by M C Beaton
As they heard him coming to the kitchen door, the Maguire sisters ran along the narrow passage and then stood staring in apparent fascination at the whalebone corsets. The burly youth strode past them.
“Let’s follow him,” hissed Molly.
The youth was keeping up a good pace but not once did he stop and look behind him. They followed him up through the streets, past the railway station, and along a narrow country lane. They kept well behind him, making sure that they only kept him in sight. A faint breeze had sprung up, bringing with it all the summer scents of the fields and the sea. The idyllic landscape made the squat figure in front of them strangely menacing. He at last stopped outside a small brick cottage on a rise, pushed open the door, and went in.
“Now we know where he lives. Back to the post office,” said Molly.
Mary began to feel frightened. “Shouldn’t we go to the police, Molly?” she asked timidly.
“No,” said Molly. “Of course not. He would be arrested and then that poor woman’s story would come out in court and be all over the town newspaper.”
At the post office the woman was still sitting at the table. Molly rapped on the window.
The woman looked up, startled, and then went to the kitchen door. The girls walked around to the back.
Her eyes still red with weeping, the woman introduced herself. “I am Mrs. Pomfret, the postmistress. I am afraid the post office is closed today. But if there is anything you need urgently…”
“We need to talk to you,” said Molly firmly. “I reckon you could do with a little help. You see, we heard—”
Mrs. Pomfret blushed crimson, gasped, and then began to cry. Molly put an arm around the thin, shaking shoulders and drew her into the kitchen. “I’m going to make you a nice cup of tea and you’re going to tell me all about it,” she said firmly. “No one should have to keep that amount of trouble to themselves.”
Glad of something ordinary to do, Mary took over and bustled about the stove preparing the tea. Molly sat down at the table and took Mrs. Pomfret’s hand in her own. “Tell me about it,” she said, her voice warm with sympathy.
Without knowing why she did it, Mrs. Pomfret found herself telling this strange American girl all about her trouble. Mr. Pomfret was dead. He had died of diphtheria two years ago. They both came from another town. Mr. Pomfret had not been free to marry her. His wife was a devout Roman Catholic and divorce was too expensive in any case. They had both decided to move away and start a new life together. Then Billy Barnstable had appeared upon the scene. Somehow he had ferreted out her secret and had started to blackmail her. If she lost her job as postmistress, she would be ruined. Did he live with his father and mother? No. He lodged with old Mr. Wothers who was as deaf as a post.
While the postmistress had been talking, Molly had been looking vaguely around the dark little kitchen. Her eyes alighted on a game rifle lying in one corner.
“Is that yours?” she asked.
Mrs. Pomfret stared. “It was Mister Pomfret’s,” she said sadly. “Used it for shooting rabbits, he did. Not that I know anything about guns.”
“Have you any cartridges?”
“Well now,” said Mrs. Pomfret in surprise. “The things you ask! Yes, dear, there’s a box of them nasty things on the mantelshelf.”
Molly looked at them carefully. “If you would lend me this gun this evening after dark, I think… I just think… I could put an end to your troubles.”
“Here now!” exclaimed the postmistress in alarm. “This isn’t the wild West.”
“Trust me,” said Molly gently. “Just trust me.…”
CHAPTER THREE
Mary was shivering with fear. Molly was excited. The hour was eleven o’clock. They had managed to creep out of the Holden mansion without being observed.
As they hurried along the sandy beach to Hadsea, Molly reflected that this was surely much more exciting than a London Season. Even more exciting than meeting King Edward himself!
Mary felt that her adored sister was making some dreadful mistake. Both were huddled in long plaid capes over their school dresses. It was a bright moonlit night and the sea spread out to their left like a sheet of silver, the only sound in the quiet night being the soft sibilant whispering of the tiny waves on the beach.
The warm glow from an oil lamp lit up the kitchen at the back of the post office. The postmistress was nervously waiting for them.
