Vanishing Point

CHAPTER 30

Lucy Cunningham had gone through the day, she hardly knew how. As long as Mrs. Hubbard was there and she was doing things in and about the house she managed pretty well. Whilst she was making beds, dusting, emptying hot-water bottles- Henry liked one, and she wouldn’t have done without hers for anything-mixing balancer meal with scraps, boiling up a mash and feeding it to the hens, the comfortable everydayness of these occupations stood like a wall between her and the events of the night. From the safe shelter of that wall it was possible to regard them as partaking of the unreal quality of any other dream. Looking back as far as her childhood, she could remember to have dreamed that she was being pursued by wolves or Red Indians, that she was trying to pack everything she possessed in one small handbag and catch a train for Australia, the missing of which would plunge her in unknown but quite irremediable disaster. She had also dreamed about falling over cliffs, a long, long swooping drop, and waking just in time to avoid being dashed to pieces at the bottom. All these were things which had happened in the night and had frightened her very much at the time, but in the comfortable daylight they thinned away and were gone.

She went busily from one task to another, and found that the weight upon her tended to lift. There were even times when she ceased to be aware of it for perhaps as long as several minutes on end. Mrs. Parsons’s cat was back on the wall again and she had to chase it away-a patchy tortoiseshell with a lot of white about it, and really quite a malignant expression in its eyes. She would have to speak to Lydia about having down the tree between the hen-run and the wall, an old walnut that never bore, because the minute there were any young chickens, that horrible cat would find it only too easy to climb down it and snatch them. Lydia wouldn’t like the tree to be cut. She didn’t like anything changed or altered. Of course she didn’t have to ask her, because Papa had bought the Dower House and she had a legal right to cut down anything she wanted to. Only she couldn’t stand on her legal rights-not with Lydia Crewe.

Henry was out for most of the morning, and they turned out his room. There was a dead frog in his collar-drawer, and some rather slimy-looking plants in the bedroom basin. She was considering whether they could be thrown away, when she discovered that there were tadpoles hatching out amongst them. She desisted therefore, and laid the frog on the front of the washstand where he could hardly help seeing it. Mrs. Hubbard, in the background, made small clicking sounds of disapproval punctuated by an occasional sniff. How Miss Cunningham could put up with it, she didn’t know. Nobody could say he wasn’t a quiet gentleman, but just as well he never got married, for there weren’t many wives would put up with what his sister did.

By the time Henry’s room had been left as clean and tidy as was compatible with not throwing anything away Lucy really felt a great deal better. All the years during which he had brought in eggs, and moths, and caterpillars, and practically every other mess you could think of, stood solidly between her and the horrid thought which had come to her in the night. Not Henry who mourned when so much as a beetle died-oh, no, not Henry!

She went into Nicholas’s room to dust and tidy it, whilst Mrs. Hubbard went downstairs. It was the room he had had since he was a little boy and George and Ethel had sent him home from India. They had both died out there, and she had been left to bring him up. There was still one bookcase full of books about submarines, and aeroplanes, and boy detectives. She picked up one or two and looked at them. There was a page all scribbled over with drawings of hens, very clever and funny. Nicholas could always draw. There was a caricature of Lydia, tall and black and severe, and one of herself, all round-about. She set the book back on the shelf and remembered Nicholas putting his arm round her and saying in his laughing voice, “But, Lu darling, what’s the good of pretending-you are a rolypoly, and there’s no getting away from it.” Her heart softened. He had laughed at her, he had teased her, he had loved her.

It was after Mrs. Hubbard had gone that the weight began to come down again. Henry had been in one of his most abstracted moods at lunch. He propped a book before him and only spoke to ask for a second helping of pudding, and when he had finished it he went away into the study and shut the door. There was nothing new about this, but Lucy Cunningham felt that it would have been pleasant to have had coffee together in the drawing-room, and that it wouldn’t have hurt him to tell her what he had been doing all the morning. She was, therefore, rather more than pleased to have a visit from Marian Merridew and the friend who was staying with her. She took them over the house, apologizing by the way for the tadpoles and the dead frog.

“My brother is writing a book, you know, and it upsets him very much if anything is thrown out or tidied away.”

Miss Silver was all that was interested and sympathetic. She admired the needlework picture worked by Georgiana Crewe in the year 1755. She admired the graceful portrait of her in the drawing-room.

“Of course all the valuable portraits are at Crewe House, but this one, as you see, has been painted upon one of the panels, so Mr. Crewe let it go with the house. My father bought most of the furniture as it stood. He and Mr. Crewe thought it would be a pity to disturb it, and they had more than they wanted at Crewe House-but it upset Miss Crewe very much at the time.”

She did not know what had made her say that about Lydia. She was just feeling that she wanted to talk, and it slipped out. It didn’t really matter of course, because Marian Merridew knew, and this Miss Silver was just a passing guest. She went on telling her about the house.

But whether they went up or down, she found that her eyes went to the sixth baluster from the top of the stairs, where a tripcord of garden twine had been tied so tightly that the edges had dented and some of the paint flaked off.

She kept the two ladies as long as she could, but in the end they went away and she was left alone. Then, as the house darkened and silence filled it, her wall of defence came tumbling down and she was left face to face, not with a dream, but with stubborn inveterate fact. Someone had tried to kill her in this house last night. There were only the three of them there-all Cunninghams, all of one blood-Henry, and Nicholas, and her-self-

One of them had tried to kill her. Would he leave it at that, or would he try again?

The evening closed down slowly. There was low cloud and a dampness in the air. Nicholas rang up to say that he would be late.

“Don’t bother about a meal-I shan’t want it.”

She could not keep the old solicitude from her voice. She heard it there, and in some curious way it reassured her.

“Do you mean that you are dining out? You must have your food.”

He said easily, “That’s all right-I’ll be having something here,” and rang off.

Her heart sank. Another of those dreadful meals with Henry not speaking. There had been so many of them, and she had not noticed or minded. Now she saw them stretching out in front of her in an endless unendurable vista. And then, quite suddenly like the jab of a knife, there was the thought that there might be no future for her to dread. If she had fallen at the tripcord on the stairs last night she would not be here now, thinking about having supper alone with Henry and being frightened. Suppose there was something else that was planned to happen. Perhaps now. Perhaps later. It might be that she and Henry would sit down to one last meal. Perhaps nothing would happen until after that. Henry would want his supper-and there would be the washing up-

How foolish, how dreadfully foolish to let such thoughts come into her mind. She mustn’t let them come. She must think about getting supper and washing up afterwards. There were herrings to fry, and she must remember that Henry liked his crisp. And the toast too. That was the sort of thing she must keep her mind on. And then Nicholas would be coming home, and-and-“I can always lock my door.”