Midnight House E-Book

Ethel Lina White

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

The story „Midnight House” about the mysterious house. The owners, who went abroad. However, neighbors claim that they saw them in the city. This house is associated with ill-fated love and early death. For a long time, it was closed, but soon reopened...

Leseprobe

Contents

I. THE EMPTY HOUSE

II. MURDER LANE

III. BLACK HAND

IV. THE CELLAR

V. POLTERGEISTER

VI. THE RACE

VII. THE LAST POST

VIII. The Game

IX. CROOKED MARY

X. "HOME"

XI. ANCIENT HISTORY

XII. GOOD VICTORIANS NEVER DIE

XIII. THE LAST WORD

I. THE EMPTY HOUSE

–I–

THE house had been barred, locked and shuttered for over eleven years. Thousands of days had dawned without a ray of sunlight striking through its windows. Thousands of nights had fallen with no flicker of a match within its walls.

Lying awake in the next house, Elizabeth Featherstonhaugh–aged nineteen and possessed of a fertile imagination–used to shudder at the thought of black emptiness pressing on the other side of her room. Herself a child of loneliness and twilight–she believed that the darkness must be in absolute possession of the deserted mansion. She imagined it clotted to material strength and shredded with solid cores of density–so that if an intruder dared to force a passage through it, he would be drawn in and crushed between rollers of atmospheric pressure.

Occasionally, as she listened, she thought she heard strange noises in the empty house. There were sounds of tapping, creaking, rumbling. Footsteps walked where there were no feet. Drawers seemed to be pulled open where there were no hands. When the furniture appeared to thud from spot to spot, she knew that it was time to switch on her bed-light.

The reassurance of her own cheerful room, with its comfort and fine proportions, reminded her that she was in charge of Captain Pewter’s two children and that it was more than a job.

“This family belongs to my caste,” she told herself. “The Captain comes from my wonderful India. I like Geraldine. I’m fond of dear little Philippa. And I love Barnaby... I won’t be frightened.”

When she was small, she had been so terrified of the dread “Black Man in the cellar” that she petitioned the angels to protect her. Now, as she sat up in bed, with her short fair hair ruffled from the pillow and her white pyjama-jacket open to reveal a thin neck, she looked almost a child again.

Her eyes were wide with fear as she stared at her bedroom wall, as though she were actually threatened by the crowding darkness. At such moments she pictured a sudden burst and bulge of masonry displaced by the encroachment of the evil force which had choked the light.

“There’s someone–or something–in the empty house,” she whispered before, once again, she prayed for protection.

“Deliver me from the Powers of Darkness.”

–II–

The empty house was listed in the postal directory as No. 11 India Crescent, Rivermead, but it was a dead address. Its absentee owner and his wife were reported to be living abroad; but it was so long since they had been seen in the town that few people remembered them. During the years there had grown up a new generation who were too accustomed to the blinded building to be curious.

Occasionally strangers asked questions about it, only to be told that it was just another of those deserted homes sprinkled about every country–shrines to memory. Only a few residents remembered its tragic story of domestic tyranny, ill-starred love and early death.

Mr. Spree, the lawyer, knew more than any outsider, but as representative of legal caution his lips were sealed. He used to walk to his office and had been accustomed to pass No. 11 four times daily without giving it a thought. Towards the middle of November, 1938, his interest in it was revived by the calendar.

He was a healthy, well-preserved man of sixty, wearing the conventional clothes of his profession while resembling the traditional farmer. Doomed by inheritance to a sedentary life, he spent his leisure in chopping wood and cutting lawns. He was also a keen gardener and specialised in yellow tomatoes.

It gave him a pang to remember that he was still in the forties when he had been responsible for sealing up No. 11 India Crescent. This house had been the property of General Tygarth, who lived there for many years with his wife and two children. Mrs. Tygarth was a silly, snobbish woman, who got the sort of husband she deserved, for the General–irritable, eccentric and tradition-bound–pushed her about remorselessly.

The children were gentle, listless and apparently of poor stamina. The daughter, Madeline, married a local doctor who–in spite of his youth–was considered destined for the first flight. Her parents were glad to be rid of her, for they concentrated on their son–Clement.

In spite of their devotion they were deeply disappointed in his character. He was delicate, dreamy and devoid of the requisite lethal instincts. The sporting community had a name for him. Yet during the War of 1914-1918 he ran away from Oxford and enlisted as a private. He became a prisoner of war in Germany–escaped, only to be recaptured–and finally, after the Armistice, returned to his family as a total disability.

