Darkwater by Dorothy Eden

said.
    Fanny faced her reproving gaze.
    ‘I wasn’t suggesting you were. Such a travelled young lady as you couldn’t have remained a baby. Indeed, I’m surprised you haven’t already found a husband.’
    Nolly pressed her lips together again, this time to prevent a surprisingly human giggle. Her hair stuck out in pigtails. She had, Fanny noticed, been hiding a doll under the blankets, for now its highly-coloured Chinese face and flat black hair emerged. She was only a baby, after all. Thank goodness, for her precocity had been a little alarming.
    Only a baby…For in the night cold fingers touched Fanny’s face.
    ‘Cousin Fanny! Cousin Fanny! Marcus is afraid.’
    Fanny sat up, fumbling for the candle at her bedside. She struck a match quickly, and the frail light showed her Nolly’s nightgowned figure. She was clutching the Chinese doll in its gaudy red kimono. Her eyes were dilated.
    ‘What is it, Nolly? Why are you afraid?’
    ‘Marcus is afraid,’ Nolly whispered. ‘He thinks he heard something.’
    Fanny wondered if George had been walking about, as he sometimes did long after midnight. The house, as she listened, was as still as it ever could be. She was so used to the infinitesimal creakings and rustlings that she scarcely heard them.
    ‘Then come and let us see Marcus,’ she said, picking up the candle and taking Nolly’s hand.
    If Marcus were frightened he was being remarkably silent about it. It required only one look to see that the little boy was fast asleep. Ching Mei, in her lowly position, wrapped in a blanket, didn’t appear to have stirred.
    Fanny was beginning to realise Nolly’s tactics. Marcus was at once her scapegoat and her possession.
    ‘Come on, Nolly, what was it you heard?’
    The child looked round fearfully. The wavering candlelight cast moving shadows over the high ceiling and the panelled walls. In the long mirror of the wardrobe they were caught, two nightgowned figures, Fanny with her dark hair on her shoulders, Nolly with her pigtails and her intensely disciplined face looking medieval, the forlorn child in an old story. The breathing of the sleepers made a faint whisper. There was still no other sound.
    ‘Something in the chimney,’ Nolly whispered. She pointed to the dark mouth of the fireplace. ‘Up there.’
    A cool prickle ran down Fanny’s spine.
    ‘What sort of noise?’
    ‘A sort of fluttering, and something falling down.’ Her fingers tightened on Fanny’s. ‘Has something fallen down?’
    Fanny resolutely shone the candlelight on the hearth, and into the cavernous chimney. There was a smattering of soot on the tiles, nothing more.
    ‘Look, that’s all it is,’ she said. ‘Soot from old fires. It gets loose and suddenly falls. That’s what you heard.’
    Nolly stared. At last she said, ‘It’s dirty.’
    ‘Yes. Dora will tidy it in the morning. Now get back into bed.’
    Nolly went quite willingly back to her bed.
    ‘It’s a good thing Marcus didn’t hear that,’ she said. ‘He’d have been frightened.’ And the amah sat up abruptly, mumbling in Chinese. She blinked. The candlelight seemed to dazzle her.
    ‘Trouble, Miss Fanny?’ for the first time she used Fanny’s name with a pretty deliberation.
    ‘Nothing, Ching Mei. Go back to sleep, both of you.’
    In the morning, which was grey and chilly, with a rising wind and the high tors black against the sky, Dora couldn’t get the fire to burn. The sticks must be damp, she said, and a lot of soot seemed to have fallen down. Perhaps the chimney needed cleaning. With the fascinated children watching, she stuck the long poker up the chimney, and something fell to the hearth with a rush.
    Nolly screamed. Fanny hurried to see the small light-as-paper skeleton of the bird, wings still outspread in its vain attempt for freedom.
    ‘It’s a starling,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Poor thing, it must have been caught there last summer and no one heard it.’
    ‘I did,’ said Nolly. ‘I heard