by Ellis Peters
“Hullo, young man! So there you are! Afraid I’m late. Confounded train behind time, as usual. I hope you haven’t been waiting long?”
“Oh, no, only a few minutes. I saw the train pulling out.”
“Well, shall we go on up to the house? We can’t do anything here in the dark. You’ve brought this little book that’s been worrying you so much, have you?” He put a hand to the latch of the gate, and his walking-stick knocked woodenly against the bars as he led the way through. Dominic followed, but rather slowly, with some appearance of reluctance, and closed the gate after him with a flat clapper-note of the latch which echoed through the bushes. Straining his ears, he thought how deathly silent it was after the sound, and his heart made a sick fluttering in him. “What’s the matter?” said Blunden, wheeling to look at him with close, stooping head, in the darkness where the small shape was only another movement of shadow. “You have brought it, haven’t you?”
“Oh, yes, look, here it is. But—couldn’t you look at it here? I was only a bit worried—I don’t want to be too late getting home, and if we go right up to the house won’t it take us rather a long time? My mother—”
A large hand behind his shoulders propelled him gently but firmly forward. “That’s all right, we won’t give your mother any reason to complain this time. I’ll take you home in the car afterwards. Mustn’t get you into trouble for trying to be helpful, must we? But I’m not a cat, laddie, and I can’t see in the dark. Come on up to the house like a good lad, and let’s have a real good look at your find.”
Dominic went where he was led, but walked no faster than he had to. He kept silence for a minute as they walked, and the black coniferous darkness closed behind them like another gate. He listened, stretching his senses until he could imagine all manner of sounds without hearing one; and then he thought there was the lightest and softest of rustling steps, somewhere alongside them in the bushes, and then an owl called, somewhere apparently in the distance, with a wonderfully detached, undisturbing note. But he was aware by a sudden quivering of the nerves that it was not distant, and not an owl. He held his breath, in apprehension that what was perceptible to him should also be obvious to the old man; but the heavy tread never halted.
Dominic drew a deep breath and felt better. Someone, at any rate, had kept the tryst. He ought to have known; he ought to have trusted Pussy, she never had let him down, never once. He clutched the little book, braced his shoulders, and said firmly: “I’d better tell you about it, sir.” His voice sounded clearly in the arching of the trees, a light thread through the darkness. “Look, you can see from the look of it why it took me a long time to make anything of it.” The beam of the torch, shaken by his walking, wobbled tantalizingly upon the sodden grayish covers with their stains of ocher. “It was the day before yesterday, when we were coming up from the Comer and crossing by Webster’s well there, and you know it’s in an awful mess now, after the rain. We were fooling around, ever so many of us, and I found this right in one of the holes in the clay by the brook there. It must have been there some time, and I should have thrown it away again, only, you know, for the murder. But we all used to hope we’d find something that would be a clue.”
“Every boy his own Dick Barton,” said Blunden, with a laugh that boomed among the trees; and he patted Dominic with a pleased hand. “Very natural, especially in the police-sergeant’s son, eh? Well, so you showed it around, I suppose, among you?”
“No, I kept it just to myself,” said Dominie. “I don’t know exactly why. I just did.”
“Why didn’t you give it to your father, right away?”
Dominic wriggled and admitted reluctantly: “Well, I should have, only—the last time I tried to help, there was an awful row. My father was awfully mad at me, and told me not to interfere again. He didn’t like me being in it at all. And I didn’t want to get into any more trouble, so I tried to make it out by myself, this time, at least until I could be sure I’d really got something. And I just couldn’t, though I’d cleaned it up all I could. But honestly, I didn’t like to risk showing him until I was sure. Most of the time I didn’t think it was anything, really,” he confessed, “only it just could be, you see. So then when you were so decent this morning, I thought perhaps if you could read German—and you could!”
“Could and can, old man, so we’ll soon settle it one way or the other. How much did you find out on your own? This is very interesting—and damned enterprising, I may say!”