“I must be mad,” she whispered, handing Molly the gun. She watched in amazement as Molly expertly snapped it open and began loading it with a practiced hand. “What if Constable Jenkins should see you?” Mr. Jenkins was the town policeman.
“Don’t worry,” said Molly with a grin. “There isn’t going to be anyone awake but us.”
Both girls whispered their good-byes. Molly hid the gun under her long cape and they sped silently along the narrow lanes that led out of the town. All too soon for Mary, Mr. Wothers’s small brick cottage appeared on the rise, silhouetted against the moon.
Molly felt Mary’s arm tremble against her own. She should have persuaded her young sister to stay behind. But it was too late now. May as well get on with it. Mrs. Pomfret had said that Mr. Wothers was stone-deaf. Molly fervently hoped this was the case and that the repulsive Billy Barnstable would answer the door himself. Suddenly feeling as nervous as Mary and hoping that Barnstable did not keep a dog, Molly raised her hand and rapped firmly on the kitchen door at the back of the house. The front door looked as if it hadn’t been opened in years.
There was a long silence. Molly rapped again. The yellow light of a candle flame sprang up in one of the upstairs rooms and shortly afterward the light disappeared and reappeared in the kitchen downstairs. There was the sound of bolts being drawn back. The door opened, and Billy Barnstable stood looking at them, his nightshirt stuffed into his trousers. “What you want?” he demanded, and then gave a cavernous yawn.
“We want you to stop blackmailing Mrs. Pomfret,” said Molly.
Billy Barnstable held up the candle and looked at the girls in its flickering light. An unlovely smile creased his fat features. “You’re nuthin’ but a couple o’ kids,” he laughed. “Get back to your ma and stop pokin’ your noses in where they don’t belong.”
“All right,” said Molly angrily. “I am no longer asking you to stop blackmailing Mrs. Pomfret. I’m telling you.”
Molly backed away from the kitchen door into the garden as she spoke, with Mary hiding behind her. Billy’s smile grew even broader. He thought Molly was frightened and strolled after her into the garden.
“An’ who’s going to stop me? You?” And he gave a great fat laugh.
“Yes, me. Me and this,” said Molly. She took out the rifle from under her coat and leveled it straight at Billy. “No one knows we’re here,” she said in a voice like ice. “I can put a bullet through your fat heart and no one would be any the wiser. And if you do not leave Mrs. Pomfret alone, that is exactly what I shall do.”
Billy quickly recovered from his initial fright at the sight of the gun. “Don’t try to scare me, missy. You don’t know one end o’ that thing from the other.”
Molly backed against the garden wall, as far away from Billy as she could get. Then she raised the rifle. There was a loud report and the candle went out. Billy realized with horror that she had neatly shot out the flame.
“Still not convinced?” the dreadful girl went on.
She saw in the bright moonlight a rusty can on top of a fence post in the adjoining field. Again that wicked-looking gun went up. Bang! And the can spun from the top of the post and fell to the grass. It was the shot of a true marksman.
Billy was now well and truly frightened. The only things he ever read were penny dreadfuls, which regularly featured stories of the wild West, where people went around shooting their neighbors with simply horrible abandon. He realized with a shock that this girl was American, the spitting image of Deirdre of Dead Man’s Gulch in his latest story.
“I’ll tell t
he perleece on you,” he whimpered.
“Oh, no you won’t,” said Molly. “Or I’ll have you dragged off to court for blackmailing. And don’t dare even poke your ugly nose into that post office to buy a stamp. You’re a farm laborer, aren’t you? Well, just remember, I can pick you off as you work in the fields. Think of that, Master Billy. Think of it every time you bend over.”
The unnatural girl gave an awful laugh.
Billy cringed even more. “Look, missy, it was a bit of a joke, like. I never meant to do any harm.”
“Starving an old lady out of her income is criminal,” said Molly. “Which reminds me. Get up those stairs and bring down any money you have, and if I think it’s not enough, I shall shoot you first in one knee cap and then in the other until you produce the goods.”
