Sure now that the camera was in working order, she folded the bag in which she had carried it and the unnecessary cardigan and stuffed them into the front of her coat. She turned the torch beam on to the worn stone stairs that clung to the wall and vanished through the opening in the ceiling; then she switched it off and climbed the stairs, moving like some deformed animal, using her feet and elbows, holding the camera clear of the stone with one hand, the torch with the other. On the thick dust, on the bat droppings, on the massed regurgitations of generations of owls, she settled herself to wait. Just before moving the switch which plunged her into darkness, she had looked at her watch. It was twenty to nine. And after that there was no more time.

22

THE THING THAT MOST AMAZED HER WAS HER OWN amazement. After all, she had suspected and then been certain that such things went on; she had been prepared to say so in public, and to say that Wesley Baines had not killed himself. Moreover, she had done a good deal of reading on the subject, reading which had sometimes evoked horror and disgust and sometimes amusement, because there were details which were ludicrous in their naïveté. Nevertheless, throughout the early proceedings her most overwhelming emotion was amazement. Then it is true, she thought. And, Can I really be seeing what I am seeing? So might someone who had read about the Sphinx, or the Colosseum, feel when confronted with the real life-size object.

They assembled stealthily; there was a rustle and a whisper, a feeling of motion and occupation in the empty place, and then, quite suddenly, the homely, pleasant smell of roast pork. And Miss Mayfield, who had read of ‘feastings’, was for a moment surprised, and then full of wonder at her own surprise.

She dared not, at first, descend from her hiding place. Someone might arrive who had reason to enter the little room at the base of the tower. And she knew that she must wait for the noise to begin.

It began, and increased steadily, as it does at any party when the first caution, reserve and shyness wear off. She could, in fact, have been listening to any party, except the voices were louder, the laughter a little less inhibited. She realized that she must now leave this place of comparative safety. The moment had come.