Mrs. Hubbard would not arrive until eight o’clock, and since Nicholas must be got down to his breakfast by then, Miss Cunningham could not allow herself the indulgence of a cup of tea in bed. She had to wake Nicholas, hurry into her clothes, open the back door, and cook whatever they had been able to contrive for the meal-fish, or sausage, or the occasional egg. On this Tuesday morning Lucy Cunningham had plenty of time. It was a relief to leave the bed which had afforded her no rest. The water was still hot from the night before. She washed her face in it, and then sponged it repeatedly with cold water from her bedroom jug. The nights went near to frost, and the water was icy. When she came to do her hair, the image in the glass had a less ghastly look. She never had much colour, and a round face does not go haggard in a night. She put on the old grey tweed skirt and the grey jumper and cardigan and went across the landing to bang on Nicholas’s door. He always took some waking, but the sleepy voice that answered her in the end was no different from what it had been for all the years she had come to his door and knocked like this.
She went to the head of the stairs and looked down. The cord had marked the balustrade, but no one else would notice a stray mark on the old paint. It had been tied very tightly, and it had had to take her weight when she stumbled. Oak would not have marked, but the balustrade was made of a softer wood. It had dented where the cord had pulled on it. She could see the dent every time she went up and down the stairs. She went down now to unlock the back door and get Nicholas’s breakfast.
There was no need for her to go and wake Henry. He had views about sleep, and considered it injurious to interfere with what should be a natural process. If you had had enough sleep you woke up. If you had not had enough, it was harmful to be roused. It was, of course, extremely inconvenient never to know when he would want his breakfast, but when you had a man in the house you had to put up with things like that. Papa had had views about early rising, and as long as he lived they had breakfasted at seven. Lucy Cunningham had been brought up on the famous adage, “Early to bed and early to rise, Makes a man healthy, and wealthy, and wise.” She had never been able to make up her mind which part of it she disliked most, getting up at half past six or going to bed at nine, at which hour the electric light had been turned off at the meter and the family restricted to candles in their bedrooms. Henry, of course, did not mind whether the lights were on all night or not-but then he did not pay the bill.
There were a couple of sausages left from supper. She heated them on the small oil stove, since the fire was out and would be left for Mrs. Hubbard to see to. Meanwhile she took the milk and the butter out of the larder and across the hall to the dining-room. Everything else was there already, since she always laid the table before going up to bed. She stood now and checked the things over just to make sure that nothing had been forgotten. Two packets of cereal-Henry sometimes liked the kind that always reminded her of little straw mattresses, but Nicholas wouldn’t touch it. Brown sugar, marmalade, a fresh pot of mustard. Oh, the bread-
As she was bringing it through the hall, Nicholas came running down the stairs. Her heart jerked. He came running down without a glance at the sixth or any other step. She felt such a rush of relief that the bread-board tilted and the loaf began to slide. The knife fell clattering.
Nicholas caught her about the shoulders.
“Hold up, Lu! What are you doing? Are you all right?”
“Oh, yes.”
He laughed and bent to pick up the knife.
“Well, don’t go throwing things about! Here, you’d better let me have that bread. I really like it better when it hasn’t been on the floor.”
She turned back to fetch his sausage, whilst he went on. When she came into the dining-room he gave her a laughing, affectionate glance.
“You know, you do look a bit wonky. You weren’t by any chance sitting up to watch for the wanderer’s return, were you? I’m the one who ought to be looking pale, not you.”
She had not meant to speak, but everything in her was shaking. The words came of themselves.
“Were you very late?”
He was tipping wheatflakes into a soup-plate and pouring milk on them.
“Oh, fairly. I got a lift, so I didn’t have to depend on the bus. Did you hear me come in?”
“No.”
“Well, I’ve got to hurry now-I was very nearly late yesterday. Old Burlington has got a complex about punctuality. And he doesn’t care for me much. There’s nothing he’d like better than to catch me out.”
“Why doesn’t he like you?”
“Odd, isn’t it? Darling, pour me out a cup of tea. He thinks I’m frivolous. Not one of our blither spirits!”
When she had poured out his tea she went away and came back again. There was a crumpled piece of paper in her hand. He looked at it across his cup.
“Where did you get that?”
“There was a hole in the pocket of your brown tweed jacket. It had slipped down between the stuff and the lining. I found it last night when I was mending the pocket.”
He put out his hand for it and took it.
“Thanks, Lu.”
He was still smiling, but there was something-some change. It was as if the temperature had suddenly dropped whilst the sun was shining, a thing quite apt to happen in an English spring. Lucy Cunningham had a bewildered sense of there being something wrong, but she had no idea what it might be.
Nicholas put the paper into an inner pocket, gulped down the rest of his tea, and was off in a hurry. But when she went out into the kitchen it was not quite half past eight. He really had plenty of time.
Mrs. Hubbard was busy lighting the fire, which was being contrary. Presently she would help Miss Cunningham with the beds, but at the moment she wanted the kitchen to herself. Anyone would think something had got into the range this morning. Three times she had lighted the dratted thing and it had gone out. If Miss Cunningham would take and go away, there was a mite of paraffin in the scullery that nobody was going to miss.
There are ways of letting people know when they are not wanted. It came home to Lucy Cunningham that Mrs. Hubbard would prefer her room to her company. She went through into the drawing-room and began to straighten the chairs and tidy up, a thing she could never do the night before because of Henry sitting up late and not liking to be disturbed. She had just finished, when she heard him come out of his room. She had left the door open, and by moving a very little she could see as well as hear. He had a slow, heavy tread. It was no slower or heavier than usual. He came across the landing with an abstracted air and on down the stairs without looking to right or left. When she came out to meet him in the hall he took no other notice than to say, “I’m down,” after which he proceeded into the dining-room, leaving the door ajar behind him.
All the time she was getting his hot plate and the sausage she had been keeping warm the thoughts in her head went round and round-Henry or Nicholas-Nicholas or Henry. She had watched them both come down the stairs, and neither of them had so much as glanced at the step where she had stumbled, or at the balustrade where the trip-cord had been stretched. Nicholas had come down in his usual rush, and Henry in his own deliberate way. Neither of them had done anything at all that was different from what she had seen them do year in, year out all the time that they had been together-Nicholas tearing down as a schoolboy, Henry, young and in love with Lydia Crewe, moving as if he had come only half way out of a dream. It might have been any day as long ago as that or in the years between.
But if either of them had fastened that cord to trip her to her death, he wouldn’t have left it there to be found in the morning. There must have been some time in the night when one of them had come to the top of the stair and looked over. But the cord would not have been there for him to see, because she had taken it away and burned it in her bedroom grate. So then whoever it was would have turned round and gone back to his bed again.
She had not closed her bedroom door. She did not think that she had slept. Could a man move so silently that she would not hear him? She looked back over the hours of the night, and she wasn’t sure. There were stretches of time which were like some dreadful dream. She couldn’t be sure whether the dream had crossed the boundaries of sleep or only trembled on the edge. She took Henry his sausage, and found him reading the paper and dawdling over a brown mess of cereal.