Mr. Temperley, with a coup de poing in his hand, or pottering about in some hill fort, or prodding with his stick where rabbits had been burrowing on a Roman site was completely another person. Moreover, Mr. Temperley, the assumed conventionalist, had discovered in the sixties how little of the lawyer was left in him. He put on legality with his clothes, and became in his solitary moments, palæolithic and naked. The world’s youth had recrudesced in him moods of primitive candour and of exquisite cunning. He had recovered a youngness that refused to conform. He prodded life anew and found it full of mischief and ironic provocations. Its solemn assumptions made him chuckle.
Mr. Temperley took his stick and his Panama hat, and leaving Mr. Maggs, his articled clerk, in charge of life’s dustiness, he set out for Brandon Heath. The day was hot, and Mr. Temperley did not hurry, but within sight of the shade of the Brandon woods, he heard footsteps behind him that were both hot and hurried.
“Excuse me, Mr. Temperley, I believe?”
Mr. Temperley found a strange young man at his elbow, an undersized young man wearing spectacles.
“I represent the Melford Argus, sir.”
“Ah, the Press,” said Mr. Temperley. “What can I do for you?”
“I understand the man Ballard was an estate tenant of yours, sir?”
“The man Ballard?”
“Yes, the fellow at Beech Farm.”
Mr. Temperley could be most debonair to people he disliked. Sweet suavity was the surest armour, and innocence could be double-tongued.
“Yes, that is so. And what do you want with me?”
“I wondered whether you could give me any information, Mr. Temperley, about these people.”
“Which people?”
“The man Ballard—and the woman who murdered him.”
They had reached the shade of the trees, and Mr. Temperley took off his hat as though he found it refreshing to walk bareheaded in the shade.
“Did she murder him?”
“The obvious assumption, sir, even though the police are a little reticent about it. But I suppose you knew these people?”
“O, hardly at all, Mr.——.”
“Soaper. I assumed that you might be able to give me some information that isn’t just gossip.”
“And what do the gossips say?”
Mr. Soaper was beginning to think that Mr. Temperley was a somewhat senile person.
“Ballard drank a good deal, and had a beast of a temper, sir. The woman——.”
“Mrs. Ballard.”
“The woman Ballard seems to have been rather a poor thing, hysterical, I imagine. All the atmosphere necessary, sir, for an emotional flare-up.”
Mr. Temperley was tapping the wire fence gently with his stick.
“Excuse me, Mr. Soaper, but there is one thing that has always puzzled me.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“When exactly does the psychological moment arrive for the dropping of a prefix?”
“Prefix, sir?”
“Perhaps I should have said title. When we enter a lavatory we are welcomed either as ladies or gentlemen, but when we arrive at certain states of publicity we are not even Mr. or Mrs. Just Ballard, or Smith, or the woman. How do you decide, Mr. Soaper, when the psychological instant has arrived for your paper to become even less polite than a public lavatory?”
The young man stared at him. He was beginning to wonder whether Mr. Temperley was quite as senile as he seemed, but before he could discover any answer to that question they were out of the shade and in the sudden presence of a third person.
Mr. Temperley put on his hat.
“Good morning, Luce. Going shopping?”
Mr. Temperley welcomed the largeness of Luce, who, pipe in mouth, and with the sun upon him, might, like Apollo, dispel this little human miasma. Mr. Temperley did not excuse himself to the Melford Argus. He waited for Luce to come down the path between two banks of heather, and the Press, finding itself superfluous, left these two gentlemen together.
No. Luce was not going shopping, nor need Mr. Temperley accuse him of being crudely curious because he felt moved to take some human interest in the tragedy of Beech Farm.
“A bad business, sir.”
Mr. Temperley, satisfied that he had shed the young man in spectacles, took Luce into his confidence.
“Thanks, Luce, for preserving me from the Press. Yes, it’s a bad business. If you are going that way we can go together.”
