The Treasure at Poldarrow Point

by Clara Benson

  The chamber was rather cold. Barbara could feel a draught of air on her skin, which was welcome after the stuffiness of the tunnel, and a faint light came from somewhere—or at least, the darkness was less impenetrable here. Barbara’s eyes gleamed as she spotted two old wooden barrels standing against the wall, and she went across to examine them. The first one was empty and the wood quite rotten: it fell to pieces when she touched it, and she started as a large spider ran out and attempted to climb up her arm. She brushed it off hurriedly and pointed the torch at what remained of the barrel. It was quite empty. The second cask was made of stronger stuff, being bound with metal rather than wooden hoops. It was impossible to get into, so Barbara ended by tipping it up and rattling it about in order to find out whether it contained anything, but it, too, was empty. She did not really expect to find a priceless necklace inside an old wine cask, but told herself that a true detective should leave no stone unturned.

  There was nothing else to see in the chamber, so Barbara continued on through the tunnel. The path had become much steeper now, and she panted as she pressed on eagerly. Surely she must be close to the house by now. At last she came to a fork. One branch led straight on, while the other doubled back and curved sharply out of sight a short distance ahead. Supposing that the first path led to the house, Barbara decided to see where the second one went, but was brought up short after about thirty yards by a rock-fall that blocked her way. She returned the way she had come and, shortly afterwards, arrived at the bottom of the shaft that led up to the trap-door into the cellar of Poldarrow Point. She recognized the metal rungs down which she had climbed herself only the day before.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I have found the tunnel, at any rate, although there’s no sign of any necklace. I suppose Preacher Dick must have taken it into the house—of course, he must have, since all his men knew about this tunnel and it wouldn’t have been safe to hide it here.’

  At that moment it occurred to her that she had spent rather a long time wandering around in the dark, and that the tide was coming in rapidly. She turned and hurried back down the passage as fast as she could. The light from her torch had been growing weaker for some time, but she judged that it would last until she got outside. She passed rapidly through the barrel-chamber, as she called it in her mind, and into the bottom section of the tunnel. Then she stopped short and a chill ran through her. Ahead of her, the path dipped slightly and rose again, and into that depression a thin stream of water was flowing. She ran forward and through the pool that had formed, then gave a whimper of dismay. The path sloped steeply downwards from here to the cave, and it was completely flooded and impassable. As she stood there, she felt a little rush of water that threatened to knock her off her feet and she retreated hurriedly. She had obviously been gone much longer than she thought, and the tide had come in and blocked her way out of the tunnel.

  At that moment her torch gave out.

  ‘Bother,’ said Barbara.

  ELEVEN

  Mrs. Marchmont sat on the terrace at Kittiwake Cottage, reading the anonymous letters and frowning to herself. At last she gave a sigh and threw them down upon the table.

  ‘It’s no use,’ she said to Marthe, who was picking up Barbara’s things from where she had strewn them all over the garden. ‘I am not Sherlock Holmes and never shall be.’

  ‘Pardon, madame? Who?’

  ‘Sherlock Holmes. He is a great detective in a book. If he were here, he would take these letters and at once tell us who sent them, whether he is left- or right-handed, what he does for a living, and probably even what he had for supper last night.’

  ‘Pfft! That is easy,’ said Marthe in disdain, and picked up a letter. ‘One can see immediately that this was sent by a woman, and that she was left-handed.’

  ‘Really?’ said Angela in surprise. ‘How can you tell?’

  Marthe shrugged.

  ‘Look at those loops. Only a woman would write so. A man would place the letters closer together.’ She lifted the paper to her nose and sniffed delicately. ‘Ah! Shalimar. I knew it!’

  Even more astonished, Angela took the letter and sniffed at it herself. She detected the faintest of scents.

  ‘I can smell perfume,’ she said, ‘but I couldn’t possibly have identified it. But how can you tell she is left-handed?’

