A DOOR BANGED in the empty flat upstairs.
Margaret felt her fingers tighten on the covers of her library book, but she refused to look up. As long as she could keep her eyes running backward and forward along the lines of print, she could tell herself that she hadn’t given in to her fear—to this ridiculous, unreasoning fear that had so inexplicably laid hold of her this evening.
What was there to be afraid of, anyway? Simply that the upstairs flat had been empty all this week, and that Henry was on duty tonight? But she had often been alone before—if you could call it alone, with Robin and Peter in bed in the very next room. Two little boys of six and eight sound asleep in bed can’t really be called company, but still …
Leonora hesitated, wondering which way she should turn.
Margaret realized that she was still reading the same sentence, over and over again, and she shut the book with an angry little slam. What was the matter with her? Was it that murder in the papers—some woman strangled by a poor wretch who had been ill-treated in his childhood? He had a grudge against women, or something—Margaret hadn’t followed it very carefully—had locked himself in an empty room in this woman’s house, and then, in the middle of the night, had crept out…
All very horrid, of course; but then one was always reading of murders in the papers—anyway, they’d probably caught him by now. Now, what had she better do to put these silly ideas out of her head once and for all?
Go upstairs, of course. Go upstairs to the empty flat, look briskly through all the rooms, shut firmly whichever door it was that was banging, and come down again, her mind set at rest. Simple.
She put her book down on the little polished table at her side. But why was she putting it down so softly, so cautiously? Margaret shook herself irritably. There wasn’t the slightest need to be quiet. Nothing ever seemed to wake the boys once they were properly off, and poor deaf old Mrs Palmer on the ground floor certainly wouldn’t be troubled.
Just to convince herself, she picked the book up again and dropped it noisily on the table. Then, with a firm step, she walked out to the landing.
The once gracious staircase of the old house curved down into complete blackness. For a moment Margaret was taken aback. Even though old Mrs Palmer was often in bed before ten, she always left the hall light on for the other tenants—perhaps, too, for her own sake, from a deaf woman’s natural anxiety not to be shut away in darkness as well as silence.
Margaret stood for a moment, puzzled. Then she remembered. Of course; the poor old thing had gone off this morning on one of her rare visits to a married niece. Tonight the downstairs flat was empty too.
Margaret was annoyed to feel her palms growing sticky as she gripped the top of the banisters, peering down into the darkness. What on earth difference did it make whether Mrs Palmer was there or not? Even if she was there, she would have been asleep by now, deep, deep in her world of silence, far out of reach of any human voice … of any screams …
Snap out of it, girl! Margaret scolded herself. This is what comes of reading mystery stories in the evening instead of catching up with the ironing as I meant to! She turned sharply round and walked across the landing to the other staircase—the dusty, narrower staircase that led to the empty flat above.
The hall stairs were in bad enough repair, goodness knew, but these were worse. As Margaret turned the bend which cut her off from the light of her own landing, she could feel the rotten plaster crumbling under her hands as she felt her way up in the darkness.
The pitter-patter of plaster crumbs falling on to the stairboards was a familiar enough sound to Margaret after six months in this decrepit old house; but all the same she wished the little noise would stop. It seemed to make her more nervous—to get in the way of something. And it was only then that she realized how intently her ears were strained to hear some sound from the empty rooms overhead.
But what sound? Margaret stood on the top landing listening for a moment before she reached out for the light switch.
Bother! The owners, who in all these months had never raised a finger to repair rotting plaster, broken locks, and split window frames, had nevertheless bestirred themselves in less than a week to switch off the electric light supply to the vacant flat! Now she would have to explore the place in the dark.
She felt her way along the wall to the first of the four doors that she knew opened on to this landing. It opened easily; and Margaret again silently cursed the owners. If only they’d take the trouble to fix locks on their own property she would have been spared all this—the top flat would have been properly locked up the moment the Davidsons left, and then there would have been no possibility of anyone lurking there. Her annoyance strengthened her, and she flung the door wide open.
Empty, of course. Accustomed as her eyes were to the complete blackness of the landing, the room seemed to be quite brightly lit by the dim square of the window, and she could see at a glance into every empty corner.
The next room was empty too, and the next, except for the twisted, shadowy bulk of the antique gas cooker which Mrs Davidson so often declared had “gone funny on her,” and might she boil up a kettle on the slightly newer cooker in Margaret’s flat?
But the fourth door was locked. Nothing surprising in that, Margaret told herself, turning the shaky china knob this way and that without success. Not surprising at all. All the rooms ought to have been locked like this—probably this was the only one which would lock, and the owners had lazily hoped for the best about the others. A perfectly natural explanation: no need to turn the handle so stealthily …
To prove the point, Margaret gave the knob a brisk rattle, and it came off in her hand. Just like this house! she was thinking, and heard the corresponding knob on the other side of the door fall to the floor with a report like a pistol in the silence of the night.
