by Ellis Peters
Bunty, looking intensely serious in a moment, asked: “Dom isn’t in any trouble, is he? He hasn’t been getting himself into any bad scrape?”
“Not any scrape at all that I know of. Don’t worry, it’s nothing like that. Just that I think it might be useful if your husband and I compared notes about him. He’s a nice kid, and got more gumption than most of his age. But perhaps he’s reached a difficult stage of development rather early.”
It sounded portentous, but Bunty seemed to understand better than the turn of phrase had deserved. Her eyes lit much as Dominic’s did when his partisan interest was kindled. “Yes, hasn’t he?” she said, and bit her lips upon a slightly guilty smile, remembering how little respect she had paid to his budding manhood when her dander was up, and with how little subtlety she had approached his new complexities. Good old Dom, the first really adult quality he had acquired had been an ability to humor his elders and make allowances for them. “Have you been having trouble with him? He likes you, you know, and that’s the first essential for being able to manage him.”
A slow, dark flush mounted Chad’s lean cheeks as he looked at her. She found it astonishing and touching that the mention of a child’s liking for him could make him color so painfully. He must be awfully short of compensations to make so much of so small a one.
“I’m glad! I like him, too, and by and large, the sort of trouble he gives me is the most encouraging kind. No, I’m only concerned, probably quite unnecessarily, with Dom’s own state of mind: Isn’t there something weighing a bit heavily on him, just lately?”
Bunty hesitated, for they were approaching a subject which had thorns wherever one touched it. “Well, of course, he’s been thinking far too much about this Schauffler case, but that was hardly avoidable, since he found the body. But naturally we’ve been keeping an eye on him, and I can’t say I’ve thought there was much wrong with his reactions. One can’t just forget a thing like that, but there’s nothing morbid about Dom.”
“Good God, no! I never meant to suggest it. No, he hasn’t an ounce of humbug in him, I’m sure of that. I was thinking of something much more positive and active. Are you sure he’s not up to something on his own? By the way, where is he now?”
“He went out, immediately after tea.” Her eyes widened in suspicion and apprehension. “He was very quick and very quiet, but so he often is. He didn’t stop to do his homework first, as he usually does, but that happens, too, when he has something on. And I’ve never asked questions, it’s never been necessary, and I’m not going to start now. You don’t think he’s up to anything really hare-brained?”
“Never quite that,” said Chad, and smiled, and was glad to see her smile in response.
“That’s awfully nice of you. He is a capable boy, I know that. But we might not think exactly alike about what’s crazy and what isn’t. You see, trusting him and leaving him his privacy has been easy while he stayed transparent and calculable—maybe not so much of a gesture, after all, because we often didn’t need to ask, we could see for ourselves. But now he isn’t quite transparent, even though I think he’s as honest as ever he was. And he isn’t, he certainly isn’t, quite calculable. That’s when the pinch comes.”
“I may be thinking more of it than it really is,” said Chad, “and troubling you with what amounts to nothing. It’s only today he’s been in this peculiar state; so one can hardly blame Schauffler for it. It may even be some odd score he’s got to settle with some other boy, only he seemed to be taking it very seriously. All today he’s been miles from school, working out something which did seem rather to be giving him trouble. I wondered if between us we couldn’t find out a little more about it, without treading too heavily on his toes.”
“There was the bad business of Charles Blunden,” said Bunty carefully. “That was rather on his mind, because—” She remembered in time that the adjourned inquest had so far produced only evidence of identification, that Dominic’s last meeting with Charles, and the queer confidence it had produced, were known to no one except herself, the police, and the boy. Maybe Dom had stretched his promise of secrecy so far as to admit Pussy, who was half himself, but she was sure he had extended it to no one else; and it was not for her to publish it to Chad Wedderburn, whatever she believed of him. “But I’d swear he was all right,” she said, “when he went off this morning. I wish I’d paid more attention to him at tea, but there was nothing particularly odd about him being silent and a little abstracted.”