Three years later, the next-door house, No. 10, was bought by a retired sanitary-engineer. He was an excellent plumber and his drains remained after him as a valuable legacy to future tenants; but the other residents resented his connection with trade.

As leader of the opposition, the General did his utmost to freeze out the newcomer. However, he met his match in the plumber, for Alexander Brown had dug in his heels.

“I’ll live to see you move out first,” he prophesied to the General. “Then I’ll clear out–and glad to leave the stinking place.”

–III–

While their parents raged like bulls in combat, the General’s son and the plumber’s daughter fell deeply in love. Marion Brown was sweet, simple, and a perfect type of natural blonde beauty, but as far as the Tygarth family was concerned, she was mud. From the first kiss, the romance was doomed to follow the tragic tradition of Romeo and Juliet, for the worthy Browns–smarting from wounded pride–turned their daughter into a virtual prisoner, to keep her from meeting her lover.

For two years she never went out alone. Clement was powerless, since he was dependent on his father for every shilling and on his mother for the care which kept him alive. Forbidden to write to his beloved, he used to stand at his window, to watch her come and go on her daily walk.

Although it was so long ago, Mr. Spree, the lawyer, felt slightly choky at the memory of that white fading face behind the glass. Thwarted of love, the young War-hero’s health grew steadily worse, and he died from collapse during an attack of influenza.

His parents were broken-hearted and possibly conscience-stricken. As No. 11 had become a place of hateful memories, the General decided to shut up the house and go abroad.

Thus was the plumber’s prophecy fulfilled...

On that misty November morning, nearly twelve years later, the lawyer recalled the General’s letter of instructions. No. 11 was to be sealed up and remain unopened, pending further orders or the owner’s return. Upon a specified date, he was to assume the death of his client and open up the property.

“I wish you to be personally responsible for locking up the house” [wrote the General]. “We are leaving nothing of value behind and there are no animals. It is intolerable to contemplate some inquisitive bounder from an Estate Office prying into details of our private life. We are moving out early tomorrow morning, and hope our departure will be secret. We have suffered too deeply to endure further painful publicity.”

Although his instructions were definite, the lawyer could not resist ringing up the General, to urge the sale of the property. He was nearly blasted over the wire by his client’s rage.

“My letter stands,” he roared. “No sale. Haven’t you the gumption to realise the last thing I want is a pack of strangers let loose in my house, making a catalogue and passing remarks on my furniture? I regard the place as dead money.”

Mr. Spree could congratulate himself that he had acted with none of the traditional Law’s delay. That same afternoon, he unlocked the door of No. 11 with the key enclosed in the General’s letter and went inside, to carry out his instructions. The house was dark, as many of the windows were already latched and shuttered. With meticulous care to avoid taking notice of his suroundings, he went from room to room, to make sure that every fastening was secure. While he waited in the hall for the Corporation employees to cut off the water and check the electric-light meter, he read his newspaper, to prove his lack of curiosity.

Later, when he was alone again, he locked the back door, which opened on to the area. Then, with a sense of drama, he walked out of the front door–reflecting that his would be the last foot to cross the threshold for many years.

The next morning, the windows were boarded up from the ouside, and both locked doors were double-chained. Even the chimneys were blocked, to prevent daws from building inside the pots. When all was finished, the lawyer remarked that the house would need a Houdini quality to wriggle itself free from its bolts and bars...

And now–within a fortnight–it would be opened again.

–IV–

Still held captive by the past, the lawyer stood in the road to gaze along the fine sweep of India Crescent. The tall Regency houses of buff stucco were too spacious for wholesale private ownership. Only a few nabobs had the means to install modern improvements and provide the essential domestic labour. Many of the mansions were converted into luxury flats. There was also an expensive private hotel and a very exclusive social club.

No. 10–at one time the property of the plumber–had been bought by Captain Nigel Pewter. Recently returned from India, he converted it from an ice-box into a conservatory, besides transforming its appearance. Glancing up at the unveiled glass, the lawyer recalled the windows when they were muffled with Nottingham lace and shrouded with peacock-blue velvet.

He remembered too the spell-binding beauty of the girl who used to stand there, waiting in hope of one glimpse of her beloved. Her long hair flowed loose over her shoulders in a golden cloud–her cheeks were petal-pink–and her eyes shone deeply blue as his own love-in-a-mist.

Where was that beauty now?... He had heard nothing of the family for years. The plumber sold the house–after the General had made the first move–and left the neighbourhood. With the passage of time the tragic Marion had become misty and remote as a legendary figure.