Billy fled and returned, gasping and sweating, with a dirty tin box. There seemed to be quite a lot of money in it.
“Thank you,” she said sweetly. “If I were you, Master Billy, I would find a job in some other town. You’ll get out of this town if you know what’s good for you. Now, skedaddle!”
Billy needed no second bidding. That “get out of town” rang in his ears with a familiar sound. That was what Deirdre of Dead Man’s Gulch had said to the rustler. Sweating with fear, he climbed the stairs to his small attic to begin packing up his belongings.
Mary and Molly walked off, triumphant. Mary was desperately trying to stifle a nervous fit of the giggles without much success. “Oh, did you see his face, Molly, when you shot out the candle? I felt almost sorry for him.”
“I hate bullies,” said Molly roundly. “This is much more worthwhile than parading around in dresses and learning to speak as if we’ve got mouths full of rocks. And that reminds me—talking of bullies—we must do something about that dreadful nurse of Lord David’s. Soon as we get our allowance tomorrow, we’ll buy us some goodies suitable for an invalid and take them ’round. ’Course we won’t say anything to Lady Fanny. It is not at all the thing for a young lady to approach any gentleman to whom she has not been introduced,’” she mimicked.
When they reached the post office, Mrs. Pomfret was waiting, trembling, on the kitchen doorstep. She could hardly believe her ears at their news. Billy leaving town! She would have given Molly all the recovered money if she could. But Molly would not hear of it.
Mrs. Pomfret, she said, had supplied some excitement in this dead-alive hole.
Molly wondered where she had heard that phrase before and then remembered the male nurse. Now, there was a bully worthy of Molly Maguire’s steel. She could hardly wait for the morrow.
Lord David Manley was halfway down the brandy decanter and feeling no pain. He had returned that evening from a visit to the hospital in Southampton and his lungs had been pronounced in good shape. With great daring, he lit a forbidden cheroot and settled back in the chair.
Now that he didn’t have to stay in it any longer, Hadsea didn’t seem such a bad place. Of course he had had to keep the usual matchmaking mamas and their damned invitations at bay. He had had, as usual, to cope with various county maidens whose bicycles, automobiles, or carriages had conveniently broken down outside his door. But that happened with boring regularity in London as well.
It had been a long time since he had believed that a woman could love him for himself alone and not for his well—known fortune. As far as the fair sex was concerned, he thought cynically, it was easier to pay for one’s pleasures.
But it was about time he set up his nursery. Lady Cynthia Whitworth would fill the bill admirably. She came from good old stock, was highly decorative, and acidulous and witty enough to retain a good deal of his tepid interest.
She had sensibly pointed out to him that there was no point in getting wed if he had tuberculosis. This might have seemed cold-hearted to a less cynical man but the jaundiced Lord David found it an eminently practical point of view. He would write to her on the morrow and tell her his good news.
In a fit of remorse for his previous ill-temper, he had given his servants the evening off and a small bonus each to go and drink to his restored health. Now he was simply enjoying the rare pleasure of getting comfortably drunk.
A soft English twilight was visible through the open windows. The air was heavy with the scent of leaves and grass and flowers. Somewhere in the garden a nightingale sang and the leaves of the old trees on the dew-laden lawns rustled and whispered in the lightest of evening breezes. And he was a whole man again. His constant companion, the specter of death and disease, had fled.
He stretched out his long, muscular legs, encased in an old pair of flannels, and breathed a sigh of pure contentment.
The clanging of the doorbell jarred through the evening air like the obscenity that rose to Lord David’s lips. He waited for his butler to answer it and get rid of whoever it was and then realized that he had given the servants the night off. With another curse he got somewhat unsteadily to his feet and walked through the hall and jerked open the door.
Two schoolgirls dressed in shabby plaid dresses and dowdy dark-brown felt hats stood looking at him in the failing light. One was holding a basket with a checkered cloth over it.
