Yes, she would pass; but was there anything she had left behind? The torch, the torch! She must have dropped it in her flight from ‘the Count’s’ bedroom and she would need it to find her way through the dark passages, into the hall, out through the front door, on to the drive—left, right? right, left?—to the garage yard.
She couldn’t go through these complicated manoeuvres without the torch, feeble as its ray was, and she must have dropped it out of reach behind the door of partition.
Sometimes clutching her suitcase, sometimes letting it drop on to the floor, she debated her next move, until dawn—like a picture frame—peeped behind the edges of the window curtains.
‘Oh, damn it,’ she said, and unlocked the dividing door.
There was a switch on his side as there was on hers, a device convenient no doubt for clandestine couples. Her fingers found it at once and light broke out, almost exploded from the central chandelier. What would it show? She only wanted to see one thing—her little torch. There it lay, almost at her feet.
She grabbed it, but in spite of herself she couldn’t help looking round the room, dreading what she might see. But she saw nothing: nothing to alarm her, only an ordinary bed with the sheet turned back, so bravely, oh! not a crease, not a stain on it, still less a man under it.
‘What a fool I am,’ she thought, retreating to her room, but not forgetting to re-lock the intervening door or the door into the passage. The house was well supplied with keys. Just as, after a thunderstorm, one feels the weather will be settled for ever, she unpacked again, took out her pyjamas, made the necessary adjustments to her face, and slept peacefully.
The maid who brought her breakfast brought a note with it.
‘Dearest Mildred, Do forgive me, but I can’t say goodbye for I have to go away early—such a bore. Please ask for anything you want. Love, Joanna.’
*
Mildred called the maid back.
‘You don’t happen to know where Mrs. Bostock has gone?’
‘No, Madam, she doesn’t always tell us. I haven’t seen her—she just left this note. Shall I draw the curtains, Madam?’
‘Yes, please.’
How brave one is by daylight! Finishing her toast and marmalade, thinking how absurd even for someone who professed to be psychic, had been her visions of the night, she got out of bed, didn’t bother to put on her dressing-gown, and unlocked the communicating door.
Night flooded in, hitting her in the face; but of course it would be dark for the curtains had not been drawn as hers had; no doubt the housemaid had been told not to call Count Olmütz, who arrived so late and slept so late. It was strange, after the cheerful radiance of her room, to be plunged into darkness again; strange and disquieting.
‘Oh, why should I bother?’ Mildred asked herself, with an eye on her dismantled suitcase, ‘it’s no business of mine.’
Curiosity killed the cat. It didn’t kill Mildred, although what she saw seemed to have killed two people, if what they had given to each other was the blood that united them in a tangled coil, blood almost as dark and solid as to be snake-like.
Darkness gave way to daylight, and all was in readiness for Mildred’s flight. Gratuity in hand, she muttered some words to the butler who had come to fetch her suitcase, words of thanks and words of warning, as casual as she could make them, and as hasty. ‘The police, my lady?’ asked the butler, wide-eyed. She had no time to disclaim the title but said, ‘Well, there is something dripping in the room next door; it may be a plumber’s job.’
‘Very good, my lady, but in my experience, the police come quicker than the plumbers.’
*
‘Will the police find anything,’ Mildred wondered, ‘that I have found or haven’t found?’
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L. P. Hartley, The Complete Short Stories of L.P. Hartley
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