So Bad a Death (25 page)

There were several interesting points about the letter which deserved further consideration. But it was advisable to keep to schedule. I realized I was very cold. The fire was no longer a small heap of glowing embers, but grey and dead-looking. The sight made me want to hurry back to the companionship of John.

“I'll just copy out the receipt now and think about the letter tomorrow. John might have something to say about it.”

Nocturnal manoeuvres never run smoothly and efficiently. I had neglected to provide myself with pencil and paper. That meant another trip to the study and more fumbling in the darkness. I was fast losing my enthusiasm. Only the knowledge that what I was about would be useful, not to say necessary, made me stifle a yawn and go creeping down the passage again to the study.

I shut the door as quietly as an oilless hinge would allow and sat down at John's desk. The torch-light was wearing thin. I flashed it once into a drawer to find a sheet of paper. It lit up John's revolver. Odd how the sight of that weapon did not have the effect of making
me feel safe, but rather the reverse. I took out the receipt from the pocket of my dressing-gown in the dark and held a pen ready so as not to waste the battery of the torch. I was nearly through with the copy when the light died. I could remember it well enough in order to complete the copy, but I had to put the original receipt in its file on the lounge-room table.

I unscrewed the bottom of the torch and pulled out the battery, stroking it firmly with my fingers to encourage some flicker. The copy went into my pocket. I got up holding the receipt and the torch.

Those last few minutes seemed to be the longest and most tedious of the whole escapade. But there was nothing to be gained by hurrying. Even the completion of my objective did not warrant any risk of bringing John to the scene. The squeaky hinge on the study door still had the effect of making me stop and listen for some movement.

As I put my head out the door a cold draught blew along the passage. I was immediately alive to that current of air. It registered something in my mind. I stood quite still for one minute before I remembered. You felt that sweeping current of air in a house running north and south when a window or door was open to the outside.

Out in the passage I was not so aware of it. It was more noticeable when stepping into the draught from a closed room. I hoped I might be imagining things and set my teeth against a jumpy feeling in my throat. I slid one hand along the wall of the passage and proceeded cautiously back to the lounge-room.

I was a few paces away from the half-open door when something flashed in the hall mirror directly opposite. Not even my clenched teeth could stop the feeling that my heart was in my mouth. I knew what the draught sweeping down the passage meant. The front door was open. I stood against the wall paralysed with fear. It was enough to feel nervous and on edge creeping around your own house in the dark early hours of the morning, but it became sheer stark terror when you realized an intruder was doing the same.

I wanted desperately to shriek for John, but somehow I restrained myself. I remained there pressed against the wall, taut and dumb. I did not have to wait long. Suddenly a crash and a splintering of glass sounded between the silence and the heavy thumping of my
heart. Almost following on the noise a figure I could sense rather than see glided swiftly out of the lounge-room door. There was just a tiny click and abruptly the current of air sweeping in from the front door was cut off.

The cessation galvanized me into belated action. I switched on the torch and went into the lounge-room. A quick sweep of light over the room from a strategic position in the doorway did not reveal any further intruders. On the floor of the coffee table were the remains of Alan Braithwaite's tumbler. Whoever the stranger was he must have shied off at the crash, thinking it would awaken the household.

I went over to the table and stared down at John's file. It was still open where I had left it. If the intruder was after something in it he must have knocked over the glass before commencing the search. I loosened my grip on the receipt I was still holding in my left hand and replaced it. The torch-light was almost gone. I had no desire to be left in the darkness.

I closed the file quickly and hurried out of the room and down the passage to John.

CHAPTER NINE

I

The following morning I might have dreamed it all. It seemed impossible that anyone should have the audacity and the means to enter our house by the front door while we lay sleeping within. I might have considered the episode as part of a dream but for the fact that my nightmares never take such a clear and reasonable form. Also, there were still the remains of the shattered tumbler lying about the mahogany table.

I got up as soon as daylight was hard and cold enough to make the house look prosaic and not the background for moments of terror. Armed with a brush and pan, I went into the lounge-room without hesitation. Much as I wanted to confide in John about our prowler, I did not want to be asked any awkward questions. Just what I was doing around the house at that hour and why had I not roused him? The shattered glass had to be removed at once. Apart from the risk of Tony cutting himself, Tony's curious father might wonder how it came to be broken.

I swept up the pieces and then opened the windows for clean, fresh air. John might feel the same instinct about a stranger in a room as I did. I had no qualms of conscience in suppressing the facts of my nocturnal adventure, although I was certain it belonged to some part of the mystery which permeated Holland Hall. John was quite capable of unravelling that mystery without any assistance from me.

I paused outside the lounge-room, brush and pan in one hand. Then I went along to the front door. I opened it slowly, watching
the lock under my hand. As the draught swept down the passage the kitchen door banged in the distance. I shut it, then re-opened it again. I knew how the intruder had entered—through the front door.

By pressing a tiny lever on the lock it could be drawn back to stay, even while the ordinary latch fell into position. Once that was accomplished, entering the house was merely a matter of turning the door handle. The adjustment must have been made the previous evening. Any earlier and John or I would have detected it when using our latch keys.

The intruder was a matter of an alternative—either Ursula Mulqueen or Braithwaite the solicitor. Had I known last night that it was one of them, I would not have been so frightened. That was the mistake I continually made; not being afraid of anyone I knew. If I had recognized the murderer as an acquaintance, my feelings would probably have been the same.

It was one thing identifying the prowler but quite another to work out what they wanted so urgently from John's file that made it necessary to take such a risk. Whatever it was, there was no doubt the venture had been unsuccessful. The time between my departure from the lounge-room and the falling tumbler was not enough to have covered an entrance, search, discovery and flight.

