Every step she took away from the light made her safer. In her dark coat she couldn’t really be seen now. No one would look this way. The back stair went down two-thirds of the way along the passage. It was screened by a door. Sometimes the door stood open. Mattie was careless about leaving it. If Thomasina had come up last, it would be shut. It was open. Walking in the dark with what light there was getting fainter and fainter behind her, she came upon it, her fingers feeling along the wall. And then quite suddenly the edge of the door, and then nothing. The door was open, and there was no light-no light at all.
She slipped into the darkness, shut the door, and took a long breath. She did not know how frightened she had been until it was over. Now she stood for a moment, pulling herself together.
It was quite, quite dark. After a moment or two she began to move her foot half a step at a time. She thought there was a sort of landing there, taps and a sink on one side, and steps going down on the other. She had to be very careful. If she made a false step, anyone might hear her. She took two steps-three, with her hand before her-four-five-and then there was the stair-rail, and her foot poised over nothingness. Her hand touched the rail just in time to prevent a loss of balance. She gripped hard on the rail and went down. She wasn’t quite sure where the stair came out.
When she had reached the last of the steps she had to feel about her. There was another door, shut this time. She opened it and found herself in a dark passage. At that moment there came over her a desperate longing to be back in her room warm in her bed. It came and it went again. Afterwards she thought that was the last moment at which she could have drawn back. It was her opportunity, and she refused it. From then on she had no choice.
CHAPTER 18
In the study Lilian Fancourt sat bolt upright on the sofa. Her expression was strained, her face very white. She was looking at the man who sat beside her, his whole appearance that of someone who is quite sure of himself. He said in an easy manner, ‘Come along, Lilian-what’s all the fuss about? I’m not going to eat her.’
Lilian brightened a little. She said, ‘N-no-’
He laughed.
‘Anyone would think I was asking you to do something dreadful, my dear.’
‘Oh, you’re not-are you!’
‘Of course I’m not. I’m only asking you to help me to restore a poor lost girl to her nearest relation. You’ve really no truck with her at all, you know. She’s not married to your nephew and never has been, and if I take her off in the middle of the night, well, she’s run away and that’s all there is to it. Next time she turns up, if she turns up at all, it’ll be as a blushing bride.’
Lilian gave him a curious frightened look.
‘What do you mean?’
‘What I’ve said. ’
‘What do you mean by saying “if she turns up at all”?’
‘Oh, just a manner of speaking.’
‘You wouldn’t hurt her-you don’t mean that!’
He laughed.
‘Look here, my dear, she’s got money, and if she was out of the way it would all go to Charity with a nice big C. You’ve known me a good long time. Have I ever struck you as being the sort of chump who would go out of his way to endow a charity?’
‘N-no-you haven’t.’ Lilian looked at him out of the corners of her eyes. It was curious to see him after-how long was it-fifteen years? No, it must be near twenty-but it might have been yesterday. She let her thoughts run back. He had always taken the high hand… She wouldn’t really have liked it. She and Harriet were better off as they were. And yet-and yet-
His voice cut in.
‘My dear girl, what’s all the fuss about?’
CHAPTER 19
Anne went on through the door into the hall. The light seemed frighteningly bright to her eyes which had accustomed themselves to the darkness. She had come out into the back part of the hall. What light there was came from the single jet turned low just inside the hall door. The first door on her right led into the dining-room, and beyond it, to the front of the house, was the room where they had sat after dinner. It was the room where Lilian had her writing-table. Light shone under the door. Straining, she thought she could catch the sound of voices. She stood still and listened. The murmur of voices went on.
And then she had a sudden fright. One of the voices rose, came nearer. She darted for the dining-room door. It was level with her. She was inside and the door held close in front of her-not shut but just held close. She stood there, her heart beating so loud that it seemed to her that anyone would be able to hear it and follow the sound and find her.
Moments passed. Her heart-beats quieted. And then when she could hear again there was sound coming, not through the door whose handle she clutched, but from behind her. She turned round. The door against which she had been leaning, the door into the hall, wasn’t shut. But the sound didn’t come from there. It came from in front of her on the right-hand side. It came from the next-door room, and she remembered that there was a door between the two rooms.
When the house was built all those years ago, when old Mr Fancourt was young, there had been gay parties in the house and provision made for guests to circulate. Lilian’s voice, explaining that of course they lived very differently now since the two wars, came to her.
‘Of course, we don’t remember its gay days. He wasn’t so young when he married our mother.’ Lilian’s high, affected voice came trailing out of her memory as she crossed the dark dining-room step by cautious step. She mustn’t make any noise at all or they would hear her as she could hear them.
She was about half-way across the room, her hands feeling before her and the carpet soft under her feet, when it came to her with paralysing suddenness that one of the people she could hear speaking next door was a man. It came to her with terrifying suddenness. From that moment when her own heart had quieted and she had really begun to listen, it had been Lilian’s voice to which she had been listening. And then suddenly there was a man speaking. It was strange to her, and yet not strange at all. It wasn’t Jim’s voice. Quite definitely it wasn’t his.
She went on moving slowly and carefully until she came to the door between the two rooms. Her hands groping in front of her felt the panels of the door. They came flat against it and stayed there. Her forehead came down between them and was pressed against the dark panel. She heard the man say, ‘You’d much better leave it all to me,’ and in that moment she knew that the man who was speaking was the man who had watched her in the garden. She had been on her knees planting the bulbs, and she had looked up and seen him. It swept out of her memory and caught her back. It took her a moment to shake it off and to come again to the dark room with her hands pressed against the door and her forehead leaning against it. It took her a moment to be where she was, not where she had been.
She came back and listened to the voices on the other side of the dark door. She must have missed something, because what she heard was Lilian again-not what she said, but her voice leaving off as if she had been speaking and then had stopped. And quite clear on that again, the man’s voice, a little louder.
‘Dry up, will you! The less you know about this the better! You do what you’re told and that’s all you’ve got to bother about!’
‘I don’t think-’
‘You don’t need to think! You do just what you’re told and no harm will come to you! You start thinking, and before you know where you are you’ll be in difficulties! And if you get into difficulties, you can get out of them all on your own as far as I’m concerned!’
Then Lilian again.
‘Oh, no, I didn’t mean that. I wish you wouldn’t-you confuse me so-I only meant-’