There May Be Danger

by Ianthe Jerrold

  “Oh, no! I haven’t heard from him for more than a year,” said Kate, still feeling slightly flustered and extremely annoyed with herself: What was there about Colin Kemp to make anybody’s heart give that absurd little jump which had caused her to drop her cigarette and, she feared, become the colour of the vulgarest kind of pink carnation? Kate did not often blush, but when she did, she blushed thoroughly. And I haven’t seen him,” she added brightly, “for over two years.”

  “Well, absence makes the heart grow fonder, doesn’t it,” said Mr. Morrison, fitting a cigarette into his long ivory holder. The perfect matter-of-factness with which he spoke convinced Kate that she was indeed carnation to the eyebrows. She was not, however, going to be daunted by foolish behaviour of her heart into changing the subject.

  “Colin must have enjoyed seeing this house,” she said with composure. “But, of course, what he really likes is a good tumulus. Gwyn Lupton tells me that you’ve got an old coin he found on the tumulus at Pentrewer, Mr. Morrison. He seemed to think you wouldn’t mind showing it to me, and I’d love to see it.”

  “My dear Miss Mayhew, I should be just delighted!”

  “I don’t know much about old coins—just a bit, through spending a good many hours in Dorchester Museum with Colin. It must be something unusual, from what Gwyn Lupton says.

  “It’s a silver penny of Ceowulf, 874, as far as I can tell,” said Mr. Morrison, looking quizzically at her as if to test her knowledge.

  “Really? That’s rather exciting, isn’t it?”

  “Ceowulf a friend of yours?”

  Kate laughed.

  “A friend of Colin’s. Slight acquaintance of mine. King of Mercia, wasn’t he?”

  Mr. Morrison’s quizzical look became tinged with a humorous respect.

  “Why, you’re quite a numismatist! It isn’t in very good state, this coin, but I thought I’d risk a little on its purchase, as Mr. Lupton seemed to prefer a more modern coinage.”

  “I’d love to see it.”

  Rosaleen jumped up.

  “You’d like to see the house, too, wouldn’t you? I expect you’ve seen a great many lovely old English houses, but you know it’s still new and exciting to us.”

  It was new and exciting to Kate, too. The Veault was much larger than it had appeared from the backyard approach. On the first storey there was a delightful long gallery which was, Rosaleen said, to be the main night nursery. Besides this gallery, there seemed to be innumerable bedrooms, both large and tiny, and mostly leading out of one another, so that by the time Kate and Rosaleen were back on the staircase landing, they seemed to have made a kind of circular tour without once retracing their steps. The second floor repeated the first floor, with three little bedrooms over the gallery, and above the second floor were the attics, dark, rambling, with swallow nests in the bare rafters, web-smeared windows and an elaborate arrangement of queen-posts and tie-beams. A brick panel in the back wall had been taken out for repairs. Kate looked out through it upon the great stone chimney-stack with the scaffolding round it that she had seen from the yard. A good many of the wide old floorboards, ingrained with the grey dust of centuries, were up, exposing the cobwebbed joists below.

  “Uncle Doug doesn’t let the men re-lay so much as a board without investigating among the joists for hidden treasure,” said Rosaleen. “So far he’s found enough husks to keep a family in breakfast-cereals for a year, innumerable spiders, a metal staybone of the Edwardian period, a broken celluloid comb and a mummified rat. But hope springs eternal in the hooman breast. He still thinks he’ll be rewarded one of these days with a sliding panel and a skeleton.”

  Kate lingered on the narrow stairs.

  “I don’t know anything about old houses, but I feel this staircase is very old.”

  Rosaleen patted her lightly on the back.

  “But you really are quite an antiquarian!” she said. “You’re quite right, honey. This part of the house and the hall and kitchen are remains of an older mediaeval manor that the Veault, as you see it, got built on to some time in Good Queen Bess’s day. The way you tell, is chiefly something to do with the timber framing, so Gwyn Lupton was telling me. You see these long upright timbers in the wall here, set so close together without any cross-pieces? Well, that’s mediaeval, it seems. Where the timbers are set out square, with lots of space for bricks or wattle in between, that’s later. And the bigger the spaces and the thinner the timbers, the later you can bet your boots it is. They were real lavish with oak in mediaeval days. Well, here we are in the kitchen again. Let’s creep through to the hall very, very quietly, or Gwyn Lupton in the scullery will hear us and come out and fix us with his eye and start telling us a piece as long as the Ancient Mariner. I’m like you, I just adore that man, but I prefer to choose my own times for sitting at his feet.”

