The blow really fell about the middle of the summer holidays. For several days his mother had been busy with correspondence. The zeppelin raids over London had started and parents were rushing their children from the east to safer schools in the west. It had been necessary to have a new stock of prospectuses printed.

Idly Branny picked up one of these as he stood by his mother waiting for her to finish a letter. The front page riveted his attention. Under the heading:

in place of the familiar Principals, Mr. and Mrs. George H. Foster, he read:

Mrs. John Delaney was Aunt Nellie. Under other circumstances, that would have been sufficiently terrible. But Miss Hilda Foster was Aunt Hilda, the fabulous, almost mythical Aunt Hilda of whom the very memory was panic.

And she was coming here to Oaklawn to be joint headmistress with Aunt Nellie and his mother. The idea was beyond contemplation.

“But, mummy,” he wailed, “she can’t come here. This is your school. It was yours and daddy’s.”

Mrs. Foster kissed him a trifle wistfully and explained that his father had wished and willed things so.

“You’ll see, Branny,” she concluded, “with your aunts here we’ll have more time together. Time for walks in the country, picnics.”

But Branny felt desolation like a stone in the pit of his stomach. He locked himself in the lavatory and cried until he was violently sick.

Aunt Hilda arrived with the first days of September, about two weeks before the beginning of the winter term. She was even more terrifying than Branny’s memory of her.

Having been paid companion to a difficult lady of title, she had waited for her death and its consequent small annuity before descending on Oaklawn. She immediately showed that there is no female tyrant so absolute as one who has herself been under tyranny.

In appearance she was almost the exact opposite of Aunt Nellie. There was no false front about Aunt Hilda, either actual or metaphorical. A short, heavy woman, she wore her grayish hair back uncompromisingly from her forehead. Her manner was as uncompromising as a steam shovel. She creaked like one, too, as she moved heavily about, clucking at the inefficiencies of the establishment. She clucked over the school accounts, the tradesmen’s bills. She clucked over the laxity of the domestics, and several of Branny’s friends among the kitchen staff — especially those on whom he could rely for snatches of food at illicit hours — were sent away in tears. Aunt Hilda clucked disapprovingly over Mrs. Foster too, whisking away all her sister-in-law’s faint protests with an abrupt:

“Nonsense, Constance.”

When the more important things in the establishment had been clucked into a state of dull efficiency, Aunt Hilda turned her attention to Branny, who, she decided, was a shockingly coddled child. First of all she banished him once again to the fear-inhabited attic bedroom. Having neither the strength of will nor the command of vocabulary to defy her sister-in-law, Mrs. Foster tried at least to soften this blow for her son by providing him with a night-light. But Aunt Hilda snapped:

“Nonsense, Constance, stop pampering the child. Besides, it’s unpatriotic to waste tallow in wartime.”

It was unpatriotic, apparently, to waste quite a few things on Branny. The teas stopped almost immediately and his diet was rigidly overhauled. Meat, which he loved, was almost forbidden. In place of warm slices from a new cottage loaf with butter or jam, he had to make out with thick slices of yesterday’s bread scraped by Aunt Hilda’s own hands with a thin film of margarine. And at breakfast, even in holiday time when there were no pupils to consider, he had to endure the agony of lumpy porridge swimming in hot milk while his aunts, good trencherwomen both, partook liberally of ham, sausages, or poached eggs and bacon.

Exasperated one morning when Constance furtively slipped a sausage to Branny from her own plate, Aunt Hilda coldly pronounced the dreaded words:

“Constance, you are hopeless with that child. There is only one thing to do. He must go to a boys’ boarding school. He needs the discipline of boys of his own age. You are turning him into a milksop.”

There followed a heated argument at the end of which Constance dissolved in tears and Branny, goaded beyond endurance called his aunts “Two fat old pigs.”

Oddly enough in this impasse it was Aunt Nellie who came forward with a solution which more or less proved satisfactory to all parties. She approached Constance some hours later in her bedroom where she had taken her poorliness and Branny after the storm in the breakfast teacups. Aunt Nellie argued with sweet persuasiveness. No one wanted to get rid of dear Branson, of course, but Constance must admit it was not good for a child to be the only little boy in a school for girls. Now she, Aunt Nellie, had been writing to her friends in Mysore; indeed, she flattered herself she had worked up quite a neat little Anglo-Indian connection for the school. In some cases parents had not wanted their children to be separated, it being wartime and India being so far away, and several girls could be snared for the school provided their little brothers could also be admitted. The introduction of boys into the school would not only solve the problem of Branny, it would bring the sisters proportionate financial benefits.