They must be collecting for some local charity, he decided.
“Come into the study,” he said abruptly and turned and walked away without looking to see if they were following him.
He sat down at his desk and drew out his checkbook. He looked up. Both girls were standing in front of him, looking at him with unnerving wide-eyed stares.
“How much?” said Lord David, his head bent over his checkbook, his pen poised.
“I don’t know what you mean,” said the taller of the girls. Her voice had a transatlantic twang and Lord David looked up in surprise.
“Haven’t you come to ask for a donation to something?” His light, pleasant voice was only slightly slurred.
“We’ve come to see Lord David,” said the elder firmly. “We have brought him a basket of nourishing food because we heard he was ill. So if you will just announce us, my good man…”
Lord David got to his feet, his face set in an unpleasant sneer.
He realized that the girls were slightly older than he had first thought… about seventeen and eighteen, he judged. It seemed that not only was his privacy to be broken by the local debutantes but by the village maidens as well!
“Very clever,” he said. “Very, very clever. Are you sure you haven’t sprained your ankles or something? The intrigues you young girls get up to in the hope of marrying a fortune amazes me. You will find the door still open. Close it behind you when you get out and take that basket of… of… codswallop with you.”
“We demand to see Lord David,” said Molly haughtily. “I did not come here to bandy words with his male nurse.”
“Male nurse!? You impertinent baggage!” said Lord David wrathfully. “Male nurse!? If you mean that mentally muscle-bound idiot my parents sent me, I sacked him weeks ago. I, dear girl, am Lord David!”
For one long minute the elder girl looked at him with those astonishing blue eyes.
“Bully,” said Miss Molly Maguire, “for you. Because of your nasty common behavior, we thought you were the nurse. You, Lord David! You’re nothing but a nasty old cheese. I wouldn’t cross the street to help you if you were dying. If you’re an example of an English aristocrat—one of those yobs we’re supposed to marry—we’d be a damn sight better off with the boys in Brooklyn.”
“Molly!” pleaded Mary, tugging at her arm, her large eyes filled with tears. But the sight of her little sister’s distress fanned the flames of Molly’s wrath.
“As for money,” she went on, “we’re both stinking rich. If you’ve got girls running after you for your money, then take my advice and marry one of them. No girl is going to marry an ugly-looking cuss like you for any other reason.”
“How dare you!” yelled Lord David.
Picking up her basket and taking her young sister by the arm, Molly marched to the threshold and t
hen turned and looked back to where Lord David stood smoldering behind his desk.
“I shall find out where your parentslive,” grated Lord David, “and make sure that for your impertinence you both get the spanking you richly deserve.”
The elder girl’s eyes raked over him with contempt, from his shabby flannels to his venerable blazer and open-necked shirt.
“Aw! Stuff it, your lordship,” said Miss Molly Maguire.
The door banged behind her with such force that the whole house shook.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Maguire sisters sat bolt upright in Lady Fanny’s open brougham. They could not in fact do anything else, since their new corsets had them strapped into a rigid position. Both were dressed in blonde lace tea gowns, Molly’s threaded with scarlet ribbon and Mary’s with blue. Both wore large picture hats embellished with fruit and roses. Their glossy hair had been put up for the first time.
The girls had just completed their first social engagement, a garden party at the rectory, which Lady Fanny had felt would not be too demanding for their first occasion. Lady Fanny had developed a headache at the last moment so the girls had been sent on their own with a list of instructions. They were to confine their conversation to yes and no. Mary was not to slurp her tea or get crumbs on her dress. If pressed, they might converse about the weather. On no account must they ever mention that dreadful Maguire’s Leprechaun Dew. Let people assume their family fortune came from some respectable American business like railroads, or “Daddy made a killing on Wall Street.”
The girls had followed her instructions to the letter. Both were feeling exhausted after the stifling discomfort of new clothes and new corsets. It had been pleasant, however, to receive the attentions of various young men. But now both longed to get home and change into something more comfortable.