Spider Light(69)
George repressed a strong desire to tell her to get on with it, because if something had happened to Maud…
‘Tonight it was getting on for eight o’clock when I got back, and that was when I found the kitchen door at Quire–the one I normally use–was locked. Not just locked, but bolted, Mr Lincoln. Well, I thought, that’s not usual. So I went round to the other doors–the garden door, the front door, and the French windows of the music room–but at every one it was the same story. Locked and bolted.’
‘Dear me,’ said George, not seeing where this was leading.
‘So then of course, I knocked. And without a word of a lie, I knocked until my hands were fair wore out, but no one came.’
‘But,’ said George, puzzled, ‘aren’t there two girls who work for you? Weren’t they there?’
‘One’s in Chester seeing her sister who’s just had a baby, and the other has the night off. I don’t ask questions as to where she goes,’ said Mrs Minching righteously.
‘What about Miss Thomasina?’
‘Miss Thomasina is away. And it’s not my place to question where she goes.’
‘No, but—’
‘Miss Thomasina,’ said Mrs Minching, compressing her lips, ‘is in the way of sometimes going off by herself for a day or two.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said George, not seeing at all. ‘But are you saying the house is empty? I’m sure Maud would have told me if she was going away with Miss Thomasina.’
‘Oh, Miss Maud’s in the house, Mr Lincoln. That’s why I’m here now. My word, Miss Maud is there all right. She’s seated at the piano, playing that belly-aching row. Beg pardon, sir, but I’ve been out in the cold knocking at the door of a house where I’ve worked for twenty years. Twenty years, I’ve been there, all the way up from scullery maid in old Mr Josiah’s time–and reduced to shouting through the letterbox to be let in. It’s enough to make a saint swear. I felt no better than a common fishwife, indeed I did.’
‘I’d better come up to the house with you,’ said George, still not overly worried. ‘Maud may not have heard you. If she was practising her music she might have been lost to everything else. I’d better let Mrs Plumtree know I’m going out. Would you like a–some refreshment while you wait?’ He made the offer hesitantly, because he had never really sorted out what was correct when it came to hospitality of this kind. Did you offer a drink to somebody else’s housekeeper?
Mrs Minching took kindly to the idea of refreshment. She said she would not object to a little nip of gin, if Mr Lincoln had such a thing. ‘It’s a cold night, and a little nip of gin’s wonderfully warming.’
The aura of the gin seemed to accompany them as they walked along Scraptoft Lane and approached Quire House. George rather wished he had had a nip of it himself, because it was a dismal kind of night. A thin, spiritless rain was falling, wreathing the trees in mist. The more he thought about it, the odder it became to think of Maud by herself in that great house, Miss Thomasina apparently absent, and all the doors locked against the world.
As they turned in at the gates George spotted a light shining through the trees from Charity Cottage, and it occurred to him that Cormac Sullivan might possibly have keys to Quire House.
‘I suppose he might,’ said Mrs Minching doubtfully. ‘You could ask.’
‘He’s probably not at home,’ said George. ‘I believe I will try, though.’
But Cormac was at home, although did not have keys to Quire House. Thomasina Forrester, he said gravely, did not hand out keys in such a profligate fashion, and especially not to the tenantry.
George explained they needed to get into Quire, and why, and Sullivan said, ‘Curiouser and curiouser. Will I come up there with you?’ and it occurred to George this might be helpful.
‘Wait while I get a coat, then,’ said Cormac. ‘And will we take a flask of something with us to keep out the cold?’
George, who was by this time starting to feel more concerned than puzzled, thought that between Mrs Minching’s nip of gin, and Cormac Sullivan’s flask, they would be lucky to get as far as Quire House by midnight.
Maud had spent all of last night and most of today trying to shut out the sounds of Thomasina and Simon tapping on Twygrist’s walls, but in the end it had become impossible. Tap-tap…Let-us-out…Tap-tap…We’re-not-dead… On and on it went, until she wanted to scream. All night she had lain in bed listening to it, and she had been grateful for the thin daylight that finally came into her bedroom because surely the tapping would not continue through the day. She felt sick and dizzy from not having slept.
By now those two must be dead. But what if they were not? What if they had found a way to get out–Twygrist’s outer door was not locked–and had somehow crept back to this house? Maud would not put it past them to do that. Well then, they would have to be kept out. She thought about this, and remembered it was Mrs Minching’s night for evensong, and that the two maids would also be out tonight. That was very good indeed; Maud waited until Mrs Minching was safely out of the house, then went round all the rooms, locking the doors and drawing the bolts. Aha, Madam Thomasina and Master Simon, you won’t come sneaking in now! No one would come sneaking in–she had made sure of that.