by Ellis Peters
“What have you got?” asked Pussy, craning to peer over his shoulder with the torch.
“I don’t know. We’ll have a look at it in a minute, when you can see it for muck—but it’s something queer to find in a brook. Look, it’s beginning to shine. I believe it’s silver.”
“Tin, more likely,” said Pussy scornfully.
“No, tin would have rusted away in no time, but this was so covered in mud it must have been there some time, and you can see it’s only sort of dulled. If one edge hadn’t stuck in me I wouldn’t have known there was anything there at all.”
He climbed out of his stony bath, shivering a little in the chill night air, but too intent on his find to pay much attention to his own state. It was Pussy who observed the shiver.
“Dom, you’re terribly wet. You’ll catch cold if we don’t get home double-quick.”
“Yes, all right, we’ll go in a minute. But look—now look!”
In the light of the torch they examined, large-eyed, a small irregular oval of silver, mottled and discolored now, but showing gleams of clean metal; a little shield for engraving, but never engraved, dinted a little, very thin, apparently from long use and sheer old age, for all the lines of its pattern were worn smooth and shallow. Round the outline of the shield curved decorative leaves, the flourish of the upper edge buckled and bent a little. It bore five tiny holes for fastening it to a surface, and by the strong round curve of its shape they could guess what kind of a surface.
“It’s like on that walking-stick we gave to old Wilman when he left school two years ago,” said Dominic in a hushed voice, “only a different pattern, you know. And a bit smaller, not so showy. But you can see it is off a stick. I can’t think of anything else that would make it curve like that.”
“Or an umbrella,” said Pussy. “It could be.”
“Yes, only people don’t often give umbrellas for that sort of present, and put names on them, and all that. They’re such stupid things it would look too silly. But lots of walking-sticks have these things on. And—we were looking for something that might belong to a walking-stick.” He looked up at her across the tarnished glimmer of his treasure, and his eyes were enormous with gravity. She stared back, and asked in an almost inaudible whisper:
“But how did it get there?”
“I think it was like I said. He did shove the weapon in there to wash off the traces. And this plate had worn very thin, and the top edge was bent up, like you see, so the water had something to press against there, and it tore it right off and washed it down among the stones there, and it lodged tight. And when he grabbed up the stick again to make his getaway—because he wouldn’t want to hang around, when for all very few people do come here, somebody easily might—he was in too much of a hurry to notice that the shield was gone. Or if he did notice it, he didn’t think it safe to stay too long looking for it, and so there it stayed. Well, it’s reasonable, isn’t it? How else should a silver plate off a stick get in a place like that?”
How else indeed? Pussy said with awe: “Then we have found it! After all, we didn’t come out for nothing. And now if we can find the stick this shield came off—” She shivered in her turn, remembering the strange pale island of Helmut’s hair in the center of the brook’s channel; and suddenly she didn’t at all like this place by night, and wanted to be anywhere out of it. She clutched urgently at Dominic’s arm with a thin, strong, dirty hand, and besought him in a low voice: “Let’s go, Dom! We’ve found it, now let’s get home. You ought to get it to your father, quickly—and anyhow, it’s awfully late, I’m sure it is.”
He could not tear himself away too easily, now that he had something to show for it, something to advance as sure proof that he had real ideas about the case which they wouldn’t allow to be his, that he wasn’t just being inquisitive in a totally aimless way. He was torn two ways, for he had an uneasy feeling that he had let time slip by more rapidly than he had realized, and it would be well for him to make all haste to placate his parents. But also he wanted to pursue success while he had hold of her skirt. What more he could expect was not certain. He knew only that he was on, an advancing wave, and to turn back seemed an act of folly.
“And you’re terribly wet,” said Pussy. “You will catch cold if we don’t run for it.”
So they ran, taking hands over the rough places, he with the little shield clutched fiercely in his left palm in his damp trouser-pocket, she with the beam of the torch trained unsteadily on the path ahead of them. Halfway down the mounds, Dominic remembered the other item of information he had to pass on to his father, the odd decision of Charles Blunden to reverse his policy toward the Coal Board. Not, of course, that that had anything to do with the Helmut affair, or could compete in importance with the silver plate; but still it was, in its way, interesting.