Feeling romantic, the lawyer quoted Shelley.

“For love, and beauty, and delight There is no death nor change–...

Damn.”

He sprang on to the pavement to avoid a car which shot round the bend. As the driver stopped, the lawyer recognised Dr. Evan Evans, who had married the General’s daughter–Madeline.

The doctor’s figure was boyish and his fair hair thick, so that at first glance he could be mistaken for a medical student. Even at close range he looked surprisingly young for a man in the forties. He had calm blue eyes and a sensitive, intelligent face. His voice was flexibly sympathetic and his social feelers so delicate that he was as popular in a slum as in the Bishop’s Palace.

Yet he was no fashionable woman’s doctor in spite of a perfect bedside manner. His skill recommended him equally to men. All his patients recognised the force of character beneath his mild exterior. On occasion, his eyes could harden to disconcerting penetration and his voice cut like broken glass.

“If you slaughter me, Evans,” remarked the lawyer, “how can I defend you at your trial?”

The doctor laughed as he explained.

“Sorry. Short on time. I have to operate–and once a body is laid out on the table it becomes a sacred charge. I could run over the best citizen if I were on my way to operate on a blackguard.”

“If you’re hinting I’m safe from injury so long as I’m your patient, it sounds suspiciously like advertising.”

The doctor’s bleak smile was proof that he did not appreciate other people’s humour. Then interest flickered into his eyes at the sight of a woman who came out of the Crescent Hotel. She was a thin, smartly-dressed brunette of middle-age, with horn-rimmed glasses and a natural high colour.

“That’s Mrs. Davis,” he said in a low rapid voice. “Daughter of old Evans the draper. She’s married to a Manchester chemist... Now she illustrates what I was saying just now. During a crisis in my life, I was interrupted to do a rush-operation on her, just before her marriage. I moved Heaven and Hell to save that woman. But when it was over and I realised the price I had to pay for yanking out her appendix, I could have murdered her ruthlessly.”

He broke off to greet the lady with his graded professional manner.

“Back on your yearly visit, May? You’re very faithful to us.”

Mrs. Davis’s colour grew higher with pleasure.

“I’ve not missed a year yet,” she said. “I’m not staying with the family this time. They’re crowded out with relations from Canada. So I’m at the ‘Crescent.’... I’m so glad to see you, doctor.” She turned to the lawyer and added, “If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be here now.”

“I claim to be responsible for all her children,” said the doctor. “Four now, isn’t it, May?”

“You should know. But don’t let my husband hear you. He likes some of the credit for these little jobs.”

As Mrs. Davis giggled and blushed, the lawyer reflected acidly that Evans knew the brand of humour which appealed to the lady. His bow was frigid when she walked on again.

“That sort of thing rather jars,” he remarked. “I was just recalling the girl who used to stand at that window. You don’t see beauty like that nowadays. I suppose she’s dead.”

The doctor’s smile was bitter as he shook his head.

“No, she’s alive and back in the town. A tragic survival. She looks older than her actual age.”

“Dear me. Pity. Hope I shan’t meet her. It would be painful when I remember–What’s brought her back after all these years?”

“I can guess. A woman naturally returns to the scene of her romance. Probably she wants to be here when No. 11 is reopened.”

The lawyer tried to make another joke.

“My operation, this time, Evans. In less than a fortnight, I shall explore an interior... I suppose no recent news of the General, or his wife, has leaked through to you?”

“No,” replied the doctor, shaking his head, “I only saw them once after they left. I went to San Remo to break the news of their daughter’s death personally. The General blamed me, although I advised them not to go abroad while Madeline’s condition was critical. At first my mother-in-law sent me an occasional post-card, but I’ve heard nothing from them for years. I think they must both be dead.”

–V–

Not long afterwards, as he drove to the hospital, Evan Evans’s thoughts returned to the night before No. 11 was shut up. It was not good preparation for dealing with a mastoid, but he knew that his professional zeal would return directly he entered the operating-theatre.

He remembered the funereal house, which was furnished in what he considered criminal taste. Again he sat in the library with its dead smell and its books which were never read. Confronting him–as judge and jury–sat the General and his wife.

The General’s face was grim and snarling as a tiger’s mask which looked over his shoulder, from the wall. His eyes were pitted to relentless points of light. His wife–with her dyed hair showing white at the roots–was like a feather whirling between opposing gales. Sometimes she defended her son-in-law, but more often she supported her husband in his monstrous charge.

