The Treasure at Poldarrow Point

by Clara Benson

  ‘Just a minute,’ said Mr. Simpson, trying unsuccessfully to make sense of this barrage of speech. ‘What do you mean you’ve rescued Jeremiah Trout? Jeremiah Trout is dead.’

  ‘No he’s not,’ said Barbara. ‘He’s a bit ga-ga but he’s definitely alive. Clifford Maynard has been keeping him prisoner in a secret room at Poldarrow Point for months, trying to get him to tell where the Queen’s necklace is. I rescued him last night and we came here, but we couldn’t find you so we had to wait until morning and try again.’

  He still looked blank, and she related the story of her night’s adventures. He eyed her as though he could not quite believe it.

  ‘But what do you want me to do?’ he asked.

  ‘Why, arrest Clifford, of course!’ said Barbara, as though it were obvious.

  ‘I?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Barbara. ‘I know who you are, you know: Angela told me.’

  ‘Did she indeed?’ said Mr. Simpson thoughtfully.

  ‘She didn’t want to, but I forced it out of her,’ said Barbara. ‘I—er—may have overheard your conversation the other day—’ she stopped, and reddened at Mr. Simpson’s look. ‘Well, it can’t be helped now,’ she went on quickly. ‘The important thing is to catch Clifford. Miss Trout is still at Poldarrow Point, in danger. What if he decides to imprison her too?’

  ‘Why should he do that?’

  ‘To get her out of the way while he looks for the necklace, of course! Now that Mr. Trout has escaped he has lost his only source of information, so he will simply have to buckle to it and start searching properly, but his aunt stands in his way.’

  It looked as though Simpson were starting to believe her at last.

  ‘Do you think Jeremiah Trout really knows where the necklace is?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I think he does,’ said Barbara, ‘but he can’t always remember, and when he can remember he won’t tell. He might tell us, though, if we can only get him to understand how important it is.’

  Mr. Simpson rubbed his chin and reflected. After a few moments he seemed to come to a conclusion.

  ‘You have done very well to rescue Mr. Trout,’ he said, ‘but now I think it is time for me to take charge. First of all, we must get him to a place of safety.’

  ‘But where?’

  ‘My room will have to do for the present. We can move him elsewhere later on. Where did you say he was now?’

  ‘Room 402,’ said Barbara. ‘We’d better go soon. I have to give the key back this morning, before we are discovered. We’re not really supposed to be there, you see,’ she said in response to Simpson’s inquiring glance.

  He laughed and shook his head.

  ‘I admire your flexible approach to life,’ he said. ‘In a few years’ time, I expect you will run rings around whichever young man is brave enough to marry you.’

  ‘I certainly hope so,’ said Barbara, flattered. They went back into the hotel and she led him up to the fourth floor.

  Jeremiah was still asleep, and Barbara went over to him and shook him gently.

  ‘Wake up!’ she said. ‘We have to leave now.’

  ‘Eh? What’s that?’ said the old man, awakening with a snort. He sat up with an effort and looked about him. ‘Where am I?’ he said.

  ‘You’re at the Hotel Splendide,’ said Barbara. ‘I rescued you.’

  He looked at her with disfavour.

  ‘I know you,’ he said. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Barbara,’ said Barbara. ‘We have to go to a different room now and hide you from Clifford.’

  ‘I want my breakfast,’ said Jeremiah. ‘I want some eggs. I always have eggs for breakfast.’

  ‘You shall have some eggs as soon as we have got you out of here,’ said Barbara.

  ‘My room is much more comfortable than this one,’ said Mr. Simpson. ‘You will be much better off there.’

  ‘Who are you?’ said Jeremiah rudely.

  ‘My name is Simpson,’ said Mr. Simpson. ‘I am a friend of Barbara’s. I should like to help you get away from Poldarrow Point if you will let me.’

  ‘But I don’t want to get away from it,’ said Jeremiah. ‘The garden needs doing.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Barbara impatiently. ‘You shall work in the garden as soon as you like, but we need to hide you just for today, until Mr. Simpson has arrested Clifford.’