The Melford Argus had not yet disappeared from sight. It had paused under a Scotch fir, to scribble in a note-book. Mr. Temperley, raising his stick, indicated the sedulous scribbler.
“Let that get on, Luce. If you are not careful he will have you down in print as the mystery man of the lone tower. But one shouldn’t be pert to the Press. One has to remember that they are our masters.”
Luce had his hands in his pockets. He withdrew one of them to take his pipe from his mouth.
“They have left us no adjectives.”
“Even less than that, Luce. Everything on the front page in large letters. Plenty of blood and brains splashed about. And the world likes it.”
Luce took a pull at his pipe.
“Would you like to repeat the Noah legend, sir?”
“Yes, but for the knowledge that the whole business would repeat itself, just as one repeats one’s past. At the age of twenty-three I was a hot-hearted young rebel. At the age of seventy-three I am again a rebel.”
Luce gave him a glance of profound attention.
“In this particular case, also?”
“Absolutely so. Call it an accident or an act of God. Because an impossible brute like Ballard gets himself shot, why should we agree to let the real victim be hunted by Tom, Dick and Harry?”
“It’s pretty damnable. And have you any theory, sir?”
“I imagine that Mrs. Ballard has drowned herself, or that she will be found dead somewhere in the woods. Shock, and exposure and exhaustion can kill. I would leave her in peace, wherever she is. There is one curious feature in the case, she had a dog.”
“And they haven’t found the dog?”
“No.”
“Rather puzzling.”
“Very. I had a few words this morning with the detective-inspector in charge of the case. The order of the day seems to be ‘Cherchez le chien.’ ”
He paused and prodded the soil with his stick.
“The fact is, Luce, I’m finding myself on the side of Nature and Mother Earth. If the poor thing happens to be alive, I’d like to see her escape society.”
“Rather a hopeless chance, sir.”
“Yes, damnably so. She is better dead, perhaps. No cage business. Death is so kind and final.”
Luce was silent. He was thinking of the night’s adventure, and how nearly a dead dog’s body had betrayed them.
“Yes, so kind and final. I suppose I ought to confess that I’m on my way to help in the search.”
“You, Luce?”
“Well, not quite as a bloodhound.”
“And if you happened to be the one to find her?”
“One might be a little more gentle than the official world.”
“No ultimate salvation in that, Luce.”
“No, sir; I’m afraid not.”
So, coming to the farm, they found it very much Tom, Dick and Harry, for the official world was organizing a methodical combing of the woods and heaths. Here were the police, and a little crowd of volunteer beaters, and Boy Scouts. Boy Scouts! Mr. Temperley’s eyebrows bristled. Why introduce these damned urchins into such a blood hunt? Luce stood smoking his pipe and watching Inspector Ford talking to a new autocrat in a lounge suit and a bowler hat. They were going to draw Chellworth Heath.
Luce knocked out his pipe and put it in his pocket.
“I think I’ll go with them, sir.”
“I hope you will draw a blank, Luce.”
“So do I.”
The pack was ordered out to work across the fields and to sea
rch hedges, coppices and ditches on the way to Chellworth Heath. Luce found himself between Brandon’s half-wit and an under-keeper from a neighbouring estate. Brandon’s half-wit kept up a perpetual sniffing. He was of the loquacious, word-picking order. The keeper was a laconic and hard-bitten person, accustomed to solitude and to using his ears and eyes. The day was hot, and the search went forward into the glare and gorse of Chellworth Heath. There were stretches of heather to be waded through, bramble patches and nests of dead fern to be probed. But Chellworth Heath delivered up no secret. The only living creature they disturbed was a very dirty tramp asleep in the heather.
3
It was on the way home that Luce passed the caravan. He had broken away from the body of searchers, and had turned back from Chellworth Heath, and having discovered as an amateur tramp that he possessed the wild man’s flair for finding his way through strange country, he had attempted a short cut. He came quite suddenly upon the caravan tucked away in a corner of a little meadow where Chellworth Heath touched cultivated country. He saw a blue car parked under a tree, with a green canvas bivvy beside it. The caravan itself stood a little apart; its door was shut, the curtains drawn across its windows.
