Patricia Wentworth - Beggar’s Choice

I shook Fay really hard.

“Stop behaving like an idiot and help me! I’m going to get away through the loft. Pull yourself together!”

I didn’t know whether she was going to be any use or not. If she wasn’t, I was done. I got the ladder into position, and the trap-door open. Fay stood leaning against the door of my room, shivering and watching me. I climbed into the loft and called to her.

“Put the ladder back in the attic and shut the door! Put out the light in my room and shut that door too! Then go down to your own room and get into bed! Do you hear?”

She said “Yes”-or I thought she did-it was all mixed up with catching her breath and crying.

I couldn’t afford to wait, because I could hear Mrs. Bell coming up the basement stairs, so I said “Look sharp!” and I shut down the trap-door and pulled an old tin box full of books over it.

The loft ran all across the middle of the house. There was a skylight at one end of it. I got it open and crawled out on to the wet, cold slope of the roof.

I shut the skylight behind me. I was on a steepish slope which ran down to meet the next house. I slid down into the trough between the two houses. It was dark, but not quite dark. I could see the edge of the roof, and I could see above me the twin skylight to the one I had just come out of. It wasn’t so easy to climb up as it had been to slide down, and when I got there, the window was bolted on the inside-at least I suppose it was bolted, for I couldn’t get it to budge. I slid down again into the trough and went and looked over the edge. There was a nasty long drop to the street. The knocking had stopped. That meant that the police were in the house:-talking to Mrs. Bell, perhaps searching my room, perhaps finding the ladder still propped against the trap-door.

I went to the back of the house and looked over there. If Fay had kept her head and put the ladder away, and if I hadn’t been seen letting myself into the house, they might just go away after searching my room. There were too many ifs. They had probably had a man watching for me to come home. I couldn’t risk staying where I was, and there was only one way of getting anywhere else, and that was over the ridge of the roof. I didn’t like the idea a bit, but I liked it better than being caught with the Queen Anne bow on me.

I crawled to the ridge and slid down on the other side. Two more slopes, and two more skylights, and both of them bolted. I made up my mind to go on. If I found an open skylight, I might be able to get away; and if I didn’t, I should at any rate be getting farther away from the police.

I didn’t know how many roofs I crossed. I got pretty good at it, but it made me wild to think of the damage I was doing to my clothes. I should think I had put about a dozen houses behind me, when I made up my mind to take a breather and review the situation. I thought I should be quite safe, because I didn’t see the police getting across those roof-tops without making a most almighty row, so I sat down in the gutter and took stock.

I was out of breath and dirty, wet about the hands, and slimy about the knees, but I was feeling a good deal bucked-I don’t know why, but I was. I had no business to be bucked, with a stolen heirloom sewn into my coat and the police hot on my trail; but from the moment Isobel kissed me I didn’t feel as if anything could ever hurt me again. I felt as if I could take anything on and make a success of it.

My head was most extraordinarily clear. I went over what Fay had said. Anna was behind this little trick with the Queen Anne bow. And then something hit me right between the eyes. The package-the package that Isobel had brought-the long matchbox with its little separate packets done up in white paper and initialed-where did that come in? I felt perfectly certain that it came in somewhere, and I thought I saw Anna behind that too.

My thoughts began to nose round that package like terriers round a rat-hole. I certainly smelt a rat. I thought I had done a pretty good piece of work when I chucked the match-box over the wall in Olding Crescent. All the things Fay had said about peddling cocaine came back to me. If those white paper packets contained cocaine, and information had been given to the police, I might have found myself pretty well up to my neck in the soup. Because if the information concerned unlawful drugs, they’d search me and they’d find not only a boxful of neat little packets of white powder, but also a valuable piece of stolen jewelry; and if the information concerned my uncle’s stolen heirloom, they’d not only get that, but a dozen or so dollops of cocaine as well. And either way, I was for it; for if, on the one hand, I cleared myself by accusing Fay, who had planted me with the bow, I couldn’t wouldn’t and shouldn’t in any conceivable circumstances involve Isobel by admitting that she’d ever been within a hundred miles of handling that beastly package of cocaine. I thanked Heaven for Fay’s attack of conscience, and for my own feeling that a match boxful of mysterious packets was not the sort of thing to carry about.

I had got that all sorted out nice and clear, and I was just beginning to think that Fay had pulled herself together and done what she’d been told, when I heard a sort of smothered racket away behind me. I knew what it was too, without waiting to think. I’d done too much slipping and sliding on wet slates not to recognize the sound of other people doing the same thing. The police boot is a fine solid bit of furniture, but it doesn’t lend itself to a stealthy approach. I thought I’d better be going.

I slithered up the slanting roof, using the skylight as a half-way house. I’d given up expecting to find anything open, but I just tried it for luck, and it came up in my hand and nearly sent me sprawling. I caught at the sill and saved myself, but it was touch and go whether I could stop the skylight from coming down with a bang on my knuckles. It was cold and slippery, and my hands were wet, but I managed to shift my grip, lift the light right up, and crawl through. The drop was only about four feet.

As I crouched on the attic floor and pulled the skylight down, I thought the police boots sounded nearer. I lost time looking for the bolt, and when I found it it wasn’t any good. The wood of the jamb had cracked and taken the socket out of the true. Try as I would, I couldn’t get the bolt to go home; and that, of course, was why I had been able to get in. I gave up trying and went groping through the attic, feeling for the trap.

That attic was cram full of stuff. I don’t know why people put old baths and kitchen fenders up in a loft. I ran into a large birdcage, a marble slab, which I suppose was the top of a washstand, about a gross of curtain-rings, perfectly beastly to kneel on, and some frightfully dangerous wire-netting. The curtain-rings and the wire-netting were immediately over the trap, and I had to shift them before I could get it open.

I looked on to a dark landing. The stair ran down from it the opposite way to Mrs. Bell’s stair, and the landing below was lighted. I could see the banisters like black ninepins against the yellow glow. I was most frightfully glad to see a light again.

There was, of course, no ladder. The drop was nothing in itself, but there’s too much of me to drop any distance at all without making a noise; also I should have to leave the trap open behind me. It couldn’t be helped, however. I took off my shoes, suspended them round my neck, hung by my hands, and dropped, I hoped, lightly.

Whilst I was putting my shoes on again, I thought I heard a noise on the roof, and as I stood up, I did hear some one raise the skylight in the attic above. There was a sound of voices. Some one shouted. I didn’t wait to hear any more.