  He was finally persuaded to leave, and was escorted grumbling all the way down to Simpson’s room, which was a rather grand corner one on the second floor. As soon as he arrived, he started demanding eggs again, but permitted himself to be satisfied with some day-old rolls provided by Mr. Simpson.

  ‘Are you going to Poldarrow Point now?’ asked Barbara of Simpson, when they had ensconced Mr. Trout in a chair by the window and given him a newspaper to read.

  Simpson shook his head.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, but you must!’ said Barbara in dismay. ‘You have to arrest Clifford before he does something desperate.’

  ‘I don’t think he will do anything desperate,’ said Simpson. ‘Besides, I cannot act without first receiving orders. This is a very delicate case, and one false move could ruin everything.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘You have done extremely well, and I shall make sure that you receive all due credit, but you must leave it all to me now.’ He spoke with finality and she saw that he was resolute.

  ‘All right,’ she said, ‘but please hurry.’

  ‘I shall phone Scotland Yard now and get my orders,’ he said, and smiled at her disappointment. ‘What? Did you expect me to rush off immediately with my gun and wrestle Clifford to the ground?’

  ‘I did, rather,’ admitted Barbara.

  ‘Well, I’m afraid that police work is not so exciting as that,’ he said. ‘Lucky for me, as I am not sure I could stand it. Now, I will look after Mr. Trout. You be a good girl and go back to Kittiwake Cottage. I am sure you need some sleep—and I imagine Mrs. Marchmont will be very worried about you too.’

  ‘I sometimes think Angela doesn’t notice whether I’m there or not,’ said Barbara, a little sadly.

  ‘Of course she does. She is very fond of you.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ said Barbara, brightening.

  ‘Oh yes. She talks about you often.’

  ‘Oh! Well, then,’ said Barbara, ‘I suppose it can’t do any harm to show my face at home.’

  ‘Good girl,’ said Mr. Simpson approvingly. ‘Stay out of trouble, and I shall let you know as soon as there is anything to tell.’

  ‘Do,’ said Barbara, and ran off.

  There was no-one at home when she arrived at the cottage, so she went upstairs and threw herself down on her bed, calculating that there was just enough time for two or three hours’ sleep before she had to be up again to catch low tide.

  For Barbara had plans. Disappointed that Mr. Simpson seemed so unwilling to act, and worried about what Clifford might be capable of, she had decided that she would go back to Poldarrow Point that afternoon and rescue Miss Trout herself. She had done it once with Jeremiah, and could do it again, she was sure. She would go back through the tunnel, find Miss Trout and lead her to safety. Then the police would arrest Clifford, they would find the necklace, and the Trouts would remain happily at Poldarrow Point for the rest of their days.

  She was just drifting off to sleep with these pleasant thoughts uppermost in her mind, when her eyes suddenly snapped open as she remembered that she had not told Mr. Simpson about Mr. Donati. Donati had as good as admitted to being Valencourt, but she had forgotten all about him in the excitement of finding Jeremiah and the secret room. She sighed and shifted into a more comfortable position, and her eyes closed again of their own accord. The news would just have to wait until another time.

  Five minutes later she was asleep.

  THIRTY-TWO

  By one o’clock, Barbara was hurrying across the sand towards the smugglers’ tunnel. Neither Helen Walters nor Mr. Donati was anywhere to be seen
today, and she had the beach to herself. The tide was out, and the cave entrance was clear. She scrambled inside, switched on her torch and followed the familiar route up to the cellars at Poldarrow Point. The trap-door was still unbolted, and she was relieved, since she had half-expected that Clifford would have bolted it during his search for Jeremiah. She pulled herself out of the hole, ascended the cellar stairs and went through the customary routine with the hair-pin after first listening to make certain that nobody was on the other side of the door. Having reached the hall safely, she considered hiding in the cupboard again, and had actually got as far as opening the door, when her attention was caught by the sound of voices issuing from the half-open door of the drawing-room. Her heart beat fast and she stole across to listen. An animated conversation appeared to be in full flow. Barbara’s eyes opened wide.