But what was that? It might have been the echo of the bang, of course, in the empty room. Or—yes, of course, that must be it! Margaret let her breath go in a sigh of relief. That scraping, tapping noise—that was exactly the noise a china knob would make, rolling lopsidedly across the bare boards. Wasn’t it?
Yes, of course it was. Margaret was surprised to find how quickly she had got back to her own flat—to her lighted sitting-room—to her own fireside, her heart beating annoyingly, and the dirty china knob still in her hand.
*
Leonora hesitated, wondering which way she should turn.
Margaret pushed the book away with a gesture of irritation. She had thought that by facing her fear—by going up to the empty flat, looking in all the rooms and shutting the doors firmly so that they couldn’t bang, she would have regained her peace of mind. Yet here she was, sitting just as before, her heart thumping, her ears straining for she did not know what.
What is it all about? she asked herself. Has anything happened today to make me feel nervous? Have I subconsciously noticed anyone suspicious lurking about outside? God knows it’s a queer enough neighbourhood! And leaning her chin on her hands, her thick black curls falling forward on to her damp forehead, she thought over the day.
Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Henry had gone to work as usual. The boys had been got off to school with the usual amount of clatter and argument—Peter unable to find his wellingtons, and Robin announcing, at the very last moment, just as they were starting down the steps, that this teacher had said they were all to bring a cardboard box four inches wide and a long thin piece of string.
Then had followed the morning battle for cleanliness against the obstinate old house. The paintwork that collapsed into dry rot if you wiped it too thoroughly. The cobwebs that brought bits of plaster down with them when you got at them with a broom….
They weren’t going to be here much longer, that was one thing, reflected Margaret. They would be moving to the country soon after Christmas, and it hadn’t seemed worthwhile to look for anywhere else to live for such a short time. Besides, if they had to live in a flat with two lively small boys, this ramshackle old place offered some advantages. Among all this decay no one was going to notice sticky fingermarks and more chipped paint; no one was going to complain about what games the children played in the neglected garden, overgrown with brambles and willow herb. No one minded their boots, and the boots of their numerous small friends, clattering up and down the stairs.
Margaret smiled as she thought of the odd assortment of friends her sons had managed to collect during their six months here. Such a queer mixture of children in a neighbourhood like this, ranging from real little street toughs to the bespectacled son of a divorced but celebrated professor. Always in and out of the house—Margaret couldn’t put a name to half of them. That crowd this afternoon, for instance—who were they all?
Margaret wrinkled her brows, trying to remember. Alan, of course, the freckle-faced mischief from the paper shop at the corner. And Raymond—the fair, sly boy that Henry said she shouldn’t let the children play with—but what could you do? And William—stodgy, mouse-coloured William—who simply came to eat her cakes, it seemed to Margaret, for he never played at anything in particular with the others.
Oh, and there had been another one today—a new one, for whom Margaret had felt an immediate revulsion. About eight or nine he must have been, very small for his age and yet strangely mature, with a sharp, shrewd light in his pale, red-rimmed eyes. He had a coarse mop of ill-cut ginger hair and the palest of pale eyebrows and eyelashes, almost invisible in his pale, pinched face. And he was painfully thin.
In spite of her dislike, Margaret had been touched by the thinness—and puzzled, too—real undernourishment is so rare in children nowadays. She had pressed on him cakes and bread and jam, but he had not eaten anything—indeed, he seemed scarcely aware that anything was being offered him—and in the end Margaret had given up and let the others demolish the provisions with their usual speed.
Margaret shivered, suddenly cold, and leaned forward to put more coal on the fire. The memory of this queer, ginger-haired child had somehow made her feel uneasy all over again. She wished she’d made more effort to find out who he was and where he came from, but the boys were always so vague about that sort of thing.
“What, Mummy?” Peter had said when she had asked him about the child that evening; “Mummy, you said I could have the next corn-flake packet, and now Robin …”
“Yes, yes, darling, but listen. Who was that little ginger-haired boy you brought home from school today?”
“Who did?” interrupted Robin helpfully.
“Well—Peter, I suppose. Or do you know him, Robin? Perhaps he’s your friend?”
“Who is?”
Margaret had sighed. “The little ginger-haired boy. The one who hardly ate anything at tea.”
“I didn’t hardly eat anything, either,” remarked Robin smugly.
“Ooo—you story!” broke in Peter indignantly. “I saw you myself, you had three cakes, and …”
Margaret had given it up, and determined to ask the child himself if he ever turned up again.
