Читать книгу Murder is Grim - Samuel Rogers - Страница 5
ОглавлениеChapter Two
KATE waited on the front steps while Felix lifted out her bags. She had never seen a more charming house; its whole atmosphere was reassuring. It was of whitewashed brick long and low, with blue-shuttered french windows opening on to a grassy terrace. The lawn through which the driveway wound stretched for acres behind her, scattered with oaks, with birches, with huge pines, and beyond it, like a spectacular green wall, the wooded hills seemed to rise almost vertically to shut out the rest of the world. The air had a damp freshness down here which brought out sharply the smell of grass and leaves – perhaps because the river was so near.
She had noticed a whining and scratching from inside the door, and as Felix opened it a little black and white beagle dashed out, wriggled first around Felix’s legs, then around hers, then flew circling over the lawn, its ears waving, its tail held high like a pennant.
‘How perfectly darling!’ she exclaimed. ‘What’s his name? How old is he?’
‘It’s a young lady’, Felix said. ‘Her name is Bobbie, and she’s not quite five months old.’
Kate watched her with delight as she stopped so suddenly she fell all over herself, grabbed a large stick, dashed back to the door and dropped the stick at Kate’s feet. Then with her chin on the ground between her front paws, her hindquarters raised, her tail wagging frantically, she looked up at Kate with dark liquid eyes. Kate could not resist stooping down. The little hound thrust its head between her outstretched hands, and Kate could feel through the silky skin the bones of her skull and jaw, as delicate and buoyant as those of a bird.
‘I see you’ve made friends already’, Felix said. ‘Bobbie certainly has good taste.’
As Kate stood up she saw a woman in black with a maid’s apron walking toward the door from the back of the wide hallway. She was middle-aged, with a weathered handsome face and thin brown hair pulled back from her forehead and temples.
‘My wife’, Felix explained to Kate. ‘Ruby, my girl, let me present to you Miss Katherine Archer. Quite an addition to the household, if you ask me.’
‘I didn’t ask you’, the woman said in such a fierce voice that it almost made Kate jump. For an instant she glared at Felix; then she shrugged her shoulders and peered at Kate.
‘That outburst wasn’t meant for you, Miss Archer’, Felix apologized. ‘It was meant for me, though I’m afraid you’re partly to blame. Youth and beauty can be very disturbing as we grow older, can’t they, Ruby, my love?’
Beneath the suavity of his tone there was a sudden hardness that Kate would not have expected: it seemed not so much Felix’s own voice as a reflection of his wife’s.
‘Oh shut up!’ the woman said; then as she turned to Kate her face lost something of its belligerence. ‘I’m sorry, miss’, she said. ‘But Felix is right. It wasn’t meant for you. We’re a queer household here at the farm, and you might as well learn it now as later.’
‘I’ll take up your bags’, Felix said. ‘Don’t let Ruby scare you, Miss Archer. Her bark is worse than her bite.’
Felix walked back through the hall to the stairway, and Kate looked over her shoulder to see where Bobbie had gone. At first she did not discover her; but then she saw her, through the still-open door, a small black and white object racing around a pine tree a hundred yards or more from the house.
‘You better step in there’, Ruby said, escorting her to a doorway on the right. ‘Mr. Gladstone wants to talk to you before you see June. He’s lying down. I’ll go call him.’
Kate, who was apt to be critical of furniture arrangements, glanced sharply about the room. It was large and low-ceiled, its floor entirely covered with a sea-green carpet, which recalled her impression, as they had looked down from the hilltop, that the valley was under water. For its size, the room was sparsely furnished: there were several sofas and easy chairs; along the walls stood two or three carved chests like pieces she had seen in Brittany. Besides the three french windows opening on the terrace, there was a fourth one, at the further end, screened by a Venetian blind; and through the slats she could see another, smaller terrace, this one paved not with grass but with red tiles and strewn with wicker chairs and tables. Beyond it, in the sunlight, she caught the gleam of delphinium and scarlet lilies.
