Patricia Wentworth - The Blind Side

She rang the bell, and waited with an agonized fear lest he should be away. Her finger went again to the bell, as if its persistent ringing must reach him wherever he was and call him back. But when the door opened and she saw him she was suddenly calm. She said, “I want to come in,” and stepped past him into the hall.

If it had been anyone but Lee, the door would not have been opened widely enough to let the visitor in. But Lee-Lee who was on her way to South America with a damned dago… No, thank God, she wasn’t-she was here.

Peter opened the door so that there should be no mistake about it, and Lee was inside and the door shut again. He said, “Lee!,” and she said, “Peter!” and he put his arms round her and said, “Darling!” And what Lee would have said to that he wasn’t to know, because at that moment the bedroom door opened and Mavis Grey came out. She was wearing the late Miss Mary Craddock’s best thin summer dress, a dark grey silk with a pattern on it of mauve forget-me-nots and black leaves, and at any other time her appearance in this incongruous garment with its shapeless bodice and its long, full skirt, would certainly have made Lee and Peter laugh. At the moment their reactions were of a different nature.

Peter said “Damn!” very heartily, and Lee released herself with a jerk. This was natural enough. It was Mavis whose behaviour was surprising. She stared at Lee, and all the colour went out of her face. Left high and dry, the brightly painted lips were in abrupt and shocking contrast with its pallor. She gave a faint sobbing cry and stammered out words which made no sense.

“You-I thought-oh!”

Lee had turned very nearly as pale. She went back until she came to the wall, and leaned there. Mavis put out a groping hand and fell.

Mavis’s swoon was sufficiently prolonged to be alarming. They got her on to the bed, and after a while she came round and began to cry in a hysterical manner. It was manifestly impossible to take her down two flights of stairs and along to the end of the street, whence Peter had proposed to despatch her in the direction of Isabel.

It was upon Peter that her eyes first rested. She said with a choking gasp, “I thought I saw Lee Fenton.” To which he returned with some grimness, “You did.”

It was after this that the hysterical weeping came on. The sight of Lee seemed to make her so much worse that Miss Fenton, not unwillingly, retired to the sitting-room. She was immediately followed by the indignant Mr. Renshaw.

“Look here, Lee-”

“You’d better go back to her, hadn’t you?”

“I’m damned if I’ll go back!”

“You can’t leave her alone.”

“Well, I’m not going to be alone with her.”

“You appear to have been alone with her all night,” said Lee with stiff, strange lips. Her eyes were a stranger’s eyes. They looked upon Mr. Renshaw for the first time, and found him a displeasing sight.

Peter was appalled.

“Lee, you can’t possibly think-”

“What am I to think?”

Peter ran both hands violently through his hair. He then gripped her wrists.

“Woman, do you want to hear me swear?”

“You have been swearing,” said Miss Fenton loftily, but her heart was extraordinarily lightened. This was not the language of conscious guilt.

The grip on her wrists tightened painfully.

“It’s nothing to what I can do if you get me going. No, look here, Lee, don’t be a fool. You’re not one really, and only a blithering, blasted little fool could possibly imagine what you’re pretending to think.”

“Mavis-”

“Mavis gives me a pain in the neck-she always has, and she always will.”

“Ssh! The door’s open.”

“I’d like to shout it from the housetops!” said Peter, with ferocity. “I’ve never had any use for her. And she’s just ruined my night’s rest, and butted in when I was going to kiss you.”

He let go of her wrists suddenly and put his arms round her, but she pushed him away.

“No! Oh, Peter-no! I didn’t come for that. You mustn’t-we mustn’t. Something dreadful has happened.”

It was not so much the words that gave him pause. There was an urgency in her voice and in the thrust of her hands. He took fright and said roughly,

“Not to you! My God-not to you!”

She said, “Oh, Peter, I don’t know. Oh, Peter, help me!”

“It isn’t that man-that damned dago?”

“No-no-oh, no.”

His face cleared.

“What do you want to frighten me like that for? What’s the matter? What’s happened?”

She caught his arm.

“Peter, that’s just it-I don’t know.”

“But you said ‘something dreadful.’ ”

“Yes-it was-it must have been-but I don’t know what.” She was shaking all over, and the words shook too.

He got her over to the sofa, made her sit down, and piled three cushions at her back. Then he took her hands and said,

“Tell me.”

She had wondered whether she would be able to, but the words came with a rush.

“Something dreadful has happened in Ross Craddock’s flat.”

He got up then, went quickly to the door which communicated with the bedroom, and shut it. Mavis was still crying, but quite softly now. He came back to Lee.

“Sorry, darling. You were saying something had happened in Ross’s flat. What makes you think so?” He had her hands again, and he felt them tremble.

“Peter, you know, after the accident-when my father and mother were killed-I used to walk in my sleep. They said it was because of the shock. They said I would stop doing it-and after a time I did. I was about fifteen.”

Peter began to be afraid again. He held her hands very tight. She went on, breathing quickly and trying to control her voice.

“I’d had a long journey. The Merville man really was a damned dago, and I had to come away in a hurry. I just caught Cousin Lucy, and she gave me her key. She said I could have the flat whilst she was away. Well, I was all in. I went to bed and read a thriller. Then I went to sleep. It had all been rather beastly-and what with that, and being so tired-I-well, I suppose I must have walked in my sleep again.”

“How do you know?”

She turned very pale indeed.

“Because when I woke up-”

“Go on.”

“It was my foot,” she said in a whisper-“my right foot-as if I had stepped-in blood-all stained-and the hem of my nightgown too. And the mark of my foot all across the hall. And when I opened the front door it was all across the landing-all the way from Ross’s flat.”

Peter threw back his head and laughed.

“My poor child! Did you think you’d done murder? Look here, it’s all right-quite all right. Listen. There’s a perfectly simple explanation. The idiot Mavis allowed herself to be lured into Ross’s flat last night. She said she didn’t know Lucy was going to be away-meant to spend the night there, and walked into Ross’s parlour to discuss alternatives. Ross got fresh. She hit him over the head with one of the ancestral decanters and staggered out on to the landing. The crash having waked me, I was there. She cast herself upon me, and I had to take her in after a few kind words with Ross, who came out of his door in a stoshed condition, bleeding like a pig-cut over the eye. So you see where the gore came from. No need to worry and all that. But I don’t like your wandering around in the night. You want someone to look after you, you do.”

The blessed, the overwhelming relief brought up a thick mist before Lee’s eyes. The room seemed to tilt a little. Peter’s voice came through the mist.

“Here, hold up. I can’t kiss you if you’re going to faint.”

The relief didn’t last. It ought to have lasted, but it didn’t. She was here in Peter’s arms. She was safe. And everything was quite all right. But a cold, deadly fear was seeping back into her mind. She drew away, and Peter came down to earth.