  ‘—far as I know he never had any friends in Tregarrion,’ a voice was saying. Barbara recognized it as Clifford’s. ‘He could be anywhere. For all I know he fell into the sea and was drowned. We’d be well rid of him if he did. Months, we’ve kept him here—months, and has it done us a ha’porth of good? No, ’course it hasn’t. He’s more cracked than he ever was. I don’t think he knows where it is any more than we do.’

  ‘He’s a close one, all right,’ agreed another voice, which Barbara eventually identified as Lionel Dorsey’s. ‘Well, we’ll just have to get on without him.’

  ‘I don’t think you quite understand, Lionel, dear,’ said a third voice. Barbara jumped. It was unmistakably that of Miss Trout, but there was a steely note to it that was quite unlike her usual gentle tones. ‘It’s not just a question of getting on without him. What if someone finds him? He may have had few friends in the area, but he was well-known by sight to many people. Somebody is bound to recognize him and then the fat will be in the fire. We must find him, and fast. Clifford, how many times have I told you about leaving that upstairs door open?’

  ‘I can’t always be remembering everything,’ said Clifford petulantly. ‘I told you, I’ve had a lot on my mind.’

  ‘Like cheating your poor old mother out of her rightful property, perhaps?’ said Miss Trout sweetly.

  ‘I never would’ve, you know that.’

  Miss Trout snorted.

  ‘You and Lionel, and that wife of his,’ she said. ‘The three of you together haven’t got half a wit between you. Did you think I had no idea? I’m not stupid, you know. I heard you, night after night, knocking on the walls and shuffling the furniture about.’

  ‘You were supposed to be asleep,’ said Clifford.

  ‘And so I would’ve been if I’d been fool enough to drink that hot milk you brought me every night. Don’t think I don’t know what you put in it. Poisoning your own mother, Clifford? For shame!’

  ‘Don’t say that, Ma,’ said Clifford. ‘I would never poison you. You know I’m fond of you. It was just supposed to make you sleep better, that’s all.’

  There was another snort.

  ‘Well, it didn’t,’ said Miss Trout. ‘I knew exactly what was going on all the time, so you might as well have saved your efforts. Anonymous letters, indeed!’

  ‘That was Harriet’s idea,’ said Lionel. ‘I told her it was stupid but she said we might as well try it anyway.’

  ‘Yes, it was stupid,’ said Miss Trout. ‘I was hardly going to leave, was I?’

  ‘I thought she’d given it up,’ said Dorsey, ‘but then she went and sent one to that snooty Marchmont woman.’

  ‘What on earth was she thinking?’ said Clifford. ‘Angela Marchmont has the ear of Scotland Yard. She could have the whole boiling on top of us as quick as winking if we don’t watch our step.’

  ‘We didn’t know that, did we? Not until you told us,’ said Dorsey. ‘What did you have to bring her in for anyway?’

  ‘Because, you ninny, like Clifford said, she has the ear of Scotland Yard,’ said Miss Trout acerbically. ‘I’m not as young as I was, and my own son was plotting against me, and I could hardly go to the police themselves, now, could I? But someone like Angela Marchmont, now—well, that’s a different thing altogether, isn’t it? She’s the law but she’s not the law, if you catch my meaning. I thought you might behave yourselves if you knew she was keeping an eye on you.’

  ‘Did you invite her here, then?’ said Dorsey. ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘No, I didn’t invite her. I saw her one day and recognized her from the papers, and thought she might be useful to me if I could only tell her a good enough story. Luckily she and that girl of hers fell for it easily enough and I felt a bit safer after that. Queer, though, isn’t it? Who’d’ve thought that I’d need protecting from my own family?’

  ‘Funny—isn’t that what Wally said?’ said Dorsey with a snicker.

  ‘Wally’s no use to himself or anyone else,’ said Clifford, ‘and he’s double-crossed us enough times. He got what was coming to him, that’s all.’

  ‘Except he didn’t, did he? He’s escaped, and made fools of us all once again. He’s got more lives than a cat, has Wally.’

  ‘Not this time,’ said Miss Trout. ‘We’re going to find him—or shall we say you’re going to find him, and when you do we’re going to settle for him once and for all. As you said, he’s no use to us. He’s been in that room for months and never yet come up with the goods, so I reckon it’s a pretty safe bet that he never will.’

