Read Online Touch and Go by Patricia Wentworth - Free Book Online

have been!
    Sarah shut the door and looked about her. She could imagine wanting to scream with rage if she had to live for ever surrounded by nothing but pale blue, but there didn’t seem to be anything to be frightened of. Yet Lucilla had certainly been frightened.
    Sarah looked under the bed after the time-honoured manner of the nervous spinster. Lucilla’s deserted slippers stood there side by side, pale and fluffy and blue. She opened a couple of cupboards and rummaged in them. They contained nothing more alarming than Lucilla’s frocks.
    The room was about the same size as the one she had left, but since it occupied the corner of the house, it had an additional window. Both rooms had two windows looking upon the garden, but Lucilla’s room had a window to the side as well. All the windows here had blue and white striped curtains, and all the curtains were drawn. Sarah pulled them back and discovered that behind the blue and white stripes all the windows were shut and latched. Surely to goodness the child didn’t sleep with her windows shut! This would have to be gone into. They were old-fashioned sash windows, very large and heavy, but as they were fitted with pulleys there was no difficulty about moving them. Sarah ground her teeth with rage to find that even the pulley ropes were blue. She could imagine Mrs. Raimond saying, “How sweet!”
    She opened the two windows that looked on the garden, switched out the lights, and got into Lucilla’s bed. She was sleepy, but behind the sleepiness there was a curious puzzled feeling just touched with fear. If she hadn’t been so sleepy, she would have laughed at herself, because there was of course nothing to be afraid of. It was the unreasoning fear which tinges the air of a dream with a murky something which will neither show itself nor yet be gone. Mist—fog—sleep—fear—
    Sarah was never sure whether she had really been asleep or not. If she had not crossed the line, she had been very deep in that foggy borderland where thought and feeling are blurred and nothing is very real. The first sound came to her by way of this blurred thought. It may have called her back from actual sleep; she did not know. The first thing she knew was the sound, and it seemed as if it were a very long way off. She began to come back out of the foggy country, waking slowly and reluctantly. Then all at once she was really awake and listening.
    There was nothing to listen to in that first waking minute. She thought that she had been wakened by a sound. She rose on her elbow to listen, and the room was as still as if everything in it were asleep except herself. The open windows let in a very faint murmur of leaves moved by some light passing air, but that was not the sound which had called her back from sleep. Yet she did not know what sound it was that had called her back.
    It was at this point that Sarah told herself firmly that she had been asleep. The sound wasn’t a real sound at all. She had dreamed it and so waked startled from her dream. She sank back on to the pillow again. The light air went to and fro outside, the leaves rustled, and she began to go down into the misty places of sleep.
    Then the sound came again.
    She waked sharply. One moment she was very nearly off, and the next she was broad awake. This time the sound did not stay behind in any dream. It was in the room. No, not in the room—at the window—at the shut window which looked to the side of the house. Sarah’s first coherent thought was one of thankfulness that the window was shut. She had so nearly opened it, but the air blew cold from the east, and, with the other two windows already wide, she had let it be.
    She threw back the bed-clothes and sat up. The sound came from the shut window, and it was like the sound of claws scratching on the glass.…
    She could have laughed with relief—a cat that wanted to come in. And then a quick chill