It was this last consideration which won the nod of approval from Aunt Hilda, and the winter term was not too far advanced by the time Branny was sharing his attic — now pretentiously called the boys’ dormitory — with the first harbinger of the male contingent.

Branny might almost have been at boarding school, so far had he been severed from his mother. They had to scheme for their meetings like guilty lovers. Since Branny could do nothing, it was Mrs. Foster who developed craft. She persuaded one of the junior governesses that she was not “strong” enough and substituted herself as director of the younger children’s afternoon walk. She imagined ailments for the solitary male boarder so that she could sneak up to the dormitory for a surreptitious squeeze of Branny’s hand before “Lights out.”

These were, however, frugal crumbs of comfort for Branny. Life had become even bleaker than in the most flourishing days of the mustache. And with the stubborn simplification of the very young, Branny viewed the causes of this new regime and affixed all the blame for it on Aunt Hilda.

From then on he hated Aunt Hilda with a hatred that was the more bitter because there was no one with whom he could share it.

Although the admission of boys to Oaklawn had brought him no positive advantages, it did bring him a friend and ally who influenced him profoundly. This was the male boarder, a youngster of Branny’s own age, who was afflicted with the name of Marmaduke Cattermole. His father was the Vice-vice something-or-other of something-or-other in India and the son was Vice and Sophistication personified. A degenerate imp, as Aunt Hilda was to call him later, not without a certain approximation to essential truth.

Branny was a trifle overawed when this angelic-looking child first appeared. In fact everyone was overawed by Marmalade, as he himself chose to be called. Aunt Hilda, observing his ethereal complexion and remembering the alphabetic distinctions following his father’s name, decreed an extra blanket for him and a glass of milk at midday.

This milk, intended by Aunt Hilda as a special mark of favor, produced an unexpected result. For Marmalade had a passionate and whimsical hatred for milk and when it became plain that milk was to be forced upon him willynilly, this hatred transferred itself to Aunt Hilda as the instigator of his misery. In a short time his loathing outrivalled and outshone even that of Branny.

Indeed, Marmalade was obsessed with Aunt Hilda. He brewed malice against her with every breath and being a talented boy both with pencil and in doggerel rhythm, he mightily convulsed Branny with his verses and sketches. Outwardly he was honey-sweet to her but behind her back the angel was transformed into a monster. He invented innumerable names for her, among which the few printable ones were “blackbeetle,” “hellwitch,” and “the female gorilla.”

There is nothing like hatred to breed hatred in others. Branny and Marmalade fanned each other to a pitch of frenzy and in this new alliance with a boy of his own age against the Arch-Enemy, Branny forgot some of his hunger for his mother.

Gradually and imperceptibly Marmalade led the more timid Branny into action. It started with a terrifying, tiptoed investigation of Aunt Hilda s bedroom. The yield was less exotic than that of Aunt Nellie’s room. There were some severe black dresses with whalebone collar-supports which Marmalade promptly removed; a coroneted handkerchief sachet, doubtless the gift of the titled lady whose declining years had been cheered; some entrancing thick bloomers over which the two boys giggled; and several pairs of formidable stays.

The nearest approach to feminine daintiness was a bottle of eau de cologne. Following Marmalade’s lead, Branny spat into it long and dribblingly.

The most intriguing object was a key hidden in a small drawer. After frantic detective work it was found to open a small medicine closet on the shelf above Aunt Hilda’s bed. Its contents were disappointing too. Apart from a few household medicaments, there was an enema tube, whose purpose was unknown even to the sophisticated Marmalade, and a small bottle labeled brandy.

Marmalade pointed to it in delight. “Look, man. I bet the old blackbeetle guzzles brandy all night. Bet she gets drunk as a geyser, man.”

This allegation, though fascinating, was incidentally quite unfounded. Aunt Hilda was the soberest of mortals and kept a small supply of brandy as an emergency measure against sickness in others of less iron constitution.

Marmalade pointed excitedly to another bottle of approximately the same size and shape. It was labeled TINCTURE OF IODINE-POISON, and there was a red skull and crossbones.

“Coo, man, let’s pour some of that into the brandy,” he said daringly, “so next time the old witch takes a swig—”

“Gosh, no, man. You’d get put in prison or hanged.” Branny’s voice was awestruck. He had a wholesome terror of the forces of law and justice.

Marmalade snorted. “Who cares for the rotten old police? If old black-beetle was out in India, we’d do her in easy, man. One of my Dad’s house-boys pushed his wife off a cliff into the river and a crocodile ate her. Never found out either till someone killed the crocodile and found her bracelet inside. He didn’t get into any kind of a row.” Marmy’s saintlike face puckered in a simian grin. “Pity the poor crocodile that ate old hellwitch.”

