"The Open Window"
Saki (1914)

‘My Aunt will be down presently, Mr Nuttel,’ said a
self-possessed young lady of ﬁfteen. ‘In the meantime,
you must put up with me.’

Framton Nuttel tried to make pleasant conversation
while waiting for the Aunt. Privately, he doubted more
than ever whether these formal visits on total strangers
would help the nerve cure which he was supposed to be
undergoing in this rural retreat.

‘I’ll just give you letters to all the people I know
there,’ his sister had said. ‘Otherwise you’ll bury
yourself and not speak to a soul and your nerves will be
worse than ever from moping.’

‘Do you know many people around here?’ asked the
niece.

‘Hardly a soul. My sister gave me letters of
introduction to some people here.’

‘Then you know practically nothing about my Aunt?’
continued the self-possessed young lady.

‘Only her name and address,’ admitted the caller.

‘Her great tragedy happened just three years ago,’
said the child.

‘Her tragedy?’ asked Framton. Somehow, in this restful
spot, tragedies seemed out of place.

‘You may wonder why we keep that window open so late
in the year,’ said the niece, indicating a large French
window that opened on a lawn. ‘Out through that window,
three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young
brothers went off for their day’s shooting. In crossing
the moor, they were engulfed in a treacherous bog.
Their bodies were never recovered.’

Here the child’s voice faltered. ‘Poor Aunt always
thinks that they’ll come back someday, they and the
little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk
in the window. That is why it is kept open every
evening till dusk. She has often told me how they went
out, her husband with his white waterproof coat over
his arm. You know, sometimes on still evenings like
this I get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in
through that window —’

She broke off with a little shudder. It was a relief
to Framton when the aunt bustled into the room with a
whirl of apologies for keeping him waiting.

‘I hope you don’t mind the open window,’ she said.
‘My husband and brothers will be home directly from
shooting and they always come in this way.’

She rattled on cheerfully about the prospects for duck
shooting in the winter. Framton made a desperate effort
to tum the talk to a less ghastly topic, conscious that
his hostess was giving him only a fragment of her
attention, and that her eyes were constantly straying
past him to the open window. It was certainly an
unfortunate coincidence that he should have paid his
visit on this tragic anniversary.

‘The doctors ordered me a complete rest from mental
excitement and physical exercise,’ announced Framton,
who imagined that everyone — even a complete stranger —
was interested in his illness.

‘Oh?’ said Mrs Sappleton, vaguely. Then she suddenly
brightened into attention — but not to what Framton was
saying.

‘Here they are at last!’ she cried. ‘In time for tea,
and muddy up to the eyes.’

Framton shivered slightly and turned towards the niece
with a look intended to convey sympathetic
understanding. The child was staring through the open
window with dazed horror in her eyes. Framton swung
round and looked in the same direction.

In the deepening twilight three ﬁgures were walking
noiselessly across the lawn, a tired brown spaniel
close at their heels. They all carried guns, and one
had a white coat over his shoulders.

Framton grabbed his stick; the hall door and the gravel
drive were dimly noted stages in his headlong retreat.

‘Here we are, my dear,’ said the bearer of the white
mackintosh.

‘Who was that who bolted out as we came up?’

‘An extraordinary man, a Mr Nuttel,’ said Mrs
Sappleton, ‘who could only talk about his illness, and
dashed off without a word of apology when you arrived.
One would think he had seen a ghost.’

‘I expect it was the spaniel,’ said the niece calmly.
‘He told me he had a horror of dogs. He was once hunted
into a cemetery on the banks of the Ganges by a pack of
stray dogs and had to spend the night in a newly-dug
grave with the creatures snarling and foaming above
him. Enough to make anyone lose his nerve.’
