Wildfire at Midnight (18 page)

I crossed the room softly towards my bed. "Good night, Neill."

"Good night, miss," he answered, without turning his head, and, absurdly enough, I felt a wave of relief pass over me at the quiet reply. It was as if one of the still shadows of the room had offered reassurance; and it brought home to me the unwelcome realization that, in spite of all precautions, in spite of Neill's very presence, I was really very nervous indeed. I chided myself sharply as I wound up my little bedside clock and slid my feet out of my slippers. The room was locked, door and window, and Neill, solid dependable Neill, was here with me; and there, at arm's length, on the other end of the telephone, was Inspector Mackenzie.

I turned back the eiderdown and crept underneath it, wrapping the full skirt of my housecoat round me. My whole body ached with weariness, but I had no fear that I should sleep too soundly to hear Roberta moving. There were other fears that would keep me too near the edge of consciousness for that. . . .

I was quite right. I dozed and waked, and dozed again —little uneasy snatches of sleep that might have been of a minute's or of an hour's duration. Twice, Roberta stirred and whimpered and had me up on my elbow in a flash; but each time she subsided once more into sleep. Once, some time soon after midnight, she seemed to rouse more fully, so I got up and heated broth, and Neill and I managed to make her swallow half a dozen spoonfuls before she turned her head away with a tiny petulant movement, and subsided again into sleep. Another time I remember boiling more water for bottles, and I recollect, dimly, the quiet change-over of watchers, as Hector Munro relieved Neill at two o'clock; and I remember twice, as in a recurrent dream, the Inspector's voice outside the locked door, asking how we did. Some time during the dead hours Hecky made a cup of tea—strong, this time—and I drank it curled up warmly under my eiderdown before I got up yet again to fill hot water bottles.

I did my job efficiently enough, I know, but I must have moved through that firelit fantasy in a state suspended between wakefulness and dream, so that, looking back now, I can hardly tell where the reality ended and the nightmare began. Indeed, my memory now is of a night of continuous nightmare, where the ordinariness of the tasks which engaged me could not hold at bay the shadows haunting, uneasily, the corners of the firelit room. The ticking of my little clock, the workaday hum of the singing kettle—these homely sounds became, to me lying dozing through the small, crawling hours, distorted into the very stuff of nightmare—manifestations as eerie and terror-filled as the shadows that gibbered across the fire-flickering ceiling above my head. Shadows and fire ... shadows across the glare

... shadows coalescing even as I watched into the image of a murderer gesticulating before the flames, dancing crazily round a pyre that grew and swelled and dilated into a gigantic smoking shape, a red-hot Paracutin of a bonfire, a veritable hell's mountain. .. . And now it was Blaven itself that loomed over me, lit with flames. And a solitary, faceless climber straddled that devil's gully, pulling after him a length of cut rope. Somewhere, a knife gleamed, and I heard the soft stutter of two voices in counterpoint, wavering through the sound of falling water. .. . You used to be my wife. .. .

You've located him, haven't you? .. . You've got a nasty problem, haven't you? . .. You've located him, haven't you? . . .

haven't you? ...

My own "No!" woke me finally* with such a jerk that I wondered if I had spoken aloud, and strained my ears for the vibration of ray own voice among the shadows. Or was it Hecky who had spoken? Or Roberta? I pushed myself up onto my elbow and looked across at her. She was moving, making fretful little noises of pain, but it was not this that made my heart, jump and my body stiffen in its little nest under the eiderdown. Hecky wasn't there.

Even as 1 reacted to this in a manner that betrayed the lamentable state of my nerves, 1 turned my head and saw him, like the specter of my dream, in front of the fire. But this fire threw no terrifying shadow back into the room, and for the worst of reasons. It was almost out.

A glance at my clock told me that it was quarter past four. I had not been asleep long, and Hecky had presumably not been to sleep at all, but in spite of us the peat fire, inexpertly stacked, had dwindled and died into an inert-looking mass of black sods.

Now a peat fire is a tricky thing for an amateur to manage. Once it is going well, it is wonderfully hot, a red glowing mass like the heart of a blast furnace. Mrs. Persimmon had banked this one expertly, and Neill, too, had known what to do with it, but Hecky was a townsman and a Lowlander, while I was the most helpless of amateurs. Between us we must have handled it very clumsily, for it had burned itself almost out, and as Hecky stirred it the peat crumbled, and fell away into fragments that rapidly began to blacken.

