“I know, but this one wasn’t in the yard. It was in the orchard. And it reminded me of Sarah’s white kitten. The day before Molyneux died, Sarah found her white kitten, the one she was keeping for me, shot dead in the orchard. Nobody bothers much about kittens when they die. Nobody holds inquests on them or tries to find out who killed them. If they had, perhaps Molyneux might have been saved. Because when I saw that white hen, I saw at once that the man who shot Molyneux was the same man who had shot the kitten. And that he’d shot both of them from behind the balustrade of Mr. Fone’s library roof. Those barn-doors aren’t often open like that—only when hay or litter is being brought in. One doesn’t realise how wide and high they are, how plainly one sees the orchard through them. Nor how the ground rises from Cole Harbour to Cleedons, and then is nearly level behind those barns. It wouldn’t occur to one, till one saw those doors open, how easy it would be to aim through them. I felt, when I saw that white hen scratching away in the green grass, that if I’d had a gun in my hands I could almost have shot it myself. And there was the white hen, only now it had turned into a white kitten, a poor little white kitten, a wonderful target for a practice shot. And there was the tree Molyneux had been pruning. And I remembered that Barchard had been laying leads on the library roof of Cole Harbour. I remembered the ladder up against the wall, and how anybody might have climbed up there. I felt awful. I thought, it must have been Barchard... Only then I looked at him, and he spoke to me, and it seemed impossible. I couldn’t see why he should have done such a thing.”
Her voice trembled absurdly. She did not enjoy the recollection of that moment of the roof of Cole Harbour.
“Poor Jeanie,” said Peter sympathetically, covering her hand with his. He added thoughtfully: “But you were always so keen on the shot having come from the other side of the orchard, from the north-west. What about Mr. Fone’s evidence? Was he mistaken when he said Molyneux swung towards the right and turned his face towards Cleedons just before he was killed? I suppose he must have been.”
“Not exactly. Molyneux did swing round, but it was after he was killed, not before.”
“But Mr. Fone heard the shot.”
“Yes. So did we hear the thud of the man cutting down trees in Cole Harbour Wood, if you remember. And the thud seemed to come after the stroke of the axe. Light travels faster than sound. You said so. Don’t you remember?”
“Lord, yes!”
“Well, Mr. Fone sat at the window in Black Ellen’s Tower watching Molyneux, and willing him to reconsider his plan of opening Grim’s Grave. And—how did Mr. Fone put it? Molyneux turned his head in response to this willing. There was a sharp crack, and Molyneux fell to the ground. The inference was that at the moment he was shot, at the moment Mr. Fone heard the crack, Molyneux was facing east of north, practically towards the Tower, and therefore, since he was shot in the left temple, the shot must have come approximately from the north-west, where the lambing-shed is. But suppose it wasn’t in response to Mr. Fone’s willing that Molyneux turned his head? Suppose it was in response to the impact of the shot? Suppose it was a man already dead who swung round to the right just before every muscle relaxed and he fell out of the tree? The crack of the shot came late to Mr. Fone’s ears, you see. And when poor Molyneux was shot, he was actually still facing west, with the back of his head to Black Ellen’s Tower. And the shot that killed him came from the south—from the roof of Cole Harbour library.”
Jeanie’s throat was still tender, and this speech made her voice sink quite hoarsely.
“That balustrade with the flat leads behind makes a perfect screen. You would just creep up there and lie flat on the roof with your rifle pointing between the balusters, and there you would be practically invisible... Oh, but how fearful!” cried Jeanie, “that poor Molyneux should have to die to keep Barchard’s sordid secret—not caring, not knowing about it, even, like a—a beetle that gets in the way of a wheel! It seems too horrible, too wasteful and silly for words! Couldn’t Barchard have moved his wretched Valentine somewhere else? He moved her to Grim’s Grave from Yew Tree Cottage in a hurry two years ago. Why couldn’t he have moved her out of Grim’s Grave again when Molyneux started to talk of opening it?”
“Two years ago, when the—secondary interment was made, the whole tumulus was grown over with saplings, you know. Nobody would have noticed what Barchard or anybody did there. But since Molyneux had those trees cut down you can’t even stroll up it without making yourself conspicuous to every passer-by. And since the trees were cut down there’ve been many more visitors to Grim’s Grave. I don’t think he could have risked digging about in it without being found out. And with the official opening of the tumulus looming up in the near future, the man was in a nasty hole.”
“Do you think he was mad, Peter?”
“He always seemed sane enough to me. But I should think companionship with William Fone might be rather too strong meat for a man like Barchard to feed on. When it comes to following one’s impulses and taking one’s instincts as one’s guides, and all the rest of the Fone philosophy, what’s sauce for the goose isn’t sauce for the gander, to put it vulgarly. William Fone’s impulses are one thing, and the impulses of a bloke like Barchard quite another! Barchard must have had a nasty moment when you told him about those pearls Agatos found in your cupboard.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Jeanie. “He hadn’t known, you know, that the pearls were genuine. He thought they were an artificial string, the kind of thing anybody might lose without worrying over. I’m sure he knew nothing whatever of Valentine Frazer’s connection with Agnes. It would have seemed to him so much more likely that Southey should give Valentine trinkets than that Agnes should. Valentine made her first great mistake when she took that zircon brooch of Agnes’s to be real diamonds and told Barchard that Southey had given it her. I suppose she didn’t want him to know about Agnes, for fear he’d kill the goose that laid the golden eggs. But she must have been a bit of an ass to risk making a man like Barchard jealous.”