This house on wheels had more than one suggestion to offer him. From a diminutive clothes-line suspended between the tree and the hood of the car dangled two pairs of stockings, a pair of socks, three handkerchiefs, a dishcloth, and a shirt. Obviously, the caravan was bi-sexual, and its lady had been busy washing, but for the moment the camping-ground was deserted. He found himself coveting a pair of those stockings, for he was wise as to the state of Rachel’s hose, but the risk of being caught as a petty sneak-thief was too great. Moreover, this motor-caravan had other inspirations to offer. He could drive a car, and how easy it would be for two people to disappear in a caravan, slip half-way across England in a night and become just casual caravaners.
There was a field gate leading into the meadow. Luce had a foot on one of the stretchers of the gate when an unseen dog lying under the caravan woke up and spotted him. The dog was chained to a wheel, and he emerged to the full length of the chain and barked vigorously at Luce. His protests were adequate. Luce waved a friendly hand at the animal and walked on, but the inspiration of that house on wheels remained with him.
What were the immediate necessities?
To keep Rachel Ballard hidden until the mystery of her disappearance had become still more mysterious, and then to smuggle her into some temporary refuge until they could dare the final adventure. To get her out of the country, that was the ultimate problem. But how? He had begun to appreciate the difficulties ahead of him, and in appreciating them and reflecting upon them to caution himself against flurry and precipitation. Had not too much haste ruined many a getaway? Ruthless, mathematical deliberation was the thing. Authority would be watching the ports, combing the cities and sea-coast towns, but would it cast an eye upon two people idling in a caravan somewhere in Wales? He might assume that Authority had no reason to suspect its victim of being associated with a man.
Meanwhile, clothes were the dilemma, stockings, shoes, a hat, a coat of some sort. How the devil did a lone man set about purchasing a woman’s wardrobe without stimulating suspicion? Caravaners might be regarded as casual people, but she must have shoes.
And then he remembered telling old Temperley that he was going to Switzerland. Well, would it not be possible to vary the plan, let it be known that friends had asked him to go caravaning? And his ultimate leaving of the tower? He would have to stage a return to it before his final exodus. Rachel would have to be concealed somewhere. And how to explain that final exodus, and to rationalize the sudden ending of his tenancy?
What if he set the place alight, and pleaded crass carelessness? The building was insured, and his furniture mere rubbish.
But to leave the country? Two passports would be necessary. How was he to procure a passport for her? And then—he remembered.
XIV
But he was to be confronted by other emotional realities, and to be made to realize that a sensitive woman cannot be left locked up for long hours in an empty building without beginning to suffer from doubts and self-accusations. He had come back full of his inspiration, to find her sitting quietly with a book. Her quietism was illusive. She sat and watched him drag an old leather attaché case from a cupboard and spill its contents on the table, maps, old letters, note-books. He was rummaging sedulously, fiercely. She heard him emit a sound of satisfaction; it was almost the exultant “Ha!” of a man whose sword has touched his enemy. He held something that looked like a very slim, blue-covered book. He opened it, turning over pink pages.
“By Jove, it’s still valid.”
She rose from her chair and stood beside him. The passport lay on the table, held open by his thumb and fingers. He was looking at the photo of a woman, with a signature below it.—N. F. Luce.
And then he seemed to become conscious of her standing and looking with him at the photo of his dead wife. That it had caused him sudden qualms and stirrings of old memories was like the intervention of some other person. He withdrew his hand from the little book, and it closed itself to display the white number and name spaces, the coat of arms in gold on a dark blue ground.
He glanced at her. He seemed to divine in her a shrinking from the issue. Something had to be said. Had poor Norah been with them in the spirit, would she have been petty and possessive, and reproached him for putting her travelling-shoes at the service of another woman? Had they not agreed not to let dead presences exercise domination. He picked up the passport, and tapped it with a finger.