And, strangely enough, as she had gone across their own landing to put on the boys’ bath, she thought she caught a glimpse of the little creature in the hall below, darting past the foot of the stairs. But she couldn’t be sure; dusk always fell early in that dim, derelict hall, and the whole thing might have been a trick of the light. Anyway, when she had gone to the back door and called into the damp autumn twilight, there had been no answer, and nothing stirred among the rank, overgrown shrubs and weeds.
Margaret picked up her book again, slightly reassured. All this could quite reasonably explain her nervousness tonight. She was feeling guilty, that’s what it must be. There was something peculiar about the child, and she should have made more effort to find out about him. Perhaps he needed help—after all, there were cases of child cruelty and neglect even nowadays. Tomorrow she would really go into the matter, and then there would be nothing more to worry about.
Leonora hesitated, wondering which way she should turn.
*
Sometimes, on waking from a deep sleep, one knows with absolute certainty that something has wakened one, but without knowing what. Margaret knew, with just this certainty, that something had made her raise her eyes from the book. She listened—listened as she had listened before that night—to the deep pulsing in her ears, to the tiny flickering murmur of the coals. Nothing more.
But wasn’t there? What was that, then, that faint, faint shuffle on the landing outside? Shuffle, shuffle, soft as an autumn leaf drifting—shuffle shuffle—pad pad … silently the door swung open and there stood Robin, blinking, half asleep.
Margaret let out her breath in a gasp of relief.
“Robin! Whatever’s the matter? Why aren’t you asleep?”
Robin blinked at her owlishly, his eyes large and round as they always were when just wakened from sleep.
“I don’t like that little boy in my bed,” he observed.
“What little boy? Whatever are you talking about, Robin?”
“That little boy. He’s horrid. He pinches me. And he’s muddling the blankets. On purpose.”
“Darling, you’re dreaming! Come along and let’s see!”
Taking the child’s hand, Margaret led him back into his own room and switched on the light.
There was Peter, rosily asleep with his mouth open as usual; and there was Robin’s little bed, empty, and with the clothes tumbled this way and that as if he had tossed about a lot in his sleep.
This confirmed Margaret’s opinion that he had had a nightmare. After all, what was more likely after her cross-questioning about the mysterious little visitor that evening? In spite of his apparent inattention, Robin had no doubt sensed something of the anxiety and distaste behind her questions, and it was the most likely thing in the world that he would dream about it when he went to bed.
However, to reassure the child, Margaret embarked on a thorough search of the little room. Under both the beds they looked, into the clothes closet, behind the curtains—even, at Robin’s insistence, into the impossibly narrow space behind the chest of drawers.
“He was such a thin little boy, you see, Mummy,” Robin explained, and the phrase gave Margaret a nasty little pang of uneasiness. The hungry, too-old little face seemed to hover before her for a moment, its eyes full of ancient, malicious knowledge. She blinked it away, shut the lid of the brick box (what an absurd place to look!), and bundled Robin firmly back to bed.
“And do you promise I won’t dream it again?” asked Robin anxiously, and Margaret promised. This was the standard formula after Robin’s nightmares. It had always worked before.
Nearly twelve o’clock. There was nothing whatever to stay up for, but somehow Margaret couldn’t bring herself to go to bed. She reached out towards her library book, but felt that she could not face Leonora’s indecision again, and instead picked up yesterday’s evening paper. She would look for something cheerful to read before she went to bed. The autumn fashions, perhaps—or would it be the spring ones they’d be writing about in October? It was all very confusing nowadays.
But it wasn’t the autumn fashions she found herself reading—or the spring ones. It was the blurred photograph of the wanted man that caught her eye—a man in his fifties perhaps—from such a bad picture it was difficult to tell. A picture of the murdered woman, too—a Mrs Harriet somebody—and a description of her …
Margaret’s attention suddenly became riveted and she read the report from beginning to end, hardly daring to breathe. This man, at large somewhere in London tonight, had escaped from a mental institution where he had been sent some years ago for strangling another woman in somewhat similar circumstances to this Mrs Harriet …
Margaret felt her limbs grow rigid. Both women had been the mothers of small boys … both had lived in tall derelict houses converted into flats … both had had black hair done in tight curls … Margaret fingered her hairstyle with damp, trembling fingers, and tried not to read any more, but her eyes seemed glued to the page. Why had the man not been hanged that first time?
