The Silent Cottage
The drizzle had increased to a downpour and the wind to half a gale when, after a dizzy journey through mud-splashed roads, Temperley and Diggs reached Whitchurch.
They found it a depressing and desolate spot. The roads were rivers, and only those who had to be were out on them. Never a centre of liveliest activity, Whitchurch now seemed drowned, and the life it possessed remained, for the most part, unseen beneath sodden roofs. They came upon the town before they realised they had approached it. “’Allo—there’s the railway station,” said Diggs, as it suddenly loomed on their right. “But it’s the police station we want, ain’t it?”
“No, it’s Rose-tree Cottage we want,” answered Temperley. “Keep your eyes skinned for somebody we can ask.”
Diggs frowned. He’d missed a night’s sleep and driven through a hundred miles of wet roads at a reckless pace, and he wasn’t feeling the bravest man on earth. He thought that a bobby ought to do the ringing and the knocking at Rose-tree Cottage. But when he began to point this out he was cut short very definitely.
“The police will already be at Rose-tree Cottage,” Temperley told him. “After getting my note Inspector James will have ’phoned through from Boston.”
“Then what ’ave we been ’urryin’ for?” muttered Diggs.
Diggs was a middle-aged man in the centre of life. He was not a young man at the beginning of it. Youth splashes through mud to reach the youth it loves; it cannot delay its rejoicing or its weeping. With middle-age, comfort supersedes Cupid.
But it is youth that rules—particularly when the middle-age is merely a rather tired taxi-driver—and when a peripatetic sack sprouted two small legs beneath it and turned out to be a diminutive Whitchurchian under an improvised umbrella, Diggs slackened dutifully and growled out: “Oi! Where’s Rose-tree Cottage?”
Rather surprisingly, the diminutive Whitchurchian knew it. Once he had been a greengrocer’s boy and had delivered potatoes at Rose-tree Cottage, and so he knew the way despite its deviations and its distance; and, since his ambition was to end up as an A. A. man, he explained the route with painstaking and praiseworthy clarity. Diggs, not to be outdone, and also because he wanted to avoid the necessity of stopping again, interpreted the directions with equal skill, and when the boy had finished he declared he could get there blindfold.
“Don’t forget the railway bridge,” said the boy, earnestly. “It’s where it curves and you go over it and then you’re nearly there and—”
“And there’s some water, but you keep that on your right and the cottage is round the next bend,” interposed Diggs. “Yes, I got it, sonny, and thank you very much.”
As the car restarted, a shilling sailed out of the window. Diggs had got it. He did not have to inquire again, which was fortunate since, once the small town had been shaken off, they did not encounter a soul. The lanes curled and narrowed. The hedges dripped. The clouds became lower, as though to join in the process of closing them in. “What a spot!” muttered Temperley.
Jolly enough in the sunlight, perhaps, but just now, in these dismal conditions, the last spot on earth!
They began to take an abrupt curve.
“Bridge,” reported Diggs.
They crossed the bridge, leaving it with another curve. Like an S. Or a…
“Water,” reported Diggs.
He did not refer to the rain. The rain was self-evident. He jerked his head towards his right shoulder as the car swung round to the left. A hundred yards away was the troubled surface of a large pond teased by rain-drops. “Slow down, man—we’re there!” ordered Temperley, his heart beating fast.
Diggs was already doing it. They glided along a short stretch, rounded another bend…
There it was! Rose-tree Cottage, with its name faintly showing on its moist little gate. Rose-tree Cottage, the end of a long and tortuous journey that had began before Boston—before Bristol, even. It had began at Euston, some thirty-six hours earlier. And here, in this desolate, insignificant, unpopulated spot, it concluded! But the nature of the conclusion was yet to learn. It would not be learned until that little gate had been passed, and a patch of tangled grass had been traversed, and a weather-stained door had been opened.
“Don’t see no rose-trees,” grunted Diggs.
It was not the lack of rose-trees that worried Temperley. It was the lack of policemen.
Unlike Diggs, however, he made no comment, but sprang from the car and hurried through the gate. The long neglected grasses clawed at his feet as he squelched through them. “Go away—people don’t live here,” they seemed to be muttering. The door, when he reached it, was equally unwelcoming. So were the little windows that stared silently at him and gave away no secrets. He found a bell in a tangle of creeper and pulled it. He heard it tinkling inside. No one answered it. He rang again. Again it tinkled uselessly.