“Well,” said Dominic, slowly and clearly, “it’s got a lot of dates in it, and some columns of figures, though you can’t make out just what they are, at least not often. It looks like somebody’s accounts, and a sort of diary, and it is German, honestly it is. Look, you can see here!” He stopped, the better to steady the light upon the warped and faded page, and the old man bent his head into the glow beside his, to peer closely, and shut one hand on the nearer side of the book; but somehow Dominic’s hand was interposed, and kept its closer hold.
“Look, that’s a German word, you can read that—it’s the German word for machine. That’s funny, isn’t it? And look here, again—” He pulled himself up suddenly from a skid into enthusiasm, moving on again slowly from under the massive bulk of the old man.
Softly in the dark Blunden said, behind him, over him: “But, my dear boy, you’re perfectly right, it is German. No doubt about it. Now what do you make of that?”
“Well, you see, it’s just that it was found there—where we found him. And he was German. I know it seems farfetched, but I do sort of wonder if it can have fallen out of his pocket somehow. And at the inquest it came out how very careful he was, and kept records of everything he did, almost, even his washing and mending. Only there was quite a lot of money without any records. And in here, look, there’s what seems to be something about money. Columns of figures, and everything. Could it be, do you think, that he was just as careful about that extra money he had, only it was a bit shady where he got it, and so he kept it in a separate book? You do see, don’t you, how it would sort of make sense?”
“Oh, yes, I quite see that!” said the old voice softly, humoring him. A sudden hand reached out again for the book. “Let me see it closer! Of course, I don’t want you to be disappointed, after so much ingenuity, but much better settle it quickly.”
Dominic held on to it, bending the torch upon its pages industriously, and frowning over the unfamiliar syllables. When the hand would have touched, he stopped abruptly, the better to study the inside cover. “Just a minute, sir! It’s funny—a trick of the light, I suppose—there’s something here I’ve tried and tried to make out, even in a good light, and now, all of a sudden—”
“Let me see! Perhaps I can tell you.” He came nearer. Dominic hesitated, and backed a step, looking up at him oddly. “Well, come on, child! You brought it for me to see, didn’t you?”
The torch went out, and left them a moment in the dark, the velvet-black night between the trees extinguishing faces and voices. The wind sighed a little in the bushes, and somewhere on the left a twig cracked, but softly, moistly in the damp undergrowth. When the tiny beam erupted again, glow-wormlike, they were three yards apart, and the small, upturned face, lit from under the chin and very faintly, was an awestruck mask with hollow, staring eyes.
“I think, sir,” he said in a pinched voice, “I ought to go straight home now. If you don’t awfully mind.”
“Go home? After coming all up here for a special purpose, go home with nothing done? Nonsense, child! There’s no hurry, you’ll be home just as quickly in the car.” And the big body, powerful and silent, leaned nearer, seemed to Dominic’s fascinated eyes simply to be nearer, without a sound or a movement. He backed away by inches, trying to keep the distance between them intact. The hands of the bushes, sudden and frightening, clawed at his back; he did not know quite how he had been deflected into them, but they were there, nudging him. He felt sick, but he was used to that, it happened in every crisis, and he was growing
out of it gradually and learning to control it.
“Yes, sir, but— It’s very good of you, but I ought to go straight back to my father. I ought not to wait. And there isn’t any need for me to bother you now, I’ve just found what we needed. It’s quite all right now, thank you. So if you really don’t mind—”
The darkness round his little glowworm of light confused him. He was trying to stay steadily between Blunden and the gate, now perhaps a hundred yards behind them; but somehow in his anxiety to keep his face to the old man he had allowed himself to be edged round into the rim of the drive, into the undergrowth; and now he had no sense of direction at all, he was just marooned on a floating island of inadequate light in a sea of dark. He knew he would see better if he switched the torch off, but he knew he must not do it. Other people, mere whispers in the bushes—and how if they were only owls and badgers, after all?—they had to see, too; they had to see everything.
