“Now we must be very quiet. You mustn’t speak a word. At first you won’t be able to understand what has happened, but Mrs. Kenley will explain it when she comes. Remember that it’s her instructions which you’re obeying.”
We went up the creaking disused stairs to the narrow attic passage under the roof, and I followed her as quietly as I could. The passage runs the length of the house, and rises sheer to the tiles at their apex. It is lighted by an odd glass tile or two. Mortar droppings covered the floor and the hot unventilated atmosphere was heavy with the dry musty smell of accumulated dust. The attics themselves open out of the passage to left and right, but the doors were shut and we passed them all. I was following close behind her and she turned her head and giggled at me as we made our way along.
“Francis, you’ll be simply thrilled,” she whispered. She had never called me Francis before, and she lingered on the word, somehow drawing it out and caressing it as she spoke. Fr-an-cis, she said, and it made me feel uncomfortable.
There is a low door at the end of the passage, and she stopped in front of it, her hand on the knob.
“This is the box-room,” she whispered. “It’s pitch dark inside and you’ll have to let me guide you. Mrs. Kenley will join us in a minute. You mustn’t say a word though, for if you do, you’ll spoil the whole of the scheme she has made.”
She was a-quiver with excitement and I could feel her trembling like a leaf as she put her hand in mine when we got inside the stuffy darkened room. What fresh mystery was lurking here, I wondered. God, had I only known in time! She closed and shut the door behind us.
“You’ll have to stoop,” she whispered again, “for the roof slopes down in places, but you must follow me for Mrs. Kenley’s, for clever Mrs. Kenley’s sake.” I could feel her hot breath on my face, so close to me she stood. Not understanding what was afoot, but full of a vague uneasiness, I followed where she led. What else, I ask, was there that I could have done?
She still held me by the hand and we moved slowly across the room. First we went straight forward for a little way, and then we seemed to turn, but the blackness was so dense, and I so busy with conjecture, that soon I had lost my bearings. She told me when to stoop, and finally we drew up against what felt like a wooden partition. There she turned me round and told me to wait.
I heard her go back across the room again, and to my amazement she was laughing gently to herself—a low contralto throaty laugh, a laugh that so long as I live I shall never forget—a laugh that somehow filled me with dismay and foreboding as it came gurgling to my ears across the darkened air.
Suddenly she switched on an electric torch and I could see her dim outline some fifteen paces or so away from where I stood. What I had thought was a wooden partition was a chest of drawers, and I found myself wedged in a corner between it and a pile of trunks and the sloping roof. As my eyes became accustomed to the light I could make out a broken-down old bedstead on the floor between us. The bottom end was missing and it sloped from head to foot, the top end canting forward at an angle to the floor. A dirty dust-sheet covered it and on an upturned box at the side of it away from where I stood I saw a large glass beaker. Margaret was playing her light on it. It was three parts full of liquid.