I swung myself off the bed, thrust my feet into my slippers, and went softly across to the fireplace.

"Won't it go at all, Sergeant?"

"It will not."

"Isn't there any more peat?"

"Och, yes, there's plenty. It's the putting it on that's tricky. Have you the way of it at all, miss?"

"Far from it, but we've got to try." There was a small pile of fresh peats on the hearth. I knelt down beside Hecky and together we stacked them over the embers and tried to blow them to a flame. But to no avail; the red ash waned and darkened, and the peats steamed sullenly, black and unresponsive. The room felt cold.

"It's no good," I said. "It's going out."

We looked at one another in some dismay, then I stood up, biting my lip. I had to put fresh bottles in Roberta's bed. I had to be ready to make her another drink. I had to get the room warm against the chill hours of daybreak.

"I'm sorry," said Hecky. "I—"

"It's my fault as much as yours. In fact, neither of us is to blame if we can't manage the dashed thing. What we should have done is to ask Mrs. Persimmon for some wood to help us keep it going. I'm afraid it didn't occur to me."

He stood up, dusting his hands lightly together. "Will I get Inspector Mackenzie to bring some wood, then?"

"There should be some somewhere," I said. "The lounge fire was made up with logs, I remember. Perhaps—"

"I ken fine where it is." He was at the telephone now. "We've been all over this place at one time and another, you'll mind. It's oot the back." ... He put the receiver back and looked at me. "No answer. He'll be taking a look around, likely enough."

"Then—had we better wait?"

He glanced at the black fireplace. "That'll be oot in five minutes. I'd best go myself."

I said doubtfully: "Should you, d'you think?" "You've got to get this fire going, have ye no'?" "Yes. Yes, I have."

"Well, then, I reckon I'd better go. And if you don't open the door till I get back, there'll be no harm done."

"I—I suppose not. How am I going to be sure it's you when you come back?"

"I'll knock—this way." He moved nearer. His hand went out to the mantelpiece beside me. A finger fluttered. I heard a tiny tapping, the sort that might be made by a grasshopper's feet landing a little raggedly on a leaf: tap

—taptap—taptaptap—tap. .. . Nobody else but I, with my ear some nine inches away, could possibly have heard it.

"Right," I said. "Don't be long, for goodness' sake. And—oh, Sergeant—" "Yes, miss?"

"If there's a kettle hot on the stove, you might bring it up. It'll save time." "O.K., miss."

"You—you'll be all right?"

He grinned down at me. "Don't worry, about me, now. I'd give a year's pay to meet that chap, whoever he is, down by the woodshed! I'll no' be more than five minutes, miss, and if I see Inspector Mackenzie prowling around, I'll send him along."

He let himself out, and I locked and bolted the door again behind him. I heard him go softly down the passage.

Silence.

My heart was beating uncomfortably hard, and once again I had to take myself sharply to task. I turned resolutely from the door, and went over to have a look at Roberta. She seemed to have relaxed a little, and her breathing was less shallow, but her eyelids twitched from time to time, as if the light troubled her. I took my green silk scarf out of a drawer and dropped it over her bedside light, then went back to nurse my little core of red fire till Hecky should come back.

He was surprisingly quick. I had ripped some pages from the Autocar and with these and some small crumblings of peat, was getting a nice little lick of flame, when I heard the soft tap at the door.

I was halfway across the room before I realized that the sound had not been the grasshopper tapping that Hecky and I had arranged.

It came again, a tiny sound: Tap-tap-tap.

I was standing three feet from the door, with my hands, in rigid fists, pressed down against the front of my thighs.

My heart began to jerk in slow, sickening thuds. I stood, turned to marble, with my eyes on the door, while the seconds ticked madly by on the little bedside clock.

Ever so gently, the door handle turned. Ever so softly, the door rattled as somebody pressed against it.

If I screamed, I thought, people would wake up, and they would catch him there ... the murderer, trying to get at Roberta.

But if I screamed, it might penetrate that still slumber of Roberta's and I had no idea of the possible effect of such a shock. It was not a risk that I felt I had any right to take.

Then I was at the door.

"Hullo?" I was surprised that my voice sounded so normal. "Is that you, Sergeant?"