“And what,” said the old man softly, “what have you found? What is this magic word that settles everything? Show me!” And the ambling, massy darkness of him below the shoulders shifted suddenly, and he was nearer, was within touch. Something else moved, too, from left hand to right; the walking-stick on which he had leaned so heavily, so ageingly, since Charles was killed. He was not leaning on it now, his back was not sagging, the stoop of his head was a panther’s stoop from muscular, resilient shoulders. Dominic felt behind him, and was lacerated with holly spines.
“It’s his name,” he said in a little, quaking voice which longed rather to shriek for George than to pursue this any farther. “I tried and tried, and couldn’t read it before, but it is his name, Helmut Schauffler— So it’s all right, isn’t it? I must go quickly, and give it to my father. It was very kind of you to help me, but I’ve got to go and find him at once—”
“Pretty superhuman of you,” said the old man’s voice heartily, “not to have shown it to someone long before this. Didn’t you? Not even to some of the other boys?”
“No, honestly I didn’t.”
“Not to anyone at all?” The hand that held the stick tightened its fingers; he saw the long line of descending darkness in the darkness lift and quiver, and that was all the warning he had.
“No, nobody but you!”
Then he gathered himself, as if the words had been the release of a spring, and leaped a yard to his right, stooping his head low, the light of the torch plunging madly as he jumped. He saw only a confusion of looming, heavy face, immense bristling moustache, exaggerated cheeks, set teeth and braced muscles steadying the blow, and two bright, firm, matter-of-fact blue eyes that terrified him more than all the rest, because they were not angry, but only practically intent on seeing him efficiently silenced. He saw a dark, hissing flash which must have been the stick descending, and felt it fall heavily but harmlessly on his left arm below the shoulder, at an angle which slid it down his sleeve almost unchecked, to crash through the holly-branches and thud into the ground. Then his nerve gave way, and he clawed his way round into the line of the drive, and ran, and ran, dangling his numbed left arm, with the heavy feet pounding fast behind him. He threw the little book away, and the torch after it, and plunging aside into the bushes, tore a way through them into somebody’s arms.
He didn’t know what was happening, and was too stunned to attempt to follow the sounds he heard, though he knew that someone had screamed, and was dimly and rather pleasurably aware that it had not been with his voice. Confused impressions of a great many people erupting darkly from both sides of the drive cleared slowly into a sharper awareness. Voices regained their individuality. Pussy had screamed, and he thought he had heard his father’s tones in a sudden sharp shout, and then after the crashing of branches and thudding of feet and gasping and grunting of struggle, a heavy fall. He didn’t care much. He was satisfied to be alive, and held with a sort of relentless gentleness hard against a big, hard body, into whose shoulder he ground his face, sobbing dryly, and past caring who heard him.
“All right, all right, son!” Jim Tugg was saying in his ear. “We was by you all the time. If you’d held still I had me hands on you, all ready to lug you backwards out of harm’s way. Never mind, fine you did it your own way. All over now bar the shouting!”
There wasn’t much shouting. It had gone very quiet. Dominic drew calming breaths that seemed to be dragged right down to his toes. “Did they get him? Is it all right?” he managed between gulps.
“We’ve got him all right. Don’t you worry!”
So presently he took his face out of Jim’s shoulder, and looked. Several torches had appeared in a random ring of light about the torn holly-bushes and the scuffled patch of gravel in the drive. Chad Wedderburn and Constable Weaver were holding Selwyn Blunden by the arms, but though all his muscles heaved a little in bewilderment against the restraint, he was not struggling. His big head had settled like a sleeping owl’s, deep into the hunched shoulders, and his face had sagged into a dead, doughy stillness; but the blue, icy eyes which stared hard at Dominic out of this flabby mask were very much alive. They had not hated him before, because he had been only a slight bump in the roadway, but they hated him now because he was the barrier into which a whole life had crashed and shattered. He stared back, and suddenly, though he couldn’t be ashamed, he couldn’t be proud, either. He blinked at the rest of them, at Io just starting toward him a step or two in impulsive tenderness, with Pussy in her arm; at his father just picking up the fallen walking-stick in his handkerchief, hurriedly and without due reverence because his mind was on something else, and thrusting that, too, into Io’s hands. It wasn’t all over bar the shouting, at all; it had only just begun, and it was he who had begun it. He’d had to, hadn’t he? There wasn’t anything else to be done. But he turned his face into Jim Tugg’s patient sleeve, and said:
“I want my father! I want to go home!”