But since there were no cliffs and no crocodiles at the Oaklawn School, little that was productive could be gleaned from this lurid reminiscence. Satisfying themselves with a last dribble in the eau de cologne bottle, the two boys stole away to safety.

Apparently nothing was suspected and the conspirators exchanged ecstatic grins every time Aunt Hilda took out her handkerchief and a faint whiff of eau de cologne assailed their nostrils.

Not long content with past triumphs, Marmalade’s fertile mind soon conceived a new plan of attack. Pleading scientific experiments, he made a surreptitious deal with Ruby, the most amenable of the scullery maids, whereby for the sum of one half-penny apiece she would hand over to him every live mouse caught in the kitchen traps. They soon had quite a flourishing family which they kept in a biscuit tin and fed on crusts from their supper.

At last the hour to strike came. Aunt Hilda’s only real self-indulgence was an hour of “forty winks” after tea. It was an immutable law and one could absolutely count upon it. Plans were duly laid. Branny was to stand guard at the foot of the front stairs while Marmalade stole up the back way with his biscuit tin and planted the mice in Aunt Hilda’s bed.

Branny waited breathlessly at his post. He could hear the clink of cups where his mother and aunts were taking their tea. Everything was running smoothly. Marmalade reappeared, his golden face beautiful with anticipation.

“Right between the sheets, man. All four of ’em. I bet the old—”

“Cave,” whispered Branny, for at that moment the study door opened and Aunt Hilda appeared. They withdrew into the shadows where they could not be seen but from whence they could watch the broad black back as it camelled its way ponderously upward over the drugget and stair rods.

The two children waited in the darkness, hardly daring to breathe.

At last it came — that faint scream which was probably the most feminine act ever perpetrated by Aunt Hilda. They heard her door open, they saw her appear, clad in a gray woolen dressing gown, at the top of the stairs.

Then, for all her bulk, Aunt Hilda ran down the front stairs as swiftly as a young doe, calling to no one in particular.

“The cat, quick! Mouse in my bed!”

The cat was duly obtained and shut in Aunt Hilda’s room where it allegedly left a half-eaten carcass under the bed.

Though the two boys hovered around, they never discovered the fate of the other mice. Whether they were squashed by the bulk of Aunt Hilda or whether they escaped to plague her further was forever shrouded in mystery.

But the reason for the mice’s presence in her bed did not long remain a mystery to the astute Aunt Hilda. The truth was made plain after a rigorous cross-examination of the scullery maid, Ruby, and Branny and Marmy received the Wages of Sin.

They were ordered to spend the rest of the day locked in their room, where they were to write one hundred times in their best copperplate hand the laudable sentence:

“Do unto others as you would be done by.”

No food would be served until Aunt Hilda was satisfied with their task.

They wasted considerable time trying to tie two nibs on to a single pen and thus do two lines at once. Finally they abandoned this and settled to their work, which they finished about an hour after their normal dinner time. They were, of course, ravenous, but they were too proud to signal their distress. However, they had a friend at court, for a faint rustling under the door attracted their attention and they saw six thin bars of milk chocolate appear under the crack. They fell on them and devoured them avidly without speculation as to their source.

It was typical of Branny’s love for his mother that he never subsequently caused her embarrassment by thanking her. In some respects he was a very tactful and gallant gentleman.

As the afternoon lengthened with no sign from their jailer, Satan inevitably entered to find mischief for idle hands. He started innocently enough goading Marmalade to write a number of lyrics all beginning with the line of their impositon.

But after a while this palled and the poet turned artist. Since they had used up all their paper, Marmalade adorned the end-leaves of Branny’s copy of Black Beauty with caricatures of Aunt Hilda’s ample figure, which became increasingly anatomical. By the time they heard Aunt Hilda’s footsteps on the stairs, the end-papers of Miss Sewell’s innocuous little opus were in a condition which would have caused the cheeks of its authoress to turn deep scarlet. Quickly Black Beauty was hidden behind the other books on the shelf and forgotten.

Although Marmalade remained the only male boarder, Oaklawn School for Girls prospered financially — an undeniable fact of which the aunts made capital, attributing it, of course, to their own efficiency and overlooking the geographical and chronological aspects of the case.

Branny, as far divorced as ever from his mother, dreamed of the holidays for which he and his mother had secretly planned a trip to Weston-Super-Mare.

But when the holidays came his dreams were shattered, for Aunt Nellie’s Anglo-Indian connection had been all too successful and there were several unwanted, homeless girls who had nowhere to go and had to remain under the school scare.