  ‘Here, you see,’ said Marthe. She indicated one or two places where the ink was smeared. ‘Her hand went through the wet ink when it passed over what she had already written. She was probably writing with a pen to which she was not accustomed, otherwise she would not have made such a mistake.’

  ‘But whoever sent the letters was not accustomed to writing at all, to judge by the spelling, which is quite illiterate.’ Angela stopped and frowned. ‘But that can’t be right either. What would such a person be doing wearing expensive perfume?’

  She looked at the letters again.

  ‘How silly of me not to notice,’ she said. ‘Of course, the writer is only pretending to be uneducated. Look—it’s all wrong. She spells “here” and “give” incorrectly, and yet she is perfectly capable of getting “nephew” and “earlier” right. And she spells “once” wrongly in one letter, and right in another. So, then, the letters were written by a left-handed woman with a certain level of education and income, who was pretending to be illiterate, presumably in order to disguise her identity. Thank you, Marthe. I shall certainly come to you in future if I require any more deductions of this sort.’

  Marthe preened.

  ‘But you haven’t told me what she had for supper last night,’ went on Angela slyly.

  ‘Madame,’ said Marthe, in the manner of one stating the obvious, ‘a woman who wears Shalimar does not eat supper.’

  ‘Ah, of course,’ said Angela.

  Marthe went inside, leaving Angela smiling and shaking her head.

  ‘I wonder if Sherlock Holmes had a lady’s maid,’ she said to herself.

  A few minutes later Marthe came back out and informed her that lunch was served.

  ‘Where is Barbara?’ asked Angela. ‘It’s not like her not to turn up to lunch. And I thought Cook was making scones today. Most odd.’

  She sat down to her meal, expecting Barbara to come rushing in at any moment and throw herself down at the table with a perfunctory apology for her lateness, but to her surprise no Barbara appeared. Angela, forgetting about the tides, supposed that she had found the tunnel and was happily exploring it, in hopes of finding the necklace.

  The thought of the necklace reminded Angela of her conversation with George Simpson that morning, and she wondered whether she perhaps ought to accompany Barbara to Miss Trout’s the next day. She did not relish the thought of spending another afternoon in that musty old house, but she had promised Simpson that she would keep an eye on things, and she could hardly do that from a distance.

  ‘What if Barbara finds the necklace?’ she said to herself. ‘Can the three of them between them be trusted to have the sense to put it somewhere absolutely safe? A bank would be the best place, naturally—at least until we can hand it over to the police. Perhaps I ought to go too, so I can persuade them if necessary.’

  Having made this resolution, Angela decided to go out for a little while to walk off her lunch, which had been a hearty one (the sea air certainly gave one a healthy appetite). She had one or two things she needed to buy, and so she headed back into Tregarrion, where a number of general stores supplying all kinds of goods had sprung up in recent years, in response to the arrival of the tourists.

  She completed her purchases and emerged into the street, where she immediately bumped into a man who had not been looking where he was going. It was Clifford Maynard. He began to apologize profusely, and then saw who she was.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Mrs. Marchmont,’ he said. ‘Do forgive me. I was wandering along in a day-dream. I am quite prone to it, I’m afraid, and Aunt Emily often laughs at me for my inattention. I do hope you’re not hurt?’

  Angela reassured
him that there was no harm done, and asked after his aunt.

  ‘Oh, she is well, very well,’ he replied. ‘She is very much looking forward to seeing young Barbara tomorrow. Old people are very fond of the company of the young, I find. It reminds them of their own childish days. You won’t let her forget, now, will you?’

  ‘I’m sure Barbara is looking forward to it very much,’ said Angela. ‘As a matter of fact, I was wondering whether your aunt would mind if I came with her. I have never taken part in a treasure-hunt, and I must confess that it sounds rather entertaining. And you know, many hands are supposed to make light work.’

