Free Stormy Petrel by Mary Stewart

place of all when it is disused. The house is dead without the warmth and the smells of cooking and the pulse of daily living. In the stuffy silence the sound of the cold tap slowly dripping was almost cosy; a substitute heart beat. Even so, my presence felt like an intrusion. But as I turned to go something caught at my attention. A key-rack just beside the doorway, with keys hanging there, labelled. One hook was empty; the hook labelled ‘C. na Dobhrain.’ Otters’ Bay.
    For no good reason, that settled it, by which I mean that what conscience I had was put to sleep by sheer, raging curiosity. Could my night-time visitor have called in here to pick up the key he had shown me, and left the back door open at the same time? Had he put into this bay first, then come up past the house and, finding it open, taken the key? But why should he trouble? If he had really only been looking for shelter and a place to doss down for the night, why look further than this? Why make the wet and stormy trek to Otters’ Bay? Even if he had thought that his parents were still there – which I found hard to believe – he could have visited them in the morning.
    Somehow, this seemed to justify what I had done. If there was indeed any mystery about Ewen Mackay’s visit to my cottage, the clue to it might well be here, in the house he had claimed to be familiar with. More, he had hinted, unless I had misread him, at a connection with the family. Perhaps he even considered himself to have some kind of claim to the place? At least, then, the note that had been left for me (‘See you around?’) gave me some excuse for trespassing now.
    I went on down the passage, towards the green baize door that closed the back premises off from the gentry’s quarters, pushed the door open, and trod tentatively into the front hall.
    This was darkish, lighted only by the stained glass fanwindow over the shut front door. To one side stood a heavy oak table piled with the usual clutter – magazines, newspapers, a couple of heavy electric torches, some anonymous boxes. Opposite this another, smaller table held gloves, a sou’wester, and a gardening-basket crammed with implements. There was a brass stand holding walking-sticks, and a dark oak settle where someone had thrown down a Barbour coat and an old anorak. Some pairs of boots and wellingtons were lined up beside it, and on the wall, above a crude, oil landscape that seemed meant to depict the moor where the diver nested, was a long rack, presumably meant for fishing rods.
    The impression of a house where the occupants had just walked out for a stroll in the garden was very strong. My presence there seemed, suddenly, an intrusion; my curiosity, if not an outrage, at any rate no excuse for going any further.
    I turned to go out the way I had come. But even as I turned, I heard something. A sound from upstairs. The creak of a door.
    My heart gave a jump, then resumed something like its normal beat as I registered the fact that even in an empty house there were draughts, and doors moved and creaked with no one to push them. But I did make for the baize door a little more quickly than on my way in, and in the semi-darkness stumbled over one of the wellingtons, kicking it halfway across the floor. I only saved myself from falling by clutching at the arm of the oak settle.
    Something came down the stairs like an avalanche. A pair of powerful arms seized me from behind, jerking me upright and off my feet. Clutched tightly to the breast of a Shetland sweater I took breath and screamed.
    The arms, suddenly nerveless, dropped me, and the Shetland sweater retreated smartly. I fell onto the settle, hit my elbow on the carved armrest, and drew in my breath to scream again.
    â€˜Don’t!’ said John Parsons hastily. ‘Please don’t! I’m terribly sorry. I thought it was – I didn’t realise it was a girl. I wouldn’t dream of – Oh, it’s