“Of course not! I had different opportunities. In the middle of the Æneid, Book Eight,” he said with a fleeting smile, “one is apt to notice complete absence of mind. Especially in the intelligent. The middle of tea is rather another matter.”
Bunty, looking uneasily at the clock, said: “With all his homework still to do, he ought to be thinking of coming back by now. Usually he does it first.”
“You don’t know where he’s gone?”
“No, I rather took it for granted it was down to the Shock of Hay to pick up Pussy for some project or other. I thought maybe they needed what was left of the daylight, hence the hurry. Now I don’t know what to think.”
“Go on thinking the same,” said Chad, “and I’ll go and see if he’s down there. But I think I ought to apologize in advance for scaring you for nothing. We’re all a shade jumpy, maybe it’s affected my judgment.”
She was nevertheless deeply aware that it had taken some very strong uneasiness to send him down here tonight on this or any other errand. It might prove baseless, but it had been profoundly felt, and since it was on Dominic’s account she warmed to him for it. “Hadn’t I better come down with you, and make sure?”
“Had you better? If he’s harmlessly fooling around there with Pussy and their gang, it might be a little galling—”
Bunty thought deeply, and smiled, and said: “You’re very right. He’ll hardly suspect you of coming along simply to reassure yourself he isn’t in mischief, but I couldn’t get by so easily. All right, I’ll wait. No doubt he’ll come blithely in when it suits him, or when he’s hungry. No, I couldn’t make a fool of him in front of Pussy, of course.”
“I’ll come back this way, and let you know. But I’m sure it will be all right.”
That, he thought and she thought, as the door closed between them, is precisely what one says when one is by no means sure of any such matter. The street-lamp just outside the police-station shone on him briefly through the near-darkness, which in unlit places would still be scarcely more than dusk. A small, slender figure, coming at a run, butted head-down into his middle, and being steadied from the impact, gave a gasp of relief, and called him Sergeant Felse. He held her off, and recognized Pussy. She had a certain fixed and resolute look about her which fingered the same sore place Dominic’s eyes had left in his consciousness. He said: “Hullo, where are you off to in such a hurry? What’s the matter?”
“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Wedderburn,” said Pussy, damped but well-disposed. “I thought you were Dom’s father. I’ve got to see him.”
“Bad luck! I came on the same errand. He’s out, and he won’t be back till late.”
Pussy, with her hand already reaching out for the latch of the gate, stopped dead, and stared up at him with large green eyes of horror. “He’s out?” she echoed in a shrill whisper. “Where? Where could I find him?”
“I doubt very much if you can. Mrs. Felse doesn’t know where he is, only that he’s been gone since this afternoon, and told her not to expect him back until late tonight. Why, what’s the matter?”
“But what am I going to do?” she demanded in dismay. “I’ve got to find him.” She pushed headlong at the gate, for a moment intent on bursting in to pour out the story to Bunty, since George was missing, and somebody had to take action. Then she closed it again, and stood chewing her underlip and thinking more deeply. No, it wouldn’t do. She couldn’t frighten his mother until she knew there was reason. The last time had been bad enough. “Is Weaver in there? Or even Cooke,
but Weaver would be better.”
“No, there’s no one but Mrs. Felse.”
“Oh, hell!” said Pussy roundly. “And they might be just anywhere!”
“No doubt they could be found, if it’s as bad as that. And why won’t Mrs. Felse do?”
“She—well, she’s a woman,” said Pussy in sufficient explanation. “I can’t go scaring her, and anyhow there’s nothing she could do. I need men. And I haven’t got time to look for them.” Her voice grew deeper and gruffer in desperation, instead of shrilling. “I need them now, at once. I was relying on Sergeant Felse. I left it as late as I dared, so he wouldn’t have too much time to think. I was dead sure of finding him at home. He ought to have been home long before now. What on earth am I going to do?”