  There was a note of cold determination in her voice that made Barbara shiver, and she took an involuntary step back from the door. She could hardly believe her ears. It had all been a lie then, from beginning to end! Miss Trout was not the innocent little old lady she had purported to be at all. Quite the contrary, in fact: she was one of the instigators of the plan to hold her own brother prisoner while they tried to pry the whereabouts of the necklace out of him. Miss Trout had known all along that Clifford had been plotting against her in turn, and had scraped an acquaintance with Angela in the hope that Angela’s fame and close association with Scotland Yard would give her some protection against him. And it had worked, too! Barbara and Angela had fallen for the lies, and had given up their time willingly, coming to Poldarrow and turning the place upside-down in search of the necklace because Jeremiah could not or would not reveal its hiding-place.

  There were many things Barbara still did not understand, but it looked as though Jeremiah’s escape had led to a certain rapprochement between Miss Trout, the Dorseys and Clifford, and they had agreed to work together to catch the old man. Who knew what they would do to him if they found him? The old lady had said they were going to ‘settle for him once and for all,’ which sounded very sinister indeed. Barbara thought with relief of Jeremiah, safe in the hands of the police. That was one difficulty solved, at any rate. They could look for him all they liked but they would never find him, locked safely away as he was in Mr. Simpson’s hotel room.

  Barbara wondered what she ought to do now. She had come here with the intention of rescuing Miss Trout from her designing nephew, only to discover that the designing nephew was in fact her son, and that Miss Trout had no need of rescuing at all! A hurt look crossed her face as she thought of how she had been deceived.

  ‘If one can’t trust a sweet old lady, then whom can one trust?’ she thought. ‘She has been stringing us along all the while with her sob-stuff. And how sly she was, too! How clever of her not to ask us to help her, but instead make us volunteer as though we had thought of the idea ourselves. And we fell straight into her trap, just as she meant us to. It’s too bad of her. I should like to give her a jolly good piece of my mind, but I suppose it would make more sense to get out of here now and tell everything to Mr. Simpson.’

  She did neither, but instead moved closer to the door to listen again. The gang appeared to be discussing the best way to go about searching for Jeremiah.

  ‘—through the tunnel,’ Miss Trout was saying. ‘But if it was high tide when he escaped then he couldn’t have gone that way. Has anybody had a look to see whether he went out
through the trap-door?’

  ‘He didn’t go that way, surely?’ said Clifford. ‘How would he get down the ladder? He’s far too old for that kind of thing.’

  ‘All the same, I think someone should go and see,’ said Miss Trout.

  ‘Oh, very well,’ said Clifford reluctantly. ‘I’ll go and have a look. Where’s the torch?’

  Barbara sprang away from the door and darted, quick as lightning, into the cupboard. She was just in time, for almost immediately she heard the squeak of the drawing-room door as someone came out. A thrill of fear ran through her as she remembered that she had left the door to the cellar unlocked, but it was too late to lock it now.

  She heard the sound of footsteps descending the stairs slowly and carefully, and waited with bated breath. She had left the trap-door open too, and Clifford was about to discover it. Would he immediately assume that Jeremiah had escaped that way? After what felt like an age, she heard footsteps climbing the stairs, and the click of the door being shut. The drawing-room door squeaked again and she waited a few seconds, then emerged from her hiding-place as silently as possible. The first voice she heard was that of Miss Trout.

  ‘Well you’ll just have to go down there after him, won’t you?’ came the voice. There was a harsh edge to it, and Barbara wondered why she had never noticed it before.

  ‘But he won’t be there, will he?’ said Clifford. ‘He’s probably in Penzance by now. Or if he caught the early train he could even be in London already.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Miss Trout. ‘How would he get to London with no money?’

  ‘He could have taken the necklace,’ said Clifford.

  ‘And used it to pay for a train ticket? No,’ said Miss Trout, ‘you mark my words—he’s hiding in that tunnel. I’ll bet my life on it. You’ll just have to go down and look for him.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Clifford. ‘You know I’ve got—’