Patricia Wentworth - Vanishing Point

Miss Silver – #24, 1953

Rosamond walked in the dark wood. The trees were leafless overhead and the earth soft and damp underfoot with the thick carpet strewn there by the autumn winds. There had been so much rain in the last few days and nights that the dead leaves no longer rustled as she walked. The wood lay at the bottom of the garden, but once you had passed the two great oak trees which guarded the entrance you might have been a hundred miles away from that, or from the house, or the road which lay beyond the winding drive. Out of sight, out of mind. What the eye does not see the heart does not grieve over. Those were old true proverbs. If you could not see the road, what did it matter who travelled along it? If you could not see the house, what did it matter who lived there? Whether it was the long ago Crewes who had had their time of fame and fortune, or Lydia Crewe who had been born too late for it and spent a grey life mourning for the loss, or whoever was to come after her, whether it was Rosamond and Jenny Maxwell or another? Once you were in the wood, it didn’t matter at all, because there wasn’t any house to be compassed with observances and served with bended knees. There wasn’t any past or future. There was only the earth which had brought forth the trees, and the sky which made an arch above them. And that was why Rosamond walked in the wood. She could slip out of the everyday life in which she rose at six and worked with hardly any moment free until at the long end of the day she lay down upon her bed and slept. For which reason she had somehow found the means to hoard or snatch these moments of escape. She had realized long ago that if she did not have them she would not be able to go on. She must be able to get away to where she was no longer just someone who answered bells, wrote letters, did the shopping, gave a hand here, there and everywhere, and generally kept things going. She must be able to get away-

But there was someone whom she could not leave behind her. She could never leave Jenny, because Jenny was in her heart, and you cannot leave your heart behind you however far you go. So now as she walked in the wood, the thought of Jenny came with her and walked there too. A foolish loving picture, because the real Jenny would have hated to walk in a damp wood with only leafless boughs between her golden head and the night sky. Jenny loved warmth and colour and light, Jenny loved voices and music, and the bright glow of the fire. She could never understand why Rosamond left these things to go down through the dripping garden to walk in a lonely wood. But then she had long ago made up her mind that grown-up people did very odd things. Now, when she was grown-up herself she had quite made up her mind what she would do. She wouldn’t stay stuck down in the country-not once she could choose for herself. She would go up to London, and she would live in a flat right on the top of the highest house she could find and whoosh up and down in a fast exciting lift- the sort where you press a button whenever you want to and it’s just like flying. And she would write books that would sell for thousands and thousands of pounds, and her back wouldn’t bother her any more, so she would go dancing every night and have the most wonderful dresses in the world. Of course she would give half the money to Rosamond, because Rosamond would have to come too. She couldn’t do without her. Not yet- not till she was quite grown up, and that wouldn’t be for another five or six years, till she was seventeen or eighteen. It seemed a terribly long time to wait.

Down in the wood Rosamond watched the tracery of black branches against the soft deep grey of the sky. She had been standing quite still for a long time. Something small and furry ran over her foot. An owl swooped. It was as white as a cloud and it made no sound. It swooped, and it was gone as if it had never been. Very faint and far away the clock of the village church struck six. She drew in a long breath of the cold, damp air and went out between the oak trees into the everyday world again.

She came in by a side door and along an unlighted passage to the hall, where a single bulb diffused what did not amount to much more than a glimmer. The big fireplace was a black cave, the stairway plunged in gloom, the door with its massive bolts like something to keep a prisoner in, or a true love out. Jenny used it constantly in the tales she wrote. She had a secret fear of it, as she had of the shadowy ancestors who stared down from their portraits upon the hall where they had walked, and talked, and laughed, and loved, and hated in the old days.

These were Jenny’s thoughts, not Rosamond’s. Once she had come out of the wood, Rosamond had no time for fancies. The hall was dark because electric light cost money, and having spent what she considered a vast sum on putting it in, Miss Lydia Crewe was at some pains to ensure that it should be as little used as possible. How much money there really was, no one had any idea but Lydia Crewe. The house was to be kept up, but there was no money for what she considered the fantastic wages of the present day. The old furniture must be polished, the old silver must be bright, and since Mrs. Bolder in the kitchen and the couple of village girls who came in by the day could not possibly achieve the standard she demanded, it was Rosamond who must make good what they left undone.

She was crossing the hall, when there was a knocking on the heavy door. If the bell had rung, Mrs. Bolder might have heard it, or she might not. In the face of a good deal of pressure she retained a strong conviction that it was not her place to answer the front door bell. There should have been a butler to do that, or at least a parlourmaid. That Miss Rosamond should answer it really shocked her. It wasn’t what she had been used to, and she didn’t know what things were coming to. But as to herself, farther than the back door she wouldn’t demean herself, not if it was ever so.

Rosamond, being fully aware of these sentiments, concluded that the bell must have been ringing for some time, and that the now continuous knocking was a last desperate effort to attract attention. As she drew back the bolts she wondered who could be there, since anyone who knew the ways of the house would come round to the west wing where Lydia Crewe kept her state and she and Jenny were tucked away.

She opened the door and saw Craig Lester standing there- beyond him the vague shape of a car. What light there was showed him big and solid in a heavy coat. When for a moment he said nothing, the height and bulk of him began to seem oppressive. There was something strange about the way he just stood there and looked, as if there were things to be said between them and he could not come by the words. The impression was there as she drew in her breath, and gone before she could take another.

And then he was saying in a deep, pleasant voice,

“Is this Crewe House?”

It might be someone asking his way. But apparently it was not, for right on the top of her “Yes” he was asking for Jenny- Jenny!

“I’ve called to see Miss Jenny Maxwell.”

“Jenny?”

“I am not speaking to her, am I?”

He did not think so for a moment-it was the obvious thing to say. Her “Oh, no,” was what he expected.

As she spoke she turned a little, her hand still on the door, and with what light there was no longer directly behind her, he could see that there was really no mistake. He hadn’t expected her to be Jenny Maxwell, and he had no idea who she was now, but that she was the original of the photograph he could not doubt. The tall, graceful figure, the dark clustering hair, the way she held her head-all these had brought conviction even before she turned. Now, looking from the darkness of the porch, he saw her face in the faintly glowing twilight which filled the hall. It was rather like seeing a reflection in water, because he could only guess at the colour which a fuller light would show. The eyes were shadowed. They might be brown, or grey, or a very dark blue. But the brows over them were the brows of the picture, strongly marked, with the odd lift and tilt which gave the face its own decided character. Another woman might have the wide generous mouth, the line of cheek and chin, but those lifting brows could belong to no one else. They certainly didn’t belong to the Jenny Maxwell who had written to him. He said,