“Perhaps next week. London wouldn’t be a bad idea, but I hardly want to go up on a Saturday. Meanwhile—I don’t know. If I sit in the garden, Gerald will turn up and I can’t bear seeing him. It’ll have to be a walk of some sort.”
“I might take a gun after tea and see if we can get a rabbit. I tell you what: there’s that outlying farm towards Pendleton. Last time I was there Jones was complaining that he was being overrun with rabbits. We might drive there, take our tea with us, and see if we can get a few afterwards. He’s quite likely to be cutting some corn. How would that suit you?”
“Quite well.” Patricia looked much more like her normal composed self. “I’ll go and see about the tea and put on some more suitable stockings. You’ll want to do some changing, too.”
Left to himself, Martin was slow to move. He didn’t quite like Patricia’s attitude towards her fiancé. It was all very well to say that she was nervous and upset and not quite in her ordinary form, but he couldn’t help thinking that a jolt of that sort ought to have brought them closer together, instead of having a tendency to separate them. After all, surely one of the points of marriage was to establish a companionship that was able to help both people to overcome the unpleasant things that were bound to happen.
And Gerald, too. The whole business was having a rather similar effect on him. In fact, he very much doubted whether, if Patricia had stayed in the garden that afternoon, she would have seen him. The suggestion of tennis had not been really enthusiastically received by him either, unless you could call really ardent the reply, “Oh, yes, I suppose so. If Patricia likes. If you ring me up directly after lunch I’ll be in.” “Funny fellow, Gerald,” thought Martin, “you never quite know what is going on underneath that perfectly turned out exterior of his. I don’t believe that I have ever seen him untidy or ruffled or even hot. Don’t know how he does it considering his income. Of course, those sallow men are always as cold as icicles. Still—I shall be sorry when he takes Patricia away. The place will be dull without her. I suppose I shall have to marry myself.” Unconsciously, his mind turned towards Barbara Carmichael, but whatever reproaches as to lack of ardour he might have levelled against his sister and Lansley were equally true of himself.
“Martin!” His reverie was broken off by his sister’s voice calling him from the hall.
“Sorry, Pat. I shan’t be more than a couple of minutes changing.”
“All right. Hurry up. But it wasn’t that. I can’t find your knife.”
“Knife?”
“The one I gave you.”
“Oh! I thought I put it in the drawer in the gun-room that it always lives in. Isn’t it there? I could have sworn I saw it yesterday when I was looking for something else.”
“It isn’t there now. I’ve looked everywhere, too.”
“Perhaps Gerald borrowed it.”
“Why should he?”
“I don’t know. He might have gone out for a rabbit too one evening. We’ll ask him, and this afternoon we shall have to do without it.”
“I suppose we shall. But if it is Gerald he might have asked before he took it.”
“Well, perhaps it wasn’t. Don’t let’s worry now.”
As he drove his sister down the drive that led to the main road, Martin mildly cursed the unknown man who had invented that particular knife. It was supposed to be a humane way of despatching game that had not been shot dead, and had been bought for him by Patricia, who had a hatred of suffering with which he entirely sympathised, but to call it a “knife” was rather misleading, since it was operated by releasing a spring which propelled a sharp piece of steel which might almost be described as resembling a stiletto. Placed accurately behind the neck of a rabbit or hare it was certain to cause instant death, and that was undoubtedly an advantage, but its weak point, at least in Martin’s hands, was that his knowledge of anatomy was too poor for him to be certain that he would put it in the right place. Consequently, he would not be sorry if the instrument was finally mislaid, but he knew that if it was he would have trouble with Patricia, who detested other methods which she considered crude and brutal, but which Martin thought were at least sure.
