The Witness on the Roof Read online

  In the recess, nearest the window by which Polly was standing, was a door; as the child, her big brown eyes wide open, marvelled why the man in the room was recklessly destroying all the pretty pictures she thought so fascinating, a slight movement in the recess caught her eye. She glanced round quickly—the door was being opened. Slowly, very cautiously, it was pushed forward an inch or two; then it remained stationary.

  The man went on with his work of destruction; there, was something oddly stealthy about his movements, in spite of his evident haste; scarcely a sound reached Polly’s ears, though the window above her was open. Yet there was a certain system about the way he went to work; he would open a book, tear out a few leaves and throw them into the fire, then lay the book down on the table, still in the same furtive, noiseless fashion, and dart to the other end of the table.

  As he turned, Polly saw his face plainly.

  It was dark, with strongly-marked, rugged features, a mass of rather long, curly hair, a short, neat beard. He was strongly built on massive lines, with big, loose limbs and broad shoulders. Long afterwards other details came back to Polly. She remembered that he was wearing a grey suit, that his linen was clean and white; she recalled the bunch of violets in his buttonhole, the flash of the big. red stone on the little finger of his left hand.

  Presently he stood for a moment near the easel. Polly could see that he was putting things in his pockets. Was he a thief, she asked herself breathlessly. She had heard her father and stepmother talking of some daring burglaries that had been perpetrated in the neighbourhood. Was it possible that this man, whose whole mode of procedure seemed to her so extraordinary, was a burglar? Would she have to tell the police? Her round eyes grew rounder. But the man by the table had evidently got all he wanted. With a little gesture of repudiation, he pushed from him all the rest of the litter upon the table, then he went farther away from the window, picked up some small object from the floor, and came over to the white heap upon the rug.

  The door in the corner moved, opened rather wider. Little Polly’s breathing quickened; she stared before her with wide open, dilated eyes, as if fascinated. It was her imagination of course—it was like the ghastly fancies that sometimes, came when she was in bed and the candle was dying down, turning the homely shadows on the walls into things of dread—but it seemed to her, now that she saw things more clearly, there was something terrifying about the aspect of that tangled mass of drapery heaped upon the rug. It was curiously hunched up; at one end a small black object protruded, a stray beam of sunlight caught it, sparkled on something bright.

  Polly’s little face turned white; she felt frightened! It could not be a buckle on a woman’s shoe—it could not be a woman’s foot and ankle that were stretched out there, rigid, motionless?

  The man was bending down; he was moving the white mass.

  Polly, watching, dominated by terror, saw that it was unmistakably a human form that lay there. With the pathetic early experience of the children of the poor, she had looked on the face of death more than once; she needed no words to tell her the reason of that rigid immobility.

  With all her heart the child longed to get away; but sheer horror rendered her motionless.

  The figure on the floor lay very still, just as the man placed it. Now that he had moved it, Polly could see that there were ugly dark stains on the white, flimsy gown near the shoulder. She could not see the whole face, only the outline of a rounded cheek and a knot of golden hair.

  The man lifted one arm, looked at it scrutinizingly, bent it to one particular angle, then put it down carefully and studied the aspect with his head on one side. Polly saw the crimson gleam of his ring against the white of the dead woman’s gown. There was something remarkable about the setting: three heavy golden claws seemed to hold the stone.

  The man’s face was turned to the window now as he stooped over the dead woman, but he did not look up. He was pallid, with an unnatural greenish pallor; even from that distance it was possible to see great beads of perspiration standing on his brow. He paused a moment as if listening for some sound behind. Then he laid the shining object which he had picked up from the polished boards at the other side of the table on the rug close by the girl’s hand. Polly knew what that was; she had seen something like it at the shooting booths.

  The door near the window moved again; Polly felt a sudden accession of terror. Who was on the other side? Did the man in the room know that some one was there watching him? What would happen when the door, now only slightly ajar, was fully open? She turned away with a frightened sob; in that silent room it had the force of a louder sound. With a quick gesture the man raised his head, his hand sought his pocket; his eyes, wild and haggard, glanced rapidly behind, then met those of the child peering in at the window.

  He sprang to his feet; the door at the side moved again; with a cry of terror, Polly fell back on the sooty roof. She heard a sound behind her, and, fearing that the man was coming after her, she ran over the roof back to the hayloft, little sobs escaping from her. She fell rather than dropped into the loft, too terrified to look behind her, and, tumbling into the straw, she crouched down with her head covered, long quivering sobs shaking her body. How long she had lain there she never knew—to her it seemed hours—when there was a noise in the stable below; some one was coming up the ladder to the loft.

  Polly sat up and listened, her heart beating fast with terror. She recognized the step in a minute—it was that of Jim Gregory, the groom—and cried out with a deep sigh of relief:

  ‘‘Oh, Jim, Jim!”

  He gazed at her in amazement, his usually florid face paler than its wont.

  “Why, what in the world—” he began.

  Polly clutched him in an agony; even at that moment a passing wonder as to why he was wearing his best clothes in the daytime struck her.

  “I’m frightened, Jim,” she moaned, “so frightened.”

  “Frightened!” The man stooped down and gathered her up in his arms. “Who’s frightened you, Polly? Them that tries to hurt you will have to reckon with Jim Gregory!”

  “She was lying on the floor all white, and he was there, and the door opened—”

  The sentence ended in a little gasp, and the child hid her face on Gregory’s shoulder.

  Chapter Two

  “I WON’T have the child frightened,” said John Spencer obstinately, as he finished lacing his boots. His wife’s face was rather redder than usual as she stood opposite, her sleeves rolled up in readiness to begin the week’s washing, Tim clinging to her skirts.

  “But don’t I tell you, John, it’s all the talk this morning, and here I’ve been listening to the child for the past hour, and this is what she’s seen—”

  Mr. Spencer’s face became apoplectic.

  “Don’t want to know what she’s seen! I tell you I won’t have the child bothered!”

  Mrs. Spencer shrugged her shoulders scornfully.

  “If you don’t know what she’s seen, John Spencer, it strikes me other folk will. Why, the police will be round asking questions! No good you thinking—” She broke off with a little cry.

  Her husband had advanced a step or two towards her; his face was very close to hers.

  “Let them ask!” he roared. “You will tell them nothing; do you hear that, woman? I’m not going to have the child brought into court and questioned and cross-questioned until the senses are frightened out of her. What is that you say—you don’t see why she should be frightened? No, it would be different with you, no doubt, but her mother was a lady born.” His voice dropped a little. “It was not fit for the likes of me to touch her gown; and I haven’t took the care of her children I ought. You drove Eve from home with your nasty, nagging tongue, and now it is Polly. But I won’t have it, missis—I won’t have it, so remember!” He banged his great fist on the table as he spoke and glared into the woman’s eyes.

  Mrs. Spencer shrank back, for once in her life thoroughly cowed.

  Her husband was general
ly of an easy, phlegmatic temperament, but she had always known that he was a man it would be dangerous to rouse—that beneath his apparent placid exterior there slumbered hidden fires. Her common sense came to her aid now. She picked up her basket of dirty clothes and retired to the kitchen.

  John Spencer reached down his jar of tobacco from a shelf and sat down in his easy chair, preparatory to enjoying a well-earned rest before he went back to his horses.

  He frowned as he filled his pipe. Faulty as he might have been in his dealings with his first wife’s children, he was fully conscious that they occupied a place in his heart that the present Mrs Spencer’s numerous progeny was never likely to fill. Polly had been talking a lot of nonsense during the night, he said to himself; the child was feverish and overwrought, but he was not going to have mountains made out of molehills. He had been a little touched as well as surprised at the length of the visits his wife had paid to her bedside during the night, but the matter was explained now—women did not mind a bit of trouble if they wanted to satisfy their curiosity.

  Just as he reached this point in his reflections there was a knock at the open door.

  “Well, what is it?” Spencer called out. Then turning his head and catching sight of the man who stood outside, he got up awkwardly and touched his forehead. “Beg pardon, sir! You were wanting to see me?”

  His unexpected visitor glanced at him a moment before he answered. He was a short, dapper man, attired in an immaculate suit; his face, long and rather thin, bore a striking resemblance to a hawk, added to, perhaps, by the gold rimmed pince-nez that was perched high upon the Roman nose; he was clean-shaven save for stubby side-whiskers.

  “If you are John Spencer, head coachman to Sir Robert Brunton, I should be glad of a few words with you,” he said.

  Spencer touched his forehead again.

  “That is me, right enough, sir.”

  The stranger walked inside and deposited his hat on the deal table.

  “I must introduce myself, though you and I have met before, Mr. Spencer. But there—time has altered us both. You have not forgotten an interview we had in the offices of Hurst and Pounceby, of Obeston?”

  Spencer’s face distinctly deepened in hue; he shuffled his feet together awkwardly.

  “No, I haven’t forgotten sir. But you can’t be Mr. Hurst.”

  The other readjusted his glasses.

  “Ah, yes! The progress of years! But I am sure that you will remember that my firm had the honour of representing Mr. Davenant?”

  Spencer moved his great foot backwards and forwards along the floor.

  “I remember, sir. And he stuck to what you said, then, did Mr. Davenant. Even when my poor wife died he—”

  “Ah, well, you must let bygones be bygones!” the lawyer interrupted. “I have brought better news to-day, Mr. Spencer! You heard of the old Squire’s death of course?”

  “Ay, and Mr. Guy’s!”

  “And Mr. Guy’s son’s?” Mr. Hurst added gravely, “You can understand what that means?”

  “I don’t know as I do,” Spencer said slowly. “I don’t see as it will make any difference to me or mine, Mr. Hurst, sir. You told me yourself as he vowed—the old Squire did—as never a penny of his should come to anyone as bore my name.”

  Mr. Hurst coughed.

  “Many a man says more than he means when he is angry, Mr. Spencer; the approach of death softens most of us. Mr. Davenant left Davenant Hall to his wife for her life; on her, death it was to descend to his son Guy and his heirs; failing them, he desires her to select one of the children of his late daughter, Mary Evelyn, who shall take the name of Davenant and become the heiress of Davenant Hall. Now, as you know, Guy was killed in the hunting field five years after his father’s death; two months ago his son George died of typhoid at his school. Thus you see—” pausing suggestively.

  Spencer stood still, his big, red face turned expectantly on the lawyer, only his quickened breathing betraying that his silence betokened no lack of interest.

  “So that at Mrs. Davenant’s death, under the old Squire’s will, the Hall will pass, with all the rest of his possessions, to one of your children, whichever Mrs. Davenant selects,” Mr. Hurst went on. “I am here as her representative today. She is naturally anxious—” with a dry cough—“to make the acquaintance of the grandchildren to whom she has been hitherto a stranger.”

  “I see what you mean, Mr. Hurst, sir,” John Spencer’ said slowly. “Squire has left it so as she can’t help herself, else my children might have died same as their poor mother, without a word from her.”

  Mr. Hurst took off his glasses and polished them carefully.

  “Well, well, Mr. Spencer, as I said before, it seems to me that the time has come to let bygones be bygones. You must remember that there is much to be said on both sides. We have heard that you have formed other ties”—his keen eyes watching the half-open door, behind which Mrs. Spencer was listening eagerly to his words—“you have another family to provide for, for I am instructed by Mrs. Davenant to inform you that she is willing to undertake the maintenance of the children of your first marriage, and to allow you, on condition of their being given up entirely to her, one hundred pounds a year to be paid quarterly.”

  “Stop!” Mr. Spencer’s face became suddenly redder. “I don’t sell my own flesh and blood!” he said roughly. “Never a penny of the Davenants’ money have I had, and never a penny of it will I take!”

  “But my dear sir—” the lawyer was beginning, when there was a sudden interruption.

  Mrs. Spencer threw open the door and came forward.

  “You would never be such a fool, John Spencer!” she cried energetically. “Begging your pardon, sir”—with a slight curtsey to Mr. Hurst—“but I could not help hearing what you were saying, and to think of Spencer refusing!”

  “I said I should not sell my own flesh and blood!” her husband affirmed stolidly. “No more I shan’t!” he went on with dogged determination in his tone, “But it isn’t for me to stand in the children’s light. Their mother”—with an odd choking sound in his throat—“would have wished it. Mrs. Davenant shall have them, sir—leastways Polly. I don’t rightly know where Evie is—she has been away from home for some time, in a place I reckon —but the little one had a letter from her yesterday morning, and she will be coming home fast enough when she hears of this.”

  “Ay, I dare say she will! But I think I shall have a word to say to this,” Mrs. Spencer broke in truculently. “It is one thing to let the child go if it is made worth our while, but if Spencer is going to make a fool of himself it is a different matter. I am not going to put myself out to do without Polly.” She looked defiantly at her husband.

  Spencer scowled at her and then deliberately turned his back.

  “You shall have Polly, sir. It will be for the child’s good and it may be as they will let us hear how she goes on sometimes.”

  “Certainly, certainly!” the lawyer acquiesced blandly. “This decision does you credit, Mr. Spencer. Probably the child herself will be able to thank you in later years. And now—how soon can she be ready? I have business which will keep me in town to-day, but to-morrow I hope to start for Warchester.”

  John Spencer drew a deep breath.

  “Polly shall be ready for you to-morrow, sir.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Spencer! Thank you!” The lawyer turned to the door. He had seen war in Mrs Spencer’s eyes, and he was anxious to avoid a scene. “To-morrow,” he repeated, and made his escape.

  Mrs. Spencer turned on her husband in a fury.

  “Well, of all the fools, John Spencer! But I shall have something to say to this. I’ll see if the police can’t stop the child from being took away from me as have always been a mother to her. It is my belief if they hear what’s she’s seen—ah!”

  Spencer had gripped her arm.

  “Polly is going, and she’s seen nothing! You remember that, woman! How should she, a child like her? Don’t you be making a fool of yo
urself! Polly will go back to her mother’s folk and be made a lady of, same as her mother before her, and you will look after the young ones yourself, like other people. I ought to ha’ seen as you did before; but it’s never too late to mend, and you’ll bear in mind what I have said. If I hear as you have spoke I’ll—” He did not finish the threat, he kept his face near hers for a moment before he released her arm and pushed her from him.

  “Well, I never!” Mrs. Spencer was too thoroughly cowed to say more.

  She leaned back against the doorpost in silence, while her husband knocked the ash from his pipe, and then, pulling his cap low over his brow, turned to the stables.

  It was raining hard the next day when Polly, crying miserably, bade good-bye to her father and stepmother, and set out with Mr. Hurst for her unknown grandmother’s house.

  It was a long journey to Warchester, and dusk was gathering when the cab Mr. Hurst had hired at the station turned in at the Hall gates.

  “We are nearly there now,” Mr. Hurst remarked cheerfully to his little companion.

  The child made no reply; she shrank a little further from him into her corner. So far, even direct questioning had produced nothing from her but monosyllables, and she had refused to eat a morsel of the refreshment Mr, Hurst had ordered for her.

  As the cab stopped a footman came down the steps and opened the door. Mr. Hurst lifted his little charge out.

  In the hall the butler, an elderly man whose hair had grown white in the service of the Davenants, was waiting to receive them.

  “The mistress is in the morning-room, sir. I am to take you to her at once, and the young lady. So this is Miss Mary’s child, sir?”