  To Kate’s disappointment, Mr. Morrison was not able, after all, to show her the silver penny of Ceowulf. He had recollected he said, that a friend he had shown it to on his recent visit to London had asked to be allowed to keep it a short while and show it to a numismatist, and that he had agreed.

  “Perhaps it was a trifle rash of me,” he admitted, “in view of the nocturnal proceedings over London at this disturbed period of history. But, as I was cheerfully leaving my friend in London, I felt that to refuse to leave my coin would scarcely be preserving the doo proportion of things. I hope he’ll mail it on to me soon. Are you staying long in Hastry, Miss Mayhew?”

  “Well—I don’t know,” replied Kate, and explained as well as she could what had brought her here.

  She was getting into the habit of watching people’s reactions to the information that she was searching for a lost boy who was nothing to her but a photograph on a poster and an appeal for help. Miss Brentwood had obviously thought her amiably insane. Mr. and Mrs. Howells had taken her mission as the most natural thing in the world. The woman in charge of the County Library had simply not accepted the idea, and had continually referred to Sidney, in all good faith, as “your little nephew”. Aminta in Aminta-like fashion, had shown no curiosity and very little interest.

  The Morrisons looked at her, and at one another, in silence for a moment.

  “Say, I think your real name must be Donna Quixote de la Mancha,” said Mr. Morrison then, admiringly. And Mrs. Morrison said gently:

  “My dear! But that poor li’l boy’s been searched for everywhere!”

  “Not everywhere, Auntie,” said Rosaleen, looking thoughtfully at Kate, “because he hasn’t been found. And he can scarcely have been de-materialised.”

  “De-materialised!” echoed Mr. Morrison. “Well, now, for any observations on the possibility or otherwise of de-materialisation, consult the gentleman who called on me this afternoon. He was, as I have intimated, an expert.”

  “Davis Pentrewer, as they call him,” said Rosaleen thoughtfully. “Well—maybe you’ve spoken wisdom in jest, Uncle Doug. Davis Pentrewer is hand-in-glove with the gipsies, they tell me. But there, I suppose that old idea of the child that gets stolen by the gipsies is just a li’l bit out of date nowadays, isn’t it? I suppose this kid Sidney couldn’t be being held to ransom by toughs?”

  “Nobody could pay a ransom worth the risk. His father’s a captain in the Merchant Navy, and his great-aunt lets rooms in a house in Bayswater.”

  “Well, I must say I think you’re real magnificent, Miss Mayhew.”

  “Oh no, I haven’t anything to do just now.”

  “No, but when you don’t have to look for the kid at all, to be so grandly hopeful!” said Rosaleen, half-sadly, getting up as Kate shook hands with Mrs. Morrison and bade her good-bye. “Most of us weaker mortals like our ventures to be just a li’l less forlorn!”

  The word struck a tiny knell in Kate’s heart. Rosaleen was a shrewd, sensible girl. Was she herself truly as hopelessly lacking in realism as, lying awake in the small hours, she had feared? No. Sidney Brentwood, or his body, was somewhere under the autumn sun. And the question of whether Kate
had to look for him, had been settled all in a flash in the Edgware Road the day before yesterday.

  Rosaleen and Nurse Maud, who emerged from the kitchen damp-handed, turning down her neat cuffs, both accompanied Kate up to the field-gate.

  “If I can ever help you in your search, command me, honey! Anyway, we’ll be seeing you again—and again, I hope!”

  Rosaleen and Maud leant against the gate as Kate went off across the field-path, The high wind which was still tearing joyfully across the sky, carrying a chill with it now that evening was approaching, blew their voices after Kate so strongly that she half-thought for a second that Rosaleen was calling her back. But it was to Maud that Rosaleen was speaking.

  “What did you want to go pulling Humphries’ leg like that for?”

  “Well, I was irritated, Rosa! I don’t like the way the man looks at you!” replied the nurse.

