My opportunity came one day as it darked and I saw her through the drawing-room window, outside, talking animatedly to John. Their discussion appeared somewhat heated, on her part, that is, for John never lost his temper. It evidented she was reprimanding him; no doubt he had wasted some little bit of something somewhere, for she was tasked by my uncle to keep all spending at Blithe on a tight rein. This was my chance. I dashed from the house and breathlessed up to her.
‘Mrs Grouse, Mrs Grouse!’ I shouted as I approached.
She annoyed me a look at the interruption. ‘Whatever is it now, child?’
‘Please, Mrs Grouse, I have dropped my needle on the floor of my bedroom and cannot look for it, for I haven’t a candle. Would you fetch me a new one, please?’
She exasperated a sigh. She had been full-flowing her complaint and did not want to be cut off. In a trice she unclipped the key ring from her belt and held it out to me by a particular key. ‘Here, Florence, unlock the large armoire in the storeroom and take one out – only one, mind – then lock the cupboard and bring the keys straight back here to me.’
I skipped off. Now, normally this would have been a rare chance to purloin an extra library candle or two, but I unheeded that. I straighted to the housekeeper’s sitting room and her desk. Then began an anxiety of trying keys. There must have been some thirty keys on that great jangling hoop and I knew I had but a minute or two at most to find the one I wanted. It obvioused that most were too big, great door keys that they were, so I concentrated on the dozen or so small keys that doubtlessed for cupboards and drawers. I lucked it the fourth one I tried. It slipped gratefully into the lock like a child into a warm bed on a cold night. It turned with a satisfying click.
I was tempted to open the drawer and it was all I could do to stop myself, but I knew that if I did and found something I would be powerless not to look at it and so would end up redhanding me. I left the drawer unlocked, which all along had been my strategy, and hastened back outside. There was no time now to visit the storeroom for the candle and so I had to hope that Mrs Grouse would not think of it or, if she did, assume it was in my pocket and not ask to see it.
As it was, it fortuned she was still so busy complaining John she simply took the keys from me without a word or even a glance and I awayed fast before she turned her attention to me. I made my way up to my room and from under my bed pulled out the box of old dolls and other such childish things that were long unplayed these days. This was where I kept my secrecy of bedtime books, for no one but me ever looked in it. It was also the hidery for my purloinery of candles, which I needed for the library and for reading in bed at night; I filched one whenever I could. For instance, whenever I aloned in the drawing room I would remove a candle from its holder, break off the bottom half, secrete it in my pocket and replace the top part; nobody ever noticed the candles were growing shorter. In the double candelabra I operated on both candles this way, to keep the appearance of them burning at the same rate.
Tonight I intended to open the drawer I had unlocked and inspect the contents, if any, and for that I would need my own candle. I could not risk lighting Mrs Grouse’s sitting-room candles. She might notice next day that they had mysteriously burned down overnight; and in the event of anyone hearing me and coming into the room, even if I heard them approach and managed to snuff the candles first, they might see them smoking or spot that the wax was warm and soft. My own candle I could snuff and then push under the rug next to Mrs Grouse’s desk, for retrieval in the morning.
My intention was to pretend to nightwalk, which I had often done before when I sleeplessed and wanted to library during the night. My nightwalks had been described often enough to me to know just how I should walk, as regards posture, pace, facial expression and so on, but there was an extra difficulty this time: because my nightgown was unpocketed, I could not carry candle and matches with me, for if caught it would obvious my trip was planned and not a nightwalk at all. So I took my candle and matches downstairs and hid them in the top of a plant pot in the hall. The plant was some bushy thing with leaves like a jungle, under which my lighting equipment would not be seen.
That night I lated awake in my bed listening to the sounds of the old house as it settled itself down for the night, the creakings and groanings as it relaxed after a hard day of containing all we people and all our hopes and fears and secrets. Now and then I heard the little girl in the attic above me, pirouetting across the boards. At last, somewhere a clock struck midnight and, satisfied that all human sounds had ceased, I slipped from my bed.
I downstairsed quick as I could in the dark, which was not fast, for having to careful not to bump into things and wake the house. I eventuallied the hall and felt about for the plant pot and, finding it, plunged my hands into its spidery leaves. I felt about on the soil, this way and that, and did not touch the candle or the matches. From somewhere above came the groan of a sleeper restlessing and turning over. My heart was a poundery of panic now. I alarmed that someone had found the candle and matches, perhaps Mary when she tended to the plants, the which meant that not only was my mission defeated but that tomorrow I would be exposed.
The picture of Mary watering the plants suddened me an inspiration. Of course, there was more than one plant! I was at the wrong pot. I blindmanned my hands before me and felt about and came upon another pot, the twin of my first encounter, and sure enough, there were my candle and matches. I paused and put my hand to my brow, which was slick with sweat, even though the night was cold and my feet frozen on the bare boards.
I struck a match and lit the candle, found the door to Mrs Grouse’s sitting room and swifted inside, closing the door quietly behind me. I stood and lofted the candle, surveying the room, to check it was empty, for my mind half expected to find Mrs Grouse sitting there, waiting and watching to catch me out, canny old fowl that she was. There was no one.
I overed to the desk, set my candle down carefully on top of it and sat in its owner’s chair. The brass handle of the left drawer was cold and forbidding to my touch. My big fear was that Mrs Grouse would have discovered its unlockery and locked it again. For I had no idea what she stored in there or how often she opened it. Why did she keep it locked in the first place? Perhaps because the household money was kept there. And if so, what if she had needed some today to pay a tradesman or the servants? I deep-breathed and pulled. The drawer yielded, although very stiff and unwilling. I slid it out slowly, gritting my teeth at its complaining rasp, feeling sure the whole household must be woken by it. But I could not wait to listen, for inside I saw a single object, a large, leather-bound book, its layer of dust testifying to its long undisturbery.
I swallowed and gingerlied it out, as if it were some holy relic, some saint’s bones that, roughly handled, might turn to dust. I placed the book on the desk and opened it and saw at once what it was, an album of photographs, such as the one Mary had once showed me, of all her family, going back years.
The first page held but one picture, a man in a business suit standing in front of Blithe House. I instanted who it was, for it was the same face as the painting on the turn of the stairs: my uncle. He had the same bold stare, the same slight play of amusement about his lips. I turned the page. Here he was again, but this time pictured in some photographer’s studio, next to a potted plant. Beside him stood a woman in a white dress, a beautiful woman, her arm linked in his, smiling too, but with a free and easy happiness, not at all like the man, who, looking again, I saw was pleased with himself, like an angler prouding it alongside some big fish he has landed.
I turned the page and found another picture of my uncle, again with a woman, but whether or not it was the same woman, I could not tell, for the photograph had been cut, a ragged square hole where the woman’s head should have been. This shivered me in the silent night and I over-my-shouldered, suddening a feeling of a man standing there with a knife as if to do to me what had been done to the woman in the picture. There was no one there, though already I began to see shapes in the shadowy corners of the room. I looked again at the photograph, at the decapitated woman, and calmed me a little, telling myself it was quite understandable, that someone had removed her head to place it in a locket or some such. It did not sinister