Read Online Poison In The Pen by Patricia Wentworth - Free Book Online

had not known whether he was dead or alive. There are a thousand deaths for the one you love, and in every hour one of those deaths could fall. You could not go on like that, never knowing, never hearing. It wasn’t possible. She was marrying Gilbert Earle tomorrow. Anger flowed in where the joy had been. Did Jason really think he could throw her down and pick her up again just as he chose? Did he think that his world would stand still while he left it to go adventuring? The word came to her with the very sound of his voice. She let herself listen for a moment. A small flame of anger came up in her. “He that will not when he may—” She had been willing enough, and he had gone away without a word. She found that she was holding the paper so tightly that it hurt.
    And then suddenly she was tearing it into shreds and scattering them from the window. The anger in her burned for an outlet. Since he had set time and place for them to meet, she would go, and for once, just for once, everything should be clear between them. Let him look at what he had done, let him watch the smoke of the burning and see the utter destruction. And then nothing more.
    She took off the long, full petticoat which she had worn under her green dress and put on a dark skirt and jumper. She took off her pale green shoes with the crystal buckles and put on low-heeled shoes with a strap. She tied a dark scarf over her head and slipped into a short, loose coat.
    When she opened her door, the passage was empty before her. She came out upon the landing. The hall lay shadowy below. A small low-powered bulb burned there. There is always something dreamlike about being alone in a sleeping house. The daily maids had gone home hours ago. Mrs. Glazier, who was the gardener’s wife, had gone back to their cottage. Somewhere on the floor from which she had come Scilla and Roger and Maggie would be sleeping—they were all tired enough. Scilla had hardly waited to say good-night before she went yawning to her room.
    As Valentine crossed the hall, the feeling of emptiness and silence came up about her. It was like going down into a swimming-pool and feeling the water rise about your waist, your throat, your chin. Now it had closed over her. She walked in it, leaving the light farther and farther behind until she came to the drawing-room door.
    When she had turned the handle and passed within, there was no more light. She closed the door without latching it, took out the little torch which she had slipped into the pocket of her coat, and switched it on. A narrow beam straggled into the darkness, showing chairs, tables, couches—shapes half guessed at in some uncharted place. She came to the pale curtains and slipped between the middle pair. The other two windows had cushioned seats behind the old brocade, but this one was a door, like the one in Scilla’s sitting-room which lay beyond. As she came out upon the terrace she switched off the torch. She would not need it again. Her feet had taken the way too often for that, by day, by dusk, and in the dark. And tonight it was not really dark at all—low clouds with the moon behind them and everything dimmed but visible.
    She went to the end of the terrace and down the steps. A lawn sloped gently, edged with trees. Presently there was a path which went away to the left and wandered among them. There were shadows that came and went as a light breeze moved the branches overhead. The trees thinned away. Here the ground rose to a viewpoint where a great, greatgrandfather had set one of those formal summerhouses which the early Victorians called a gazebo. She climbed to it by a path which was overgrown with grass. As she came to the top, something moved in the shadowed doorway. She stood still, her heart knocking against her side.
    There were two wooden steps up into the gazebo. Jason Leigh came down them and dropped his hands upon her shoulders. It was all so easy, so familiar, so near the pattern of what had been that she