She could, of course, knock on the communicating wall, as she occasionally did, especially if she were unwell. But that seemed unkind. The child had been out with her sick mother and needed her sleep; but she herself would not sleep until she knew. She must know. She rose, put on her slippers and dressing-gown and took her candle.
The sight of the empty room threw her into a fluster. Up to that point her thinking had been logical and lucid and her anxiety natural enough. Now here she was, all alone, and she’d lost Damask. Her world began to break
up. Secrecy, she thought, wildly; that was the thing. Once the Saunders knew that Damask had gone … Oh dear, oh dear! They mustn’t know. She trembled to think what would happen. They’d have it all their own way again. She must escape, get away and find somebody to help her–-
Furtive as a thief, she padded down the stairs and reached the front door. It was locked and the key had been removed—oh, how cunning they were. But not cunning enough, or else luck was with her, for the key lay there, on the table in the hall. She inserted it, turned it, and opened the door, inch by inch, lest she should make a sound. There, she was out! And lucky again in that she had brought down the covered night candle— an ordinary one would have soon been quenched by the thick, fog-laden air. She held the candle out well ahead of her and followed it, steering an erratic, zigzag course along the drive, sometimes plunging into the wet bushes of the shrubbery on one side or blundering on to the wet grass of the lawn on the other, and muttering to herself as she went. Eventually she reached the gate. This time it did not cry out its message of betrayal; somebody must have oiled it since her last attempt to escape in search of help. One of those kind people to whom Mrs Saunders had given a shilling, perhaps.
Now, which way? The Stone Bridge was a good place; people often lingered there, people with nothing to do. On the other hand, that way led to the village where Charles and Felicity lived. She’d avoided the village since their marriage; she hadn’t even attended church since that Sunday when Charles had come out of the porch with his bride on his arm. But in this fog it was safe enough. Even if they came by they wouldn’t recognise her … wouldn’t know that she was the one whom Charles had jilted in the very middle of a dance because, over her shoulder, he had seen the beautiful pink-and-white mask that hid the face of a mad devil. Funny, the way men never saw behind masks and women always did. She could have told him. She could have said, ‘She’ll want
a purple garden, you know, and a house in London and twenty-four pairs of high-heeled shoes, and all that unnecessary expense will wreck your plans for recuperating your finances.’ But of course to have said that would have drawn attention to the fact that she herself was an heiress; it would have been in bad taste. Besides, she had never had a chance. Charles had avoided her for years. Ashamed, no doubt. It was not until Felicity was dead and the baby grown into quite a big boy that he had come visiting again.
She had now reached the Stone Bridge, and having lost all sense of time was momentarily disappointed to find it deserted, all its embrasures empty. But she was soon comforted, for she recalled a dream. In the dream she had stood there, just like this, waiting, and the girl in the ugly dress of the Poor Farm had come along. So everything was all right, and she had only to wait. In the dream it had been a warm night, with a great copper-coloured moon; now there was no moon and the weather was foggy and cold. Very cold, thought Miss Parsons, ineffectually huddling her dressing-gown around her. The poor child would feel the cold too, in that thin print dress; she hoped the waiting would not be too long. However, perhaps her name would keep her warm. It was a warm, red name, Damask, like the rose: the very word called up a picture of a dark, deep-hearted rose, sweet-scented, basking in the sun on a red wall. She said the word over and over again and the foggy darkness took the sound, hushed it away into silence.
In the hidden place Mr Mundford’s ‘experiment’ neared its climax. And about time too, Richard thought; the rites seemed to have gone on for hours and were becoming tedious. In the beginning he had watched Alec’s actions with interest and curiosity and had been mildly surprised —but’ interested—by the discovery that he was still capable of physical revulsion. Blood he had been prepared for. Alec had made no secret of his intention of sacrificing the pheasants, had indeed gloated over the beauty and
rarity which made them so suitable to his purpose; and to see some of the blood drained off into a little brass bowl was tolerable—after all, Richard had been cupped in his time! Fastidiousness made its first protest when Alec dipped his tallowy fingers in the bowl and, using the blood as though it were paint, began to draw strange patterns on the floor. Richard had looked away then and his thoughts had begun to wander. He would never again—he thought
__be able to watch those long pale fingers handling knives
and forks at table or cards in a game without remembering how they looked at this minute.
The patterns were completed at last. The peculiarly vile-smelling candles threw little light on that part of the floor, and all that Richard could see when he looked that way again was a kind of cross with extra pieces added to each extremity and some interlinked triangles—or it could have been a star. Not that it mattered, he thought sceptically as Alec took a measured pace backward and began to mutter a brief incantation.
Richard allowed his attention to drift towards the stone slab where Damask lay. Interest stirred again; the girl appeared to be dead! Not one of the sculptured figures beyond the pillars was more white or more still, or—come to that—more shapely. He remembered, viciously, those moments when he had been nailed to his chair and how, soon after, Alec had announced in high glee that he had found the perfect instrument, and he had protested against any dealings with the insolent little baggage. Alec had said, ‘You may safely leave her to me!’ Was that what he had in mind all along—human sacrifice? Immediately he was conscious of irony because he realised that the idea of Damask Greenway losing her life in the cause of this fantastic nonsense moved him not at all, whereas what Alec was doing now … really, too utterly revolting. Even if one had retained one’s childhood belief in the Devil, hoofs and horns and smell of brimstone and all, one could hardly credit that such a nasty—childishly nasty—performance could be pleasing to him.
Averting his eyes, Richard thought back over his
association with Alec Mundford. There’d been the promise of two thousand pounds, of course, and the indisputable matter of the luck with cards, but the rest was mainly talk —promises, hints. There’d been that time when they’d come down and brought Dunhill and Saxstead and the girls and there’d been what Alec called an attempt to establish the right atmosphere in the temple, and that, except for one detail, had seemed to Richard just another drunken orgy carried to extremes but not, in essence, different from similar affairs in Angelina’s house and other places. The only thing that made it memorable was the behaviour of the girl who ran away … Rose? Right at the height of the excitement she’d suddenly begun to cry and scream and pray and cross herself. There’d been also the visit they’d made to London, where, years ago, there had, it was said, been an outbreak of demoniac possession. It was a small, dismal place with nothing to do and Richard had been bored and said so. Alec had said, ‘Mecca and Jerusalem aren’t particularly pleasant places either, but they have their pilgrims.’
Now there was this, pompous, disgusting, going on and on and getting nowhere, just like everything else in life. Well, tomorrow he’d collect his two thousand pounds
from Mundford and just drop him___
It was at that point that he realised that while he had been thinking Mr Mundford had made a fire and thrown upon it something which gave off a powerful scent and a great deal of smoke; and now he was on his knees, praying, if you could rightly call it that, aloud, and praying for something which appeared to put Richard’s fee in jeopardy—for what Alec Mundford was praying for was that the Power which had granted him an increased span of years should now take away the gift and grant him instead instant and sudden death.