At first she thought the house was on fire. That had always been her one fear in leaving Mrs Isaacson alone; and she sat up in bed and sniffed vigorously. “Funny,” she murmured; “it smells like—like plum pudding.” The analogy was probably suggested to her by the odour of burning brandy.
She got up and opened the door of the bedroom.
Mrs Isaacson slept on a sort of glorified landing, and when Blanche stepped outside her own door she could see at once by the light of a watery full moon that her lodger had not yet come to bed.
The smell of the spirit was stronger on the landing, and Blanche, forgetting her toothache in the excitement of the moment, stole quietly down the short flight of crooked stairs. The door giving on to the living-room was latched, but there were two convenient knot-holes, and through one of them she saw Mrs Isaacson seated by the fire drinking hot tea. On the table stood an open whisky bottle and two lighted wax candles.
Blanche was thunderstruck. Tea, whisky and candles were inexplicable things. The thought of witchcraft obtruded itself, and so fascinated her that she stood on the stairs gazing through the knothole until a sudden rigour reminded her that she was deadly cold.
She did not interrupt the orgy. She crept back to bed, and after much difficulty awakened Millie.
The sound of their voices must have alarmed Mrs Isaacson, for the girls presently heard her stumbling upstairs. They stopped their discussion then, and Blanche’s toothache being mysteriously cured by her excitement, they were soon asleep again.
Neither of the girls spoke of their discovery to anyone the next day, but Blanche returned to the cottage at half-past four, when Mrs Isaacson was at a meeting over the way, and explored her bedroom. She found a small store of tea, sugar and candles under the mattress—the whisky bottle had disappeared—and so came to an understanding of Mrs Isaacson’s self-sacrificing insistence that she should perform all work connected with her own sleeping-place—it could hardly be called a room.
After consultation with Millie, Blanche decided that she must inform Jasper Thrale of the contraband.
“She’s been stealing, of course,” he said. “I suppose we shall have to bring it home to her.” But he laughed at Blanche’s indignation.