Patricia Wentworth - Lonesome Road

Better get away at once whilst they are all at lunch. You’ll get a good start. That woman is a detective.

A shaft of terror pierced her to the very quick. The hard, clear outlines were blurred. The typed lines wavered in a mist. She said, “I won’t faint-I won’t-I won’t!” She fought the mist until it went away and left the paper clear again. She forced her eyes to the sheet and read:

That woman is a detective. If you don’t get away, she’ll make you speak. Take your car to Slepham Old House. I’ll make an excuse and meet you there. We can talk things over and decide what had better be done. You’ll have some time to wait, but you must get out of this or they’ll make you talk. Drive right into the stable yard and wait.

There was a line or two more which terrified her. She sat staring at these lines and at Richard’s name. Richard- Richard-Richard-No, she mustn’t think about Richard, she must only think about getting away.

She ran to the door and locked it, and as she stood there with her hand on the key she heard the lunch bell ring. Suppose someone came to ask her how she was. Suppose it was Rachel. It would surely be Rachel. And at the thought Caroline’s heart stood still. This was misery-to feel an anguish of dread at the thought that it might be Rachel who would come. “But I’ve locked the door. Nobody can come if I’ve locked the door.” She leaned her forehead against it and closed her lids over eyes which were hot and dry. They burned behind the lids. She heard Ernest’s voice, and Mabel’s, and Miss Silver’s. She heard Rachel’s step, she heard it pause. Then the footsteps went past and the voices died away.

She unlocked the door and went back to the bed. Ivy would come up with a tray, and she mustn’t find her up.

She began to tear up the typewritten note, but her hands were shaking so much that she bungled it, and before she had finished Ivy came.

As soon as the girl was gone she jumped up. The torn pieces of the letter spilled. She found some of them and crammed them into her pocket.

A coat-something to cover her head-that old brown hat-some things in a bag-brush-comb… No, what did it matter? Her hands shook too much. Just her handbag then. Money-it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except to get away. A scarf? Yes. Only hurry, hurry, hurry!. Then along to the end of the house, past Richard’s rooms, and down the stair that gave on the garage door. No one there. Rachel’s car-Cosmo’s-Richard’s-her own little Austin. And the tank was full.

She got in, and found her hands were steady on the wheel. The garage slipped away. The drive slipped away. The empty Ledlington road began to slip away. The worst of the terror that had been gripping her relaxed. She was no longer trapped there in that room for anyone to find, to question, to torture. She was out of the trap and away. If she was to be hunted she had a good start, and no one would look for her at Slepham. That was clever. They would make sure that she had gone to London. She had talked of going there-was it yesterday or the day before? She couldn’t remember. Everything was such a long way off… She stopped thinking and watched the road.

It was just after half past two when she turned into the lane with its bordering elm trees which led to Slepham Halt and the Old House. There is a deserted lodge on the right-hand side about half way between the line and the London road. Caroline drove in through moss-grown pillars and along a moss-grown drive to the stable yard.

Slepham Old House had stood empty for twenty years. It was a big ramshackle place of no particular period, and entirely lacking in modern conveniences. Since there is nowadays no market for an ugly house which has thirty bedrooms, one bathroom, no electric light, and a range which takes a ton of coal at a gulp and asks for more, it was likely that it would continue to stand empty until it fell down.

The stable yard was much enclosed. It had that peculiarly chill, deserted feeling which settles about places which have been used by men and left for a long time derelict. There was nothing to bring anyone there, and so from year’s end to year’s end no one came. The house was stripped, the out-houses empty and locked, the stables falling down.

Caroline leaned back in the car and closed her eyes. It was very cold, and it was dreadfully still. She had wanted to be alone, and now she had her wish. The loneliness of the place began to rise about her like a tide.

It’s pretty thick ahead,” said Gale Brandon. “How much farther is it?”

“I think that last village was Milstread. We ought to have asked. Everything looks different in a fog,” said Rachel doubtfully.

“And if it was Milstead?”

“Then it’s about three miles on.”

“I’d like to make it before the last of the light goes.”

“It’s pretty well gone as it is. It’s nearly four o’clock.”

He looked round at her for a moment.

“What’s the hurry, honey?”

Everything in Rachel protested. Words rushed to her tongue.

“There isn’t any hurry-there can’t be. It was you who said there was, because of the light.”

His eyes went back to the road again.

“I know-I said it all right. But do you think I haven’t felt you sitting here beside me trying to push the car? Even when we were doing fifty I could feel you pushing. A hundred wouldn’t have been fast enough for you. What’s in your mind, Rachel?”

She struck her hands together.

“Nothing-nothing-I just want to get there.”

Gale Brandon frowned.

“There’s no need to tell me if you don’t want to, but we’ve got too close for me not to know when you’re frightened-and that’s what you are right now.”

Physically, they were so near that he felt her shudder. She said quickly,

“Do you believe that? Do you think that what is in someone else’s mind can reach one? Because that-that’s what is frightening me.”

“Then you’d better tell me about it,” said Gale Brandon. “You’ll do better if you don’t have secrets from me, because I shall always know when you’ve got them, and I shall always find out what they are, so it’ll save a heap of trouble if you tell me right away. Now-what is it?”

She slipped a hand inside his arm.

“When we were going to London and I said ‘Stop!’ I told you I didn’t know why I said it, and that was true. Something made me, and I didn’t know what it was. But I know now. Just before I came away from Whincliff Edge Miss Silver asked me if there wasn’t anywhere else that Caroline might be. We’d been talking about her going to London to Cosmo’s flat, and she asked if there wasn’t anywhere else. I told her about Pewitt’s Corner, and when she said what everyone always does say ‘What an odd name!’ I told her about the house being built over an old well, and about Pewitt’s being a corruption of puits. And I told her Caroline couldn’t bear the place and I didn’t think she’d go there. She always did so hate the thought of that well under the scullery floor. There’s a lid of course, but she hated it all the same, and I made sure she wouldn’t go there. But-oh, Gale, it was the well that made me say ‘Stop!’ ” Her hand closed desperately on his arm.

“Yes, honey? Go on. You thought about the well?”

She pressed against him.

“I didn’t know it was the well. Something frightened me and made me say ‘Stop!’ Afterwards, when you had turned the car, I knew that it was the well, I remembered she was afraid of it, and sometimes-when you’re afraid of something-Gale, do you think it was because Caroline was thinking about the well that I thought of it?”

It was out. She sat empty and shaking, with the horror put into words.