The doctor defended himself, but in the end had been defeated by shock-tactics. They forced him to sign a paper. He warned them that it was blackmail, while he determined to get it back and destroy it... And then–as he told the lawyer–the telephone-bell rang in the hall.

Before he left his house–when he expected his visit to the General to be one merely of farewell–he told his secretary to ring him in case of emergency. He expected a rush-operation, for he had been called in, as a second opinion, to diagnose May Evans’s pain, when it was dangerously late.

Even in his peril, he could not remain deaf to the call upon his service. Resolving to return when it was safe, he slipped down to the area and unlocked the back-door in readiness for a return visit to the house.

On his way to the hospital and throughout the operation, the paper he had signed remained at the back of his mind. It was dangerous as dynamite with its threat of professional exposure and ruin. He was in a fever of impatience to handle it–to shred it and see it blaze into ash.

Presumably his sub-conscious urgency communicated itself to his fingers, for he performed a brilliant feat of surgery. Actually his audacious speed saved the patient’s life as her appendix was rotten.

When all was over, he broke away from congratulations in order to return to No. 11. He was driving at his usual furious speed when he overshot the red lamps which warned motorists of road excavation.

Several days later he recovered consciousness in hospital, only to hear bitter news. His wife–who was ill with gastric ulceration–was dead and buried. She had died from heart-failure, presumably caused by the shock of his accident. And No. 11 was permanently locked up.

He inherited his wife’s money, bequeathed to her by her godmother, and he moved ino No 2 India Crescent; but throughout the years of growing prosperity there remained the torturing knowledge of the sealed house–and what it contained. His appeal to the lawyer to enter met with flat refusal. Mr. Spree would not violate his client’s instructions.

As time passed, his sense of danger remained. He was haunted by a recurring dream of finding a secret entrance into No. 11. Recently, as though a rattlesnake had been sleeping upon a pile of dried leaves, he heard the rustle of his rising dread.

Whenever he looked at the house, he cursed its solidity and prayed for a fire or a stick of dynamite to blast it into rubble... Could he have waited another two years, his desire would have been gratified–when two clean gaps in the curve of the Crescent made it resemble a jaw with missing teeth.

But the War was still a future event and he was beaten by the time element.

–VI–

During the afternoon, the scene was visited by another person who was present at the “Last House” of the drama of No. 11. A woman turned into the Crescent and stood in the road, in order to look up at the boarded windows. She was middle-aged, spare and shrivelled. Her faded dark-blue eyes were the only remainder of the beauty of Marion Brown.

She was twenty-eight when she came to live at India Crescent but she looked a girl in her teens. This was partly due to the fact that–owing to its weight–she always wore her hair loose when she was indoors. There was a further factor of arrested development, although her inarticulation was probably the salvation of romance.

After Clement Tygarth’s death, Nature adjusted the time-lag cruelly by parching her dew of youth prematurely. The change was unnoticed by Marion, since she was free from vanity. She had given her love with all the force of a simple and ardent nature to the General’s son. In her eyes, he was passionate as Byron–beautiful as Shelley–and she cherished her beauty only for his sake.

Otherwise it had proved a complication and a curse, attracting a wave of passion before which she bent like a reed, so that it could not scorch her. Now–when she was left to stand in buses–it was strange to remember that men had actually cried, in the hunger of their unsatisfied longing...

She looked up at No. 10–whose bare windows suggested cleaning to her–and thought of the hours she had paced its rooms as a prisoner. She knew every creaking board, every worn patch on the carpets, every detail in the pictures which covered the staircase wall... It seemed to her that No. 10 must be haunted by an unhappy golden-haired girl in a white wrapper–the ghost of her dead youth.

While she was recalling the dark and muffled house, its door was suddenly flung open. To her surprise, the heavy curtains–which formerly shut off the lobby from the hall–had been removed and the light streamed through the large window at the back, revealing a bright and shining interior.

A very young girl–a silver-blonde–ran down the steps. She wore a suit of black knitwear, relieved by white gloves, scarf and cap. With her were two children–a girl with fat golden curls, in a white fur coat–and a skinny boy in cornflower-blue jodhpurs.

She looked at him with a faint pang, for his white peaked face and large mournful eyes reminded her of Clement... The next second, both children broke loose from the girl.

“Barnaby. Philippa,” she called.

She had no control over them and was forced to chase them the length of the Crescent. Marion Brown watched them disappear round the corner. When they had gone, the relief of the interlude was merged in tragic memories.

