Fear by Night by Patricia Wentworth Read Free Book Online Page A

one. If I don’t, you’ll know I’ve eloped with the run-runner to wherever he keeps his secret still—do you make rum in stills? I shall be able to tell you all about it if we ever meet again. Return to captions: “A Voice from the Ocean. Good-bye—good-bye—good-bye!” Slow fade out .
    Ann .
    Isn’t it too marvellous to be getting out of London ?
    Mrs. Halliday came down to tea in a very bad temper. Mr. Halliday did not come to tea at all.
    â€œAnd I don’t wonder neither!” said his mother, cutting a thick slice of bread viciously into squares. “It’s right down put me out and ’e knows it, and if ’e’s got any sense, ’e’ll keep out of my road till I’ve slep’ on it.” She put butter on one of the squares, honey on another, marmalade on a third, and black currant jelly, strawberry jam, and apple cheese on the remaining pieces. “’E did ought to know better, and so I told him!”
    â€œDon’t you want to go away?” said Ann.
    Mrs. Halliday took the square spread with honey in one hand and the square spread with marmalade in the other and took alternate bites from each.
    â€œAcourse I want to go away!” she said angrily. “Monday we was going, and Monday was a good day to go—start of a week and start of a journey.” She finished the honey and marmalade and went on to strawberry jam and apple cheese. “End of the week travelling’s like end of the week washing—looks as if you’d been trying to get off since Monday and hadn’t made it out. Wash on Saturday, wash for shame—that’s what I was always told in my young days—I’d like some more milk in me tea. ’Ot and milky, and three lump o’ sugar’s the way I like it, Miss Vernon. So I says to James, ‘Have it your own way, my lad, and don’t blame me if things go wrong.’ Another lump of sugar, my dear, and just a dab more honey. Him and me ’ad words, and if ’e goes without ’is tea it’s no more than ’e deserves.” Mrs. Halliday paused, licked a smear of honey from her forefinger, and went on to black currant jelly. “There won’t be any good come of this, and so I told ’im. Dreamt I was packing last night and all, and woke up that put about because Riddle ’ad packed my best bonnet along of Jimmy’s sea-boots. Another cup o’ tea, my dear, and you needn’t trouble to empty the dregs—I like to keep me sugar. I’ve had some terrible strange dreams in my time, and I don’t hold with going against ’em. I dreamt one time that my laundry-line was blowing away, and I run out and tried to catch it, but I couldn’t reach, so I got the kitchen table and climbed on it, and so soon as I got the line in my two ’ands it took me right off me feet and I couldn’t let go, and I tore my best table-cloth clean in two and woke up crying my ’eart out, and that day three weeks I broke my leg through missing the top step of the stairs in the dark. So I don’t ’old with flying in the face of dreams, and never shall.”
    When she had talked herself into a good humour, Ann said,
    â€œWhere are we going, Mrs. Halliday?”
    Mrs. Halliday’s long nose crinkled a little. Her head, with the grey hair banded on either side of a wide parting and surmounted by a white lace cap trimmed with yellow satin ribbon, nodded in time to her chuckling laugh.
    â€œYou wait and see, Miss Vernon my dear!”

CHAPTER VII
    Charles Anstruther got Ann’s letter on Saturday morning. It disquieted him enough to send him straight off to Westley Gardens, where a young footman in undress informed him that the family had left, and that the house was being shut up. He didn’t know anything about an address. Tipped by Charles, he believed that Mr. Halliday, and Mrs. Halliday, and Miss Vernon, and Mrs. Halliday’s