There followed the story of his childhood—a story of real Dickensian horror. Brought up in a tall ruined old house by a stepmother who had starved him, thrashed him, shut him in dark rooms where she told him clawed fiends were waiting … her black, shining curls had quivered over his childhood like the insignia of torture and death. The prison doctors had learned all this from him after the first murder—and had learned, too, how the sight of a black-haired woman going up the steps of just such a derelict house as he remembered had brought back his terror and misery with such vividness that “I didn’t just feel like a little boy again—I was a little boy … that was my house … that was her”—that was the only way he could describe it. And he had crept into the house, locked himself in one of the empty rooms until the dead silence of the night, and then crept out, with a child’s enormity of terror and hatred in his heart, and with a man’s strength in his fingers …
Margaret closed her eyes for a second, and then opened them again to read the description of the murderer: “About fifty years of age, medium height, ginger hair growing grey, eyebrows and eyelashes almost invisible …” With every word the face leaped before her more vividly—not the face of the ageing, unknown man, but the little malevolent face she had seen that afternoon—the ill-cut ginger hair, the little red-rimmed eyes filled with the twisted malice of an old and bitter man …
“I didn’t just feel like a little boy again, I was a little boy …” The words beat through Margaret’s brain, over and over again.
She thrust the paper away from her. Don’t be so fanciful and absurd, she told herself. After all, if I really think anything’s wrong all I’ve got to do is call the police. There’s the telephone just there in the hall.
She walked slowly to the door and out on to the landing, and stood there in her little island of light with darkness above and below. She tried to go on telling herself what nonsense it all was, how ridiculous she was being. But now she dared not let any more words come into her mind, not any words at all. For she was listening—listening as civilized human beings rarely have need to listen—listening as an animal listens in the murderous blackness of the forest. Not just with the ears—rather with the whole body. Every organ, every nerve is alert, pricked up, so that, in the end, it is impossible to say through which sense the message comes, and comes with absolute certainty: Danger is near. Danger is on the move.
For there was no sound. Margaret was certain of that. No sound to tell her that something was stirring in the locked room upstairs—that dark, empty room so like the locked room where once a little boy had gone half mad with terror at the thought of the clawed fiends. The clawed fiends who had lost their terrors through the years and become his friends and allies, for now at last he was a clawed fiend himself.
Still Margaret heard no sound. No sound to tell that the door of the empty room was being unlocked, silently, and with consummate skill, from the inside. No shuffle of footsteps across the dusty upstairs landing. No creak from the ancient, rickety steps of that top flight of stairs.
And in the end it was not Margaret’s straining ears at all which caught the first hint of the oncoming creature—it was her eyes. They seemed to have been riveted on that shadowy bend in the banisters for so long that when she saw the hand at last, long and tapering, like five snakes coiled round the rail, she could have imagined it had been there all the time, flickering in and out and dancing before her eyes.
But not the face. No, that couldn’t have been there before. Not anywhere, in all the world, could there have been a face like that—a face so distorted, so alight with hate that it seemed almost luminous as it leered out of the blackness, as it seemed to glide down towards her a foot or two above the banister …
There was a sound now—a quick pattering of feet, horribly light and soft, like a child’s, as they bore the heavy adult shape down the stairs, the white, curled fingers reaching out towards her …
A little frightened cry at Margaret’s elbow freed her from her paralysis. A little white face, a tangle of ginger hair … and an instinct stronger that that of self-preservation gripped her. In a second she was on her knees, her arms round the small trembling body; she felt the little creature’s shaking terror subsiding into a great peace as she held him against her breast.
That dropping on her knees was her salvation. In that very second her assailant lunged, tripped over her suddenly lowered body, and pitched headlong down the stairs behind her. Crash upon crash as he fell from step to step, and then silence. Absolute silence.
“Mummy! Mummy! Who…? What…?”—a tangle of small legs and arms, and in a moment her arms seemed to be full of little boys. She collected her wits and looked down at them. Only two of them, of course, her own two, their familiar dark heads pressed against her, their frightened questions clamouring in her ears …
And when the police came, and Henry came, and the dead man was taken away, there was so much to tell. So much to explain. It could all be explained quite easily, of course (as Henry pointed out), with only a little stretching of coincidence.
The little ginger-headed boy must come from somewhere in the neighbourhood—no doubt he could be traced, and if necessary helped in some way. Margaret’s obsession about him would explain Robin’s dream; it would also explain why, in that moment of terror, she imagined the strange child had rushed into her arms. Really, of course, it must have been one of her own boys.
And yet, Margaret could never forget the smile on the face of the dead man as he lay crumpled at the foot of the stairs. They say that the faces of the dead can set in all sorts of incongruous expressions, but it seemed to Margaret that the smile had not been the smile of a grown man at all; it had been the smile of a little boy who has felt the comfort of a mother’s arms at last.