Keep Away From Water! by Alice Campbell

Author:Alice Campbell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dean Street Press
Published: 2022-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The night passed safely, and if a dozen times Sarah woke with all her faculties alert the total silence coupled with the recollection that the windows and doors of both rooms were securely bolted set her mind at rest. Once she lay wondering as to why Brian Gilcrest had called, wanting to believe it was she who had drawn him, but vaguely dissatisfied as to his real motive. The book she had borrowed as yet unread, lay within reach. She caressed the cover, thrilling as she had done when the owner’s strong fingers had lain on hers.

“Oh!” she breathed into her hot pillow, “if after this I should find he was actually entangled with that woman, how could I bear it? But he isn’t! I’m positive the whole thing’s a made-up tale.”

Towards dawn, with startling suddenness, she recalled something which had happened on the way home from the doctor’s. Stopping at a wine shop Miss Venables had bought and conveyed back by taxi a crate of Vichy water, now locked in her wardrobe. At the time there had seemed nothing strange about it, but now full-grown the question sprang into being, “Does she think it may be drinking-water which will kill her?”

Slipping out of bed Sarah had stolen into the next room. There on the bed-table was the tumbler half-filled with Vichy water which, on retiring, the spinster had used to wash down her nightly capsule. No one could have got in to meddle with the contents, but all the same Sarah rinsed the glass and replenished it. She was taking no chances.

She looked at the wan face, dimly visible in the dusk. Last night Miss Venables had admitted a slight discomfort in the gastric region, making light of it as an occurrence to be expected when her mind was disturbed, and declaring that after her usual dose she would have a comfortable night. Apparently she was right, for her breathing was calm. Reassured, Sarah crept back to bed, to wake no more till breakfast time.

The seventeenth of April was here. One year to the day since Major Frampton perished. . . .

Sarah suggested making the doctor’s orders about keeping quiet an excuse for remaining in her room, but Miss Venables, obstinate in her sense of duty, held fast to her intention of meeting Beryl’s sister in Hyères. The car was ordered and could be kept closed; the chauffeur would be the same who had driven her for ten years. Nothing untoward was likely to happen on the short drive to the station and back, and what would poor Mrs. Cripps think, coming all this distance and on so sad an errand, if no one met her?

“Mrs. Bulstrode or Miss Whittaker would be glad to go.”

“They are strangers to her. No, as the one acquaintance she has in Ste. Brigitte, I really must do it. Once that is over, I can stay in retirement, which I shan’t at all mind, for by the signs we are going to be in for a mistral.

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