She had been drawn back to this house by an instinct stronger than her resistance. There was a whisper which warned her that it was not safe to stay. She knew too much of what had happened inside No. 11 just before its long darkness.

While Clement lived, she had not been allowed to cross its threshold, as though it were a sacred spot and she–a defiling cur; but on the last night, the servants had been sent away, so that she was able to slip inside, unseen. While she was hiding, she had been a witness of two fateful interviews.

The General was like an ancient tiger with a broken fang, goaded by the pain to sadistic cruelty. He was old and had lost his son; but he still had power to wreck the promise of the lives of two young men who dared to be alive.

From behind the plaited-grass curtain, Marion Brown watched each of these young men. She saw them enter and she saw them go. She heard all that was said and witnessed what was done... For herself she feared nothing. The General had done his worst to her. Since that terrible minute when she watched the hearse carry her lover to the grave, she had survived only as a creature cut in two.

She was inside that house to take her revenge.

–VII–

As she turned away, she saw May Davis coming out of the Crescent Hotel for the second time. In the interval, the lady had enjoyed a good lunch and a nap. Consequently she felt well pleased with life.

Hers had been a consistently comfortable existence. As the daughter of a flourishing draper and the wife of a prosperous manufacturing chemist, she had never known money shortage. Unlike Marion Brown, there had been no hint of the “femme fatale” about her life history. She had been sent to an exclusive school but she remained true to type. The chief result of an expensive education was the loss of her local burr, which made it easier for her to acquire a Lancashire accent, after her marriage.

She stopped for a minute to chat to a resident guest who was about to enter the hotel. His profile–which he turned towards Marion Brown–was so striking that she remembered it after a lapse of nearly twelve years. His name was Hartley Gull and he was the second young man who had been inside No. 11 on the last night.

He was now a man of poise and compelling appearance, but she noticed that he looked up at the shuttered house with dark defiance. It was evidence that he too had not forgotten...

Mrs. Davis left him and walked briskly towards Marion Brown. As she glanced at the woman without recognition, she was surprised to hear her maiden name.

“Isn’t it May Evans?”

Fortunately the stranger gave the clue to her own identity in her next sentence.

“I wanted to see our old home again.”

“Why, Marion,” exclaimed Mrs. Davis. “Fancy meeting you. After all this time.”

“Yes, years. I knew you although you’ve changed. You used to be so pretty, with a straight dark fringe. You’ve grown so thin.”

“Anno Domini,” explained May Davis. “I’ve a daughter who knows all the answers. I wouldn’t put it past the little faggot to make me a grandmother one day.”

Compassionately she hid the shock of her surprise as she remembered the breath-taking beauty of Marion Brown. It was almost mesmeric, for she used to find it difficult to remove her eyes from that flawless face. While she stared, she envied the other girl such perfection of feature and colour.

And now–this. Time was a champion leveller.

“I’m staying at Vine Cottage,” Marion Brown told her. “Won’t you come back and have tea wih me?”

Had May Davis’ horoscope been cast at her birth, she might have been warned against that minute... But she was feeling responsive to the past. Every visit back to her home-town found more gaps in her circle, so that it was refreshing to meet a contemporary.

“I’d like to come,” she said.

“That’s nice. Do you mind if we go the back ways? I don’t want to meet people I used to know. There was always so much talk about me.”

They walked together through the quiet grey outskirts of the old town while the twilight veiled the end of each ancient street with a purple-blue curtain and withered chestnut leaves rustled over the cobbled road.

May Davis enjoyed her visit. The tea was good and she ate her cake with keener relish because Vine Cottage was a guesthouse patronised by bank-clerks and teachers, while she was staying at an exclusive luxury hotel. It was true that it was rather a shock to discover that Marion Brown cherished the pathetic illusion that she was still beautiful.

As though to prove that she had remained unself-conscious about her looks, she actually invited May Davis upstairs, to display her wardrobe. The consequence of thus adhering to feminine tradition was that it was nearly dark when Mrs. Davis went out of the garden-gate of Vine Cottage.

“Dear me, I’ll be too late to dress for dinner,” she insisted.

“You’d better take the short-cut,” said Marion Brown.

Mrs. Davis took her advice... But the short-cut proved longer than the longest way back.

For she never returned.

II. MURDER LANE

–I–

THREE days later, on his way back to his office, after lunch, Mr. Spree, the lawyer, again paused outside No. 11 India Crescent. He was joined by Hartley Gull, who was smoking on the steps of the private hotel.

“What’s the opening date of your show?” he asked nonchalantly.