So Constance was required to stay at home and Branny stayed too, eating the same uninteresting food as during term time and denied even the use of the front stairs.

But life was not too impossible — at least not until the day that Aunt Hilda started, unbeknown to anyone else, to collect items for a local Church bazaar for the Belgian Refugee Fund. During the course of her probings, she came upon Branny’s books and it was not long before Black Beauty was discovered. Unfortunately there was a duplicate copy and she picked on the one in which Marmalade, now vacationing with an aunt in Chapstow, had made his recognizable drawings.

It went to the vicarage along with other books, a faded lampshade, two broken parasols, a wilted pair of chintz curtains, and a supernumerary pair of andirons.

Branny was in the garden the next day when the vicar’s wife arrived. With the sure instinct of childhood, he knew that there was trouble brewing even before he saw Black Beauty clasped to an indignant bosom.

He gave her one of his slowest, sweetest smiles, but she hardly responded. Then his heart went sick because he saw what she was carrying.

She was shown to the drawing-room to see Aunt Hilda, and soon Branny’s mother and Aunt Nellie were sent for. Branny hovered around but acoustically the drawing-room was poor — that is, for people listening outside the door. He heard nothing but later, when the vicar’s wife left and the conference was transferred to the study, his eavesdropping was more successful.

“It’s entirely your fault, Constance,” Aunt Hilda was speaking. “You’ve raised the child without the first principles of discipline.”

“He needs a good whipping,” this from Aunt Nellie.

“It’s not his fault and you’re not to touch him.” Branny could hear his mother’s voice, tearful but determined. Then he caught the mention of Marmalade’s name.

“That degenerate imp... he’ll have to go... wouldn’t have had Mrs. Jackson... for the world... scandal... ruin the school... of course, Branny must go too.”

It was more than Branny could bear. He pushed open the door and marched in.

The three women were sitting around the center table. His mother held a handkerchief up to her face. Aunt Hilda’s arms were folded across a broad intransigent chest. Aunt Nellie drummed jeweled fingers. On the table lay Black Beauty, open at the end-pages, the broad caricatures glaringly displayed.

Branny’s eyes were riveted on them in horrified fascination. Then some strange impulse seized him and he started to laugh, helplessly, hysterically.

“Branson Foster.” Aunt Hilda’s voice thundered through the room. But it was Aunt Nellie’s ringed hand that delivered the sharp slap to the boy’s face.

“Stop it — at once!”

Branny’s laughter ended as abruptly as it had begun.

He moved toward his mother, seeking her face. But it was hidden behind her handkerchief.

Aunt Hilda demanded: “Branson, did you — er — perpetrate these... these—?”

Branson was still looking at his mother, paying no attention to Aunt Hilda.

“Speak up, you wicked child,” rapped Aunt Nellie.

But Branny did not answer. The aunts started talking, both at once. Branny had found his mother’s hand and was squeezing it. His touch seemed to give her courage because she spoke at last.

“Hilda, Nellie,” she faltered. “Leave us alone, will you, please?”

“Very well, Constance. He’s your son.” Aunt Hilda rose ponderously. “But if you find he isn’t innocent — and I can’t believe he is...”

“Innocent,” snorted Aunt Nellie.

“What he must have is a good whipping.”

Aunt Hilda took a ruler from the desk and pushed it across the table towards Constance. The two aunts withdrew.

Alone with his mother, Branny did not speak for a moment. His eyes turned again to the dreadful book on the table. Then suddenly, almost fiercely, he picked it up and threw it in the fire. The sight of the flames curling around the images of Aunt Hilda gave him a strange satisfaction.

His mother’s large brown eyes were staring at him inquiringly.

“Oh, Branny, did you... Oh, if only I knew what to do... if your father were alive.”

His eyes downcast, Branny said:

“I didn’t do it but... but I don’t want Them to know I didn’t.”

“But Branny...”

“I’ll take a whipping.” He took the ruler from the table and held it out.

“But Branny... if you’re innocent—”

“I’ll take a whipping,” he repeated doggedly.

“Oh, Branny, I know what it is. You don’t want to tell on Marmy.”

Still Constance did not move. Her large brown eyes filled with tears. With sudden determination Branny seized the ruler from her with his right hand and brought it down on his own left palm with hard, painful whacks. After each blow he uttered a realistic howl. He changed hands, striking at his right hand. With the sixth blow he gave vent to a burst of caterwauling which, for all its violence was almost sincere.

Then he rushed from the room, past his listening aunts who looked at each other and nodded in satisfaction. He could almost hear them saying:

“I didn’t know poor Constance had it in her.”

