by Ellis Peters
Just when he wanted to rush his tea and his homework, and be away on the job in hand—though when it came to expecting any results from it he might have been regarded as a despairing optimist—Cousin John was at the house visiting, and without his mother, so that it inevitably followed that Dominic was expected to help to look after and amuse him. Not that young John was such a bad kid, really, but who could be bothered with him on this particular day? Dominic made an ungracious business of it, so much so that Bunty was a little hurt and put out at his behavior. He was usually an accommodating child. Still, she admitted his right to his off-days, like the rest of us, and good-humoredly, if a little coolly, relieved him of his charge as soon as she had washed up. Dominic rushed through his French, made a hideous mess of his algebra, and scuttled out at the back door in a terrible hurry, with George’s best torch in his pocket. It wasn’t that he expected to find anything, really, but there was somehow a satisfaction in furious activity, and, after all, if one raked around persistently enough, something might turn up. At least he had keyed himself to the attempt, and he meant to leave no blade of grass undisturbed between Webster’s well and the Harrow fences.
This was the day on which the news went round Comerford that the Harrow appeal had been allowed. In view of the objections raised by the owner, the Ministry had decided not to proceed with the extension of the open-cast site, but to cut their losses and end their operations in Comerford at the Harrow borders. Nobody was much surprised. The Blundens almost always got their own way, and it wasn’t to be expected, in view of what Comerford had yet seen of nationalized industries, that the new setup was going to alter the rule very much. It took more than a change of name to upset the equilibrium of Selwyn Blunden when it was a case of manipulating authorities.
Dominic had heard, distractedly from behind a French prose extract, the discussion round the tea-table. He wasn’t surprised, either, everyone had been saying for weeks that it would go that way, but somehow long delay raises disconcerting doubts far back in the mind, behind the façade of certainty. Every speculation always ended with: “But after all, you never know!” Well, now they did know, and that was done with. Now there was only one topic of conversation left in Comerford.
At the last moment, just as he was sliding out at the gate, Bunty called him back, and asked him to see John safely on to the bus for Comerbourne Bridge; which meant that he had to go all the way round by the green, and stand chafing for five minutes until the wretched bus arrived, instead of taking all the most convenient short cuts to his objective. But as soon as John was bundled aboard, off went Dominic by the fields and the lane and the quarry, heading by the longer but now more direct route for Webster’s well.
He came to the stile in the rough ground outside the Harrow preserves, where the silvery green of birches fluttered against the background black of the conifers; and there was Charles Blunden sitting on the stile, with a shotgun on his arm and a brown-and-white spaniel between his feet. He was looking straight before him with mild, contemplative eyes, and he looked vaguely pleased with the contents of his own mind, and rather a long way off. But he smiled at Dominic when he came up, and said: “Oh, hullo, Dom! Made any more interesting discoveries yet?”
Dominic had walked off the remnants of his impatience and ill-temper, and grinned back quite cheerfully at him. “No, nothing new! Did you get any birds tonight?” He peered through the stile, and saw a brace dropped in the grass by the side of the path. The spaniel, sad-eyed, poked a moist nose into his palm; its brow was covered with raffish brown curls, and its front legs were splayed out drunkenly, spreading enormous feathered paws in the wet grass. It had a pedigree rather longer than its master’s, and shelves of prizes, and rumor had it that he had refused fabulous sums for its purchase; but it was not in the least stuck-up. Dominic doubled its ears and massaged them gently in his fingers, and the curly head heeled over into his thigh heavy and lopsided with bliss.
“I heard,” said Dominic, looking up into Charles’s face, “about the result of the appeal. I bet you’re glad it’s settled, aren’t you?”
“Settled? Ah!” said Charles absently. He grew a little less remote, his wandering glance settling upon Dominic thoughtfully. “Tell me, Dom, as an intelligent and unprejudiced person, what do you think of that business? What were the rights and wrongs of it? Don’t mind me, tell me your opinion if it kills me.”
“I hadn’t exactly thought,” said Dominic, taken aback.
