“Comes another question,” said Laura, “if you will not think me impertinent. Your own initials intrigue me very much. Would you have any objection to telling me what they stand for? This is only idle curiosity, I realise that, but Q.X. are so very unusual a combination that I can’t stop trying to work out what they stand for. The nearest I can come up with is Quentin Xavier. Am I on the right track?”
“No,” replied Owen with a smile. “My names are Questor Xenophon. At school I was known as Quexo, the O, of course, standing for Owen.”
“So nobody bothered about the letter L,” said Catherine, “or you could have been called Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec god with the flint-tipped dart at the winter solstice.”
As though he had come prepared, Owen fished out a modern, flat briefcase from the shelf under the table and from it handed round sheets he tore from a writing-pad.
“What, exactly, is the point at issue?” went on Catherine, making a scribble or two on her paper to make certain that her ball-point worked. Before Owen, if he intended to do so, could answer, the nuns came in. Chairs were brought over from another table by Stewart and Lionel and the circle was enlarged to accommodate the Sisters. Sister Pascal said she hoped they were not intruding. They had hoped to go for a walk, but the rain prevented this. They were cordially invited to join in the game and were given paper and pencil.
“Examinations usually have a time-limit,” said Capella. “How long are we allowed?”
“I don’t think we need set a time-limit,” said Owen, “but perhaps we should keep in mind that the judge has to study nine sets of answers and she will not want to stay up all night.”
“Oh,” said Dame Beatrice, “I can hardly judge and assess the papers tonight. Will not tomorrow evening do? If a prize is to be awarded I must not be forced into hasty conclusions.”
“How sensible,” said Catherine.
“It sounds very official and cold-blooded,” said Clarissa.
“I still think it’s a silly game,” said Capella, “but I suppose it will pass the time.”
“I thought, though,” said Stewart, “that in this game one was supposed to give oral answers so as to keep the party going.”
“Not the way I play it,” said Owen.
“Obviously the judge herself can’t play, but am I to take part?” asked Laura.
“As you please, Mrs. Gavin.”
“Then what are you all going to think if Dame B. awards me the prize?—for I should like to play.”
“That you deserved to win, of course,” said Lionel.
“Let’s get on with it,” said Stewart. “I want a nightcap before they close the bar.”
“You drink far too much for a boy of your age,” said Catherine.
(“Good Lord! The motherly touch!” thought Laura.)
“Yes, I shall have the stomach of an alderman by the time I’m thirty. How do you spell ipecacuanha? I need a purgative,” said Stewart.
“Get on with your truth-telling and don’t be disgusting, little boy.”
“Great-aunt, I love you, and I will be good.”
“Well, now, here are my questions,” said Owen, “and I shall include myself in the competition unless the majority rules that I am ineligible.”
“It depends upon your list of questions,” said Lionel.
“Well, here they are. First: why did you want to join this tour? Second: what would you have been doing otherwise? Third: what is your secret fear and how does it relate to your favourite superstition?”
“He didn’t think of all that on the spur of the moment,” muttered Stewart in Capella’s ear. “Prenez-garde, as Abbie would say.” He scribbled busily and was the first to hand in his answers. The others took more time, but one by one the papers came in. Dame Beatrice gathered them up, said goodnight, and, followed by Laura, went upstairs. She was only moderately interested in the collection of written answers. Some might be truthful, others not, but few, if any, she thought, were likely to contain the whole truth, and some of the answers to the second question would most likely contain lies, evasions, and half-truths. She thought she might be able to sort these out, but she knew so little of her companions’ private lives that there was bound to be a considerable amount of guesswork in her conclusions.
She was interested that Owen had obviously come prepared for some game to be played which involved writing, since he had all the materials very much to hand, but this could merely be the provision made by the leader of the expedition against just such a long, wet evening as the party had experienced.
“Well, bed will suit me tonight,” said Laura, when they had reached the first-floor landing.