She thought of the grim woman who had just left her: perhaps Ruby, if she was as jealous of Felix as she seemed, had sent the note in a last effort to prevent the arrival of an attractive young girl in the house. ‘But of course Ruby had never seen me’, thought Kate, and then smiled at her own conceit. And yet, in fairness to herself, it was not really conceit: she had learned by experience that most men found her nice to look at, and it would be crazy to pretend that she did not know it and did not thoroughly enjoy it, even if it was sometimes embarrassing. Or again, perhaps Felix had sent it himself, for the sake of domestic peace, suspecting that Ruby would resent her coming. She wished that either one of these explanations was true; then everything would be cleared up and she would feel free to enjoy this wonderful place; but she was not convinced. She couldn’t believe it of Felix, and not even of Ruby. In spite of her dourness, she looked honest and only too forthright.
As she strolled toward the farther window, Kate noticed that a pair of feet was protruding from one of the wicker chairs whose back was turned to the house. They were small feet, wearing scarlet sandals with very high heels, and through the straps Kate could see that the toe-nails were painted crimson. Could that be Clotilde, she wondered: it was certainly not June. But then the thickness of the ankles and the flabbiness of the bare calves, daubed with sun tan, made her sure that this was an older woman. It must be Mrs. Gladstone, June’s mother, though one wouldn’t have thought it. A tall glass, empty except for a sprig of mint, stood on the tiles beside her.
Then as Kate idly watched, an extraordinarily pretty girl in grey flannel slacks appeared on the terrace from somewhere behind the house. She had a small head set on a long neck; she looked as composed, as beautifully made up, as the models in a fashion display; but the most striking thing about her was her hair, which floated down to her shoulders in waves of the glossiest, palest gold that Kate had ever seen. Kate thought regretfully of her own hair, which had had that almost silvery brightness when she was two or three (Mother had kept a lock of it), but which had darkened ever since. She suspected that she would not like this girl: she seemed far too smooth; but she did arouse Kate’s sporting instincts. It would be interesting to see her fiancé.
‘Well you owe me five dollars’, Clotilde called to her stepmother (Kate was sure she had identified them both). ‘I beat him 6-4, 6-3.’
‘Anyone else but you,’ a throaty voice answered from the chair, ‘wouldn’t feel right about taking the money. It’s quite obvious that if you did beat him it was only because he let you.’
The first thing that struck Kate about this voice was the fact that, with its drawl, the mannered way it lingered on certain syllables, it assumed the presence of an audience. Since they were betting, Kate felt she would be willing to bet even money that Mrs. Gladstone had once been an actress.
‘You ought to know Ralph by this time!’ Clotilde laughed, and her tone seemed exaggeratedly casual, as if she were trying to underline its difference from the older woman’s. ‘He’s not so damn chivalrous as all that.’
‘Chivalrous!’ Mrs. Gladstone snorted. ‘Who said anything about chivalry? If he didn’t bother to win, it was because he was bored, poor lamb, and God knows I don’t blame him! You’re not at your best, my dove, on the tennis court.’
The voices came through the open window as clearly as if they were in the room. Kate did not know what to do: should she cough, or pretend to adjust the blind? But it would be embarrassing to make her presence known now; and as far as Clotilde and Mrs. Gladstone were concerned, she felt they would not care in the least who might hear them.
Clotilde had walked nearer her stepmother’s chair, and was gazing down at her with a fixed irritating smile.
‘Mavis, darling,’ she said, ‘I’m afraid what really worries you is the idea, and I admit there’s something in it, that it’s I who am growing bored with him.’
‘And why, pray, should that interest me?’ Mavis sounded like a duchess on the stage of a summer theatre.
Clotilde lifted her fine eyebrows and drew her lips together in an expression of innocence. ‘Ah, why indeed?’ she asked.
‘Darling, do you know what you remind me of?’ Mrs. Gladstone went on after the slightest pause; and Kate was now aware of a rasping note beneath the smoothness of her voice. ‘You make me think of a mosquito, a very charming, slim mosquito – that goes without saying – with lovely gauzy wings, but a mosquito nonetheless. And I’m terribly afraid, you know, that Ralph is beginning to agree with me.’
Clotilde seemed to be having a very good time. ‘Let’s see what you remind me of’, she said. ‘It’s like that descriptive game, isn’t it, and you have chosen the subject of insects. Of course it’s very hard to think of you in such terms. If you had chosen flowers, say, or nice things to drink, nothing would have been easier. But if I had to describe you as an insect, I think I should be inclined to choose a tick, one of those pretty, plump little ticks you find on dogs.’
Mrs. Gladstone laughed huskily. ‘I hope not a tick’, she said. ‘They can be quite dangerous, you know.’