George was by him already, lifting him out of Jim’s arms as by right, hugging him, feeling him all over for breaks and bruises, and finding nothing gravely wrong. George was an inspired comforter. Jim Tugg heard him, and grinned. Dominic heard him, and came to earth with a fine corrective bump that braced his nerves and stiffened his pride indignantly, and did him more good just then than all the sympathy in the world. Having satisfied himself that his son was not a whit the worse, and still holding him tightly:
“You bat-brained little hellion!” said George feelingly. “Just wait till I get you home!”
Three
« ^ »
When they really did get him home, of course, they wanted to put him to bed and keep him quiet, and not let him do any talking until next day. Pussy and Io went straight into the kitchen with him, while the others shut themselves into the office, and presently telephones rang, and cars came and went. Dominic was preoccupied with more immediate things, little ordinary things the charm of which he had not noticed so clearly for a long time, like the coolness of Bunty’s bare arms when she hugged him, and the rough place on her finger where she always pricked it when she sewed, and the skin on top of very creamy cocoa, and the worn place on his favorite velvet cushion. He had been so abstracted at tea that he had eaten scarcely anything, and now he was hungry. Bunty fed him, and didn’t ask him any questions. She didn’t know the half yet, but it was scarcely even late, and he was home, and safe, and apparently in some obscure fashion both a hero and a criminal. Since he was there within sight and touch of her, and eating his head off, Bunty forbore from either scolding or praising him, and waited without impatience for explanations. And when George and Chad and Jim came in, she got them at last in very fair order.
“He’s away to Comerbourne,” said George, answering all the interrogatory eyes which turned upon him as soon as he entered the room. “And the stick’s gone with him. Plenty of work and fuss yet, but virtually, that’s over.” He rubbed a hand over his forehead, and marveled that he felt nothing of satisfaction, little of surprise, only a flatness and a weariness, such as come almost inevitably
at the end of tensions. When the cord slackens, and there ought to be a joyous relief, there seems instead to be only a slightly sick indifference. But later things right themselves. You can get used to anything in time, even to the idea that Selwyn Blunden, J.P., the nearest thing to God around Comerford, is a murderer. He looked down at Dominic, half-immersed in cocoa, and said darkly: “I ought to take the hide off you!”
But the tone was reassuring to Dominic’s ears; he knew enough about parents to know that when they begin to talk about it as something they ought to do, the resolution necessary to the act has already left them. “The stick!” he said, emerging from the mug with a creamy-brown moustache, “I forgot about it! It was the one, wasn’t it?” His face was beginning to melt from the slightly stunned immobility of shock to a rather painful excitement, with a patch of hectic rose on either cheek, and snapping yellow lights in his eyes. Bunty, having made room for everyone and given them all coffee, came and sat on the sofa beside him, and put a restraining hand on his arm. He liked the touch, and turned on her a brief, vague smile, but went back instantly to his question. “It was the right one, wasn’t it?”
“Not much doubt about it,” said George, eyeing him thoughtfully. “The shield fits, even to the crumpled edge. The place has been stained over to match the rest, and very well done, too, but the holes are there to be seen, and the outline of the shape, too, in a good light. It’s a ridged horn handle, well polished with use, but it has some very deep furrows. Even if it was washed in the outflow, there ought to be some traces to be found in those furrows.”
“And all this time,” said Io, staring fascinated, “he just hid it by carrying it everywhere with him.”
“Can you think of a better way? And he didn’t know actually that anyone was looking for it. The shield was never mentioned; it came too late for the inquest, and nothing was ever published about it even when it did turn up.”