“And me,” said Dame Beatrice. “I’m sorry I can’t deal with these papers tonight, but it would not be fair to the contestants to do so. These days in the open air are conducive to sleep. Come in and help me to get out of this dress. I am too tired to be a contortionist tonight, and it requires that kind of personal activity to reach these back fastenings.”
As she said this, a group of the others passed her and Laura, said goodnight, and went along the corridor. Mystified by the request for help which she knew was unnecessary, Laura followed Dame Beatrice to her room.
“Why this thusness?” asked Laura, switching on the light as she closed the door.
“Oh, merely precautionary measures. There is bound to be somebody interested in somebody else’s answers, so I intend to keep open house for half an hour when I have dictated these writings to you and you have taken them down in shorthand. As I finish with each paper I shall mark your shorthand with an unobtrusive symbol and then we shall see what happens.”
“Stewart’s initial is a plain S, of course. S for serpent, would you say? I thought he was playing off Catherine against Capella this evening, didn’t you?”
“May I dictate?”
“Oh, sorry. Fire away. Why, exactly, do we need two copies of these probably wildly untruthful screeds?”
“Time will show. If it does not, then I shall have wasted your time, that is all.”
“Those who pay for things have a right to waste them.”
“Not so, but very far otherwise, dear child. Nobody has a right to waste anything, not even his breath.”
The dictation was soon completed, each shorthand piece being marked with the required initial.
“Now what?” asked Laura.
“Now you put your shorthand into your handbag and keep it safely until I ask you to transcribe it or read it back to me. So now for bed. If anything happens, I will tell you all about it in the morning.”
“Look here, you’re not taking any risks, are you? All this smacks of conspiracy.”
“No. A conspiracy involves more than one person. I think somebody’s curiosity may outrun his or her discretion, that is all. Those questions, in my opinion, were loaded and, since the essence of the Truth Game is to cause laughter at the expense and to the embarrassment of at least one of the players, this method of asking for written answers which are not to be read aloud has the element of novelty about it, and there must be some reason for that.”
“Whose curiosity are we talking about?”
“Almost anybody’s. I said that the party has fused. I am beginning to think that nothing could be further from the truth. Well, goodnight, and off you go.”
Having closed the door behind Laura, Dame Beatrice laid the papers on the bedside table, put on a dressing-gown, picked up sponge-bag and towel and, having put out the light, she left her door ajar and crossed the corridor to the nearest bathroom. She had bathed before dinner, so she merely turned on both taps, sat down on the bathroom stool, and waited. After a while she turned off the taps, waited again, and a quarter of an hour later she pulled out the plug, gave herself ten minutes more, and then returned to her room.
As soon as she examined the papers she knew that somebody had taken advantage of the open door and had been into her room. There had been nine sheets and there were still nine sheets. Moreover, so far as she could
remember, they were in the same order in the little pile as when she had left them. One of them, however, no longer had her tiny, secret mark of identification on it.
Dame Beatrice read it and learned that the writer had joined the tour at the pressing invitation of her cousin, Professor Owen; that otherwise she would have been getting on with her next novel; that her secret fear was of spiders and that her favourite superstition was that horse-shoes hung the right way up brought good luck.
The first two answers were probably true enough, but anybody in the party could have guessed them. The rest of the answers were trite and might have applied to hundreds of women. In other words, nothing in the substituted paper gave any clue to the identity of the forger. As for the handwriting, it was very like the convent-school Continental hand of Sister Pascal, thought Dame Beatrice, making comparison with the paper marked P.