  ‘Why, we should both be delighted to see you again,’ said Mr. Maynard jovially. His manner suddenly changed, and became confidential. ‘By the way, Mrs. Marchmont,’ he said in a low voice, ‘there was something I wanted to speak to you about.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. Let us go over here.’ He took hold of Angela’s elbow in a proprietary manner and led her out of the way of the crowds. Angela raised her eyebrows slightly but allowed herself to be conducted across the street without fuss. He stopped next to the window of a shop which appeared to specialize in selling waterproof clothing. It was closed, and a hand-written sign hanging on the door read, ‘Back Next Week.’

  ‘I feel I ought to apologize for yesterday,’ began Mr. Maynard without further ado. ‘I fear that my aunt has imposed upon you, rather.’

  ‘Because of the necklace?’ said Angela. ‘Please, don’t give it a moment’s thought. Barbara is terribly excited to be allowed to join a real treasure-hunt, and I confess it pleases me that she has something to occupy her time. It must be dull for her here, with no other children to play with.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that, exactly,’ he said. He lowered his voice still further. ‘My aunt is very old, Mrs. Marchmont, and I fear that she may be getting—how can I put it?—a little bit vague in her mind.’

  ‘I see,’ said Angela. ‘Do you mean she is losing her memory?’

  ‘Partly,’ he said. ‘But it’s not only that. Much as it pains me to say it, I am afraid her imagination has also begun to run away with her, although she denies it, of course.’

  ‘I don’t quite understand. What do you mean, exactly?’

  ‘I mean that she has begun to tell some rather tall stories. They are not lies as such, because I am fairly sure that she believes them implicitly herself, but I have caught her out on several occasions recently. For example, only a week or so ago, while we were wondering what to do about this problem with the lease, the conversation turned to our family history, as you might expect. I was saying what a pity it was that the Trouts had been so poor as to need to sell the freehold of Poldarrow Point, and she said something like, “Ah, yes, but of course, throughout history the illegitimate descendants of royalty have always been treated unfairly.” Naturally, I had no idea what she was talking about, and when I asked her what she meant, she said, “Don’t be silly, Clifford—of course you know that Preacher Dick was the illegitimate son of the Duke of Gloucester, who was the brother of George the Third.” This was quite a surprise to me, and I asked her if she was quite certain of it, and she said, “But I thought everybody knew. The Duke had a secret mistress here in Cornwall, who lived here in Tregarrion and gave birth to a son, Richard—our ancestor. But the Duke did not do right by the poor woman, and denied that the child was his. She eventually married a man named Warrener and the boy took his name.”’

  ‘It is certainly an extraordinary story,’ said Angela. ‘Are you sure it is not true?’

  ‘Of course it’s not true,’ said Mr. Maynard impatiently. ‘Why, our family history is perfectly well documented locally, and there is no record of the Duke of Gloucester’s ever having even visited Tregarrion, much less taken a mistress here. It was all in her imagination—a fact proved a day or two later when I mentioned the story again and she denied ever having said such a thing—seemed astonished, in fact, and accused me of making up silly stories.’

  ‘Dear me,’ said Angela.

  ‘Indeed, I was most dismayed,’ he said, ‘but that is merely the most striking example of what I have been saying. There have been other, minor incidents which are not worth relating, but which all seem to point to one inescapable conclusion: that Aunt Emily is no longer as sound in her mind as she used to be. Most of the time she is as sane and sensible as she ever was, but I fear these episodes will become increasingly frequent as she gets older.’

  ‘Poor Miss Trout,’ said Angela. ‘Do you believe, then, that she invented the story of the necklace?’

  ‘Oh, no, no,’ he said. ‘That’s true enough—or at least, the legend certainly exists. Whether there is a necklace, and whether it is in the house, I cannot presume to say. And everything she has said about Preacher Dick and his smuggling activities is also true. No, I was referring to this story of hers about the anonymous letters. I am afraid it is all nonsense.’

  Angela remembered Mr. Maynard’s admonishment to his aunt when she had embarked upon her tale.