Four
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Dominic arrived blown and incoherent at the back door just as the church clock chimed the half-hour, and wondered, as he let himself in with unavailing caution, whether it was half-past nine or half-past ten. It couldn’t really be only half-past nine, though the thought of the later hour made his heart thump unhappily. What on earth had made him forget to put on his watch? But he had a talisman in his pocket, and a tongue in his head; and anyhow, they were always willing to listen to reason.
He had no time to steel himself, for the kitchen door opened to greet him, though he had made no noise at all; and there was George bolt upright in front of the fire looking distinctly a heavy father, with one arm still in the sleeve of a coat which he had just been in the act of putting on, and was now in the act of taking off again, with some relief; and there was Bunty at the door, with a set, savage face like angry ice, and eyes that made him wriggle in his wet clothes, saying as he halted reluctantly: “So you decided to come home, after all! Come in here, and be quick about it!”
Quite ordinary words, but a truly awful voice, such as he had never heard from Bunty in the whole of his life before.
Dominic’s heart sank. Suddenly he was fully aware of every smear of grime on his face, of his encrustations of clay, of his appalling lateness, of the fact that George had been about to come out and look for him, and, into the bargain, of every undiscovered crime he had committed within the year. The scrap of silver clutched in his hand no longer seemed very much to bring home in justification of all these enormities.
He stole in unwillingly, and stood avoiding Bunty’s fixed and formidable eye. In a small, wan voice he said: “I say, I’m frightfully sorry I’m late!”
“Where,” said Bunty, levelly and coldly, “where have you been till this hour? Do you see that clock?”
Now that she pointed him to it so relentlessly, he certainly did, and he gaped at it in consternation. But it couldn’t be true! Half-past ten he could have believed, though even that seemed impossible, but half-past eleven! He said desperately: “Oh, but it can’t be right! It was only seven when I went out, it just can’t have been as long as all that—”
“And what have you been doing? Just look at you! Come here, and show yourself!” And when he hesitated discreetly among the shadows in the doorway, his heart now somewhere in his filthy shoes, she took two angry steps forward and hauled him into the light by the collar of his jacket, and like any other mother gasped and moaned at the horrid sight. “George!” she said faintly. “Did you ever—!”
George said blankly: “My God, what an object! How in the world did you get into that state?”
“I’m most awfully sorry,” said Dominic miserably, “I’m afraid I am a bit dirty—”
“A bit!” Bunty turned him about in her hands, and stared incredulously, despairingly, from his ruined gray flannels to her own soiled fingers. “Your clothes! They’ll never clean again, never! Why, it’s all over you. It’s even in your hair! How on earth did you get like this? And where? Nearly midnight, and you come strolling in as if tomorrow would do. And filthy! I never saw anything like you in my life. And you’re wet!” She felt a
t him with sudden exasperated palms, and her ice was melting, but into a rage which would need some manipulating. “You’re wet through, child! Heavens!” she moaned, “you’re supposed to be thirteen, not three!”
She usually listened, and tonight she wouldn’t listen. She was always just, yet tonight she didn’t care whether he thought her just or not. She didn’t give him a chance to explain, she just flamed at him as soon as he opened his mouth. It was a shock to his understanding, and he simply could not accept or believe in it.
“But, Mummy, I—yes, I know, I fell in the brook, but it was because—”
“I don’t want to hear a word about it. Upstairs!” said Bunty, and pointed a daunting finger.
“Yes, I’ll go, really, only please, I want to explain about—”
“It’s too late for explanations. Do as you’re told, this minute.”
George, an almost placating echo in the background, said dryly: “Better go to bed, quick, my lad, before something worse happens to you.”
“But, Dad, this is important! I’ve got to talk to you about—”
“You’ve got to get out of those wet things, and go to bed,” said George inflexibly, “and if I were you I’d do it without any arguing.”