The nun was the very last person to have made the substitution, Dame Beatrice decided. The most likely candidate was Owen, who might have wanted to know why Catherine had accepted his invitation; although Stewart, out of a mixture of curiosity and mischief, was a possibility and so was Capella. There remained, apart from Sister Veronica and Laura, both of whom it would be ridiculous to suspect, Lionel and Clarissa, who were, as Laura would have put it, “the dark horses of the outfit.” Dame Beatrice had her reasons for thinking that Laura might be right, so she put them on her mental list of suspects and picked up Stewart’s contribution. As she had expected, Stewart had chosen flippancy as the better part of truth. He had written:
“I joined the tour as an alternative to joining the Foreign Legion. This answers questions one and two. My secret fear is that the goblins ’ull git me ef I don’t watch out. My favourite superstition is that it is unlucky to fall over a black cat in a coal-cellar if its eyes are shut.”
Dame Beatrice exchanged her dressing-gown for her night attire and went to bed. In the morning she shredded all the papers into tiny pieces, mixed these well together, put the lot into the large envelope which Owen had provided—undoubtedly he had come prepared, she thought—screwed up the envelope and put it into the waste-paper basket. She told Laura what she had done.
“And anybody who can put that Humpty-Dumpty together again is better at jig-saw puzzles than I am,” she said as they went down to breakfast next morning. “I shall depend upon your shorthand a little later on. Incidentally, I shall award the prize to Sister Pascal, whatever her entry is like. They will all expect to have the winning answers read aloud and hers will be the safest, in every way, because nobody will be knowledgeable enough to attempt any reading-between-the-lines of a nun’s disclosures.”
“Well, nobody is likely to quarrel with your choice, if that’s the entry you choose,” said Laura. “I wonder what today will bring forth, if anything? When shall you announce your verdict?”
“Not until this evening at the earliest, and it is more likely that I shall wait until we have been over to Arran. People may want to go to bed early tonight.”
Laura would have liked to know the reason for the destruction of the original documents, but was content to bide her time.
CHAPTER 5
DIVISION OF FORCES: (1) MACHRIE MOOR
“Thy unmolested peace, unshared cave,
Possess as lord, not tenant of thy grave.”
William Basse
In the bustle of preparing for departure, the payment of bills, the tipping of hotel porters, and the loading up of the cars, nobody mentioned the Truth Game, let alone asked any questions concerning Dame Beatrice’s opinion of the entries.
There was to be a short stop for coffee at Carlisle, lunch would be taken at Dumfries, and the party was booked in for the night at Ardrossan ready for the crossing to Brodick on Arran in the morning.
After lunch, at Owen’s suggestion, there was to be a change-round of passengers, but, to begin with, the party travelled as on the first day. Stewart offered to take over the driving in order to give Lionel a chance to relax and enjoy the scenery, but Lionel, not too politely, refused to consider the proposition. He pointed out that the journey was not long enough and the scenery not exciting enough to warrant a change of drivers. Clarissa said that she preferred to be in the front seat (“for if you drove you would want Capella beside you, I suppose”) and was accustomed to Lionel’s driving and to navigating for him. Capella, without her opinion being called for, chimed in and said that she wanted to arrive in Ardrossan in one piece.
“What makes you think I’m not a safe driver?” demanded Stewart.
“You haven’t had enough experience.”
“I’ve been a driver—and with a clean record, too, I’d have you know—for seven years.”
“Seven from twenty leaves thirteen, so don’t tell lies.”
“What makes you think I’m only twenty?”
“You said you’re writing a thesis.”
“Post-graduate. I’m twenty-six.”
“Honest?”
“Cross my heart. And now I’ll let you into a little secret. No, on second thoughts, I don’t think I will.”
“Perhaps you’d rather tell it to Catherine.”
“Hey, hey! Are you suffering from an attack of little green monsters?”
“Certainly not. She is a very beautiful woman and I wouldn’t blame you.”
“ ‘Too soothe and mild your lowland airs/For one whose hope is gone,’ ” said Stewart.
“Poor Stewart! Did she keep you at bay?”
“Wait for it, or you won’t get the compliment you’re angling for. Ready? Well, this is it: ‘I’m thinking of a little tarn, Brown, very lone.’ ”
“I don’t call that a compliment.” She released her hand from his and moved away from him. Stewart began to sing, very softly, “Horo, my nut-brown maiden,” but she remained aloof.
