Patricia Wentworth: The Girl in the Cellar

It was open. She took it out of the envelope, unfolded it, and read:

Chantreys,

Haleycott.

Dear Anne,

It is very difficult to know how to write, but we have Jim’s letter and we will do what he asks us to and take you in. It is all very worrying. Jim’s letter is very short and does not really tell us anything, only that he has married you, and that you will be arriving. It all seems very strange. But of course we will do what we can. I don’t at all understand why he has not come over with you.

Yours affectly.

Lilian Fancourt.

She looked up, met Miss Silver’s eyes, and at once looked down again. When she had read the letter a second time she held it out, her gaze wide and fixed.

‘I don’t know what it means.’

Miss Silver took the letter and read it through. Then she held out her hand for the envelope. It was addressed to Mrs James Fancourt, just that and nothing more. A personal letter sent by hand. By whose hand? There was no answer to the question.

Miss Silver said, ‘How did this reach you?’

‘I don’t know-’

‘Do not trouble yourself. Are there any other letters in your bag?’

‘I don’t think so-’

‘Will you look?’

She looked, but there was nothing more-nothing but that one link with the past, with the future.

Miss Silver said, ‘Why did you come to this station?’

The dark blue eyes looked through a mist of tears.

‘I don’t know-I don’t seem to know anything-’

It was clear to Miss Silver that she was at the end of her resources. Nothing would be gained by continuing to press for an answer which was not there. She said very kindly, ‘Do not trouble yourself, my dear. It is very fortunate that you have this address and the assurance that these relatives of your husband are awaiting your arrival affectionately. As to who they are, you will know more when you have met them. This place is not so very far away’

‘You know it?’

‘I have never been there, but a friend of mine was staying in the neighbourhood recently.’

The words seemed to bring the unknown Haleycott a little nearer. Anne… that felt right. Anne… her mother called her that a long time ago. She said, ‘You think I ought to go there?’

Miss Silver’s voice was very kind as she answered.

‘Yes, I think so. You are expected, and if you do not come there will be anxiety. I do not think you ought to trouble yourself too much. Memory is a curious thing. You may wake up tomorrow and find that everything is clear again.’

She could never remember much about that journey. When she thought about it afterwards it resolved itself into something like a dream. There was the swaying of the train and the warmth of the carriage. Those two things she remembered, but nothing more. She thought that she slept a little, and woke again in a panic of fear lest she should have passed her station. And after that she stayed awake, but nothing felt real except the rushing of the train and the darkness close up against the windows. It was as if she was in a closed-in space and she was safe as long as she was there. Only she mustn’t rely upon this safety and fall asleep again.

The other people in the carriage came and went. The train stopped a good deal. Haleycott was a little place. Anything that stopped there would stop at a great many other places too. There was an elderly woman who looked at her very hard, and a young one, gay and laughing with a boy of her own age. They got out, and two other people got in, a woman and a child of about six.

And then they were at Haleycott. Anne got to her feet. She looked about her for her hat-box.

There wasn’t any hat-box.

And then she got out on to the platform and stood there with the most terribly lost feeling she had ever had. The train she had left was leaving her. She was a stranger in a strange place. A feeling of utter desolation swept over her, and then, hard upon it, something stronger. It was like the sun coming out. There, on the dim platform with the darkness crowding in, the light began to shine inside her. She stopped being afraid. She stopped thinking of all the things that might be going to happen. Her shoulders straightened up. She began to walk along the little station platform as if she had known it all her life, as if she was coming home.

There was a cab and she got into it. She said no, there was no luggage, and she gave the address that was on the letter in her bag. And then they were off…

She didn’t know what she thought of whilst they were driving. She didn’t know whether she thought of anything at all. When she thought about it afterwards there was only that feeling of a rising sun. There were good things that were going to happen in the coming day. It was a strange thing, but it did not seem strange to her, it felt perfectly natural.

The wheels went round, and presently the wheels stopped.

She got out, paid the man, and pulled the old-fashioned bell. It was not quite dark here. She could see the shape of the door and the line of the house with the small yellow lamps of the waiting taxi.

And then the hall door moved. At once she stepped forward. It was as if the opening of the door was like the rising of the curtain in a theatre, a signal for the play to begin. A woman stood there. She wore a brown dress and an apron. She had a quantity of grey hair. She said, ‘Oh, Mrs Jim!’ And then she turned and called over her shoulder, ‘Oh, Miss Lilian, it’s Mrs Jim!’ Then, with a quick turn back to the door, she put out both her hands and said in a warm, full voice, ‘Oh, my dear-what a coming home to be sure! But come you in-come you in!’

The taxi rolled away behind her and was gone. She walked into the hall of the house and saw Lilian Fancourt coming down the stair at the far end of it.

She knew who it was. That was one of the things that you think about afterwards. At the time there was no place for thought. Things kept happening.

Lilian Fancourt came down the stair with her hands out in welcome. Everything about her said the word. Everything about her said what wasn’t true. She came forward, she reached up, put her little hands on the tall girl’s shoulders and kissed her, and it was all like a scene from a play. There was no reality in it.

Of course, I don’t know how much you know.’

If Miss Fancourt had said that once, she had said it so many times that one’s mind stopped being able to take it in, and then each time she had leaned across to press her hand and to say, ‘Oh, but we mustn’t. We mustn’t dwell on all that, must we?’

The first two or three times it happened Anne found herself saying ‘No.’ And then it came home to her, that it wasn’t a thing to be answered-it was just her way of talking, so she didn’t say anything at all.

The woman who had let her in, and whose name was quite unbelievably Thomasina Twisledon, took her upstairs and along a wide passage to her room. She thought it would look out on the back, and was vaguely pleased, she didn’t know why. There was a bathroom next door, and Thomasina said the water was always hot.

Anne found herself taking off her hat and her coat and looking into the glass to see whether her hair was tidy. She didn’t know what she expected to see when she looked in the glass. Everything was so strange. Would what she saw be strange too-another Anne whom she had never seen before, looking at her from a dream life which had no connection with reality?

She looked into the mirror and saw herself-her own real self. The relief was so great that the face she looked at, with its brown curling hair, its dark blue eyes, its parted lips, swam in a sudden mist. She leaned on her hands and let the giddiness go by.