“Neither had I, until the thing was almost settled. D’you know how it is, Dom, when you want a thing against pressure, and want it like the dickens—and then the pressure’s withdrawn, and you find you don’t really want it, after all?”
“Oh, yes,” said Dominic readily, “of course! But I don’t—”
“Well, after all, we seem to have made all this fuss about twenty acres of second-rate pasture. It got to looking like the fattest agricultural land in the county to me, while the fight was on. What do you think we ought to have done? I’ll bet you had an opinion one way or the other. If you didn’t, you’re the only person over the age of five in Comerford who didn’t.”
“Well, I don’t know much about it,” said Dominic doubtfully. “It does look an awful mess when the land’s being worked, but the old colliers say the shallow pits made a worse mess in the end. And it’s all shallow coal, isn’t it? So if it’s ever going to be got at all, it’s got to be one way or the other, hasn’t it? It seems almost better to have the mess now, and get it over. It doesn’t last so long as when the ground caves in, like under those cottages out on the Comerbourne road— all pegged together with iron bars. And even then the walls are cracking. I know a boy who lives in one. The bedroom floors are like this,” said Dominic, tilting his hand at an extravagant angle.
Charles looked at him, and the odd, finished peacefulness of his face broke into a slow, broad smile. “Out of the mouths—” he said. “Well, so you think we raised a song and dance for next to nothing, and on the wrong side?”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. I only said— And I told you, I don’t really know much about it.” Dominic was uncomfortable, and found it unfair that he should be pinned into a corner like this. He scrubbed at the bunched curls of the spaniel’s forehead, and said placatingly: “But anyhow, in the end it seems the Coal Board didn’t want it as much as they thought they did, either. Especially after they started to have such rotten luck. If it was luck! You remember that grab that went over the edge? I was talking to one of the men off the site once, and he told me he thought somebody’d been mucking about with the engine. He said he thought a lot of those repairs they had were really sabotage, only he couldn’t say so openly because he couldn’t find any proof. I don’t suppose there’s anything in it, really,” owned Dominic regretfully, “because I’ve often talked to the same man, and he likes a good story, and anyhow if there wasn’t the least bit of evidence there may not have been any sabotage, either. But still, it was funny that they had so much trouble so quickly, wasn’t it?”
“I never heard that story,” said Charles.
“Oh, he wouldn’t dare tell it to anyone responsible, he’s known for an awful old liar. Anyhow, the whole unit will soon be packing up now, I suppose, so there isn’t any point in guessing.”
Charles looked at him, and smiled, and said: “Maybe they won’t, after all. It rests with them entirely.”
“But—they’ve nearly finished the rest of the site, and now that they’ve allowed the appeal—”
“Oh, I took it to a further appeal, Dom. I told you, I stopped being indignant as soon as I got my own way. I’ve been walking round having another look at all my grandfather’s wreckage this evening, since we heard the result. I’m going to withdraw my objections, and waive the result of the appeal. Tomorrow, while I know my own mind. They can carry right on, and be damned to grandfather and his methods.”
Dominic, staring with open mouth, perceived that Charles meant what he was saying. This was no joke. The tire
d, satisfied, almost self-satisfied glow which Charles had about him this evening emanated from this decision, and he wanted someone to share it so that it would be irrevocable, underlined, signed and sealed, with no room anywhere for another change of heart. For which rôle of witness even Dominic had sufficed.
He asked, swallowing hard: “Does Mr. Blunden know?”
“Not yet!” Charles laughed, a large, ruddy, bright sound in the evening, breaking the sequence of gunshots, far and near, which were now the commonplace of the season, and almost inaudible unless one consciously thought about them. “Expecting me to get a thick ear? Don’t you worry, if I know him he’s lost all interest since he heard he’s carried his point. That’s what mattered with the old man, to have his own way. I suppose it’s in the family. Besides, it’ll please his cussed nature, making ’em sweat blood losing the ground to him, and then chucking it to ’em when he’s won. Take his side of any argument, and he’s sure to hop over to yours. No, this is really hot news, young Dom. You’re positively the only one who knows it yet.”
