He stepped into the hall and set down the bags. As he was turning to close the door, Muriel put her hand on his arm.
“I say, Rod. Do you think you’d better close it?”
“Why not?”
“I-I don’t know.”
“The place is getting chilly enough as it is,” he pointed out, unwilling to admit that the same thought had occurred to him. He closed both doors and shot their bar into place; and, at the same moment, a girl came out of the door to the library, on the right.
She was such a pleasant-faced girl that they both felt a sense of relief. Why she had not answered the knocking had ceased to be a question; she filled a void. She was pretty, not more than twenty-one or -two, and had an air of primness which made Rodney Hunter vaguely associate her with a governess or a secretary, though Jack Bannister had never mentioned any such person. She was plump, but with a curiously narrow waist; and she wore brown. Her brown hair was neatly parted, and her brown eyes-long eyes, which might have given a hint of secrecy or curious smiles if they had not been so placid-looked concerned. In one hand she carried what looked like a small white bag of linen or cotton. And she spoke with a dignity which did not match her years.
“I am most terribly sorry,” she told them. “I thought I heard someone, but I was so busy that I could not be sure. Will you forgive me?”
She smiled. Hunter’s private view was that his knocking had been loud enough to wake the dead; but he murmured conventional things. As though conscious of some faint incongruity about the white bag in her hand, she held it up.
“For Blind Man’s Bluff,” she explained. “They do cheat so, I’m afraid, and not only the children. If one uses an ordinary handkerchief tied round the eyes, they always manage to get a corner loose. But if you take this, and you put it fully over a person’s head, and you tie it round the neck”-a sudden gruesome image occurred to Rodney Hunter-“then it works so much better, don’t you think?” Her eyes seemed to turn inward, and to grow absent. “But I must not keep you talking here. You are-?”
“My name is Hunter. This is my wife. I’m afraid we’ve arrived late, but I understood Mr. Bannister was expecting-”
“He did not tell you?” asked the girl in brown.
“Tell me what?”
“Everyone here, including the servants, is always out of the house at this hour on this particular date. It is the custom; I believe it has been the custom for more than sixty years. There is some sort of special church service.”
Rodney Hunter’s imagination had been devising all sorts of fantastic explanations, the first of them being that this demure lady had murdered the members of the household and was engaged in disposing of the bodies. What put this nonsensical notion into his head he could not tell, unless it was his own profession of detective-story writing. But he felt relieved to hear a commonplace explanation. Then the woman spoke again.
“Of course, it is a pretext, really. The rector, that dear man, invented it all those years ago to save embarrassment. What happened here had nothing to do with the murder, since the dates were so different; and I suppose most people have forgotten now why the tenants do prefer to stay away during seven and eight o’clock on Christmas Eve. I doubt if Mrs. Bannister even knows the real reason, though I should imagine Mr. Bannister must know it. But what happens here cannot be very pleasant, and it wouldn’t do to have the children see it-would it?”
Muriel spoke with such sudden directness that her husband knew she was afraid. “Who are you?” Muriel said. “And what on earth are you talking about?”
“I am quite sane, really,” their hostess assured them, with a smile that was half-cheery and half-coy, “I dare say it must be all very confusing to you, poor dear. But I am forgetting my duties. Please come in and sit down before the fire, and let me offer you something to drink.”
She took them into the library on the right, going ahead with a walk that was like a bounce, and looking over her shoulder out of those long eyes. The library was a long, low room with beams. The windows towards the road were uncurtained; but those in the side wall, where a faded red-brick fireplace stood, were bay windows with draperies closed across them. As their hostess put them before the fire, Hunter could have sworn he saw one of the draperies move.
“You need not worry about it,” she assured him, following his glance towards the bay. “Even if you looked in there, you might not see anything now. I believe some gentleman did try it once, a long time ago. He stayed in the house for a wager. But when he pulled the curtain back, he did not see anything in the bay-at least, anything quite. He felt some hair, and it moved. That is why they have so many lights nowadays.”
Muriel had sat down on a sofa and was lighting a cigarette, to the rather prim disapproval of their hostess, Hunter thought.
“May we have a hot drink?” Muriel asked crisply. “And then, if you don’t mind, we might walk over and meet the Bannisters coming from church.”
“Oh, please don’t do that!” cried the other. She had been standing by the fireplace, her hands folded and turned outwards. Now she ran across to sit down beside Muriel; and the swiftness of her movement, no less than the touch of her hand on Muriel’s arm, made the latter draw back.
Hunter was now completely convinced that their hostess was out of her head. Why she held such fascination for him, though, he could not understand. In her eagerness to keep them there, the girl had come upon a new idea. On a table behind the sofa, bookends held a row of modern novels. Conspicuously displayed-probably due to Molly Bannister’s tact-were two of Rodney Hunter’s detective stories. The girl put a finger on them.
“May I ask if you wrote these?”
He admitted it.
“Then,” she said with sudden composure, “it would probably interest you to hear about the murder. It was a most perplexing business, you know; the police could make nothing of it, and no one ever has been able to solve it.” An arresting eye fixed on his. “It happened out in the hall there. A poor woman was killed where there was no one to kill her, and no one could have done it. But she was murdered.”
Hunter started to get up from his chair; then he changed his mind and sat down again. “Go on,” he said.
“You must forgive me if I am a little uncertain about dates,” she urged. “I think it was in the early eighteen-seventies, and I am sure it was in early February-because of the snow. It was a bad winter then; the farmers’ livestock all died. My people have been bred up in the district for years, and I know that. The house here was much as it is now, except that there was none of this lighting (only paraffin lamps, poor girl!); and you were obliged to pump up what water you wanted; and people read the newspaper quite through, and discussed it for days.
“The people were a little different to look at, too. I am sure I do not understand why we think beards are so strange nowadays; they seem to think that men who had beards never had any emotions. But even young men wore them then, and looked handsome enough. There was a newly married couple living in this house at the time: at least, they had been married only the summer before. They were named Edward and Jane Waycross, and it was considered a good match everywhere.
“Edward Waycross did not have a beard, but he had bushy side-whiskers which he kept curled. He was not a handsome man, either, being somewhat dry and hard-favored; but he was a religious man, and a good man, and an excellent man of business, they say: a manufacturer of agricultural implements at Hawkhurst. He had determined that Jane Anders (as she was) would make him a good wife, and I dare say she did. The girl had several suitors. Although Mr. Waycross was the best match, I know it surprised people a little when she accepted him, because she was thought to have been fond of another man-a more striking man, whom many of the young girls were after. This was Jeremy Wilkes, who came of a very good family but was considered wicked. He was no younger than Mr. Waycross, but he had a great black beard, and wore white waistcoats with gold chains, and drove a gig. Of course, there had been gossip, but that was because Jane Anders was considered pretty.”