  Rosaleen’s fresh laughter followed Kate up the slope.

  “Anybody hearing you might think you were jealous on old Major Everyman’s account! Or at least, anybody looking at you might!”

  Kate could not help turning her head to look at Maud in the distance and see what it was that so manifested jealousy in her looks. But she looked just as usual, her white coif fluttering in the wind, and as Kate looked back she raised her hand and waved in a friendly manner. Had Nurse Maud, then, a secret tenderness for Major Everyman? If so, it certainly showed itself oddly!

  But a secret tenderness was apt to show itself oddly, and who should know it better than Kate, who, with the utmost manifestation of lightheartedness, had let Colin Kemp go to South America without her? Kate forgot Maud, and Rosaleen, and Major Everyman, and thought about Colin all the way home.

  The track at Pentrewer looked very dark and secret when she passed it, with the high darkling hills between it and the sun. Two rough ponies were grazing a little way up the track, and beyond a hedge Kate caught sight as she passed of the gipsy caravan, and a blue drift of woodsmoke. The gipsies were evidently spending the night near their relations at Pentrewer.

  Chapter Nine

  Kate, having ascertained that the school break was at half-past-eleven, decided the next morning to go and see Sidney Brentwood’s schoolmaster, and, while she was about it, some of Sidney’s contemporaries and friends.

  “Mrs. Howells, I suppose it’s no use asking if you’ve got any sweets in the shop?”

  “Well, I think you are lucky, there was a few pounds of toffee come in this morning, and if it’s for the schoolchildren you can have half-a-pound if you wish!” Mrs. Howells added, when she had weighed out the half-pound: “Now the boys and girls will be all swarming over my shop in the dinner-hour like ants when they smells honey, but never mind—I would rather it was them than Miss Gilliam and some others I knows as is always in here after sweets.”

  She tipped the little waxed-paper and bright tinfoil-wrapped cubes into a paper bag, and handing it to Kate, added pensively: “It was toffees like these that Sidney had in his pocket when he went off that night.”

  This was news to Kate.

  “Yes, indeed,” sighed Mrs. Howells. “It was finding one of the papers up the road made us think he had turned towards the hills when he left here that night, not towards the village.”

  “Whereabouts was this paper found, then, Mrs. Howells?”

  “Oh, in the road about fifty yards up. The police didn’t think a great deal of it, because of course there was plenty others bought toffee that day, and children mostly drops the papers about, whatever their teachers tells them! The reason Corney and me thought it was Sidney dropped this paper up the road, was, it was a green shiny paper like is on the peppermint flavours. And Sidney liked the peppermint flavours the best, and I picked out an extra lot of the green-covered ones to please him. Still, because plenty of other people like peppermint flavour, too, I did not give them all to Sidney,” said Mrs. Howells replacing the lid on the tin, and the tin below the counter. “The police did not think so much of the toffee-paper because they believed he had gone back to London, as children mostly does that doesn’t like the country, and London is the opposite direction from the hills. But I knows, and Corney knows, Sidney never had a thought of going to London.”

  “Did Sidney take any other food with him when he went out that night?”

  “Not from here. Sidney was a very good boy, he never went to the larder like some boys as is billeted about here.”

  The extraordinary wavelike high pitched hullabaloo of young humans at play smote on her ears as she approached the school and when she went in at the entrance a football came hurtling through the air, missed her head by about three inches, and went hurtling back over the heads of innumerable shouting boys. In the tremendous noise, the interrogative upward inflections of the Marches mingled with the affirmative burr of the North, and was punctuated by the glottal stop of the Cockney kid. It occurred to Kate that the break probably only lasted a quarter of an hour, and that she had better get hold of Sidney’s friend before seeking an interview with his teacher. She stopped in her tracks and looked about her for a Cockney. At once half-a-dozen boys, who had a second ago seemed oblivious of her presence, gathered round her inquiringly, with the touching helpfulness of the helpless young. The first to speak was a London child.

  “Miss, do you want Mr. Pilgrim, Miss?”

  “I’m looking for a friend of Sidney Brentwood’s—his best friend, if possible.”