The incident did at first re-arouse Patricia’s difficult mood, but it disappeared quickly when they reached Pendleton, for there a field of corn was not only being cut, but the process had reached a stage when there was only a patch about twenty yards square left in the middle of the field, and Jones, the farmer, who was just organising all the assistance of which he was possessed, to cut off the rabbits which had been driven in and in towards the centre of the harvest machine, had been round the outside. “Brutes,” he said, “they look nice and innocent, I know, but the amount of damage they do is fair shocking. Glad to see you, sir, and you, miss. Want all the help that I can get. Now, sir, if you’ll stand here—”
The strategic plan was soon modified to include Martin and his gun, and Patricia was given a job too. The ensuing half-hour was sufficiently full of incident for Patricia to forget all her worries. Indeed, when much later on in the evening they drove back, Martin was delighted to notice that she seemed to be entirely herself again. It was all the more annoying, therefore, to see a car standing on their drive, as they approached, and the large, ponderous figure of Sergeant Scoresby get out of it and signal for them to stop. “Damn,” said Martin, under his breath, “the last person I wanted to see! Bound to bring it all back to her.” But out loud he only asked civilly if there was anything that he could do.
“I don’t think that there is, sir,” was the comforting reply. “To tell you the truth, sir, I was looking for Mr Lansley, and when I couldn’t find him at his own place, I thought perhaps he might have been here. Seems as though I was wrong, though.”
“I’m afraid so, sergeant. Is one allowed to ask what it was that you wanted to see him about?”
“N-no. Not that it concerns you at all, if I may put it that way, but on general principles, least said is soonest mended.”
“Quite. That is what I have been trying to say to Mr Lansley and my brother. They wanted to come and worry you with all sorts of details and, though we all agreed that we ought to tell you everything we could, I am sure it was right not to confuse you. Also, to be quite honest, I should like to forget the whole thing.”
Martin threw his mind back. So far as he could remember, his sister’s present attitude was not quite consistent with that which she had been adopting previously, and he waited for Scoresby’s obvious rejoinder.
Nor was he disappointed. “I can quite understand that,” the sergeant began tactfully, “but wouldn’t the best way of doing it be to tell me everything and so get rid of it? You have been very frank all along, I know, but apparently there is something else on your mind. What is it?”
“A possible question of two miles on a speedometer. I set the journey register—or I thought that I set it—that evening, but from here to where the dance was I do not believe to be more than five and a half miles. Of course, we did pick up Miss Carmichael and Mr Lansley but still I was surprised, when I saw that it measured seven and a half.”
“You saw that, when?”
“When we left to go up to Y Bryn. I suppose that I could not have set it properly.”
“I should think that’s probably right. Still, I’m glad you’ve told me. Hope you had a pleasant evening’s sport, sir.” He turned apparently quite casually to Martin.
“Very good fun. Took our minds off this business and helped Jones of Pendleton. To be honest, I was rather sorry to see you here. It brought it all back.”
Scoresby grinned sympathetically and then became serious. “Quite used to that sort of feeling in the ordinary way in the force, without having something special like this. People don’t like being asked questions, even when it’s only about quite trivial things, and when it comes to reminding people of what I’m engaged in now—”
“There is one thing I should like to ask you,” Patricia leant forward suddenly. “I think that it’s what i
s really worrying me, and the rabbit shooting this afternoon reminded me. I never knew Mr Yeldham, but he seems to have been rather a nice old man. Was he—was he killed absolutely at once and quite painlessly?”
Scoresby’s face was gravely sympathetic. “From what the doctor says, I think I may safely say ‘yes’.”
“I’m glad.” Patricia seemed considerably relieved. “There was a rabbit this afternoon that wasn’t quite killed, and my brother hadn’t got his knife and I hated to see it. I couldn’t help wondering if Mr Yeldham suffered the same way, too. We must find that knife, Martin, or get another one.”
“What sort of a knife is it, sir?” Scoresby asked indifferently.
“A patent one with a spring for releasing a piercing blade,” Hands answered. “To tell you the truth, I’m not quite so keen on it as my sister because I’m a little nervous of not using it properly.”
“You haven’t lost it on purpose, have you, Martin?”
“No, really, I haven’t. I’m almost sure I saw it yesterday. It’ll turn up. If not, we shall have to get the police to help us.” Hands passed it off lightly, and Scoresby, with a laugh, said goodnight and got back into his car. Directly the backs of the Hands family were turned, he made a careful note of the reading of the speedometer.
