Spider Light(46)

There was a symmetry to the sounds. Footsteps, was it? No, it was more like something moving backwards and forwards. Something rocking? Yes, that was exactly what it sounded like. She paused by the gateleg table, and glanced over her shoulder towards the friendly, warmly lit sitting room. She had closed the front door when she came in, and dropped the latch, but if there really was someone in the cottage she could be at the door in seconds, and outside.

It would not be an intruder, though. It would be Raffles or the plumbing or something in the central heating; it was certainly not her imagination. Whatever it was, it had to be tracked down and dealt with.

Despite her resolve, she had to take a deep breath before she could push open the kitchen door and step inside. The kitchen was dark and her apprehension increased but she reached for the light switch along the left-hand wall.

Something brushed against her face. Something that was light and dry, and felt for a terrible moment like an old, dead hand reaching out of the shadows to touch her cheek.

Panic grabbed Antonia, constricting her throat, so she could not even scream. The unseen thing touched her face again, a little more definitely this time, and she gave a sort of strangled half-cry, and hit out blindly. But her hands met only air, although there was the impression of some kind of thin movement directly in front of her. She was shaking so much she thought she might fall down, but she finally managed to locate the light switch.

The entire room and what it held sprang into dreadful clarity, and this time she did cry out.

Hanging from one of the rafters was a long thick rope–as thick as Antonia’s wrist, almost as thick as a man’s neck–and it was this rope that had swung into her face. The end of it had been looped up and knotted to form a shape that was sickeningly familiar from dozens of images. A hangman’s noose. The method of punishment used until the middle of the twentieth century on men and women convicted of murder. Antonia stared at it in frozen horror. It was swinging slowly to and fro, pulling gently against the old ceiling joists as it moved and causing them to creak. It was several minutes before she managed to put out a shaky hand to still it, hating the coarse feel of the hemp, but unable to bear the swaying back and forth like a hypnotizing snake.

The rope had been moving because of the kitchen door opening, of course: the movement of air would have disturbed the rope, or the edge of the door might have caught it. Or had it been the soft creaking she had heard when she came in?

Whoever had let Raffles in that day must have come back. That person might even be hiding in the cottage now, watching her.

There was a faint warning creak from the ceiling beam, and the rope stirred slightly, and then began to sway again. Exactly as if someone was holding one end of it, swinging it menacingly.

Come closer, murderer…Step nearer so that I can loop this around your neck, and snap your spine, or strangle you in a slow death–it could go either way, you know…

Antonia’s precarious control snapped. She gasped and ran from the kitchen, slamming the door hard. Somehow she got across the sitting room and wrenched the front door open, tumbling outside.

She leaned against the old stone wall of the cottage, still shuddering, and took several deep breaths of cold night air. And then, since to go back into the cottage, even to find her mobile phone or keys, was unthinkable, she began to run across the park, towards Quire House.





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN




Quire’s main front door was closed, but when Antonia turned the handle, it swung open, and she went thankfully into the big shadowy hall and leaned against a carved chest for a moment to get her breath back and regain a degree of calm before seeking out Godfrey Toy. In a moment she would go through to his office at the back of the house, and explain to him that someone was playing some kind of sick joke on her.

Or would she? Could she tell anyone what had just happened without her real identity coming out? Without Richard’s and Don’s death being dragged into the light once more? But it would have to be done. Whoever had put that rope in Charity Cottage was sick and dangerous. Antonia went determinedly across the hall and through to the back of the house, which was in darkness. Darkness inside a house again…that eerie in-between darkness, when anything might be hidden by the shadows…Oh, for pity’s sake get a grip!

The door to Godfrey’s office was closed, but it was not long since Antonia had left him so there was a good chance he was still here. If he was not, she would decide whether to venture upstairs to find his flat. She was just preparing to tap on his door, when a man’s voice behind her said, ‘I’m afraid this part of the house isn’t open to visitors. And the museum closed two hours ago.’

Antonia had not heard anyone approach, and the words made her jump. She spun round at once, hoping she did not look as startled as she felt. Whoever the speaker was, he was brown-haired with rather narrow deepset eyes and in the uncertain light he might almost have been part of the shadows, except for the voice. There was nothing in the least shadowy about the voice: it was distinctly frosty. It was a you-have-no-right-to-be-here voice, and a who-the-hell-are-you voice.

‘In fact,’ said this cold-voiced man, regarding Antonia with unmistakable hostility, ‘the main doors ought to have been locked.’

‘Well, the front one certainly wasn’t locked,’ said Antonia returning his stare, ‘so I didn’t break in, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m staying at Charity Cottage for a few weeks, and I’m going to be doing some cataloguing work for Dr Toy–My name’s Antonia Weston.’