He ran up the front stairs to his room and stayed there almost all day.

When next he saw his mother alone, he learned that Aunt Hilda was adamant about his going away to a boys’ boarding school next term. Marmy would have to leave, too.

And when he went up to bed in his lonely attic, Aunt Hilda forbade him once again the use of the front stairs. That night he dreamed of Marmy’s Indian crocodile, but the woman toppling over the cliff into the reptile’s jaws was not the houseboy’s wife, it was Aunt Hilda. And when he awoke, a strange quivering of excitement was in him. If Aunt Hilda were gone, life could be golden again. Accidents did happen. Why couldn’t an accident happen to Aunt Hilda?

Once his mind had leaped this terrific hurdle, the idea was never out of his thoughts. He nursed it like a secret joy. An accident had happened to the wife of Marmy’s father’s houseboy and nothing had happened to the house-boy. Marmy had said so. The profundity of Marmy’s influence on him was beginning to show. Timid, unassertive, he would never have imagined what he was imagining if the other boy had not taught him that one can fight even the most formidable foe.

His dreamings were at first thrilling but vague. He remembered the blue bottle of iodine in Aunt Hilda’s room with its red skull and marked with the word POISON, and wondered what would happen if by chance some of it got into Aunt Hilda’s brandy. Iodine tasted bad. Branny knew that because he had licked some off once after it had been applied to a cut finger. Probably Aunt Hilda would taste the iodine and not drink the brandy. No, the accident wouldn’t happen that way.

Branny’s mind dwelt constantly and caressingly on Marmy’s Indian reminiscence of the unwanted wife, the cliff, and the crocodile. His days and nights were exalted with an image of Aunt Hilda falling from a high place, while below, its jaws gaping to receive its prey, squatted a monstrous but cooperative crocodile. In Branny’s secret dream world, Aunt Hilda gradually stopped being a human being. She became a symbol of Injustice. If something happened to her, it would not be something happening to a real person of real flesh and blood.

He brooded more and more, yearning for the old days of closeness and safety with his beloved. He grew so pale with brooding that his mother became quite worried about him. However, she ascribed his vapors to his dread of going away to boarding school, for arrangements were already being made with a gentlemanly but inexpensive establishment in Kent and his departure was scheduled for the beginning of the Easter term.

It was the Germans, those arch-experts in murder, who brought Branny’s secret desire out of the realms of dream and into reality. The zeppelin raids had now begun in earnest and it was rumored that they would not concentrate upon London alone but were planning to destroy the industrial cities of the midlands, even the nearby city of Bristol. These rumors were confirmed by a solemn visit from the vicar who, in his role of special constable, was responsible for seeing that all regulations were observed concerning the safety of Littletonians.

England was not yet blacked-out as it was to be later in the War and the street lamps had not yet been painted that bluish purple which, though picturesque, was to make the towns and villages so gloomy at night. The menace from the air — especially in the west — was nowhere near as great as in the Second World holocaust. Nevertheless, each little town in England was beginning to take itself seriously as a target especially picked by the Kaiser himself, and black cloth for curtains was at a premium.

The menace, however inconsiderable, was there. And the vicar, a resourceful and conscientious man, felt responsible for the safety of his flock, in particular for the young lambs entrusted to the care of the principals of Oaklawn School for Girls.

Consequently, he evolved a plan and called on Mrs. Foster and the Aunts for a solemn conference.

It had been arranged by the local authorities that the approach of Zeppelins should be signaled by the ringing of the church bell. At the first peal it behooved everybody to extinguish all lights and betake themselves to the security of their cellars. But the vicar realized that in a house of some sixty or seventy persons — mostly young persons — there might be panic or confusion resulting in serious accidents.

He suggested that the three Principals should divide up the duties among themselves or their appointees and having decided on their battle stations, they should hold a practice or two during daylight hours. In this way the girls and mistresses would get accustomed to the routine and then — when the fatal hour struck — they would hurry to the safety of the cellar like trained soldiers with the minimum of disorder. He further suggested that an air of jollity or “larkishness” should be given to the whole proceeding so that the children would not be unduly intimidated or alarmed.

“If I can be of any service,” he concluded mildly, “you can count on me.”

But that was sending coals to Newcastle. Aunt Hilda had grasped the idea perfectly. And her superb generalship was more than equal to it. In fact, it was exactly the task she relished.

After dinner the next day she addressed the whole school, including the staff and servants, allotting specific duties.