‘Not unless you let them get under your skin’, Clotilde replied.
Mrs. Gladstone’s laugh died away in a kind of purring chuckle. ‘I don’t flatter myself that I could ever get under yours’, she said. ‘It’s-shall we say too fine-grained? So you’re perfectly safe.’
Kate was amused but at the same time slightly revolted by this scrap of conversation; she felt at least that she was beginning to understand what Miss Barstow had meant when she said that June’s family background left much to be desired. Then, the next instant, a young man in white flannels appeared on the terrace, and in her surprise and pleasure this malicious sparring seemed all at once unimportant. He was a solid straight young man, with chestnut hair, a brown skin, and deep-set brown eyes. His features were large; his eyebrows were almost ferociously dark and thick; but the general impression one gathered from his face was that of a somewhat detached and distinctly patient kindness. It was Ralph Green! There could be no doubt of it. What fun that he should be here! She remembered now that Felix had mentioned a Mr. Green, and of course Mavis had referred to ‘Ralph’; but it had not occurred to Kate to put the two names together. She had not seen Ralph for five years and she thought of him always in connection with the summer she had spent in Maine. She had been only fifteen years old and Ralph must have been twenty-one or two; but he had taken her sailing, he had coached her in tennis; he had been kind, even affectionate, never in the least condescending; and Kate during the last month of her stay had been more nearly in love with him than she had ever been with anyone since that faraway summer.
Of course, to him, she had been just a rather big little girl; he had liked her very much; she could realize that he must sometimes have been amused by her. She would always be grateful to him because she felt that he had given her a standard of comparison by which she could judge the series of younger boys who had begun that very winter to fall in love with her. She could hardly wait now to speak to him. She wondered if he, too, would be surprised; she even wondered if he would remember her. Then like a chill it came over her that Ralph was engaged to marry this awful Clotilde.
‘I couldn’t find the last ball’, he said, and there was an edge to his voice, suggesting that even his patience had its limits. ‘I’m not going to waste any more time looking for it.’
‘Now really, Ralph!’ Clotilde exclaimed. ‘They were very special ones. It’s almost impossible to get them.’
Ralph looked at her with a fixed and quite unrevealing smile. ‘You like things that are hard to get, don’t you?’ he said. ‘You like things made to order. I wonder if there’s anything you’d enjoy, if you thought that the average person, the common run-of-the-mill individual, could get it just as easily as you could.’
Ralph was standing very straight and yet he seemed quite relaxed; he had the surprising light stance and poise that you notice sometimes in even the most dignified and massive dogs. Kate watched him with keen curiosity. He was not so handsome as she remembered him; no actual young man could be that. In fact, she had to confess, he was not handsome at all; and yet it seemed to her that she liked his face more than ever. Its present impatience or irony, or even scorn, seemed only to emphasize what must be its habitual gentleness. You felt that he had learned not to expect too much either from himself or others, but that he was more inclined to be tolerant of others than of himself. Clotilde met his eyes.
‘I haven’t given the matter much thought’, she said coolly.
‘No, I expect not’, he said. ‘Well, I’m going up to take a shower. See you at dinner.’
He stepped out of sight toward the front of the house, and Kate felt with pleasure that he had snubbed Clotilde; already she had the sense that she was watching some kind of game and that the side she was cheering had just won a point. A moment later she could hear him opening the front door and running upstairs. She had almost gone out into the hall to waylay him; but then she thought it would be more fun to surprise him at dinner, and she would have hated to do anything that might have seemed like thrusting herself on his attention before he noticed her.
A faint noise made her look around, and she saw a large dark man in a Palm Beach suit, with a rose in his buttonhole – a man whom she thought she had seen somewhere before – coming toward her across the watery expanse of carpet.
‘Were the girls out there putting on one of their little shows?’ he asked in a deep voice with a slightly sardonic intonation.
Kate blushed. She felt like a child caught in a preserve closet. ‘Well, I don’t know’, she said. ‘They were talking and I’m afraid I couldn’t help —’
The man grinned, and his teeth looked younger and more vigorous than the rest of his face. ‘Of course you couldn’t and why should you? I only hope they kept the script clean.’
