Patricia Wentworth - Lonesome Road

“How do you know all this?”

“Miss Silver found the bits all torn up. Some of the pieces were missing, Richard’s name was on one piece- just the name by itself. That doesn’t mean he wrote it. It was typed-on his machine. But that doesn’t mean he wrote it. We don’t know who wrote it, and we don’t know who she’s gone to meet, because just those bits were destroyed. I suppose she took care about that.”

“But Treherne followed her. He did just what the note said-he made an excuse and followed her.” He was starting the car as he spoke. “Would you worry about her if you thought she was with Treherne?”

Rachel looked at him.

“I’m frightened,” she said. “I’ve been frightened all the time. But what frightens me most is that I can see Miss Silver is frightened too. And I oughtn’t to be frightened if Caroline is with Richard, because he loves her.”

Gale Brandon looked straight ahead of him. Visibility was not too good. He thought, “There’s a fog coming up. It’s a bad business.” He said out loud,

“I liked Treherne a good deal, but I don’t know him. Miss Silver said two things to me, and I’m going to tell you one of them. She said not to let you out of my sight, so I’d like you to bear that in mind.”

“What was the other thing?”

“I’m not telling you that yet. Let’s get back to Caroline. If she got off by half past one, she wouldn’t be far off getting to London now. It’s after three, and I suppose she’d make it in two hours at the outside.”

“Not if she had to wait for the person who wrote that letter. And if it was Richard, he-it must have been quite two o’clock before he got away.”

“And you don’t know where he would take her?”

“No-Cosmo thought…She has the key of Cosmo’s flat. We thought-”

“But wasn’t that when you were thinking she had gone alone? Would Treherne take her there? That’s the point.”

Rachel hesitated.

“He might-if they wanted to talk-if he wanted to get her away. She knows something-my poor Caroline-and she’s frightened of being made to speak. Oh, if I could only find her! She needn’t be frightened-she needn’t be frightened about anything. She’s got such a tender heart, and she’s easily hurt. I’m blaming myself terribly, because I’ve seen for some time that she was upset. But I thought that it was Richard, and I didn’t like to interfere.”

“And he’s in love with her you say?”

“But she has refused him. That is what I can’t make out. I’ve been so sure that they cared for each other.” Gale Brandon was thinking of the second thing which Miss Silver had said to him-the thing which he had refused to tell Rachel. “Miss Caroline is in great danger.” That was what she had said, and that was what had made him wonder if she was crazy. If she was, then they could have the laugh on her. But if she wasn’t-well, in that case things didn’t look too good. And one of the people they didn’t look too good for was Richard Treherne. He said abruptly,

“Are you sure she’s not crazy, that Miss Silver?”

“Quite, quite sure.”

He accelerated sharply. The hedgerows became a mere streak on either side, with the fog smudging them.

They came to the ugly outskirts of Ledlington, and had to drop again to thirty. Rows and rows of little new houses, with names like Happicot and Mon Abri. Then the older streets, with the older, dingier houses. And ultimately the narrow High Street with a big new multiple store or a cinema crammed in here and there among the relics of an Elizabethan, a Georgian, or a Victorian day.

Right through the town and out on the other side to the London road. Away from the lights of the shop windows dusk and the fog darkened the landscape. Flat fields, cropped hedges, a row of bare elm trees marching on either side of a lane, a signpost with the words “To Slepham Halt.”

They were five miles out of Ledlington, and in that five miles neither of them had spoken. Rachel said suddenly,

“Stop, Gale!”

He glanced round at her, his foot on the brake.

“What is it?”

She said, “I don’t know. I feel as if we were going the wrong way. Do you believe in that sort of feeling?”

“I should call it a hunch.” The car slowed down and stopped. “Well, I don’t know. They’re very unreliable things hunches. I’ve had them and I’ve acted on them and they’ve come off, and I’ve had them and I’ve acted on them and they’ve let me down flat. The only sure thing about them is that you never can tell. What’s your hunch?”

Rachel looked at him rather helplessly. The impulse which had made her say “Stop!” had spent itself. She felt lost and rudderless. She said uncertainly,

“I don’t know. I felt we were going the wrong way. I can’t explain it, but you know-when you wake up in the dark and you don’t know where you are, and you move, and run into something, and it comes over you that you’re all wrong-well, that’s the nearest I can get to it.”

“We haven’t run into anything yet,” said Gale, with a laugh in his voice.

“It was a very strong feeling,” said Rachel.

“Haven’t you got it still?”

Her voice sounded forlorn as she said, “I haven’t got anything-I’m all lost.”

He put a consoling arm about her.

“What do you want to do about it, honey?”

Through the lost feeling something pricked.

“I think I want to go back.”

“To Whincliff Edge?”

“No-no, I don’t think so.”

When he had turned the car he said, “All right, where do we go?”

“Back past the turning for Slepham Halt, and then take the left-hand fork instead of the one that goes to Ledlington.”

“And where does that take us to?”

“It takes us to Pewitt’s Corner,” said Rachel.

When Miss Silver had gone out of the room and shut the door Caroline Ponsonby sank back upon the pillow and hid her face. She could shut out the light and her own power to see, but she could not shut out Miss Silver’s words. She kept on hearing them just as if they were being actually spoken: “What is it that you know? It would be better for everyone if you would say… It will be better for everyone if you will make up your mind as quickly as possible.” The same words over and over, and over and over again. And the door shutting softly. Her mind was tormented, and through the torment the senseless repetition went on, and on, and on.

When the door was opened again she pressed her face deeper into the pillow and brought her hands up over her ears so that she might not hear. She was past coherent thought and at the mercy of the oldest instinct in the world. Hide your eyes, and stop your ears-make yourself very small and very still, and perhaps they will think you are dead, perhaps the hunt will go by. Every muscle tensed as she pressed herself down against the bed, eyes darkened and ears hearing only the beat of her own blood. She held her breath and waited. No voice came through the silence. No one touched her.

With an infinite strained caution she slackened the pressure upon her ears and listened. There was no sound of breathing but her own. She waited a long time, or what seemed to her a long time, before she lifted her head and looked about her. There was no one there. She was alone in the room and the door was shut, but on the table beside her head there was a folded note with her name typed across it-just Caroline. She stared at it, and then sat up and pushed back her hair. Everything in the room stood out very hard, and sharp, and clear. Her name on the note was black and distinct.

She took up the paper and opened it. There were some lines of typing but no beginning. She read: