Free The Ivory Dagger by Patricia Wentworth Page A

this transition period that Marsham made his final round of the house. The windows had all been fastened hours before, and the front door locked when Professor Richardson had followed the Considines. He shot the two bolts, top and bottom, and turned into the passage dividing the rooms which looked out upon the gravel sweep from those which faced the terrace and the view.
    At the study door he paused, and stood for a moment listening. There was a sound of voices from within. As he said afterwards, he supposed that Sir Herbert was having a smoke and a drink with Mr. Haile, who was staying the night. Since Sir Herbert was often very late and he was not required to wait up for him, he did not find anything unusual in the fact that the gentlemen should be sitting over the fire with their drinks. He could hear two voices, but could distinguish no words. This is what he said afterwards. At the time, he lingered a little longer than was exactly necessary, but not so long as to lay himself open to a charge of eavesdropping. When he moved to go, it was with a slight shrug of the shoulders, and he had not taken more than a couple of steps before he turned back again. One of the voices had been raised. He stood for a moment, and then took his way to the end of the passage and through the green baize door which screened the back stairs.
    Lila Dryden did not undress. She had no settled plan in her head, she was just waiting. Presently, when everyone was in bed and asleep, she would have to think what she was going to do. Of course the easiest thing would be not to do anything at all. That was what she had been doing all this time—the easiest thing, the easiest way. It was like being in a car when someone else was driving—you didn’t have to think, you just let yourself be carried along. Sybil Dryden was an extremely capable driver. She knew just where she was going, and how to get there. But tonight Lila had had a sudden horrifying glimpse of her destination. It was like seeing something in the flare of a lightning flash, and it had frightened her so much that she was almost ready to jump out of the car.
    Lucy Ashton’s crazed eyes, and the ivory dagger red with blood.
    The picture rose, and there was no Adrian to send it back to its own horrible place. Her heart failed and her breath fluttered.
    She got up shaking from head to foot, went over to the hearth, and kneeled there. The fire had died down. But wood ash holds the heat for a long time. A comfortable warmth came from it, it helped her to stop shivering.
    But she had not come there to warm herself. When Sybil Dryden tried the handle of her door before dinner, she had slipped Bill’s letter under the wooden kerb which guarded the hearth. She had read it, she had hidden it, and she had lied about it. Now she lifted the kerb and pulled it out, a little dusty and crumpled. Bill never wrote long letters. He got on with what he had to say, and when he had said it he stopped. This was almost too short to be called a letter at all. She knelt there in front of the pile of wood ash with the glow at its heart and read what he had written.
    Lila—I’ve got to see you. If you want to marry Whitall you can marry him. If you don’t want to, I’ll take you to Ray tonight. I’ll be outside the window of the room on the left of the hall as you come in from half past eleven onwards. Show a light and I’ll knock three times so you’ll know it’s me.
    Bill.
    It was a way out. She could pack a suit-case. She could put on a dark coat and skirt and her fur coat, and when the big clock on the landing struck the half hour after eleven she could slip downstairs and get out of the window in the Blue Room, and Bill would take her away. She always wondered why it was called the Blue Room. Perhaps it was blue once, long ago. It wasn’t now. There was some very dull tapestry work on the chairs, and an ugly modern picture of a girl with a green face which Herbert said was very clever.
    These things