  There was a noisy and sibilant consultation, and in a very short time Kate was confronted with a wiry, freckled boy in a corduroy wind-sheeter and manly blue serge trousers. Half-a-dozen boys, interested in the possibilities of unfolding drama, introduced him zestfully as Ronnie Turner. Kate thought it best to say at once, that she had no news of Sidney Brentwood, but on the contrary, wanted Ronnie to tell her something about him. Ronnie looked rather reserved, but led her to the comparative privacy of a roofed shelter where one or two smaller boys were hopping about on the benches, offered her a seat with some self-consciousness, and stood in front of her with his hands in his pockets and one leg twisted behind the other, in silence. The other boys kept a respectful but interested distance of about three yards.

  When Kate explained that she had come from London to search for Sidney until she found him, Ronnie’s apprehensive frown cleared, but to all Kate’s inquiries as to what his own surmises were, he answered only:

  “Dunno, Miss.” Kate was beginning to feel desperate when it occurred to her to break the charm by asking Ronnie a few questions about himself. His home, it seemed, was in Westbourne Grove, and he had been evacuated at the same time as Sidney. They were old friends and had hoped to be billeted together, but Sidney had gone to the Howells while Ronnie was billeted on Miss Gilliam at the Cefn up the hill.

  “Do you like it there?”

  The boy made the underlip grimace which is the Londoner’s shrug.

  “Not much, Miss.”

  “What’s the matter with it?”

  “Dunno, Miss,” said Ronnie, reverting to his formula. This time, however, he added, with a sudden charming half-grin:

  “I’d like to be billeted on the gipsies!”

  Kate laughed.

  “That’s an idea! Have you ever spoken to the gipsies?”

  “Sidney did, Miss. He had supper with them.”

  “Oh, did he? When?”

  “When he went to Pentrewer, Miss.” Kicking the asphalt with a child’s grand disregard for boot-leather, Ronnie suddenly found his tongue and added mournfully: “I was going with Sidney, on’y I sprained me ankle.”

  “Was that the day Sidney went to see the tump where the piece of old money was found?”

  Ronnie looked up, as if both surprised and pleased to find that Kate really did know something about Sidney and was not merely exercising the grown-up’s boring prerogative of asking unexplained questions.

  “Yes, Miss. Me and Sid were going over there together on our bikes to look for things. On’y I sprained me ankle so Sid went by
himself. And the gipsies was camping there, and he had supper with them and all.”

  “I thought he had tea with Mr. and Mrs. Davis that day?”

  “So he did, and supper with the gipsies, what they cooked out of doors. The gipsies is friends with Mr. Davis, see.”

  “Yes, I know. Sidney didn’t tell Mrs. Howells he’d been with the gipsies, did he?”

  Ronnie looked a trifle uneasy.

  “Well, Miss, he would have told, on’y she didn’t seem to like it when he said he’d been with Mr. Davis, so he didn’t like to say he’d been with the gipsies as well, see. The people round here don’t like the gipsies much, Miss. They say they pinch things. Miss, do you think Sid might’ve gone off with the gipsies?”

  “I’m afraid not, Ronnie. I think he’d have been found long ago, if he had.”

  Ronnie looked dubious. He was a good-looking child, rather narrow-faced, with the clear skin and clear grey eyes that often accompany freckles in dark-haired people. He gazed at Kate a moment, and suddenly blurted half-interrogatively:

  “Miss Gilliam says he’s dead, Miss?”

  “We mustn’t say that yet. We’re going to find him, Ronnie.”

  Ronnie looked at Kate as if he had suddenly had a glimpse of Eldorado.

  “Oh, Miss!” he breathed, flushing brightly. “When shall we start?”

  Kate, whose “we” had been the reassuring “we” of the grown-up tribe, perceived that Ronnie had taken it to include himself. She could hardly bear to dash the joyful and adventurous spirit that had suddenly swept all dubiety out of the child’s bright eyes. She temporised.

  “Well—of course school takes up a lot of your time, Ronnie.”

  “There’s the evenings, Miss! There’s Saturdays and Sundays! There’s the nights!” breathed Ronnie, uncurling his legs and standing as lightly in his stubbed boots as though ready to spring off that minute into the unknown.

  “The nights? What would Miss Gilliam say to that?”