The Turn of the Key(32)

There was no path up through the woods in the direction the footsteps had been leading, but I followed in as near an approximation as I could, when suddenly a crackling scream split the air. I stopped dead, my heart thumping erratically in my chest for the second time that day, the dogs barking hysterically and leaping at the end of their leashes.

For a second I didn’t know what to do. I stood, looking wildly around. The scream had sounded close at hand, but I could see no one, and I couldn’t hear any footsteps over the noise the dogs were making. Then it came again, long and almost unbearably high-pitched, and with a stomach-lurching realization, I understood.

I pulled the baby monitor out of my pocket, and watched as the lights flared and dipped in time with the long, bubbling shriek of pure fear.

For a moment I just stood there paralyzed, holding the monitor in my hand, the dogs’ leads looped around my wrist. Should I try to access the cameras?

With shaking hands, I pulled out my phone and pressed the icon of the home-management app.

Welcome to Happy, Rowan, the screen said, with agonizing slowness. Home is where the Happy is! And then, to my despair, Updating user permissions. Please be patient. Home is where the Happy is!

I swore, stuffed both the phone and the monitor back into my pocket, and began to run.

I was a long way from the house, down a slope, and my breath was tearing in my throat by the time I left the cover of the trees and saw the house in front of me. The dogs had broken away from me some way back, tugging their leads out of my numb fingers, and now they were leaping and gamboling in front and behind me, barking joyfully, convinced that this was all some kind of game.

When I reached the front door, it was standing ajar, in spite of the fact that I knew it had been closed when I left—I had used the utility-room door, leaving it open for Maddie and Ellie in case they returned, and for a second I thought I might be sick. What had I done? What had happened to poor little Petra?

I was almost too frightened to stumble the last few steps up the flight of stairs to the nursery, but I forced myself, leaving the dogs in the hallway, tangled up in their own leads, and at last I was outside Petra’s door, sick with fear about what I was about to find.

It was closed, just as I’d left it, and I pushed down a sob in my throat as I turned the knob—but what I found there made me stop short on the threshold, blinking and trying to fight down my gasping breath.

Petra was asleep, in her cot, arms flung out to either side, sooty lashes sweeping her pink cheeks. Her bunny was clutched in her left hand, and she had plainly not stirred since I had put her down.

It didn’t make sense.

I had just enough self-control left to back out of the room, closing the door quietly behind me, before I sank to the floor in the hallway outside, my back hard against the knobbly banisters, my face in my hands, trying not to sob with shock and relief, feeling the wheeze in my chest as my lungs labored to take in enough oxygen to stabilize my pounding pulse.

With shaky hands, I pulled my inhaler out of my pocket and took a puff, then tried to make sense of it all. What had happened?

Had the sound not come from the monitor? But that was impossible—it was equipped with lights that illuminated to show when the baby was crying, in case you had the volume turned low for some reason. I had seen the lights. And the noise had been coming from the speaker, I was certain of it.

Had Petra had a nightmare and cried out? But when I thought back, that didn’t make sense either. It was not a baby’s cry. That was part of what had frightened me so much. The sound I’d heard was not the fretful wail I knew so well from the nursery but a long, throbbing shriek of terror, one made by a much older child, or even an adult.

“Hello?”

The voice came from downstairs, making me jump again, convulsively this time, and I stood, my pulse racing, and leaned over the bannisters.

“Hello? Who is it?” My voice came out not sharp and authoritative, as I had intended, but quavering and squeaky with fear. “Who’s there?” It had been an adult voice, a woman, and now I heard footsteps in the hall and saw a face below, peering up at me.

“You’ll be the new nanny, I dare say?”

It was a woman, perhaps fifty or sixty years old, her face ruddy and her body foreshortened by my perspective. She looked plump and motherly, but there was something in her voice and her expression that I couldn’t quite pin down. It wasn’t welcoming, that was for sure. A sort of . . . pinched disapproval?

There were leaves in my hair, and as I began to make my way down the flight of steps towards the ground floor, I saw that I’d left a trail of spattered mud on the thick carpet, in my headlong flight to Petra.

Two buttons had come adrift on my blouse and I fastened them and coughed, feeling my face still hot with exertion and fright.

“Um, hello. Yes. Yes, I’m Rowan. And you must be . . .”

“I’m Jean. Jean McKenzie.” She looked me up and down, not troubling to conceal her disapproval, and then shook her head. “It’s up to you, miss, but I don’t approve of keeping children locked out, and I dare say Mrs. Elincourt wouldna like it either.”

“Locked out?” I was puzzled for a moment. “What do you mean?”

“I found the poor bairns shivering on the step in their sundresses when I came to clean.”

“But wait”—I put out a hand—“hang on a second. I didn’t lock anyone out. They ran away from me. I was out looking for them. I left the back door open for them.”