“No, honestly, I’m not trying to make any excuses, it’s—” Bunty said, in the awfully quiet voice which indicated that the end of her patience was in sight: “Upstairs, and into that bathroom, without one more word, do you hear?”
It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t like her, and Dominic simply couldn’t believe it. A flash of anger lit for a moment in the middle of his confusion and bewilderment. He burst out, almost with a stamp of his clay-heavy foot: “Mummy, you’ve got to listen to me! Don’t be so unreasonable!”
Bunty moved with a suddenness which was not natural to her, but an efficiency which was characteristic, boxed both his ears briskly, took him by the scruff of his neck, and ran him stumbling and shrilling out of the room up the stairs, and into the bathroom, quite breathless with indignation. She sat him down upon the cork-topped stool, and swooped down upon the taps of the bath as if she would box their ears, too, but only turned them on with a crisp savagery which made him draw his toes respectfully out of her way as she swept past him.
“Get out of those clothes, and be quick about it.” She stooped to feel the temperature of the water, and alter the flow, and when she turned on him again he had got no farther than dropping his jacket sulkily on the floor, and very slowly unfastening his collar and tie. She made a vexed noise of exasperation, slapped his hands aside quite sharply, and began to unbutton his shirt with a hard-fingered, severe speed which stung him to offended resistance. He jerked himself back a little from her hands, and pushed her away, childishly hugging his damp clothes to him. “Mummy! Don’t treat me like a baby! I can do it myself.”
“I shall treat you like a baby just as long as you insist on behaving like one. Do it yourself, then, and look sharp about it, or I shall do it for you.”
She went away, and he heard her moving about for a moment in his bedroom, and then she came back with his pyjamas, and his hairbrush, and gave an ominous look in his direction because he was still not in the bath. The look made him move a little faster, though he did it with an expression of positive mutiny. She was in a mood he didn’t know at all, and therefore anything could happen, especially anything bad; and the bath seemed to him the safest place, as well as the place where she desired him to go. He wanted to assert himself, of course, he wanted to vindicate his male dignity, his poor, tender male dignity which had had its ears soundly boxed, exactly as if it had still been a mere sprig of self-conceit; but she looked at him with a pointed female look, and reversed the hairbrush suggestively in her hand, and Dominic took refuge in the bath very quickly, with only a half-swallowed sob of rage.
The silver shield, which he had fished carefully out of the pocket of his flannels and secreted in his tooth-mug while she was out of the room, must on no account be risked. If it came within her sight she might very likely, in her present mood, sweep it into the waste-bin. But he was in agony about it all the time that she was bathing him. For she wouldn’t trust him to get rid of the clay unaided, even though he protested furiously that he was perfectly competent, and flushed and flamed at her miserably: “Mummy, you’re indecent!” She merely extinguished the end of his protest with a well-loaded sponge, and unfairly, when he was blind and dumb, and could not argue, told him roundly that she intended to get him clean, and to see to it herself, and further added with genuine despondency that she didn’t see how it was ever to be done.
The battle was a painful one. Having no other means of expressing his resentment of such treatment, Dominic developed more, and more obstructive, knees and elbows than any boy ever had before. Bunty, retaliating, adjusted his suddenly unpliable body to the positions she required by a series of wet and stinging slaps. The tangled head which would not bend to the pressure of her fingers was tugged over by a lock of its own wet hair, instead. Dominic fought his losing fight in silence, except when her vigorous onslaught on the folds of his ears dragged a squeal of protest from him:
“Mummy, you’re hurting!”
