Undiscovered, she reached the back hall and hid herself among the coats on the pegs by the stairs. She had been there for what seemed a long time, but was actually ten minutes, when she heard the jangle of the bell which summoned Washbrook to assist his master to bed, and then the sound of voices in the front hall as Mrs Mott-Tyler saw to the door the neighbour who had been the fourth player that evening. Washbrook, on the way from the dim region beyond the kitchen where he and his dog abode, passed close to where Miss Mayfield stood holding her breath. There was another long interval; then Washbrook descended the back stairs and retired. Soon after, Miss Ellison, moving almost silently in her soft slippers, came down the same stairs and went into the kitchen. When she emerged, she was eating something; the crunch of her teeth was audible. She locked the door which led into the garden, went through into the front hall and locked and bolted the front door and put out all lights.

Now the thing was not to be precipitate. Everyone must be asleep before she moved, lighted by matches, through the night-filled house. She counted sixty heartbeats; that would be about a minute. When she had done one such count for each finger, ten minutes would have elapsed. By such reckoning she waited an hour before striking her first match and consulting her watch. It was then just short of midnight.

She reached up and took down her warmer coat, placed on a peg earlier in the day, and slipped it on. Then, by the faint and wavering light of the match, she went into the front hall, stood still and listened. Nothing stirred. She struck another match and set to work, with fingers that were suddenly weak and wet, on the fastenings of the door, expecting every second to see the light flood on and to hear Miss Ellison say, ‘What the hell do you think you are doing?’ But luck was with her. She had the door open, and closed again behind her. She was out on the drive, almost free. She tiptoed on to the grass verge that ran alongside the gravel and, once safe on its muffling softness, broke into a trot.

In the street outside she turned downhill towards the town, where many lights still glittered. She had no notion of the direction in which the station lay, having been brought to Barnhurst by car; but she could ask. She missed a good opportunity halfway along the road where two people were just leaving a house and getting into a car, watched by their hostess who stood in the lighted doorway. It was too near to Barnhurst. She crossed over and slipped past as unobtrusively as possible.