She tried, unsuccessfully, to give to the project an air of holiday or treat — a special amusement designed by herself for the delectation of the whole school. While attempting to make light of any possible danger, she managed to make her discourse sound like Pericles’ Funeral Oration.

The girls and mistresses smiled halfheartedly as they trooped out of the dining-hall.

However, the actual practice alert did prove to be more fun than had been expected. Aunt Hilda scheduled it for the second hour of afternoon school. She handled it with impressive thoroughness. Girls, governesses, even the servants were instructed to go upstairs to their rooms, to undress and get right into bed, just as if it were their normal bedtime. At the sound of the whistle, things were to begin.

It was far, far better than the algebra or French of afternoon school.

The girls loved it, especially the little ones. And how they giggled when — the whistle having sounded — Aunt Nellie appeared in a cerise peignoir and lighting the candle in broad daylight, advised them, half in English and half in French: “Look sharp, children, and prenny garde.”

Squeaking and tittering could be heard from every room, particularly from the senior domitory where Miss Earle — who had a flair for the dramatic — had appeared in a Japanese kimono with her hair actually done up in a full panoply of curl papers.

Branny enjoyed it all, too. He had, as the only possessor of a flashlight, been given a special assignment. His job was to stand at the top of the back stairs, flashing on his light when needed and shooing off any one who made a turn toward the front stairs. He entertained himself by flashing his light into the girls’ eyes as they scuttled down the stairs with a “boo, look out for the zeppelins” or a surreptitious pinch for those with whom he knew he could take liberties.

After the last girl and junior staff member had been shepherded down, Branny stood at his post and watched, fascinated, as Aunt Hilda emerged from her room in a snuff-colored dressing gown and conscientiously went through the motions of turning out the unlighted gaslights in each passage. Then, carrying a lit candle, she made her portentous way down the front stairs towards the gas bracket in the hall. She was moving fast and purposefully but on the last stair but one she stumbled and the candle fell from her hand.

As Branny scurried away to join the others in the cellar he suddenly knew what was going to happen.

A minute later, when Aunt Hilda came down, he heard her say to Ruby: “One of the rods is loose on the front stairs. See to it at once or someone will break her neck.”

Branny’s pulses were racing as he heard these words from the dark corner of the cellar where he was holding his mother’s hand.

The stair rod is loose... someone will break her neck...

Next time, perhaps, it wouldn’t be daylight. A stair rod might be loose at the top of the stairs rather than at the bottom. Then someone going down hurriedly in the darkness might easily fall all the way from the top and — break her neck...

That night, when going through the stereotyped formula of his prayers: “And bless mother and all kind friends and make me a good boy. Amen,” he added a rider:

“And please, God, make the zeppelins come here soon.”

During the ensuing days while he was waiting for his prayers to be answered, Branny was a model boy. He was good, so obedient, that everyone thought he must be sickening from some infectious disease.

He was particularly polite to Aunt Hilda, for he had inspected the front stairs very carefully. The carpet was overlaid by a drugget of thick, patterned linen. This was held in place by stair rods which fitted into rings at both ends. By pushing the rod an inch or two out of its rung on the banister side and by loosening the drugget, he found he achieved a surface almost as slippery and hazardous as a toboggan slide. Only a quick grab at the banister with the right hand could save anyone. And Aunt Hilda had held the candle in her right hand during the practice. After the fall, when the drugget would automatically be more loosened, no one could ever guess that the stair rods had been deliberately pushed out of their ring-sockets.

He decided on loosening the rods on two stairs — the third and fourth from the top — and practiced several times, even doing it with his eyes closed, since the final deed would have to be done in darkness.

With a child’s implacability he trained himself to the task as thoroughly and impersonally as a guerrilla, but he never really assessed what he was doing. There was going to be an accident. That was all.

Waiting was hard, especially at night when he lay sleepless in bed, his senses tingling in expectation of the sound of the church bell. That there might be any real danger from Zeppelins to himself or to his mother never even occurred to him. Branny feared no straightforward menace.

He was asleep when the church bell finally sounded at two o’clock on a bitter cold night in early December. He jumped out of bed shivering, put on his trousers and jersey, picked up his flashlight, and made his way to his appointed place between the front and back stairs.

From the girls’ bedrooms he could hear twitterings, less gay and giggly now that the real thing had come. He watched the governesses moving, candles in hand, from dormitory to dormitory. Then he slipped to his mother’s room and escorted her to the servants’ wing, whence she was to conduct the maids down the kitchen stairs into the distant safety of the cellar.

Before the procession started was his time for action. Very quickly, and quite calmly, he ran to the front stairs and loosened the rods and the drugget on the third and fourth stairs.