He held out an enormous hairy hand, and as she took it she realized why he seemed familiar: in spite of the pouches beneath his eyes, the sag of his jowls, his nearly bald head, he reminded her of June. He had the same oblong face with its heavy chin and small rounded nose, the same swarthiness of skin, the same dark glance; and yet his face, at any rate when he spoke, had a kind of concentration, of liveliness, in spite of its air of fatigue, which June’s had always lacked. He was an ugly man, but she could imagine that he might be interesting, even attractive.
‘I’m sorry I kept you waiting’, he went on. ‘All the more so, now that I’ve seen you. The fact is I was napping in my underwear, and I didn’t feel I knew you quite well enough to appear as I was. June told me you were beautiful, but I knew she had a crush on you – in a perfectly nice way, of course – so I made considerable allowance. But my word!’ – He looked her up and down with embarrassingly direct admiration beneath his bantering air. ‘It was really an understatement.’
Once more she saw his lopsided grin. ‘You may give quite a jolt to Clotilde,’ he went on, ‘and poor old Mavis will be sick; but what a treat for Ralph and Jo, not to speak of my aged self! And I mustn’t forget Felix. Felix was quite a lady’s man in his prime, the rascal. Don’t let that respectful manner fool you. I bet Felix was licking his lips!’
Kate felt that Mr. Gladstone spoke as if she were a choice morsel to be served up at dinner. She suspected that he was trying to tease her and determined to show no sign that she noticed it.
‘I’m looking forward to seeing June again’, she said. ‘She must have changed a good deal in the last four years.’
Mr. Gladstone sent her a sharp glance. ‘The more, the better, eh?’
If she hadn’t prepared herself against confusion, Kate might have blushed. ‘I didn’t mean that at all,’ she said, ‘and I think you talk horridly for a father. I noticed it in your letter too.’
He looked at her quizzically and as she met his gaze she had the feeling that he liked her all the more for her sharp retort.
‘I know my appearance suggests one of the larger anthropoid apes,’ he said after an instant, ‘but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a father’s heart. But wait a minute —’
He walked past her over to the window that opened on to the terrace. ‘You see, the theatre had reversed itself’, he explained. ‘We had become the stage in here, and Mavis and Clotilde had become the audience.’ He raised the blind and closed the casement window. ‘That’s better,’ he said, ‘and now please sit down. I don’t know why I didn’t suggest it before. Let’s say it was because I was dazzled.’
Kate sat down in one of the big leather chairs near the fireplace; it gave her the same feeling of super-comfort that the seat in the car had done. Mr. Gladstone seated himself in an even larger chair on the other side of the hearth, leaned back and crossed one ankle over his knee.
‘Seriously, Miss Archer, I’m damn glad you’re here’, he said. ‘But I’m not going to call you that. Katherine? Kate? Kate’s what they call you, isn’t it?’
‘Most of my friends call me Kate’, she admitted.
‘Swell! Anyhow: to be frank, I feel just a little bit guilty about June, as I told you in my letter. Of course she’s not much more decorative than I am, though I will say she has improved during the last year, and I suspect you can give her some damn good advice. You know, her clothes, her hair, and things like that. I think she’s really a nice kid. Between ourselves, I think she’s worth two of Clotilde. I confess I have a weakness for Clotilde, but I know damn well it’s mostly because she’s such a knockout to look at. Clotilde knows what she wants and she’ll get it, regardless. It may be my fault for spoiling her, but her mother was very much the same type. When I was a young man I was a lousy judge of women, at least the ones I married. But to go back to poor June. I hope you will stay here for a month anyway; and if you can give her a little self-confidence and brighten her up a bit, you’ll have done your good deed for the year. We’re a pretty free and easy bunch out here, as you’re probably discovering, but I think you’ll live through it. If you can stand me, you ought to be able to take the rest of us, and you seem to be doing pretty well so far.’
A scurrying in the hall made Kate turn her head in time to see Bobbie dash into the room, slide back on her haunches for a moment in the midst of her rush, to look around her, and then make for Kate’s ankles with a series of little grunts and barks. Kate put down her hands to protect her stockings, and Bobbie, after a few growling charges, wheeled on her hind legs, her front paws waving, her ears swirling about her face like the curls of a ballerina, and dashed straight across the room for another arm-chair. Kate thought she was going to fling herself against it, but in the nick of time, without slackening her speed, she flattened herself out and half slid, half scrambled under the border of pleated chintz that touched the floor. Then almost at once her head appeared peeking from under the edge, her chin pressed close against the carpet, while her eyes gleamed up at Kate as if to challenge her to try to drag her out of this refuge.
