She looked at the clock. It was eleven p.m. ‘And it’s at least ten minutes slow,’ she reflected. ‘I wonder whether Aubrey is in bed? He’s young, but he’s awfully sensible. I’ll talk it over with him, and see what he can suggest.’
She reconnoitred. All was well. She climbed out of her bedroom window, slid down the porch, and was soon at the gate.
After her experiences of the previous night, she felt nervous at the idea of traversing the Manor Woods. However, the way round by the lodge was so very much longer, and the thought of finding the gate closed when she eventually arrived there so disheartened her that she decided to summon all the resolution she possessed and dare the woodland path. She entered the little wicket gate, found the main path through the woods, and ran.
The drawing-room, like the library, looked out on to the lawn. Felicity saw a light shining through the curtains as she emerged from the darkness of the trees, and made directly for it. As she approached, she heard a heavy crash. Her heart leapt. Her pulses raced. Her head swam, and her knees knocked together. At the same instant the light went out, and Aubrey’s boyish accents, raised in something between fear and horror, cried:
‘Cheese it, you stiff! You’ll do me in, you fool!’
The mother, that sleeping lioness which inhabits all of us, however weak and timorous we be, awoke to frenzied life in Felicity’s breast. She dashed towards the French windows and banged frantically on the glass. Jim Redsey’s voice exclaimed:
‘Hullo! Who’s that?’
Felicity banged again, and somebody inside the room switched on the light. A voice behind the curtains said:
‘Who is it?’
‘It’s me!’ said Felicity, with an ungrammatical terseness born of nervousness. ‘Let me come in! Quick, quick!’
A fumbling at the catch, and Aubrey opened the French windows. Except for himself, the room was deserted.
‘Where’s Jimsey?’ asked Felicity, surprised. Aubrey carefully closed the French windows before giving her any answer.
‘Gone to bed,’ he replied laconically.
‘Who were you shouting at just now?’
‘Me?’
‘Don’t be silly! Who was being unkind to you?’
‘No one, dear child. I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley. Nobody is ever unkind to me.’
Felicity stamped impatiently.
‘Naughty,’ said Aubrey, unperturbed. He bent and picked up the spade, which was lying across the splintered top of a small occasional table.
‘I suppose you’ve heard the glad tidings that are round the village?’ he asked.
‘You mean the murder? Aubrey, that’s what I’ve come to see you about. You know our dust-heap?’
‘Survivals of mediaeval England,’ said Aubrey, grinning. ‘In other words, past pluperfect of the verb stinkay – to give forth an obtrusive odour with malice aforethought. I know it, yes.’
‘I agree it’s time something was done about it,’ said Felicity with a grimace of disgust. ‘Well, this time it’s excelled itself.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. I always have to go and inspect it, because Mary Kate Maloney will throw food away if I relax my vigilance, and, between friends, we can’t afford to be wasteful. Besides, it’s wicked. Well, on the dust-heap I found a suitcase. It has Rupert Sethleigh’s initials on it. In fact, I’m practically certain that it’s the same suitcase he lent Father when we went away for a holiday last month.’
‘And that’s Mary Kate’s neighbourly way of returning it,’ grinned Aubrey.
‘I don’t know about that. I thought Father had returned it – properly. What terrifies me is –’ she paused, and a slight frown settled between her eyes – ‘the inside of the case is horribly stained with blood.’
With no thought of waking his mother, with no thought for anything except Felicity’s news, Aubrey whistled.
‘My – hat!’ he said, aghast. Added to his own surmises, theories, and fears, these seemed dreadful tidings.
‘Yes, isn’t it?’ agreed Felicity, subscribing to the thought and not to the inadequate expression which clothed it. ‘You see – it’s so awkward, with poor old Jimsey digging that ghastly grave and everything!’
‘Eh?’ said Aubrey, startled.
‘I was in the woods last night – out for a walk,’ Felicity explained. ‘I saw him chasing you.’
‘Oh, I see. We’re in this together then? Good! You know the Roberts have been here all the afternoon, don’t you?’
Felicity’s eyes widened.
‘I can’t believe it of Jimsey,’ she said. ‘Not the – not the horrid part, anyway. Aubrey’ – she laid a hand on the boy’s arm – ‘what was happening in here when I came along?’
Aubrey grinned. ‘Oh, I made the poor old thing a bit hairy, you know. I can see now the way I asked him about Rupert practically amounted to an accusation of murder. A bit thick, that. I mean, a man may think a man has dotted a man one over the nut in a fit of peevishness, or absent-mindedly, but a man has no earthly right to indicate to a man, even in the most measured and tactful terms, that a man suspects such to be the case.’
‘Yes, I see what you mean,’ said Felicity, without ironic intention. ‘And he was angry with you?’
‘He had a shot at slamming that spade down on top of my head,’ said Aubrey, grinning. He pointed to the splintered table-top. ‘I was always a nut at the obstacle-race when I was a small kid at Cliveton House,’ he observed carelessly.
Felicity shuddered. Maternally she stroked his black head to make sure it was still safe.
IV
At twelve-twelve before dawn on Wednesday, June 25th, Mrs Bryce Harringay awoke. She raised herself slightly in bed and listened. Yes, there was certainly a noise. Yes, they were still at it. What a mercy she had locked her bedroom door! Thanking Heaven – for the woman was pious in her way – that the house was not her house, and therefore the burglars were no concern of hers unless they actually forced their way into her bedroom and demanded her jewel-case, she turned over on to the other side and lay down again. It occurred to her that about an hour earlier there had been that awful crash. Probably the burglars murdering James Redsey! A nuisance, that! Still, her subconscious mind was busily adding, James could be spared. It occurred to her that the bedroom window was wide open! An easy method of access to her room if the burglars could climb forty feet of blank wall! The feat, she told herself, was not an impossible one. These cat burglars could climb anywhere. A fly had nothing on them when it came to scaling precipitous heights, she had heard. And there had been that ghastly murder in the neighbouring town of Bossbury! . . .
Mrs Bryce Harringay poked a plump and graceful foot out of bed. In less than five seconds she was closing the window. It is not easy to close a window without making any sound at all, but, fear lending her dexterity, Mrs Bryce Harringay managed it.
Then, with a curiosity which not even fear could allay, she peered out. There was no moon, but the luminous softness of a midsummer night, heavy with scents and secrets, and never becoming wholly dark between sunset and the dawn, allowed her to discern two, or perhaps more, shadowy figures as they walked across the lawn. One of them seemed to be carrying an electric torch. She could see the moving disc of light it cast on the grass.
‘Making their escape with ill-gotten booty,’ thought Mrs Bryce Harringay, who carried a romantic heart beneath the layers of superfluous tissue which covered it, and who had been in her youth a keen student of the then infantile Silent Drama. With great, though entirely subconscious satisfaction to know that the booty was not her property, she watched the burglars until they disappeared into the shadows beyond the farther flower-beds.
She was about to return to bed when a thought struck her. What of Aubrey? Was he safe? She decided hastily that of course he was perfectly safe. Burglars had no interest in boys. She went to bed and slept soundly.