“First to Miss Carmichael’s and then to Lansley’s,” he said to himself, “and then to where the dance was held. Now, if that proves in fact to be about five and a half miles, and I shall be very surprised if it does not, then we must think where near Y Bryn, other than the lane beyond, a car could conveniently be parked at a radius of one mile from the town hall. And we must bear in mind that Reeves apparently did not see that car. And finally, perhaps somewhere near there, we might look for a patent knife with a piercing blade, though in that case I think that I had better find out more about what sort of a knife it is first. It isn’t often that one gets two bits of help like that handed to one within a few minutes. But I must say that if they point to Hands, he kept extraordinarily calm about it. And, by the way, this simply makes nonsense of the purple lady theory, nor does it connect in any way with Finchingfield or Kinderson or Salter. The way in which that apparently quite nice elderly retired schoolmaster made people have moderately good motives to want to murder him is positively shocking. And as I thought”—he stopped the car and looked at the speedometer again—“the distance is not and could not be seven and a half miles. In fact it’s less than five and a half.”
12
A Country Walk
“Afternoon, Barbara!” Gerald Lansley’s voice sounded ostensibly cheerful as he met her in the doorway of the little cottage outside Trevenant in which she was living. “What are you doing with yourself?”
“Looking at the ‘situations vacant’ column in the Daily Telegraph,” was the gloomy answer. “Companions wanted and jolly things like that.”
“But I thought that now that Yeldham—”
“Then you thought wrong. At least I don’t know.”
“Don’t you really know? I mean, I thought it was quite definite.”
“No, I don’t. And I wish you and other people would get it into your heads that I don’t. Of course if some of Miss Yeldham’s money is coming to me, I might stay on here, though whether I could afford to live at Y Bryn is quite another matter. I suppose there will be a second lot of death duties.”
“I believe there is some relief over that.”
“There never is enough to make any real difference. No, I’m pretty sure that in any circumstances not much money will come to me. It is generally fairly safe to assume that things will turn out badly for me, and in any case I don’t know that I should exactly fancy Y Bryn now.”
“Oh, you would soon forget all about that. I’ve very nearly done so already; and as for looking for a job as a companion, it’s absurd. I always thought that—well, that—how shall I put it?—that there were other reasons why you might stick to the country.”
“If by that you mean Martin, you are absolutely wrong—on both sides, in all probability. To tell you the honest truth, I am just a little tired of being patronised by your future brother-in-law, if you must drag him in.”
Lansley nodded. “To be perfectly candid, so am I. The way he harped on the fact that their beastly car had gone two miles out of its way to fetch us the other night. Two miles! And I know perfectly well that he gets a packet from the shop where he and I work—or rather where I work and he gets in the way.”
“It wasn’t Martin who brought that two miles up. It was Patricia.”
“Was it? I thought it was Martin. Anyhow, I don’t believe it was true, because when I wanted to tell it to the police, Patricia stopped me. I was rather cross with her, really, though I didn’t show it.”
Barbara looked at him quietly and thought the last remark or two over. “Is that why you aren’t there now?” she asked. “You usually play tennis with them on Saturday afternoons.”
“There was some talk of it,” Lansley answered sarcastically. “I was to go home and wait and come along if I was sent for, but not otherwise. As far as I remember, it was delicately hinted that this time it would be quite unnecessary to send the car for me. So, as they weren’t very quick about saying they wanted me, I came along to see if you would like a walk. So far the privilege of walking has not been denied to the poor, although the roads have been made beastly for pedestrians so that Martin and his like can drive their cars in comfort.”
“On the whole,” said Barbara, “I think I had better take you for a walk—and a very stiff one, too. It seems to me that what is wrong with you is liver. Perhaps it’s just as well you haven’t got a car, or you would never get any exercise.”
