Why Shoot a Butler

by Georgette Heyer

She had no means of measuring the distance she had walked, but she supposed that she must have covered nearly a couple of miles, and began to look out for a gate. Half in anger at herself, half in a kind of scornful amusement, she blamed the weather and the twilight for her nervousness. The rain fell softly, steadily; there was no wind to stir the leaves of the trees; there did not seem to be a soul abroad. Yet several times she had caught herself straining her ears to catch the sound of - she scarcely knew what. Footsteps, perhaps; perhaps the hush of tyres on the wet road. Once she thought she heard a car purring in the distance, but nothing passed her, and she concluded that she had either been mistaken or that another road ran somewhere near at hand.

A gleam of white ahead of her attracted her attention. She went on and found a gate leading into the wood to her right. It stoodd half-open on to a grassride cut through the trees. She hesitated and searched for a name on cracked posts.

With a wry little smile she reflected that she brought a suburban mind into the country. Of course there was no name; country people always knew who lived where; you never found names on any gateposts. It was little tiresome for strangers, all the same.

She went on a few yards, feeling herself rather at a loss, but after five minutes' walking she saw big iron gate ahead and the lights of a lodge. These must certainly belong to the manor; she turned and went quickly back towards the first gate.

The wood looked dark and mysterious; there was a good deal of undergrowth, bracken standing three feet high turning brown with the fall of the year, and blackberry bushes. Under Shirley's feet the ground was slippery with wet; in the wheel-ruts of the ride there were muddy puddles.

She walked forward cautiously, peering through the gathering darkness for a cottage. A little way from the gate the ride forked; she saw a light at the end of the shorter fork and bore onwards, leaving it on her right.

She smelled pines again, and a few steps brought her to clearer ground. The earth grew more sandy under her feet; a carpet of pine needles deadened the sound of her footsteps. Fallen cones were scattered over the ride; the undergrowth had come to an end; slim tree-trunks, gleaming with wet, surrounded her, stretching away, line upon line of them, into the mist and the enveloping gloom.

The silence was almost eerie; the rain which was falling soundlessly and fast, seemed like a blanket, cutting off all small, ordinary noises of the wood. Shirley gritted her together and felt, in the big pocket of her coat, the reassuring butt of her automatic.

The ride took a turn, and immediately lights became visible in the distance. Shirley had come to the lake, an artificial sheet of water set at the end of a broad avenue that had been cut to the south of the manor. There were little glowing lights in the distance; she could just discern the outline of the manor against the sky and see the sweep of a lawn running to meet the edge of the wood.

On the opposite side of the lake from the manor, forming part of the view to be had from the south windows, was a white pavilion built in the classical style so much in favour during the eighteenth century. It stood like a ghost in the darkness, its windows blank and uncurtained.