‘Bobbie, come here! Bobbie, where are you?’
It was June’s voice, and the next instant she stepped into the room and came toward Kate with a smile that showed her large strong teeth. At the same time Bobbie’s head ducked under the chair, and then she scrambled out, holding in her mouth a very dirty doll made of string, which she brought over and dropped at Kate’s feet. But Kate had hardly time to notice her now, because she was so curious to see what June would be like as a ‘young girl’.
June shook her hand vigorously, leaned toward her as if to kiss her, and then straightened up as if she did not quite dare.
‘Kate!’ she exclaimed in her rather deep voice, which had always been the most attractive thing about her. ‘It’s the same old Katey! I was so afraid you might have changed. I was so afraid you might seem all grown-up and fancy, but you don’t look any different.’
It was not quite the same old June, Kate realized at once. Not only was she about a foot taller, several inches taller than Kate now, but she was far less stolid-looking. She still moved with awkward abruptness; her face was still too heavy, but it had a kind of intensity of expression, a liveliness at this minute of greeting, which suggested her father more than ever. Her complexion, too, dark and slightly oily, was at any rate much better than it had been. At present she was wearing too much lipstick of too pink a shade; her black hair fluffed in unbecoming wisps about her cheeks; and Kate who liked nothing better than fixing things over according to her own very particular taste, looked forward, as her father had suggested, to starting in at once on the reconstruction of her appearance. June, with a little tact and care, might be smart-looking, even distinguished. Kate was sure Mr. Gladstone had been right when he said she was worth two of Clotilde.
‘It’s great fun to be seeing you again’, Kate said. ‘It doesn’t seem as if it could be four years since we were together, except that you certainly have grown up, if I haven’t. And this is such a lovely place! I’ve never seen anything like it. You must show me all around. I’m sure we’ll have a wonderful summer, June.’
‘June, sweet,’ Mr. Gladstone said, with a touch of irony in his tone, which probably, Kate thought, had become so habitual that he was no longer aware of it, ‘I suggest that the first thing you show Kate is her own room. Felix took up her bags. And then she may doubtless want to be left in peace to unpack.’
‘I’d love to have June help me unpack’, said Kate. ‘That is, if she wants to.’
‘You bet I want to’, June said. ‘I’m crazy to see your clothes. You always had such pretty clothes.’
‘Well then, my little dears,’ Mr. Gladstone said, making only a token gesture as if to rise from his chair, ‘I’ll be seeing you before dinner.’
As the two girls walked upstairs side by side, Bobbie climbed ahead of them, putting first her two front feet on each step above her and then bringing up her hindquarters with a little bounce and jerk that made Kate think of a mechanical rabbit. At the top of the stairs they turned to the left along a pleasant hall, with green and white straw matting on the floor, and then turned to the right into another wing which led toward the back of the house.
Presently they reached the end of the corridor. ‘Here we are’, June said. ‘Your room will be this one straight ahead, and mine is here to the left. They’re next to each other.’
Kate pushed eagerly through the door into her room, and then couldn’t help smiling because she loved it so. On the floor there was the same green and white matting, whose damp smell reminded her of Matunuck. The chintz curtains had a pattern of cornflowers and poppies, and near the bed stood a luxurious chaise-longue.
‘It’s not so big,’ June said, ‘but I’ve always liked this room. I used to wish it was mine, but I couldn’t have it because it was used as a guest room. Do you like it, Kate?’
‘I just love it!’ Kate said. ‘I can’t imagine a nicer room.’
She walked gaily across to one of the windows. ‘And what a pretty view!’ she exclaimed. ‘It looks so quaint and peaceful.’
An oblong of turf, like a bowling green, stretched smoothly to a little house of white brick, with mossy red tiles and blue shutters like the main building; but this was as miniature and dainty as a cottage in a fairy tale. Behind it a wall of trees rose so steeply that she had to lean out of the window to look up at the sky. And from the little house she could hear the sound of a violin.
‘I suppose that’s Mr. – I suppose that’s Jo’, she said. ‘Felix told me about him.’
‘Yes, that’s Jo’, June said, and if Felix’s tone had suggested disapproval, June’s expressed real dislike. ‘He lives out there so his practising won’t disturb us, but sometimes when he plays late at night it keeps me awake. Mavis, that’s mother, accompanies him; she plays pretty well; but lately it’s been mostly Clotilde. She plays too.’
