The Open Window

Framton Nuttel had come to the countryside to rest his nerves, which his doctor said needed complete calm. His sister, who had once spent a few months in the area, had given him letters of introduction to several local families, so that he would not spend his whole stay alone. So, one October afternoon at tea time, he found himself in the sitting room of a Mrs. Sappleton, waiting for his hostess to come downstairs and being entertained by her niece, a remarkably calm young lady of fifteen called Vera.

"Are you acquainted with many people around here?" Vera asked. "Barely anyone," Framton admitted. "My sister stayed nearby a few years ago." "So you've never heard what happened to my aunt," said Vera, lowering her voice. She pointed to a large glass door that opened onto the garden and stood wide open, although the air was turning cold. "That door, you see, is never closed before dark."

Three years ago, she explained, her aunt's husband and her aunt's two younger brothers had gone out through that door, with their little brown dog, for a day's shooting. Crossing the wet moorland, all three had stepped into a bog that the summer rains had made deeper than usual, and their bodies had never been found. "Poor Aunt is convinced they'll come back one day," Vera went on, her voice no longer quite steady. "That's why the door stays open every evening. My uncle always walked in with his white coat over his arm, and Ronnie, the youngest, would be singing to annoy her. Sometimes, at this hour, I could swear I hear their boots on the terrace."

At last, to Framton's relief, Mrs. Sappleton swept into the room. "Forgive the open door," she said brightly. "My husband and brothers are out shooting and should be back any minute. They always come in through the garden." Poor woman, Framton thought: she really believes it. As she chattered on about birds, he tried to change the subject by describing his illness in great detail, but her attention kept wandering to the garden behind him.

"Ah, at last!" she said suddenly. Framton glanced at Vera with a sympathetic look, but she had gone pale and was gazing at the doorway in horror. He turned in his chair. Three men were crossing the lawn in the fading light, each with a gun, the first with a white coat over his arm, and behind them trotted a weary brown dog. Then one of them began to sing. Framton snatched up his hat and fled. He ran out through the hall and down the gravel path, and at the front gate a man on a bicycle had to swerve into a hedge to avoid him.

"Who was that?" asked the man with the white coat, coming in through the glass door. "Mr. Nuttel. Such a strange man," said Mrs. Sappleton. "He told me all about his illnesses, then hurried away without saying goodbye. You'd think the house was on fire." "It must have been the dog," Vera said quietly. "He told me he was terrified of dogs. In India, a pack of wild ones chased him into a cemetery, and he spent the whole night in an open grave while they growled above him. No wonder his nerves are in such a state." Making up stories at a moment's notice was, it must be said, Vera's greatest talent.