“One has only to change the photo. The description tallies amazingly.”
She was reading the gold letters on the cover. British Passport. His dead wife’s passport. A little inward shudder went through her. Stepping into dead shoes! Though her shrinking from the issue was dressing itself in this mood of the moment.
“I don’t know whether——.”
She seemed to move a little away from him, and he had a feeling that she did not want to be touched. She did, and she did not. It would depend upon his manner of doing it.
“Doubts? Why not tell me?”
He had replaced the passport on the table. They had forgotten that the window was open, and with an exclamation he went and closed it.
“Isn’t that a sign of finality?”
“It is not too late to turn back.”
“Think so?”
“I could walk out of this place and no one need know. I could go and say that I had been in the woods.”
Some impulse made him pick up the passport and slip it into his pocket. Had that photograph upset her, roused some emotional reaction? He looked at her. He would have said that once again her face had become the face of her tragedy.
“Were you happily married, John?”
“Yes.”
The fingers of one hand were moving over the surface of the table like those of a blind woman touching embossed letters.
“Much better let me go, John. Better for you, dear. What am I bringing to you?”
“Isn’t that my business?”
“A happy memory. And this horror! O, my dear, if I should bring you—bad things? Much better let me go.”
With a tenderness that was wiser than he knew he took her gently by the shoulders.
“Didn’t we settle that question yesterday? I’m not going to let you go.”
“But haven’t you thought, John? I’m nothing; I have nothing. It might mean that your whole life——.”
“My dear, in these matters one decides first and does the thinking afterwards. That’s Nature’s way, I believe. It was decided for me—I rather imagine—all in half a minute—when you stood on my doorstep. It seems to me inevitable now. If I had been just a greedy, unimaginative beast——.”
“I shouldn’t have come to you, John.”
“Well, doesn’t that prove that the thing was meant?”
“But, my dear!”
“Someone is being sacrificial? Is that your—trouble? Well, let me tell you that I was one of those people who was in danger of becoming a potterer. No real urge left, and that’s not good for a man.”
And then he picked her up and sat down in a chair with her in his lap. “Now, listen to me. I’ll tell you what we are going to do.” She let her head sink down on his shoulder. This was the love that she needed, a love that refused to argue with a hypersensitive conscience, but took it in its arms and spoke of the open sea. She wanted her conscience ravishing; she wanted to be carried away in the arms of this sea-rover. She had been distracted and hesitant for his sake, and now that he was strong enough to smother her struggles, she surrendered and lay still.
“Listen to me.”
Did she ask to be convinced that all these impossible things could be possible? Did not those big arms of his make them seem possible?
“I’ve got to get you a hat and shoes.”
“Yes, John.”
“It looks as though I shall have to go shopping in London. The caravan business will be easy. We can get away at night. Now, about that passport. Put the kettle on; we’ll get to work at once.”
She did not quite understand what was in his mind, but she slipped off his knees and lit the stove.
“Steam, my dear; we’ll try it. I happen to have a camera here. I shall have to buy a small developing outfit.”
She put the kettle on the stove.
“It seems rather—horrible, John. Do you think?”
“That she would have minded?”
“Yes.”
“My dear, she was not that sort. Besides, if there is any survival—one hopes and believes—that selfishness is purged.”
“Aren’t we being selfish, John?”
“Yes, utterly, and why not? How else can we be saved?”
It was a delicate business steaming off that photo without discolouring the pink page or causing it to pulp or blister, but Luce had hands and the patience of a large and resolute creature. A clean table-knife and some blotting paper assisted, but before attempting the steaming process, he had taken the precaution of cutting out a cardboard frame to protect the page. She stood and watched him sitting at the table, and his deliberate and deft handling of this other problem. Would that vital page be soiled or made to crinkle? She was aware of him drawing a deep and almost joyous breath.
The Woman at The Door Page 14