“Suppose she wouldn’t come. She was afraid of this place-she hated the well. Suppose he killed her first. Have you thought of that?”
Miss Silver said, “Yes.” Then she added in her briskest voice, “It is useless to speculate. We will not anticipate evil. We need coolness and courage. And here is Mr. Brandon who has plenty of both.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
When Rachel looked back afterwards at the next half hour it seemed to her the longest she had ever known. She would have said the most dreadful too, if the culmination of that time of waiting had not been more dreadful still.
At first she was too cold and numb to feel. Prim and efficient as a governess in her own schoolroom, Miss Silver took command. She talked apart with Gale. They admitted the chauffeur, Barlow, and talked with him. Finally they took up their positions. Barlow in the kitchen, with a candle well shaded and the window made light-proof by hanging a tablecloth over the drawn curtains. Rachel and Gale together where the back door opened and, opening, would hide them from view. Miss Silver on the other side of the door, half way between the well and the larder, with the larder door left open as a line of retreat. A log of wood on the floor beside her.
Rachel’s glance had passed over the log without really seeing it in the candle-light, but as she stood in the dark and waited, a picture of it formed on the surface of her mind, as a broken reflection forms again on water that has grown still. An odd picture. Miss Silver and that log of wood. Miss Silver pushing the log until it lay right on the edge of the well. A heavy log. An odd picture. She thought about it with the kind of apathy which dwells on some trifle because the thing is there and it is too much trouble to stop thinking about it.
The silence and the cold of the scullery settled about them. The darkness was unbroken-a darkness that could be felt. The damp of the well came up with a breath of decay. Rachel’s thought came slowly and most unwillingly back to the well. It was so very old. More than twice as old as the house which had been standing over it for three hundred and three score years. An old well. Very deep, very dangerous. Was this the first time that a man had made use of its secret danger? No wonder Caroline was afraid of it.
The numbness of the apathy left her. Her heart turned over. Caroline… She shuddered from head to foot.
Gale’s hands came down on her shoulders and turned her to him. He held her, and kissed her again and again. Agony and joy were together in her mind. She thought, “I can’t go on feeling like this-I shall die.” And then she thought, “This isn’t death, it’s life.” And then she stopped thinking at all, and time stopped too.
It began again with the sound of the telephone bell. The bell rang in the living-room, and with both doors closed the sound had something ghostly about it, like a sound caught between sleep and waking.
Miss Silver said at once, “You go, Miss Treherne-and pray do not forget the well.”
Rachel wondered whether she would ever be able to forget the well. She left Gale’s arms-left warmth, protection, comfort-and skirting the right-hand wall, came past the table to the kitchen door, actually brushing the well cover as she passed. Her hip touched it, and her hand. The wood was soft and smooth, almost slimy. The feel of it set her shuddering again.
Barlow was in the kitchen, sitting up stiff and straight on one of the kitchen chairs with his candle on the table beside him shaded by an elaborate contrivance of books and saucepan lids. She signed to him not to get up, and went through into the living-room, leaving the door ajar.
The telephone was on the wall half way to the window. The bell was ringing again, and now it sounded horrifyingly loud. Her heart beat, and the hand that lifted the receiver shook, and then stiffened into rigidity, because it was Richard’s voice which struck insistently upon her ear: “Hullo-hullo-hullo! Who is there? Is there anyone there?”
Richard-but Richard… What was the good of saying but? What was the good-
She put her left hand up to her throat and managed his name.
“Richard-”
His voice leapt at her.
“Who is that? Is that Rachel? Oh, for God’s sake!”
Rachel Treherne took a hard pull at herself.
“Yes, it’s Rachel.”
“Where is Caroline?”
“Richard-I-don’t-know-”
“Where is she? She wasn’t at Cosmo’s flat. Her car wasn’t in the garage. I thought about the cottage, and started to come down, but this damned fog is so thick. I thought I’d ring up and tell her I was coming-if she was there.”
Rachel said steadily, “She isn’t here, Richard. Miss Silver thinks-she may be on her way.”
There was a harsh anger in his voice as he said, “After four hours! It’s nearly four since she left Whincliff Edge!”
“Miss Silver says-”
He broke in more harshly still.
“What are you doing at the cottage? And Miss Silver- what is she doing there?”
Her control was slipping. Her voice flinched.
“She came-to look-for Caroline. I came-with Gale. She isn’t here. Miss Silver thinks-We’re waiting to see if she’ll come.”
There was a sound that might have been a laugh or a groan.
“Then I might as well wait with you. I’ll push on.”
“Where are you?”
“Linford.”
She heard the receiver jerk back and the line go dead.
But she ought to have warned him not to drive up to the Corner. She ought to have thought of that. It was too late now.
She hung up, went back across the kitchen, and opened the farther door. But as she opened it, there came to her ears the sound of the back door key grating in the cumbrous lock. Instantly she was alive. She felt a vital apprehension, a tingling excitement that was partly fear and partly an astounding relief, because now, at last, the waiting was over. She stood on the threshold with the door drawn to behind her-listening-intent.
The lock went back, the back door handle turned, and the door swung in, covering Gale. Only now he was to move, come forward to the edge of the door, and be ready. She could see the doorway breaking the solid dark of the room, and something-someone-like a shadow standing there. The wet step caught a glimmer from the fog. The shadow stood there and did not move. Then from the fog a voice called cheerfully,
“Get a light-there’s a good child. Right across to the dresser. There are matches there, and a candle.”
The shadow on the threshold stirred. Caroline’s voice said faintly, “It’s so dark.” And at the sound of that faint voice three people in their hearts said, “Thank God!”
The man’s voice came out of the fog again with a bantering sound.
“Afraid of the dark? You poor tired child! Well, the best way is to make haste and light that candle. I’ve got my hands too full to do anything about it myself. Hurry up, child! Don’t you want a cup of tea? I do.”
Caroline said, “Oh, yes!” She took a step forward. And then, as Gale’s arm came round her, she screamed, and Miss Maud Silver pushed the heavy log out over the edge of the well… It seemed a long time before the splash came.
There was no second scream. Even if Gale Brandon’s hand had not closed down over her mouth, Caroline would not have screamed again. For twenty-four hours she had walked the edge of an abyss. Now she slipped over the edge. She let go. She went down.
There is a point at which you no longer care. Caroline reached it and let go. She did not quite lose consciousness, but she no longer cared what happened.
Miss Silver moved noiselessly back till she touched the jamb of the larder door. She stood there with the door in her hand, ready to move forward or back.
Rachel did not move at all. She had no consciousness of her body. She was set there in judgment. She was a burning flame of justice.
She waited, looking to the doorway. A second shadow had come up, and stood there as Caroline had stood a moment before. So little time had passed-so much had passed-