Soon afterwards the girls and governesses began to troop from their dormitories. The children, for the most part, looked frightened and bewildered. Branny didn’t tease them or pretend to be a zeppelin this time, but — as befitted the only male in the house — said encouraging things.

“The old zeps won’t get this far. We’ll shoot ’em all down over London. You see if we don’t...”

Then, when everyone had dispersed — including Aunt Nellie in her cerise wrap — Branny made his way down the back stairs and to the far end of the hall where he could keep the front stairs under observation.

He did not exactly want to witness Aunt Hilda’s downfall. There was no element of sadism or gloating in his scrutiny. It was simple a ruthless sense of efficiency which made him wish to reassure himself that the accident would happen.

The church bell had stopped tolling and the minutes seemed endless. In the near-darkness he could hear the grandfather clock near him ticking off the seconds like drum beats.

Then there was the opening of a door upstairs and he recognized Aunt Hilda’s heavy tread as she moved along the upstairs passages, turning out the gas. As he waited breathless, he heard another sound. Someone was running with light, swift tread up the back stairs. It must, he reflected, be one of the governesses who had forgotten something. He heard Aunt Hilda’s voice saying:

“Forgotten your coat? Well, hurry up and get it. It’s very cold in the cellar and I hope none of the girls...”

The sound of the light scurrying footsteps retreated. A door opened and closed. For a second or two there was no sound except the rhythmic ticking of the grandfather clock and the pounding of Branny’s own heart.

Then footsteps again and — as he peered unseeingly into the darkness upstairs — Branny was conscious of someone approaching the top of the front stairs. Aunt Hilda must be coming down, but without her candle.

Now he could see her dimly as she moved. She had reached the small landing at the crest of the stairs.

She started down. He watched in a kind of appalled fascination.

Then there was the metallic rattle of stair rods. A scream... a crash... as she fell forward and hurtled down the stairs, landing on the tiles of the front hall.

A little moan... then silence...

For a moment Branny stood motionless. One impulse urged him to move forward, another held him back. A sense of triumph warred with a feeling of fear for what he had done.

In the dim light from the gas by the front door he could see the dark figure lying still — very still — at the foot of the stairs.

He felt nothing — only the certainty that Aunt Hilda was there — dead.

Then he heard a sound that made his blood turn to ice. There were heavy footsteps above him and a voice came from the upstairs landing: “Good God, what has happened? Did you have an accident?”

It was a horribly familiar voice. Aunt Hilda’s voice! He became conscious that his Aunt, holding her candle high above her head, was making her way down the stairs, skirting the perilous third and fourth steps.

Aunt Hilda was coming down the stairs. Then it could not be Aunt Hilda who was lying there, a dark pool on the tiles of the hall.

Through his agony of remorse and terror Branny heard Aunt Hilda’s voice again:

“Constance, Constance, are you hurt?”

There was no need for Branny to move closer. In the nearing light from his aunt’s candle, he could make out quite clearly the outlines of that figure lying there, could see the aureole of dark hair framing the beloved face, paler now than death.

“Mother!”

The word came in a groan of agony. Then Branny turned away and disappeared into the darkness.

There is a degree of suffering beyond which the human mind cannot go, even in childhood where suffering is so acute. It is beyond the realm of sanity and verges on the outer darkness beyond which there is no thought, no reason.

Luckily for Branny he reached that point of narcosis immediately. His only instinct was a blind desire to hide — somewhere far away, to fade and quite forget. Up in the attic there was a cupboard whose door he could lock from the inside. It was musty and dirty but he didn’t care. It was dark and as far away from the front hall as possible.

For hours he crouched there in the darkness, his mind mercifully blank. If any conscious thought came to him it was simply that he had killed his mother and if he stayed hidden up there long enough he’d die too and that would be that.

Somewhere in the house were voices and footsteps, the girls returning from their cellar and trooping back to their dormitories. And then someone was calling his name:

“Branny... Branny...”

But he didn’t move. He’d never come out of his hiding place... never... and when they found him, if they ever did, he’d be dead and they could bury him by his mother.

He sat there, dry-eyed, and immobile as a rock. He had no sense of time or place any more. He slept. He was dimly conscious of that when he awoke. He was dimly conscious too of faint light creeping through the cracks in the door which told him it was day. Then the daylight went again. It never occurred to him that he might be hungry. He did not even feel the aching of his body. Noises sounded occasionally, infinitely remote. He heard them but he didn’t try to interpret them. He slept again and awoke again to his stubborn grief.

At some point, it might have been aeons later, he heard Aunt Nellie’s voice and he knew that she was near, actually in the attic.