Of course it wasn't; but if he said it was... .

"No." The vigorous whisper was certainly not Hecky's. "It's Inspector Mackenzie. I came to take a look at her. Open up, will you, lassie?"

Even as I accepted the statement with a quick uprush of relief, I surprised myself again. I heard my voice saying calmly: "Just a minute, Inspector. I'll get a dressing gown on."

In three strides I was at the telephone, and had lifted the receiver. My little clock chittered the seconds crazily away beside me . . . two, four, seven seconds, seven dragging light-years before I heard the click of the other receiver being lifted, and Inspector Mackenzie's voice, soft but alert, saying sharply: "Mackenzie here. What is it?"

I cupped a hand round the mouthpiece and whispered into it: "Come quickly! Quickly! He's at the door!"

The line went dead. My knees gave way under me, and I sat down slowly on my bed, with the receiver still clutched in my hand. My head turned, stiff as a doll's head, to watch the door.

There was no sound, no rattle, no movement of the handle. The door stood blind, bland in its smooth white paint, telling nothing.

There was a swift stealthy rush of feet up the corridor. A voice.

"Inspector? Is anything the matter?"

"Where the devil have you been, Hector Munro?"

"To get wood. I'm sorry, sir. Is something wrong?"

Doors opened. I heard Hartley Corrigan's voice, raw-edged with nerves. "What the devil's going on here?" Then his wife's scared whisper: "Has something—happened?"

"Nothing, madam. Please go back to bed." The Inspector's voice sank to a reassuring mumble, and, since I could now hear three or four voices murmuring in the corridor, I opened my door.

The Corrigans were just withdrawing into their room, which was opposite my own. The only other people who seemed to have been disturbed were Colonel Cowdray-Simpson and Hubert Hay, whose rooms were just round the corner from our passage, in the main corridor. As I opened the door, Hecky, standing rather shamefacedly before the Inspector with a bundle of wood under one arm and a still-steaming kettle in the other, turned and saw me, and came hurrying down the passage in some relief.

Inspector Mackenzie whipped round after him. His voice was still low, but clear and urgent.

"Hecky! Don't touch that door! Miss Brooke, stand away from the door, please."

"Look here, Inspector"—this was Colonel Cowdray-

Simpson, still surprisingly authoritative in a deplorable old dressing gown, and without his teeth—"what's wrong?"

"Please accept my assurance that there's nothing wrong, sir. You can reassure Mrs. Cowdray-Simpson. And you, Mr. Hay 1 promise you that if I want help I'll ask for it, but just at the moment—"

"O.K. I'm off." And Hubert Hay, resplendent in Paisley silk disappeared reluctantly.

The Inspector came swiftly down to where I was still standing. "Now, what's all this?"

It was so much the conventional policeman's opening that I felt an absurd desire to laugh. I said, shakily: "He— he was at the door. The murderer. He said—he said—"

He took my arm and drew me gently into the room towards my bed.

"You sit down there. Don't try to talk." He shot a rapid glance at Roberta, and was apparently satisfied. "Hecky, get that fire going. . .. No, on second thoughts, let me do it. You go to my room and get my bag and give that door a going-over." He looked at me. "You said he was at the door. I suppose he touched it?"

"Yes. He pushed it, and turned the knob."

He gave a small grunt of satisfaction. "The knob, Hecky. No, man, leave it standing open, then no ghosts can wipe it clean before you come back. Aah!"

This was an exclamation of satisfaction as the dry sticks caught alight, and the flames roared up the chimney in a crackling blaze.

"I suppose there wasn't a sign of anybody when you came?" I said.

"No." He was expertly stacking peat.

"He must have heard me telephoning you. I'm sorry."

"On the contrary, you did very well."

"Well, I'm sorry I made Hecky go downstairs, then. It was my fault for letting the fire down, but I had to get it going again."

He pushed the kettle down among the now blazing peats, and stood up. "It might have been a lucky stroke," he said,

"if we had seen die murderer. Now, supposing you tell me what happened."

I told him about it, while Hecky busied himself over the surface of the door, and Roberta lay quietly in her blankets in the little green glow of the bedside lamp.

He listened in silence, his eyes on my face. "Hum," he said at length. "He must either have heard Hecky go, or have seen him go out across the yard. It doesn't get us much forrarder, except for one thing."