“Nobody at ’ome?” asked Diggs, behind him.
“I don’t like it!” muttered Temperley.
“I ain’t lovin’ it meself,” replied Diggs. “Try knockin’.”
Temperley knocked. His knuckles had never made a more eerie sound. “Well, sir,” said Diggs. “If nobody’s ’ere, nobody’s ’ere.”
“What’s worrying me, Diggs,” answered Temperley, “is that nobody seems to have been here.”
“’Ow d’you know that, sir?”
“I don’t know it. Maybe it’s only an idea. Still, there’s certainly no sign of it.” His eye left the door, and stared at a window. The window was heavily curtained, and there was no sign of light or of life inside.
“Been and gorn, p’r’aps,” suggested Diggs.
“Perhaps,” nodded Temperley, moving to the window.
“What are you doin’, sir?” inquired Diggs, watching him apprehensively. Temperley was peering in at the window; or, rather, trying to. The dim slit between the thick curtains revealed nothing.
“We’d better go,” urged Diggs.
A crash of glass answered him. He nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound. Temperley had broken the window.
“’Oi—we can’t do that!” gasped Diggs.
“We have done it,” answered Temperley, quietly. “Stick outside the door, will you?”
He was climbing through the window as he spoke.
Diggs stuck outside. His heart thumped. What was the use of it? Nobody was in there! That was plain, wasn’t it? If they’d been there they’d have answered the bell, wouldn’t they…
And then a queer and horrible vision came into Diggs’s mind. A ridiculous, grotesque, outrageous vision. A vision of three people—a man lying crumpled in an arm-chair, a gipsy woman lying silent in a field, and another man—a taxi-driver, like himself—lying face upwards in a dank pool of water. And a bell was ringing through the vision. And none of the three people responded—because they couldn’t.
Was a fourth person to be added to the vision? A fourth person somewhere behind this door outside which Diggs waited? A fourth person who, also, couldn’t answer a bell…
The door opened suddenly. Diggs nearly fainted. “Come in!” commanded Temperley’s voice.
Diggs went in, mechanically. He found his eyes glued on Temperley’s wrist. There was blood on it.
“W-what’s that?” he stammered.
Temperley looked at his wrist. It was the first time he had noticed the blood.
“Nothing,” he answered. “The window, I expect.”
Diggs gulped.
“Found anyone?” he asked.
“Not down here. I’m going upstairs now.”
He turned and ran up the staircase as he spoke. Diggs hesitated, then abruptly followed him. Diggs needed company. Reaching the upper landing Temperley paused for an instant, and Diggs barged into him.
“What’s the matter?” demanded Temperley, sharply.
“Nothing,” mumbled Diggs. “I was jest a bit close, like.”
Ahead of them were two doors. One was ajar, the other was closed. They tried the door that was ajar first. It opened into a small front bedroom. It was empty. The bed had not been slept in since last being made. Then they tried the other door. It opened into the back bedroom, a rather larger chamber. Through the window across the room was glimpsed the end of a pond some distance off. But the thing that interested Temperley most was the bed. This had not been made since it had last been slept in.
Beneath a counterpane that looked as though it had been hastily replaced were tumbled bedclothes. They made a little mound, and for a second the two men stared at the mound with sickening dread. But when Temperley dashed forward for a closer investigation, he found that the mound sank blessedly beneath his hand. The bed contained no victim.
But a second point of interest lay in the position of the bed. It had been pulled out a little from the wall, and stood at an angle from it. Peering across into the space between it and the wall, Temperley gave an exclamation. Diggs’s hand clapped his stomach, where his main emotions resided. “What is it?” he jerked.
“Board up,” answered Temperley.
Quickly pulling the bed farther still from the wall, he examined the long, thin gap. The displaced board lay along the wall, and whoever had taken it away had failed to replace it.
“Anything there?” chattered Diggs.
“Nothing,” answered Temperley, frowning. “Rather queer—isn’t it?” The next instant he had leapt to his feet, and was staring at Diggs.
“Did you close the front door before you came up?” he whispered.
“Eh? No!” Diggs whispered back. “Why?”
Temperley did not reply. It was not necessary. Someone had entered the cottage, and was moving about below.