Lionel and Clarissa also appeared disinclined for conversation, and after lunch Lionel had Capella beside him with the nuns on the back seat. Owen took on Dame Beatrice, while Laura convoyed Clarissa, Stewart, and Catherine—the last two, to Laura’s interested speculation, sharing the back seat while Clarissa sat next to her in the front.
The party put up at a hotel by the harbour and after dinner Stewart announced his own plans for the morrow. He regarded the stones on Machrie Moor, he said, as of less importance to his work than the much more interesting and complex sites round about the village of Kilmartin on the mainland. He proposed, therefore, to leave the party to make the crossing next morning to Brodick, arrange for his own transport, and meet the others again when they returned from Arran.
“We’re spending another night here, anyway,” he pointed out, “so I shan’t be upsetting any plans.”
“The Kilmartin valley?” said Owen. “I wonder whether that would appeal to anybody else?”
“What is so special about it?” asked Clarissa. Stewart produced maps, plans, and photographs and soon had an interested audience. Clarissa looked at Lionel and said that it sounded very interesting, and that she would like to go.
“Not without me,” said Lionel. Owen asked whether anybody else would prefer Kilmartin to Arran. He himself would like to go, but there was the question of seats in the cars if the party were to divide up. Catherine thereupon opted for the new plan and so, to Laura’s surprise, did Dame Beatrice, who was immediately invited to travel in Owen’s car with himself and Catherine, unless Laura also wanted to go to Kilmartin.
This left the nuns, Capella, and Laura herself to make up their minds. Sister Pascal said that she and Sister Veronica were prepared to fit in as the rest of the party dictated, but Laura thought she caught a pleading glance from the younger nun, who was clearly disappointed when she heard that Owen and Stewart had changed the original plan. The whole question was settled by Capella, who said that she had been looking forward to Arran and would make the crossing alone if everybody else was going to Kilmartin.
Laura caught Dame Beatrice’s eye, made a slight gesture, and received a nod which she was s
ure she could interpret correctly.
“Arran for me,” she said firmly, “and that looks as though I’ve collected a car-load, then.”
“Oh, but—” began Sister Pascal. Laura did not allow her to finish.
“I’ve been looking forward to Arran, too,” she said. “I’ll be only too glad of company. That’s settled, then. We’ll see the others off after breakfast tomorrow, and then I’ll go out and buy things for a picnic lunch that we can eat in our fingers. We’ll have a real day out tomorrow, just the four of us.”
She looked at Dame Beatrice again and received approval in the form of a ferocious leer. Later on, when there was an opportunity, Laura said.
“So you’re going on the warpath tomorrow.” Dame Beatrice cackled.
“It is good of you to help me to separate the sheep from the goats,” she said.
“So there is something cooking,” said Laura. “I knew it in my bones. Did something happen last night which you haven’t told me?”
“You are jumping to conclusions.”
“Oh, oh! Who mentioned sheep and goats?”
“I believe I did.”
“So you’ve got the ship’s company sorted out.”
“The Truth Game may have done that for me.”
“That Owen is a deep schemer. The rumours are right, then. You were asked to come along to vet somebody. I knew there was something behind that Truth Game. Owen made his own rules, didn’t he? Did he ask you to—”
“He did not ask me to do anything except read the answers and adjudicate upon them.”
“Why did you make me take them down in shorthand?”
“Because I intended to conduct a little experiment and I wanted to make certain that I had a second means of access to the various answers.”
“You speak in riddles. What exactly happened last night?”
“I gave the opportunity to anybody who wished to avail himself or herself of it to enter my room and remove any of the papers which contained a too-revealing truth. Somebody did take such opportunity. Somebody removed Miss Catherine’s answers and substituted another set.”
“Good Lord! Whoever it was took a pretty big risk. Suppose you had come back and found him at it!”
The Whispering Knights (Mrs. Bradley) Page 6