For answer, Chad took her by the arm, and turned her firmly about, and began to march her toward the distant lights of the Shock of Hay. “Come on, if it’s as bad as that, you can walk and talk at the same time. You’re going home, and on the way you’re going to tell me what this is all about.”
Not unwillingly trotting alongside, she uttered breathlessly: “But I can’t—it isn’t my secret, I can’t just tell anyone.”
“Don’t be finicky! You want men, and I’m the nearest. In the bar no doubt we can find more, if you can convince me by then that you seriously need them. So go ahead, and tell me the whole story. Where’s Dominic?”
She began to tell him, half-walking and half-running at his side in the dark, gratefully anchored by his large, firm hand. She had disliked the whole business from the beginning, as she disliked and distrusted any plan of which she possessed only half the essential outline; and now that it came to the point, she was glad to pour it out to him, glad of his unexclaiming quietness and terse questions; glad of the speed he was making with her, though it left her gasping; and more glad than ever of his procedure on arrival. For he released her arm at the main door, shepherded her by one shoulder straight through the bar, where she was not allowed to go, walked up to Io without hesitation, and said:
“Come through into the kitchen, please, Io. There’s something bad afoot, we need five minutes’ thinking.”
Io pushed a draught Bass across the bar, scooped in a half-crown, and automatically dispensed change, without any alteration of her expression. She raised her eyes to his face suddenly, their rich brown a little stunned and misty with bewilderment, but large and calm, and ready to light up with pleasure. He had just shouldered his way clean through something which had hung between them for so long that she had almost forgotten how he looked when he was not obscured by it. She did not feel the eyes of every soul in the bar converging upon them, with a weight of speculation which would have hurt her only ten minutes ago. She was not aware of the sudden silence, and the equally sudden discretion of voices veiling it, rather too quickly, rather too obviously. She did not stop to argue, but did exactly as he asked her; she had been ready to do exactly as he asked her for quite a long time, and the real trouble had been that he had never asked her. She turned, and flashed through the rear door, holding it open for him to follow; and the surprising creature, turning to run a critical eye over the whole company assembled in the bar, singled out Jim Tugg as the most potentially useful and the most proof against astonishment, and jerked an abrupt head at him to join the conference in the kitchen.
“Lend us a hand on a job, Jim?”
Jim left off leaning on the corner of the bar, and hitched his muscular length deliberately after them, the collie padding at his heel soundlessly. The men of Comerford, glasses suspended in forgetful hands, watched his dark, shut face pass by them, going where Chad Wedderburn called him, uncommitted, apparently incurious, certainly unsurprised. They fell silent again, their eyes following him until the door closed between. Joe, rolling back from the snug with an empty tray, looked them all over and asked blankly: “Who’s been through? The Pied Piper?”
When they told him, he shrugged his wide shoulders, and went on drawing beer. He was at sea already with Io; better to keep his fingers crossed and leave her alone.
In the kitchen Io turned on Chad and Pussy wide-eyed. “What is it? What’s the matter? Where did you find her, Chad, and what’s wrong with her?”
Chad looked at the clock; it was twenty-five minutes to nine. He looked down at Pussy, whose green eyes were blazing again hopefully, almost gleefully. “Now, then! Get your breath back, and tell all that tale again in less than five minutes. No interruptions, there isn’t time. If you or he are pulling our legs, look out afterwards, that’s all. But now, we’re listening!”
Pussy recounted in rather less than three minutes the instructions she had received from Dominic, and the way he had looked and acted at that interview. Io and Jim kept their eyes on her throughout the recital, but Chad’s were on Io, and when Pussy’s breath and facts gave out together Io seemed to feel the compulsion of his glance, for she looked directly up at him, and both of them smiled. A rather anxious, grave, and yet very peaceful smile, confirming, where there was no time for more, that while what was about to happen was extremely uncertain, what had just happened was the most certain thing in the world, and neither accident nor mistake.
“Well, what’s the verdict?” asked Chad.
