The Girl In The Cellar by Patricia Wentworth Page B

to do? She stood quite still and shuddered. But it wouldn’t do to stand still. At any moment they might find out that she had run away, and he would come after her. She made a great effort and looked about her.
    The night was not dark. A little fitful moonlight and some cloud that veiled it from time to time. There was a house not very far away. She tried to think whose it could be. The house lay on the right of the road. On the left there were open fields with no hedge to screen her. If the man came down the road in a car looking for her he would see her on the field side. No use getting in there. She turned to the house. Suppose she were to knock them up—tell them the truth. She said, ‘I can’t,’ and was swamped by the unbelievable story she would have to tell. And he, the man—he would only have to say she was his niece, his sister, and she had lost her memory and given them all a terrible fright. She didn’t even know his name. He could make up anything he liked about her, he could put up a tale that anyone would believe, and she hadn’t so much as the shred of a fact to bring against him.
    If she could only get to Miss Silver—if she could get to Jim. And then like a dizzying blow the thought struck her. Jim— wasn’t he in this? Lilian was. Something pulled at her heart. If Jim was in on this betrayal, she might as well give up. And then, quick on that, she found herself defending him. He wasn’t in on it—he couldn’t be. There were reasons why he couldn’t be. She would think of them presently. Not now—it didn’t matter now. What mattered at the present moment was that she should get off the road before anyone found her there.
    She went to the right and climbed up half a dozen steps to the front door of the house that stood there, and as she did so a car came up the road behind her, going slowly.
    CHAPTER 21
    Jim Fancourt went to Scotland Yard as soon as he got up to town. He walked in on Frank Abbott, who was writing, and said with hardly a preliminary, ‘She doesn’t know anything.’
    Frank laid down his pen and lifted his eyebrows.
    ‘She?’ he said.
    Jim frowned.
    ‘Anne—the other girl—the one who found her dead. I told you all about it.’
    Frank’s brows went a little higher.
    ‘All?’ he said.
    ‘All I knew. I’ve got a little more, but not much.’
    ‘What have you got?’
    ‘I went down and saw Anne. She identified the bead I showed you. It was one of a string round Anne Borrowdale’s neck. She said the string was broken. She says she saw the beads there in the cellar—she did see them. I told her about going to the house with Miss Silver, and it all fits. She doesn’t remember going down to the cellar. Her recollection begins half-way down the stairs like I told you. She went down, and made sure that the girl she saw was dead. I told you all that, didn’t I? And when she was sure, she wanted to get away, and I don’t blame her. Do you?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘When she was sure the girl was dead she put out the torch and came up the stairs. I told you about all that—her walking along the street, and getting on the bus, and meeting Miss Silver. Well, I went down yesterday and saw her. I told her that I’d been to look for the house, and I showed her the bead. She turned awfully pale when she saw it, and she said the beads that had been round the girl’s neck were like that. I pressed her, and she stuck to it. She said she was sure she had seen them. She shuddered violently when she said it—it evidently brought the whole thing back. She said, “They were there— but the string was broken!” I pressed her about going to the house. She couldn’t remember anything—anything at all— before the moment when she found herself on the cellar stairs with the consciousness that something dreadful had happened. It was after that that she sat down on the steps and waited for her head to clear. She found the bag, got out the torch, and saw the dead girl at the foot of the