“The cupboard, Miss Snellgrove. When Miss Foster searched up here yesterday, she never thought of the cupboard. It is just possible...” And then Miss Snellgrove’s tearful voice. “Oh, Mrs. Delaney, hasn’t there been any new word from the police station?”

“Not a word, but it’s hopeless. They have searched everywhere, all over the countryside. I am convinced, Miss Snellgrove that the boy is...”

At that moment the door handle of the cupboard was vigorously shaken.

“See? It’s locked. Branny.” Aunt Nellie’s voice was kind but strained with anxiety. “Branny, I know you are there. Do come out, there’s a good boy.”

Branny crouched deeper into the cupboard and pulled some musty curtains over him. They were not going to get him out by any trick of kindness or anxiety.

They were both tugging at the unyielding door. “He must be there. Oh, Branny, do come out...”

At last they went away. It seemed a long time before anyone came again and then there was the sound of footsteps and a man’s voice. Branny recognized it at once as that of the doctor who had attended his father during his final illness.

“Branny—” this time it was Aunt Hilda speaking — “Dr. Berry is here to talk to you. He has something to tell you.” She added hurriedly: “I’m going away so you can talk to him alone.”

Branny heard her heavy footsteps departing and the doctor’s voice:

“Branson, my boy, won’t you come out? I want to talk to you about your mother.”

Branny did not answer. They were speaking softly and gently to him now but as soon as they got him out, they’d be harsh with him. Perhaps they had guessed what he had done on the stairs and he would be sent to prison.

Then Doctor Berry spoke again. “Branson,” he said quietly, “I want you to come with me and see your mother. She’s asking for you. She needs you very badly, my boy.”

Branny’s heart missed a beat. Through all those long hours in the darkness it had never occurred to him that his mother might still be alive.

Slowly his hand went up to the lock. Then he withdrew it again. No, this might be a trap — to lure him out so they could pounce on him.

“Branson, she’s down in the drawing-room waiting. You wouldn’t want to be unkind to her, would you? She’s had a terrible accident...”

Branny could bear it no longer. He crashed open the cupboard door and stood there facing Dr. Berry. For a moment the physician stared in astonishment at the child. Branny was covered with grime and dust. His hair was full of cobwebs and the expression on his pale face held in it all the misery of the world.

Dr. Berry was strangely touched and, dirty as Branson was, he drew him towards him. The kindness of a stranger was too much for the boy and the pent-up flow of unshed tears broke loose in a torrent.

For a moment Dr. Berry said nothing. He just held the quivering child close and patted his head while Branny wept his heart out. Then the doctor produced a handkerchief, wiped Branny’s eyes, and said cheerfully:

“Come on, now, old boy. You’ve got to be a man. Your mother needs a man to look after her and you’re the only one in the house, you know.”

Then in answer to an unspoken question, he went on: “She’s going to live, Branson, but she may never be able to walk again. That’s why she’ll need a man like you to look after her.”

He took Branny’s hand and led him from the attic. “Now, go on down and have a good scrub and then we’ll take you to see her. Come on, let’s see a clean smiling face and look sharp.”

Aunt Hilda and Aunt Nellie were waiting for him downstairs. They kissed him and Aunt Hilda said “poor little boy” as she produced the best Brown Windsor soap. Aunt Nellie got his Sunday suit and used her own comb and brush to brush the dust and cobwebs from his hair.

And then, when he looked clean and neat, Aunt Hilda said: “Your mother’s in the drawing-room, dear. Her bed is down there now and you can have the little study next door all for your own. So you can look after her. And you can have all your meals together.”

“And,” put in Aunt Nellie with a grim attempt at cheerfulness, “after a few weeks when your mother’s a little stronger, she’ll need you to push her wheel-chair. So you won’t be going to boarding school next term after all...”

Dr. Berry led him then into the drawing-room where his mother’s bed was placed near the window. She lay in it, frail and beautiful, her soft hair about her face.

“Well, here’s your new nurse, Mrs. Foster.”

Branny moved to his mother’s bedside and took the slender hand that she held out to him. They looked long into each other’s eyes like lovers.

“Branny,” she breathed. “Oh, Branny, darling...”

After the doctor had left, they stayed there, fingers intertwined. There was a faint fall of snow outside the windows and through an open door Branny could see his own bed in the little room that had been prepared for him. There was even a fire.

Soon Aunt Hilda came in, carrying a tea tray with two cups only. There was a boiled egg for Branny and muffins to be toasted.

“Now, Nurse Branson,” she said, “I’m going to leave you to take care of your patient.”

Branny felt his heart would burst with joy.