“We must go, of course,” said Io. “I don’t say he’s really on to anything important, but almost certainly he’s going to be in some sort of trouble if we don’t fish him out of it. Either way, he needs rescuing.”
Jim said: “What is there to lose? If the kid’s father isn’t here to lug him out of mischief, somebody else better take over. All the more if there’s more to it than mischief.”
“There is,” said Pussy earnestly. “I tell you, he’s dead serious. I think he was a bit scared, really, but he’s got some clue, I’m sure he has. Let’s go, quickly! There’s only just time.”
They slid out from the scullery door to the yard, Io clawing a coat from the hooks in the passage as she went. It was the mackintosh she wore when feeding the hens, but she didn’t care. And suddenly in the half-lit scullery Chad turned and caught her hand restrainingly as she struggled into it.
“No need for you to come, Io. Stay here! We shall come back.”
“What do you take me for?” she demanded indignantly, and remained at his shoulder as they scurried across the yard. “This may be something real—have you thought of that? You know Dom. He isn’t a fool. He doesn’t go off at half-cock.”
“Yes, I’ve thought of it. So go back and help your old man, and take Pussy with you. Who’s going to look after the bar if you quit?”
“Damn the bar!” said Io. “If Pussy and I stay behind, who’s going to look after you?”
Two
« ^ »
Dominic went up the last fifty yards of dark birch-coppice with his heart bumping so heavily that it seemed to him its impact against his ribs must be clearly audible a long way ahead, like a clock with an enormous tick. If it went on like this, it would be difficult to talk. He tried to restrain its leaping, breathing deeply and slowly, clenching his hands and bracing his muscles to struggle with the pulse that shook him. It was ten minutes to nine. He had just seen the smoke of the train, a pallid streak along the line with a minute rosy glow at its forward end, proceeding steadily in the direction of Fressington. It would take the old man the full ten minutes to walk up the lanes from the station and reach his forest gate. So Dominic had time to think, and time to breathe slowly.
He came to the gate and waited there. Behind him the absolute dark of the first belt of conifers, beyond which the older mixed woods began; but in both, darkness enough, only the wide drive making a perceptible band of pallor until it lost itself among the tree’s. Very close to the pathway the bushes and trees leaned. He thought of them, and felt comforted. Before him, across the green track, the clumsy, crumpled mounds, half-clothed in furze and broom and heather, blundering away into a muddle of birch trees once more. On his left, the winding lane dipping down into meadows and coiling to the station;
and on this side it seemed almost light by comparison with the blackness of the firs within the Harrow fence. On his right, grass-tracks meandering to the bowl of the well, autumnally filled now with coppery ocher-slime and stained, iridescent water.
Dominic’s feet were caked to the ankle, and felt too heavy to lift. He groped along the dark ground for a broken end of stick, and began to clean the worst accumulations from under the waists of his shoes. The little notebook he was clutching, still damp to the touch, and soil-colored almost to invisibility in the last remains of the light, could hardly suffer by such smears as found their way to its covers. It was already a disintegrating mess. But he had better keep his face and hands fairly presentable. The former he scrubbed energetically with his handkerchief, the latter he rubbed even more vigorously on the seat of his flannels. The moist October night settled deeper about him, an almost tangible silence draping his mind like cobweb, when his wits had to be so piercingly clear. He pulled the little torch out of his pocket, and tried the beam of it. Not too big a light, not so bright that it made vision easy even when held to the page. The faint, faded ink-marks in the book, widened and paled by soaking in water, sunk into the swollen texture of the pulpy leaves, winked and seemed to change and shift under the light, sometimes to vanish altogether with his intent staring. But here and there a word could be read, and here and there a column of figures, conveying its general significance but not its details.
Down the lane from the station there began the sound of footsteps, heavy but fairly swift, though the old man was climbing a decided slope. Presently there was a bulky, increscent shape vaguely discernible against the sky, gradually lengthening to a man’s full height; and Selwyn Blunden, puffing grampus-like, and leaning heavily on his stick, came laboring to the gate.