“The twenty-fifth instant,” replied the lawyer.

“Take my tip and wear your gardening clothes. If you don’t dig up any mummies, there’ll be the dust of ages.”

“Yes, I expect a dirty job. But it will be a satisfaction to open the windows and let the light in upon dark places... Who’s that girl?”

Mr. Spree lowered his voice as Elizabeth Featherstonhaugh came out of No. 10, accompanied by Captain Pewter’s two children.

“Apparently the nursery governess,” remarked Gull.

“She looks rather juvenile. But she’s an improvement on the last.”

“Maxine?” Gull’s voice was indulgent. “Oh, she was all right. Of course she wasn’t cut out to wipe the noses of other people’s kids. But she had to eat.”

The lawyer reflected that he had spoken unguardedly, since Captain Pewter’s late governess had a large local following which would inevitably include Hartley Gull. As his own taste was fastidious, he had been repelled by her attraction. To his mind, her beauty had the unwholesome charm of the traditional orchid reared upon a swamp.

But Hartley Gull was the type of seasoned bachelor against whom modern girls warn their mothers. In spite of his suavity and sophistication, he could have gone to a masquerade as a Roman Emperor–and got away with it–on the score of his dark carven features and arrogant carriage. A Puritan himself–the lawyer credited him with a torrid reputation, but he liked him. In his capacity as honorary secretary and treasurer of the local branches of Dr. Barnardo’s Homes and the S.P.C.A., he had proved Gull kind-hearted and generous in the cause of charity.

–II–

While the men discussed her, Elizabeth hurried her charges towards the water-meadows which gave its name to the town. Although the pale molten gold of the November sunshine flooded the fields, she knew that she had begun her usual race with the darkness.

She was not fond of exercise, but she used to enjoy the afternoon walk, as she had fallen under the spell of Rivermead. To her it was a dim enchanted place of echoes and memories–murmurous with the cooing of doves, the chiming of antique clocks, and the sound of imprisoned waters. In addition to the river which flowed through it, there was a partially built-over tributary which refused to be suppressed. It seemed to Elizabeth that it was continually breaking out in fresh places, as it stole from its underground channel and gushed through arches and gratings–back to the light.

In spite of its age, the town was not a museum of extinct industry, for under the dead layers of the past there pulsed a live core. Although it appeared to have dreamed through the centuries, there were flourishing factories, in proof that it kicked vigorously in its sleep.

Elizabeth always took the children home by way of High Street and the Promenade, to avoid going through the slums. The end of summer, however, had brought the complication of seasonal fog. It arose from the river punctually after sunset and covered it with a thick white layer of vapour which looked like cotton-wool. Miss Pewter had warned the new governess that Phil was chesty and must not be out after dark; but the modern part of the town was in a vulnerable position on the river bank and a wide bridge had to be crossed to reach the Promenade, which also lay low.

That afternoon Elizabeth had a special reason for returning home in good time. There was something she dreaded more than fear of losing her job–something which quivered under the surface of her mind, like the dread shadow beneath the foul green water of a tropical port...

Soon the walk became an incessant pull between her authority and the opposition of the children. Knowing what she might expect, she tried to turn them back almost before they had started. But they were engrossed in a pastime of which they never seemed to tire–that of throwing twigs into the river and rushing across the bridge to see them emerge on the other side.

Barney, aged eight, was the active mutineer, but Phil was his passive partner. She egged him on, not through malice, but because she had a keen sense of humour and enjoyed the Human Comedy. Although her long golden curls and big solemn blue eyes gave her the appearance of an expensive doll, she had a good brain and a remorseless memory. Popular with every one, her tastes were domestic and she preferred the society in the kitchen.

Elizabeth used to imagine she saw–hovering over her–the shadow of a future prosperous matron–either wearing a fur coat and pricing joints in Brixton, or adorned with a tiara, queening it in a box at the Opera. And she was certain that, whatever Phil’s hip-measurement, men would always call her “a little woman.”

She always felt vaguely guilty because she had given her heart to Barney. He was a clever, highly-strung shrimp, with the sad eyes of a stranded angel, and a private code which exacted one evil deed per day. Although he was definitely hostile to her, he had only to smile–in serving his ends–to make her his slave.

All the afternoon he had been mulish in resistance to her efforts to goad him on, and it was growing late when she succeeded in prodding him up the lane from the river towards the fringe of the modern town. They had only to go through the dark tunnel of an old archway and down several flights of uneven steps to reach the main shopping street beside the river.