  ‘Do you think she made it up?’ she said. ‘Then who wrote the letters? Are you suggesting that she wrote them herself?’

  He looked distressed.

  ‘That’s just it, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But I can’t think of any reason why someone should want her to leave Poldarrow Point. Why, our family have lived here for generations. There’s simply no sense to it. And since I have caught her out on other occasions—well, you may imagine how difficult it is for me to say such things about my own dear Aunt Emily, who is almost the only relation I have, but I hardly know what to think, except that old people do, sadly, sometimes become a little confused.’

  Angela did not reply for a second. Clifford Maynard was, of course, unaware that the police believed the letters came from a dangerous criminal, but were the police right? Marthe was certain that they had been written by a woman, and Angela had great faith in Marthe’s intelligence and perspicacity. Perhaps Edgar Valencourt had a female accomplice—Inspector Simpson had mentioned that he had been known to work with other people. Perhaps he was even married. Or, as Clifford had said, perhaps the letters had been written by a confused and lonely old lady who would resort to any stratagem in order to ensure that her visitors kept coming back.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked at last.

  Mr. Maynard looked relieved.

  ‘Why, whatever you think best,’ he said. ‘I had to tell you of this, as I should hate you to waste your time in investigating something that I am certain is the product of her lively imagination, but I will leave the course of action to you—although I am sure you will be kind enough not to let my aunt know that you suspect her of anything.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Angela. ‘Perhaps I shall make a show of looking into it, for her sake.’

  ‘That is very good of you,’ he said with a smile, ‘and now I’m afraid I must rush off, as I only came out to get Aunt her medicine. We shall see you later.’

  He nodded briskly then went away, and Angela walked slowly home. Barbara had not returned, and Angela was puzzled. She went down to the garden gate and looked right and left, but there was no sign of the girl.

  ‘Hallo, Mrs. Marchmont,’ said Helen Walters, who was just then coming out of her own gate. ‘Are you looking for someone?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Angela. ‘I seem to have lost Barbara. I don’t suppose you’ve seen her today? She did not come home for lunch, and that is most unusual, as I am sure you can imagine.’

  ‘I saw her this morning, down on the beach,’ said Helen, ‘but I left before she did. She was poking about among the rocks. I thought she was looking for crabs, or something. But the tide is quite high now, so she must have left the beach some time ago.’

  Angela frowned. She had warned Barbara against the tides herself, so there was no excuse for her staying down there too long. She could only suppose that the girl had gone off somewhere else—perhaps into Tregarrion—for reasons of her own. She was bound to be back
in time for tea, though.

  Angela called for Marthe to bring her some coffee and sat down with her book, but did not read. Instead, she watched the seagulls as they made patterns in the air above her, finding a sort of music in their harsh cries. The wind was still strong, but here in the garden it was sheltered and warm. Evidently she was not the only one to find the situation agreeable: after a few minutes, the cat came and jumped onto her lap, and she scratched its chin absently. It purred and kneaded her skirt, then settled down for a nap. Angela sipped her coffee and leaned back more comfortably in her chair, taking care not to disturb her guest. Jewel-thieves and unruly children notwithstanding, she was having a most pleasant time of it.

  TWELVE

  Barbara stood in the pitch darkness for a moment or two, listening to the sloshing, whooshing sounds of the water as it advanced inexorably into the tunnel. Now that the light had gone, the noise seemed almost deafening, and she wondered how on earth she had failed to notice it before. She felt another wave rush over her foot and decided to make good her retreat. Stretching her hand out to the side, she felt the tunnel wall cold and hard under her fingers. She pressed herself against it and groped her way slowly and carefully back up the slope towards the barrel-chamber, fearful all the while that the encroaching sea would catch up with her stealthily and overcome her before she could reach safety.

  After what seemed an age she felt a slight gust of air and began to make out faint shapes in the darkness, which told her that she had arrived in the chamber. Now she knew she was safe—from the sea at least, since the presence of the barrels indicated that the tide did not advance this far.