“Serve you right!” she said smartly. “How do you suppose I’m ever going to get you clean without hurting? You need scrubbing all over.” But for all that, she went more gently, even though the glimpses he got of her face in the pauses of the battle, between soapings and towelings and the rasp of the loofah, did not indicate any softening in her anger and disapproval. Still, in spite of her prompt: “Serve you right!” so determinedly repeated, she wiped his eyes for him quite nicely when he complained that the soap was in them; and suddenly, when her fingers were so soft and slow with the warm towel on his sore, sulky face, he wanted to give in, and say he was sorry, and it was all his fault, even the bathroom war. But when he got one eye open and glimpsed her face, it still looked dauntingly severe, and the words retreated hurriedly, and left an unsatisfied coldness in his mouth. And then he was angrier than ever, so angry that he determined to make one more attempt to assert himself. The thought of his hardworking evening, the feel of the little shield stealthily retrieved and secretly cradled in his hand as he pulled on his pyjamas, stung him back to outer realities.
He waited until he was padding after her into his bedroom, his hair smugly brushed, his tired mind stumbling with sleep but goaded with hurt self-importance. Bunty laid the brush on his tall-boy, turned down the bed, and motioned him in. He felt the sharp edges of his discovery denting his palm, but she didn’t look any more approachable than before, and there was still no safe ground for him to cross to reach her.
“I’ll bring you up some hot milk,” she said, “when you’re in bed. Though you don’t deserve it.”
But for that fatal afterthought he would have got across to her safely, but as it was he turned back in a passion of spleen, and said ungraciously: “I don’t want any, thank you!” He wasn’t going to want anything she said he didn’t deserve.
He hesitated at the foot of the bed, gazing at her with direct, resentful eyes, his newly washed chestnut hair standing up in wild, fluffy curls all over his head. “Mummy, there’s something I want to talk to Dad about, seriously. I’ve got to tell him—”
It was no use, she rode over him. “You’re not going to talk to anyone about anything tonight. We’ve both had enough of you. Get into bed!”
“But it’s awfully important—”
“Get into bed!”
“But, Mummy—”
Bunty reached for the hairbrush. Dominic gave it up. He made a small noise of despair, not unlike a sob, and leaped into the bed and swept the clothes high over him in one wild movement, leaving to view only the funny fuzz of his hair, soft and delicate as a baby’s. Under the clothes he smelled his own unimaginable cleanness, revoltingly scented. “The wrong soap,” he muttered crossly and inaudibly. “Beastly sandalwood! You did it on purpose!”
Bunty stooped over him, and noticed the same erro
r in the same moment. He hated a girl’s soap. She wished she had noticed in time. She kissed the very small lunette of scented forehead which was visible under the hair, and it and all the rest of Dominic’s person promptly recoiled in childish dudgeon six inches lower into the bed, and vanished utterly from view in one violent gesture of repudiation. Unmoved, or at any rate contriving to appear unmoved, Bunty put out the light.
“Don’t let me hear one word more from you tonight, or I’ll send your father in to you,” she warned.
“I wish you would!” muttered Dominic, safely under the clothes. “At least he’d listen to reason.”
When she was gone, he lay clutching his treasure for a few minutes, and then, mindful of the danger of bending its thinness if he fell asleep and lay on it, and so losing perhaps the most vital aspect of his clue, he sat up and slipped it into the near corner of the little drawer in his bedside table. Then he subsided again. He was still very angry. He lay tingling all over with hot water, and scrubbing, and slaps, his mind tingling, too, with offended pride and slighted masculinity. He was too upset to sleep. He wouldn’t sleep all night, he would lie fretting, unable to forgive her, unable to settle his mind and rest. He would get up pale and quiet and ill-used, and she would be sorry—
Dominic fell off the rim of a great sea of sleep, and drowned deliciously in its most serene and dreamless deeps.
Five
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When he awoke it was to the pleasant sensation of someone rocking him gently by the toes, and the gleam of full daylight, with a watery sun just breaking into the room. He opened one eye into the rays, and closed it again dazzled and drowsy, but not before he had glimpsed George sitting on the foot of his bed. He lay thinking about it for a moment, trying to orientate himself. Around his snug and blissful sense of immediate well-being there was certainly a hovering awareness of last night’s upsets, but it took him an interval of thought to remember properly. He opened his eyes, narrowly against the glare, and yawned, and stared at George.