Unable to see what the cloaked figure was doing, Macdonald guessed by the position of the figure and the sounds which emerged. Something was unlocked. There was only one object with a lock on it in the sewing room—the box cover of the ancient sewing machine. “Not a bad place to hide anything,” thought Macdonald. “It’s so much less obvious than a drawer or a box or a cupboard. You expect a sewing machine to be a sewing machine, not a receptacle——”
His train of thought was cut short by a sound which made Macdonald’s pulses jump. Dealing clumsily with the old-fashioned box cover, the intruder in the sewing room had let it slip, and it slammed down with a bang which sounded as startling as the trump of doom. “You silly fool . . . can’t you do it quietly?” flashed incongruously through Macdonald’s mind. But no reaction came from the silent house, and a moment later the small lock clicked again, amid the heavy breathing of the startled intruder. The shaking of tremulous hands told a story of fear, and the breath came in short gasps now. At last the cloaked figure turned away along the passage, the way it had come. It was a second later that Macdonald heard a sound upstairs. Someone had awakened.
4
It was Emma Higson who woke up. “All in a sweat,” as she said afterwards, she lay trembling in her bed for a while, and then, with considerable courage, she got up and crept to the top of the stairs. She had in her hand an electric torch (necessary in a house with such niggardly wiring as Gramarye). It was a bicycle lamp with a new battery, and she turned it on just as the cloaked figure reached the stairs. The beam fell on the cloak and the bent veiled head, and Emma Higson’s nerves gave out.
“ ’Tis Sister, dear God o’ mercy, ’tis Sister . . .” she screamed.
The torch fell from her nerveless hands, jerked itself out, and Emma Higson’s shrieks rent the air as another crash resounded through the darkness, and a heavy body went headlong down the polished stairs, right down the steep flight from top to bottom, with one final crash as the helpless body hurtled against the wall at the bottom.
Emma Higson screamed on. It was Reeves’s homely voice which first penetrated her panic.
“It’s not Sister, you silly old fool, it’s just somebody playing the goat. I tell you, it’s not Sister.”
Macdonald had got to her by that time, his own torchlight showing the familiar stairs, empty of the apparition which had appalled her.
“It’s all right, Cook. It wasn’t a ghost. Ghosts don’t make a row like that falling downstairs. What about poor Hannah? She’ll be frightened out of her life.”
Emma Higson left off screaming and staggered to her feet with Macdonald’s firm hand under her arm; she was still in a state of semi-hysteria, and between her sobs she clucked out, “Please to take me notice. I can’t abide any more . . .”
“I’ll take your notice, Cook, but better come and see if Hannah’s all right,” persisted Macdonald. They went in together to the narrow little room where Hannah lay on her back with moonbeams playing over her withered face. She hadn’t moved since Macdonald last saw her, but the uproar in the house must have disturbed even her solid slumber, for suddenly she began to snore; turning over, she tucked a hand under her cheek, and a diminutive grey plait slipped askew across her peaceful face.
“I’ll light the candle for you,” said Macdonald serenely, but Emma Higson had recovered herself.
“That you won’t, and me in me night shift,” she said tremulously.
“All right. I’ll bring you up a cup of tea and put it outside the door,” said Macdonald.
“I won’t say no,” she sniffed, and then uttered the remark which Macdonald always thought of as “the curtain” to that particular act.
“Doctor always said them stairs’d be the death of someone. Him was right, seemingly.”
5
Macdonald had been aware of sounds downstairs which were certainly not due to Reeves’s activities, though doubtless Reeves was fully occupied. When the Chief Inspector went downstairs, he found that the lights were on in the hall, and another man had appeared on the scene. It was Raymond Ferens, who was bending over the body of the man*who had fallen downstairs. The cape and the veil had been loosened and thrown to one side and lay, a negligible huddle of dark material, looking oddly inadequate for the result they had achieved. Ferens stood up, saying, “He’s alive . . . just. I think his neck is dislocated, apart from the head injuries. I suppose we’ve got to get an ambulance.”
His voice was irresolute, but Reeves said, “I’ll ring through to Milham Prior.”
Fie produced the key of the office and went in, and Ferens said to Macdonald: “I was out in the garden and I heard someone screaming, so I came over at the double and your chap let me in.”
Macdonald nodded, looking down at the grey face on the floor. “How much did you know about this, Ferens?”
“I didn’t know anything at all,” said Ferens, and he looked Macdonald straight in the face. “Neither was it my business to guess. I’ve told no lies at all, and it wasn’t up to me to hazard possibilities. It was your job, first and last. I said from the start that Gramarye was no business of mine.”
“Yes. I noticed you were adamant on that point,” said Macdonald. “And how many people in the village knew—or guessed?”
“I don’t think anybody knew, if by knowing you mean having any evidence,” said Ferens slowly, “but villages like this one have their own sort of awareness. I can’t define what it is. It isn’t detection, in your sense of the word. It isn’t intuition. Awareness is the