As a consequence of which accident, he was now unusually pleased with Dominic, and suddenly fishing out a half-crown from his pocket, flipped it over into his startled hand. “Here, celebrate the occasion, while I go and break the news.” He swung his legs over the stile, hoisting the shotgun clear of the gate-posts, and gathered up his birds from the grass. Dominic was stammering delighted but rather dazed thanks, for he was not used to having half-crowns thrown at him without warning, or, indeed, at all. The cost of living, so his mother said, was turning her into a muttering miser, and causing her to cast longing eyes even on her son’s weekly one and sixpence, and occasional bonuses.
“That’s all right!” said Charles, laughing back from the shadow of the trees. “Buy your girl a choc-ice!” And he whistled the spaniel to heel, and marched away into his dark woodlands with his half of the momentous secret.
Three
« ^ »
Pussy and Dominic hunted all the evening, inexhaustible, obstinate, refusing to be discouraged even by the fact that they were hunting what appeared to be a different country. After a night of thunder and heavy rain, the bowl behind the well, the frozen sea of clay, had thawed most alarmingly. It was now a glistening expanse of yellow ocherous slime, indescribably glutinous and slippery, with swollen, devious streams threading it muddily; and the overflow from the back of the well was a tight, bright thrust of water as thick as an arm, jetting out forcibly with a mule’s kick. It was always strong of course, but this was storm pressure, and would soon diminish. In the meantime, they had chosen the worst possible conditions for their search, as they found after the first skid and fall on the treacherous greasy slopes going down into the bowl. Pussy got halfway down, and then her feet went from under her, and down she slid, to rise with the seat of her gym knickers one glazed gray patch of wet clay. Dominic, trying to enjoy the spectacle and pass her at speed at the same time, made a terrifying spin and left long ski-tracks behind him, but merely came down on one hand and arm to the elbow, much to the detriment of his jacket. He had also to work his way sidelong a dozen yards by the current sheep-track to find a tuft of grass big enough and dry enough to wipe his hands fairly clean.
As for their shoes, in a few minutes they were past praying for, clay to the ankles; but at the time they brushed these small catastrophes aside as of no importance. In any case, after the first fall there was not much point in being careful, and they began to stride recklessly about, skidding and recovering, slithering on to their behinds and climbing precariously up again, with their tenacious minds fixed on their objective, and fast shut to all regard of consequences to their clothing or skins. They’d come to look over the ground yet once more, and look it over they would, even if the rain had transformed it overnight and a fortnight of time made the quest practically hopeless in the first place.
The dusk came, and they did not even notice it until they were straining their eyes upon the ground. Then the torches came out, and the dark came, and as their eyes were bent assiduously upon the circles of light upon the trampled ground, it quite startled them to look up suddenly and see that the sky had stars already, and was deeply blue between the clusters of them, fully dark. The gradual brightening of the discs of gold, the gradual darkening of the walls of dark, had passed unnoticed.
“It must be getting late,” said Pussy dubiously.
“Oh, rot, can’t be!” He had not his watch on him, but he was quite confident, because it seemed to him that he had been there no time at all. “It gets dark very quickly, once it starts. But it can’t be past nine o’clock yet.”
“Seems as if it’s hopeless, though,” said Pussy, staring at the well. They were disheveled, tired and unbelievably dirty. Clay even in Dom’s hair, where he had come down full-length once, and slid downhill on his back. Smears of ocher down his face. She had an uneasy feeling that she did not look very much better herself. Now that she came to look at him, the effect was awe-inspiring. She said: “Wait till your mother sees you! My word, isn’t there going to be a row!”
“My mother will listen to me,” said Dominic firmly, “she always lets people explain. If you’re scared, go on home, or anyhow, go on up to the level and wait for me. I’m not afraid of my mother.”
“Well, anyhow, we’ve looked everywhere, and it seems a dead end.”
