Patricia Wentworth - Lonesome Road

Her hand held up the candle, stiff and steady, as if the wax, the brass and her arm were all of one piece. She stared at Gale, and for a moment he stood rigid, staring back at her. Then he came round the well, walking slowly and carefully, and took the candle from her hand and set it down on the dresser and put his arms about her.

They stood like that, locked together, without speaking a word, hardly drawing breath, because death had been so close and life was immeasurably sweet.

Presently, when he lifted her face and kissed her, she could feel that his was wet, and that moved her very much. Her own eyes were dry. The danger had been hers, not his. Her heart contracted as she thought of what he might have heard in the dark if she had taken that other step. She would have cried out, but the sound would have been swallowed up by the well… And then there would have been the splash-a long way down-a horribly long way down.

She found words then to comfort him, as one finds words to comfort a child who has waked afraid-stumbling words, broken words, that brought tears to her eyes and a great gush of love to her heart. As he held her and kissed the tears away, they came so near that it was as if they took each other then with a true marriage vow-to love and to cherish-till death us do part-and thereto I give thee my troth.

They drew apart slowly and reluctantly. The candlelight showed the room with the door open upon the back door step, a tin can standing in the sink, a deal table pushed against the left-hand wall, and, tilted against it, damp from the breath of the water, the wooden cover which had been taken away from the well.

Gale let go of her and walked over to it. He touched it and looked back over his shoulder.

~“Do they keep the well open like this?”

Rachel said, “Never.”

In her mind words formed themselves-part of a verse which she knew quite well, but now she could only remember how it began: “They have digged a pit…” The words said themselves over and over. “They have digged a pit-they have digged a pit-they have digged a pit-” But she couldn’t remember how the verse should end.

Gale came back to her.

“Rachel-what does this mean?”

She said, “I don’t know.” But it wasn’t true, because the answer was in those words which repeated themselves without ceasing in her mind: “They have digged a pit…”

They stood there, very close but not touching one another. The candle behind them on the dresser threw their shadows forward across the well, and the uneven brick, and the damp stone of the doorstep beyond it. The two long shadows lay there and were still.

At last Gale said, “What’s in your mind? You’d better tell me.”

She turned towards him then and spoke in an odd clear voice,

“Someone wound the clock, and someone uncovered the well-” She turned a little more and pointed. “The clock says half past four. It gains five minutes a day. What is the right time?”

They looked together at the watch on his wrist. The hands stood at five-and-twenty past.

“Then it was wound yesterday,” he said.

Rachel said, “Yes.”

“And the person who wound it uncovered the well. Why?”

She had no answer to that.

“But the clock,” said Gale Brandon-“that’s what I can’t understand. If that cover was taken off the well for the only reason that I can think of, why in thunder should the person who did it wind the clock?”

Rachel was cold to her feet. There was just one person who could never keep his hands from a clock. If Cosmo had come here yesterday he could no more have helped picking up that clock and winding it than he could have helped breathing. Because the clock would have stopped- it would have been stopped for nearly six weeks. Cosmo could never pass a clock that had stopped without winding it. But Cosmo had not been here since the end of September. He had said so yesterday.

Someone had been here.

Someone had wound the clock.

The person who had wound the clock had uncovered the well.

They had digged a pit-

She turned slowly and looked at Gale. His eyes were horrified and stern. A most dreadful thought came to her. Her lips were suddenly dry as she said,

“Caroline!” She could not get past the name. Her eyes said the rest, and said it with anguish. “Did she come here before us? Are we too late?”

He said, “No-no-the door was locked. The key was in the shed.”

Rachel’s hand went to her throat,

“He could have put it there.”

“Who? My God, Rachel!”

She shook her head, tried to speak, spoke in a whisper.

“I-don’t-know. Someone-uncovered-the well. Someone-tried-to-kill me. Perhaps Caroline-knew- who it was-”

“Rachel, don’t look like that! She hasn’t been here-” He paused, and added, “yet.”

“How do you-know?”

“It’s easy. Look here-if this trap was set for Caroline and she had fallen into it, would the man who had set it lock up and go away and leave the well uncovered? You can see he wouldn’t. Why, the first thing he’d do would be to cover up the well.”

Rachel tried twice before she said, “Unless he meant it to look-as if-she had done it herself-”

Gale took her by the shoulders and shook her lightly.

“Wake up, honey-you’re dreaming. If anyone was planning to make this look like suicide, he’d have to leave the door open the way it is now, with the key sticking in it. Quit frightening yourself. Caroline isn’t here.”

“Then where is she?” said Rachel with trembling lips.

“Well, there are a few good places besides this, honey.”

She put a hand on his arm and stared at the well.

“That wasn’t done-for nothing. Someone was meant to come in like we did, and to fall-Oh, Gale!-as I should have fallen if I had taken just one more step!”

Her clasp tightened suddenly. He turned his head. They both held their breath.

“There’s someone coming now,” he said.

For a moment Rachel heard nothing. Then it seemed to her as if she heard too much. A vague sound without direction which might have been the sound of a car, but whether coming or going she could not tell. The drip of a fog from the eaves, from the holly hedge. The faint scuttering which some small creature would make if it were disturbed-mouse, or mole, or rabbit-any one of them might be abroad in the dark. And, first faintly and then clear and distinct, footsteps coming nearer.

She held on to Gale, and they watched the door.

It was Miss Maud Silver who came out of the fog and stood looking in on them from the worn step. She was dressed with her usual dowdy neatness-a three-quarter length jacket of black cloth with some rather worn brown fur at the neck and wrists, and a curious head-dress, half cap half toque, made of the same stuff as the coat and trimmed with what was quite obviously a piece of the fur which had been left over. A black handbag with a shiny clasp depended from her left wrist. She put a hand in a black kid glove on the jamb of the door and looked in upon the candle-lit room.

Two doors, one to the left by the sink, one to the right beyond the dresser. The open well, not flush with the rough brick floor but sunk. The cover that would bring it to the floor level leaning aginst that table on the right. But the well was open now, and the two people who stared at her across it might have been looking at a ghost instead of at Maud Silver.

Miss Silver could not remember when she had been frightened last, but she was frightened now. Under her breath she said “Oh dear!” She then called up her courage and addressed Gale.

“Mr. Brandon, where is Miss Caroline?”

Gale Brandon said, “Not here.”

Miss Silver came across the threshold and closed the door behind her.