Kate smiled. ‘You don’t think much of him, do you?’ she said. ‘Felix didn’t seem to either, not that he wasn’t very polite. What’s wrong with him?’
‘Nothing’s wrong with him really,’ June said after a minute, ‘except that he’s a sponge. I don’t blame him so much. He’s no worse than the rest of them.’ And then her face darkened into a scowl, the kind of scowl Kate remembered when girls at school had bothered to tease her. ‘It’s just that it’s all so nasty. Everything’s nasty around here. It’s always been that way ever since I can remember. It’s not fair for things to be so nasty!’
Her face suddenly lightened, and she looked with the new intensity of her glance directly at Kate. ‘That’s one of the reasons I wanted you to come’, she said. ‘Because you won’t mind it, I guess. It’s not your family.’
At that moment Kate was so sorry for her that she felt like putting her arms around her and kissing her, but it might be just as well not to start a precedent. She wondered if she were referring to any special things. Whatever they were, she was perhaps exaggerating.
‘We can treat everything like an adventure’, she said. ‘And we won’t have to bother with people when we don’t want to.’
‘But Kate’, June went on after a minute, in a new tone of voice, no longer passionate but rather stilted and hesitant. ‘That’s not the only reason I’m glad you’ve come. That’s not the main reason.’
‘What is it?’ Kate asked curiously.
When June spoke, her voice was almost a whisper. ‘The main reason is that I’m afraid.’
Kate felt a crawling sensation inside her stomach, as if the roller coaster had begun its downward plunge, but she tried to smile incredulously. ‘Afraid!’ she exclaimed. ‘What on earth are you afraid of?’
‘You mustn’t laugh’, June said. ‘It’s not my imagination. Listen, Kate. A week ago I was walking with Bobbie on the river bluffs. I walk around here a lot. I always have. That hill out there behind the little house is the start of a bluff. It rises for just a few hundred yards, getting steeper and steeper, and then there are rocks, and the bluff drops almost straight down into the river. It’s quite wild all along the shore. The bluffs go on for miles, and there are lots of little nooks and caves. I guess nobody knows them all, unless it’s Professor Hatfield. Felix said you met him on the way out here. Well, on one of the bluffs about a mile down the river from here, Bobbie started barking and barking. I thought it was at some animal so I began to explore. Over the crest in a kind of steep place I found a little cave I’d never noticed, because a juniper tree spread out from the bank right smack above it. It was sort of hard to get down, but I’m a pretty good climber, and inside there was an old blanket and some whisky bottles and an electric torch and a kind of tin lunch box that I didn’t look into. Bobbie was still yelping on top of the bluff, because she couldn’t get down, and all at once I had the most awful creepy feeling that someone was near. I don’t think I heard anyone. I didn’t see anyone. It was just a feeling, but it was so awful I could hardly climb back around the juniper.’
‘I can imagine that’, Kate exclaimed. ‘I’d have never dared climb down in the first place. I suppose it was just some camper. Or perhaps a hunter, if anything’s in season.’
‘I don’t think it was an ordinary camper’, June said.
‘But why not?’ Kate asked. It almost scared her to feel such relief that June’s fear was irrational: what had she been expecting anyway?
‘Wait a minute’, June said. ‘I’ll be right back.’ And she hurried out of the room.
Kate wouldn’t have believed how empty June’s absence would make it seem. Even Bobbie lying beside the bed, her slim hind legs spread backward like a frog’s, was scarcely a consolation. She could still hear the violin, but it only increased the silence of everything else. That wall of trees seemed now rather suffocating, as if it shut out the natural air and light. Thank heaven, at least, that Ralph was here! She gave a faint start as June came back into the room, just as she had started several hours ago (it seemed like an entirely different day) when Felix had knocked at her door back in town.
Then as June handed her a letter, her heart began to beat so violently that it was almost an agony to force herself to smile. Because she recognized that envelope, that printing.
‘It came in the mail just two days later’, June said. ‘That was five days ago.’
Kate felt that she could not trust her voice. She took out the paper, and there printed in the same red crayon – blood-red it looked to her now – she saw the following message:
IF YOU GO ON POKING YOUR NOSE INTO THINGS, YOU’LL BE SORRY. AND I MEAN SORRY!