“I know,” he said, dismally smearing a clay-stiffened eheek. He had not expected much, but he did not admit that, there was no point in making Pussy feel worse than she did already. “And yet if we quit now, there won’t be any chance of finding anything after. We’ve trampled the whole place up, and after a few more rainstorms it’ll be hopeless. But I suppose it was a thin chance—after so long. If we couldn’t find a weapon or any sign of one that first time, we couldn’t very well expect to find it now.” He stared at the back of the well, where the fierce, quiet jet of the outfall poured into a little pebbly hollow, and ran away downhill through boulders and small stones to join the stream. “You know, I always thought—”
“Thought what?” asked Pussy, following his stare and the strong beam of the torch.
“Well, if I’d hit somebody over the head with a club, or whatever it was, close here by the well, I shouldn’t throw it away and leave it to be found. And of course he didn’t, either, or we should have found it. But if—if there was any blood, or anything, I shouldn’t want to carry it away like that, either. They said it was something thin, like a walking-stick or a crop, so if it was you could easily walk away carrying it, even if you met a dozen people on your way home, if it was just clean and normal. But you have to be careful about getting even the smallest drop of blood on your clothes, because they can tell even months after what group it is, and everything.”
“Plenty of water down there,” said Pussy, shivering, “where he put the body. He could wash it.”
“Yes, but that’s the stream, and it’s ocher water; I should think if there were any grooves, or if there was a plaited thong, like in some crops, or anywhere that dirt could lodge, that fearful yellow stuff might get left behind. Enough to be traced, they don’t need much. But here,” he said, jerking his solemn head at the muscular arm of the outflow, and gnawing at his knuckles forgetful of their coating of clay, “here’s clean water, and with a kick on it that ought to wash anything off anything if you just stood it in it firmly for a few minutes. Very nearly wash the paint off, too. Only, of course, it wasn’t quite so strong as this then. But it was pretty hefty, all the same. Remember, we were mucking about with it that next night, throwing jets around, and it was all you could do to keep your hand still in it.”
Pussy drew a little nearer to him at the stirring of that memory, steadying herself by his arm. “Yes, that’s right! I remember, just before you found him—”
“If I’d had to get a stick cleaned up after a job like that,” said Dominic, “I should have wedged it in among the stones there so that it stood in the outflow. I should think if you left it there ju
st while you dragged the body down and put it in the stream, and then came back for it and walked right on into the village, or wherever you were going, there wouldn’t be even a hair or a speck left on it to show. Anyhow, that’s what I should have done. Like anybody who had a drop of blood on his hands here would just run there and wash them. It stands to sense.”
She agreed, with a shiver, that it seemed reasonable. Dominic climbed up the slope and pulled a stick out of the lush foot of the hedge, and scrambled with it up into the stony fringes of the outflow. “Like that!” He planted it upright, digging the point deep between the stones and into the soft underneath of the bed, and it stood held and balanced in the direct jet of the water, which gripped it solidly as in ice. “You see? It couldn’t be simpler.”
The spray from the tiny basin spattered him, and, shifting a precarious foothold, he stepped backward to one unluckily more precarious still. A rounded, reddish stone rocked under his foot, and slid from its place, bringing down in one wet vociferous fall Dominic and a large section of the stony bank together. He yelled, clawing at the boulders, and tumbled heavily on one hip and shoulder into the descending stream below the outfall. His hands felt for a firm hold among the stones under the water, to brace himself clear of it and get to his feet again; and sharp under his right palm, deep between the disturbed pebbles, something stung him with a sharp, metallic impact, denting but not breaking the skin.
Pussy, slithering along to help him out, sensed his instant excitement in his sudden quietness. She had reached for his arm, but he was grubbing instead in the bed of the brook, bringing up some small muddy thing which was certainly not the weapon with which anyone had been killed; and until he had it washed clean of encrustations of silt he was not even interested in getting out of the water. He scrambled backwards to his feet, and dipped the thing, and rubbed it on his handkerchief, which in any case was already soaking wet and smeared with clay.