The torch went away. Aunt Lydia ’s footsteps went away. Everything was nice and dark and quiet again. And then all of a sudden the darkness and the quietness stopped being nice and began to terrify her. She slipped out of bed and ran to the door, quickly in case there was something that might be going to pounce-a black bat with ragged wings like Aunt Lydia hating her, or Miss Holiday all white and wet come back to find her blue Venetian bead.
And the door was locked. It was the most dreadful moment in Jenny’s life. Worse than the one just before the accident, when she knew it was going to happen. Worse than coming round in the hospital and feeling all smashed up. Because with Jenny the things that happened in her mind would always be worse than anything that could happen to her body. She stood flat against the door and made herself stiff, so as not to beat upon it with her hands and scream for Rosamond. If she did that, Aunt Lydia would come, and she would know that it was Jenny who had tricked her.
It took every bit of her strength, but she did it. And then all of a sudden the key turned, and the handle, and the door began to move. She had been pressed against it, but at the very first sound she went back inch by inch on her bare feet, her hands at her throat to stop the scream which was there. The door went on moving, and suddenly, blessedly, there was Rosamond in her white nightgown with the passage light behind her. She saw Jenny, her hair standing up in a rumpled halo and her eyes staring. When she held out her arms Jenny ran into them, gasping for breath and all at once a dead weight to be carried to the bed and laid down there.
When Rosamond had shut the door she came back to kneel down and listen first to a wordless sobbing, and then to half-stifled words. Some of them were to come back to her afterwards. At the time she could only think of Jenny’s clinging hands and the trembling of her body. They were there together in the dark. A movement to put on the light had brought a more agonized shuddering than before, and a gasp of “No-she’ll come!”
When the sobbing died away Rosamond’s almost inarticulate words of comfort began to take form.
“Jenny, listen!… Yes, you can if you try. Something lovely is going to happen, and I’m going to tell you about it. There isn’t anything to be frightened of. We are going away.” Jenny gave a rending sniff. “Wait till I get a handkerchief and I’ll tell you all about it.”
She made her way to the chest of drawers, came back again, and sat on the bed.
“Here you are. And don’t cry any more, or you won’t be able to listen.”
“I’m not crying-I’m blowing my nose.” Then after an interval, with no more than a catch in her breath, “Where are we going?”
“We are going away with Craig. I’m going to marry him.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow-no, I expect by this time it’s today.”
“I’m coming too?”
“Of course! Oh, Jenny, I wouldn’t leave you!”
Jenny said, “I should think not!” And then, “Aunt Lydia locked me in.”
“I know, darling. Nobody shall again. Only you mustn’t go out at night-you’ll promise, won’t you?”
“Who said I went out at night?”
“Aunt Lydia saw you. And Craig did too. You mustn’t, darling-it isn’t safe.”
Jenny’s voice went stiff.
“I don’t want to any more.” Then, with sudden energy, “Rosamond-”
“What is it?”
“Suppose she comes back!”
“Aunt Lydia?”
Jenny was gripping her wrist.
“Yes-yes! She was out there! She came and looked in and shone a torch!”
“Was that what frightened you! I thought I heard someone in the garden-someone talking. Was that Aunt Lydia?”
“The talking part wasn’t. Rosamond, she shone her torch to see if I was awake. Suppose she comes along the passage and tries the door!”
“Why should she?”
“She might. Let’s go into your room. We can lock this room again and she’ll think I’m here, and we can lock ourselves into yours. And then we’ll run away tomorrow and marry Craig and live happy ever after.”
CHAPTER 39
Lydia Crewe went back to her room and put on all the lights- not only the big chandelier with its many-faceted lustres, but the gilt and crystal sconces on either side of the chimney-breast and between the windows, until every inch of the crowded room sprang into view. The curtains hung across the windows in the dark straight folds, but this was the only darkness which remained. There was no place for shadows under the blaze of those unsparing lights. She sat down in her chair, stiffly upright, rigidly controlled. Her heart still beat more heavily than it should have done. She set her will to steady it. The dark garden was shut away from her by a barrier of walls, a barrier of lights. If it was nerves which had played her a trick, they should learn that she was their mistress. If it was Jenny-
She held her anger in a leash and would not let it go. Jenny could wait. This was no time to take an extra risk. It was Lucy who was the danger, not Jenny, playing with a blue Venetian bead which no one would ever see again. It was gone, and tomorrow Jenny would be gone to the school which Millicent Westerham had described as “a bit rough and ready, but the discipline is excellent and the fees really low.” Jenny wasn’t going to like the excellent discipline of Miss Simmington’s school. It might perhaps be left to deal with her, at any rate for the present.
She came back to Lucy Cunningham, who was the real danger.
After that interview with Henry it would be safer to wait, but she couldn’t risk it. And in a way it would be all to the good, because he would be able to say in the most truthful and convincing manner that poor Lucy had been in an extremely nervous state and had complained about not being able to sleep. Only of course he must stick to that and not go beyond it. He had neither the nerve nor the clarity of mind to lie convincingly.
Well it must be done tonight. More people than Henry would have noticed that Lucy hadn’t been herself all day. When she was found in the morning, it would be just one more case of an elderly woman who couldn’t sleep and had gone beyond the safety line in the matter of a drug. Her mind began to busy itself with the details. Henry and Nicholas must be asleep. Lucy had often complained that nothing woke either of them once they were off. They must have time to be so profoundly asleep that no one would ever know that she had returned to the Dower House. No one except Lucy, and Lucy would not be in a position to tell what she had known. It would have passed with her into the silence from which there is no coming back.
The voice which she had heard in the garden whispered at the edge of consciousness and was refused. The dead could not return. They had no power to harm. You were safe from them. When Lucy was dead she would be safe from her… Time went by.
When at last she rose to her feet she was steady and resolved. Her bedroom lay beyond with a connecting door. She went through to the bathroom on the other side, a converted room with some of the furniture which had belonged to it still taking up what should have been clean, clear space. She went to the small bureau in the corner and lifted the flap. There were a number of pigeonholes behind it, all stuffed with papers-old bills, old correspondence, things she had never troubled herself to deal with. When she had cleared the second hole from the left she felt for the spring which disclosed a small inner compartment. It was empty except for just one thing-a glass bottle very nearly full of white tablets.
She put everything else back, tipped a number of the tablets into the palm of her hand, and contemplated them. They were more than twenty years old-nearer thirty. Old Dr. Lester had prescribed them for her father in his last illness. One, or at the outside two if the pain became severe. On no account more. She wondered if the drug would have kept its strength. She had never heard anything to the contrary, and she would just have to chance it. Better make the dose a stiff one-say ten tablets. She counted them out and put them into a tumbler to dissolve with a little hot water. She would need a small bottle for the liquid. After some deliberation she selected from a cupboard a three-parts empty bottle of ipecacuanha wine, washed it out carefully, and when the tablets were fully dissolved corked them up in it.