My eyes fell on the old-fashioned bolt and chain hanging loosely half-way down the jamb. Hitherto I had not bothered to use it when John was home. I smiled grimly to myself. There would be no repetition of last night's episode. The Dower was my house and I intended to keep it inviolate.

When John was in the house things seemed much the same as usual. But I noticed a difference when he left for town to interrogate Ernest Mulqueen. Not even Tony's scamperings up and down the passage banished that nasty feeling you get after your home has been broken into. I stood it until after lunch, when Tony went down for a nap. Then the house took on a deathly quiet, the same as I had crept through in the chill early hours.

I could not walk out of the place and leave Tony. Certainly there was the radio with which to infuse some atmosphere of unconcern through the house, but that was in the lounge-room. I felt quite
incapable of sitting there after the events of the previous night. I wandered around the house waiting for Tony to finish his sleep. The perverse child seemed to be taking longer than usual. Most of the time I spent in the bedroom, pottering around and tidying drawers. I could sense John's presence more keenly there than in any other room. Last night it had seemed like a haven. Once I went into the study with some wild idea of calling the Hall and trying to trick Ursula into giving herself away. I stopped myself in time. The person who broke the tumbler may have been Alan Braithwaite.

At last Tony woke up, quite unconcerned with the moments of distress I had put in while he slept peacefully. I bundled him into a coat and muffler to take him out for a walk.

“Under your own steam today, my son,” I said firmly. “It will take longer, but that is the idea. I don't want to get back until it's time for Daddy to be home. I'll only get the jitters again.”

He climbed hopefully into the pusher as I searched for a harness to guide his steps. I shook my head. He got out with a loud sigh.

We wandered down the road towards the village. I had no set plan for the excursion, when my eye fell on the golf course at the right of the road. I remembered the ball I had lost on the day of James Holland's murder. There wasn't a chance of finding it, but it gave me an objective.

I lifted Tony over the fence and then got through myself. The long strap fastened to the harness was twitched from my grasp as Tony ran off down the second fairway. I cast an anxious look around, but no one was playing.

Presently he stopped and turned, waiting for me to catch up. I knew better than to hurry. It would only set him off again. As I proceeded at the same pace, he squatted down on the grass, bending over something interestedly. I made a sudden spurt and put my foot firmly on the trailing lead.

Tony did not seem to mind losing his stolen freedom. He stood upright with the object of his interest grasped tightly in one hand.

“Show,” I commanded, remembering other souvenirs. Against some protest I prised open his small fist.

“Good Heavens!” I said with mild surprise. “Maybe there's a chance of finding that ball of mine if you can pick up a thing like this.” It was a baby's dummy.

“What an extraordinary thing to find on a golf course,” I remarked, not recollecting that I had thrown it there myself. “Come along, fellah. We'll make for the eighteenth. You can try out your sharp eyes there.”

I tried to persuade Tony to throw the dummy away, but he put it carefully into a pocket.

We cut across the fairways. Once or twice I had to lift Tony across a narrow creek. Luckily it was dry, as I slipped and half fell, much to the child's amusement. We climbed up the slope of the seventeenth fairway. Ames was mowing the green. I thought it advisable to explain my presence on the course minus clubs and plus child. Also, I was unsure of my position. The open invitation to use the course may have ceased now with Mr Holland's decease.

Ames was playing his cheery open-air role that day, conformable to the links. He was in an ideal setting. I stood off the green looking up to where he sat in the saddle of the machine, the sun on his handsome face. He listened to my explanations and refrained from saying immediately that I had not a hope in Hades of finding the ball. He spoke intelligently to Tony, who stared back with his eyes and mouth wide open, and finally rounded off the conversation smoothly by commenting on the dryness of the season and general drought conditions.

I made a half-hearted search for the ball, beating around the scrub with a stick. Tony followed suit. It was a new sort of game to him. After stopping his weapon on the shin for the third occasion, I considered it time to close the search. The fruit of my labours consisted of a very old ball indecently denuded of its outer covering. I was putting this in Tony's pocket when a hail came from the tee. We hurriedly withdrew into the shelter of the trees and waited for a female golfer to drive off. She might have saved her breath, as the ball trickled to rest a hundred yards from where we had stood. When I saw that the female golfer was Daisy Potts-Power, I hastily worked out a plan of retreat to avoid meeting her. She had not recognized us and I
had no desire to be caught again. Or hadn't I? A notion came to me suddenly. Maybe Daisy would be useful. I waited until she took a number three to a low-lying ball. It came straight across the course to the rough without gaining the slightest ground towards the green. I marked its fall with my eye and strolled over to wait for her.

Daisy entered among the trees with bent head and eyes on the ground.

“Here!” I called, giving the ball a nudge with my shoe to send it onto a tuft of grass. It was a sure bet that she would hit a tree getting out, but I had made the lie a bit easier.

“Fancy seeing you here!” Daisy cried, with a wide delighted smile. She spoke as though our last place of meeting had been the other side of the globe. “Are you not playing? But of course not. How foolish of me.”

“This fellow impedes my freedom a little. I can't haul him around the links.”

“So you are out for a walk together instead,” Daisy said in a sentimental voice. “What grand company he is for you! You must be great pals.”

I glanced about for Tony. He was off the lead again and I did not want him to stray. Actually he was standing immediately behind me, staring at Daisy. The beastly dummy he had found was in his mouth. I pulled it out, uncorking a long continuous sound of protest.

“Disgusting child!”