Though Lansley might, as she intended him to, turn the remark off with a laugh, the conversation had been so much of a shock to Barbara, that for once she had forgotten her own troubles and was thinking of somebody else’s. It had been a little bit of a surprise to the neighbourhood when Patricia’s engagement had been announced. With a good deal of money, as far as could be made out, and a reasonably good-looking face, it had generally been expected that she would marry pretty well. Of course, it was well known that she had what was generally described in a familiar phrase as a “devil of a temper”, but there had been young men quite prepared to put up with it, even optimistic enough to hope that they would charm it away. Martin, after all, as they pointed out, was almost placid—and why should Patricia not become so too?
That she should reach the age of twenty-four without becoming engaged represented not so much a lack of confidence amongst the would-be Petruchios as the firm refusal of the Katherine to play her part. It had therefore been unexpected and a little disappointing when Lansley, with no apparent advantages, had arrived and quickly conquered, nor could anyone quite see how he had been able to do so.
To Barbara Carmichael, who knew them both better than most people, it had been at first peculiarly puzzling. There seemed to be no reason for it at all. It could by no stretch of the imagination be termed a marriage of convenience; there had been no nonsense about love at first sight; there was little even superficial affection, and there had not ever been a constant companionship of the kind that sometimes ultimately ripens by mere habit into an engagement. Watching very closely, she had finally arrived at a solution which was satisfactory to her cynical and despondent mentality. She put it all down to Lansley’s tenacity, a deliberate and determined purpose carried out with patience. For him the match would clearly be a good thing. If he could not literally hang his hat up in the hall, because it would be Martin’s, another hall of very reasonable proportions would be provided, together with as good a job as the factory could afford for him.
“To give him his due,” thought Barbara, walking along beside him, “it might reasonably be quite a good job. He’s no fool. All the same, I don’t envy him. I wouldn’t put myself in the position of being entirely dependent on Martin. He doesn’t mean to be anything but nice, but he’s always had money, and known he
was going to have it, and he takes it all for granted, and is quite impatient with other people who haven’t. And Patricia’s always been spoilt. Since their father was killed and their mother became so difficult she’s had her own way; and, of course, it’s years now since either of them had anyone to keep them in order.”
The recollection of what she had been told of Mrs Hands and her strange moods during the last few years of her life brought back a thought which had been in the back of her mind ever since the night that Yeldham died, and which she had been meaning to talk to Lansley about. “You remember,” she began, “that at the dance Martin didn’t want to go round to Y Bryn. There has always been some sort of bad blood between the Hands and the Yeldhams; but what it was, Miss Yeldham didn’t seem to know, and neither Martin nor Patricia would ever tell me.”
“Miss Yeldham?” Lansley seemed startled. “I didn’t know she was anything to do with it.”
“I don’t believe she was. It all happened long before I was old enough to know anything about it, but she did tell me the story once. It seems that when Martin’s father was killed, Mrs Hands was most terribly upset. Of course, that was natural enough, but apparently it took a very violent form—almost hysterical and perhaps a little mental. Anyhow, before then she and Miss Yeldham had always been quite good friends. In fact, they still were for some time afterwards, because Miss Yeldham went round and consoled her several times. But about a month later she got the oddest letter from Mrs Hands, which said quite briefly that she never wished to see her again. ‘It is the name,’ were the only words given in explanation. And it always hurt poor Miss Yeldham, even after Mrs Hands died. She tried, of course, but failed to get to the bottom of it. Patricia was always friendly to her, and that pleased her; but Martin, for no reason that she could think of, was sometimes a little odd.”
“I think I can explain,” Lansley answered. “It was the name; and the same explanation accounts for why Martin did not want to go to Y Bryn. I had it all out with him only yesterday. Apparently Hands’ sergeant came on leave and wrote a letter, which he hadn’t liked to do before because of regimental censoring, and in it he explained that Hands would never have been killed if Yeldham—he and Hands were serving together—hadn’t been a coward. To my mind, it was a very stupid letter, because it could only do harm and couldn’t possibly do good. Perhaps the man thought it would get Yeldham, against whom he may have had a grudge, into trouble.”
And Death Came Too Page 10