“Perhaps she enjoyed risks.”
“Perhaps she did, poor creature. But it meant that when she got tired of living in Handleston and wanted to go back to her life in London, Barchard could only think that she and Southey were lovers and that she wanted to follow him. He told me that she’d gone up to London to be an artist’s model, and that he’d never believed the village gossip about her and Southey. He was very calm and reasonable about her departure. Too calm and reasonable, I see now. It wasn’t natural, the unembarrassed cool way he talked about her and Southey. But at the time it took me in. I liked him all the more for being so civilised and reasonable and not being influenced by vulgar talk. Good Heavens, Peter! There I sat in that little parlour with a man who’d done two murders, thinking what a civilised agreeable man he was! And to think what his real feelings must have been about my questions, and about me!”
“He didn’t keep them a secret for long, did he?” said Peter grimly. “Oh Jeanie, it makes me feel quite sick with horror when I think of how I let you go home alone that day! Suppose you’d died! What should I have been thinking now?”
His voice trembled. Jeanie returned the hard squeeze of his fingers.
“You’d have been thinking, like everyone else, what an ass I was to tinker with an old fire-place,” she essayed light-heartedly. “Do you know, Peter, I believe Mr. Agatos is going to make an offer for my poor little ruin? He rather prefers old cottages burnt down, I believe. It saves him trouble in alterations, and he gets them cheap. I don’t believe the idea’s ever been out of his head that he’d tempt me out of Yew Tree Cottage sooner or later. In fact, he was responsible for terrifying me out of my life on that awful evening by creeping into my garden and taking the measurements of the kitchen wall to see, he calmly confesses, if there would be room for a garage as well as a study!”
“Infernal cheek!”
“He was just off to look at a cottage in Somerset, if you please, and wanted the measurements for purposes of
comparison. Well, I can’t really complain of anything Eustace Agatos does or ever did. He saved my life.”
There was a little tremor in her voice, and the two of them remained silent a moment.
“Shall we go and see if they’ve finished ironing out the creases on Mr. Grim’s Grave?” suggested Jeanie.
“Old Fone certainly won’t let them go until they have! Well he’s had his way and averted the curse of the old gods. Though I don’t know what could have happened if the grave had been opened much worse than what has happened, without opening it! I think old Fone’s instincts have played him false for once.”
They strolled side by side over the browning grass of the autumn meadow.
“I don’t know, Peter. It was talking about opening the mound that made all this happen, didn’t it? Well, Mr. Fone might say, if just talking about it caused all this horror, what might not have happened if the matter had gone beyond talking?”
Peter smiled.
“He might say so, certainly. And no doubt he will say so, and a lot more beside. Did I tell you he’s invited me to take Barchard’s place for a year or two at a very handsome salary?”
“Are you going to?”
Peter hesitated.
“I don’t fancy it. I like Fone, but—well, I have a feeling that this place isn’t fortunate for me. Sounds silly, I know, but why should Mr. Fone be the only one to go in for impulses and intuitions?”
“I feel just the same. This place isn’t fortunate for me, either,” said Jeanie, thinking sadly of Agnes, whom she had not seen once since the burning of Yew Tree Cottage. Agnes had her own troubles to reflect on: how should she spare sympathy for Jeanie? If the news of her sister’s death had not distressed her, no doubt she found its circumstances distressing enough. The prodigal sister, exhumed two nights ago from her resting-place on the top of Grim’s Grave, was having her last, unpremeditated fling at the respectable one. And Agnes was keeping to her room, thinking out, no doubt, the best attitude to take up at Monday’s inquest on the remains of Vera Drake, known as Valentine Frazer. Jeanie was sure it would be a graceful attitude. Agnes would not need Jeanie to help her to sustain it.
“I feel just the same, Peter. One can’t paint in the country, anyhow. There are too many distractions. I’m going back to London to look for a studio.”
“And I’m going back to look for a job, then. When shall we go?”
“As soon as all these inquests are over. Oh Peter, do you realise there are going to be three inquests?”
“I do.”
They walked up the sloping, rabbit-mined side of the great tumulus. The chill sun of an October afternoon shone red upon the boles of the tall pines, and below in the fields to the south mists were rising as once they had risen over the swampy forests when the tumulus was first raised.
“But no inquest on Mr. Grim,” said Peter. “Mr. Grim lies undisturbed.”
“Let him lie. I sympathise with Mr. Fone. I used not to, but I do now. There’s been too much death and digging and inquests. The thought of digging up Mr. Grim makes me feel quite—quite—”
“It may sound egotistic,” said Peter, smiling, “but it makes me feel very glad that we’re alive.”
Jeanie considered a moment.
“Yes, that’s what I really meant, Peter. Let’s leave Mr. Grim’s bones to Mr. Grim, and think about studios, and jobs, and London, and being alive.”
THE END
About The Author
Ianthe Jerrold was born in 1898, the daughter of the well-known author and journalist Walter Jerrold, and granddaughter of the Victorian playwright Douglas Jerrold. She was the eldest of five sisters.
She published her first book, a work of verse, at the age of fifteen. This was the start of a long and prolific writing career characterized by numerous stylistic shifts. In 1929 she published the first of two classic and influential whodunits. The Studio Crime gained her immediate acceptance into the recently-formed but highly prestigious Detection Club, and was followed a year later by Dead Man’s Quarry.
Ianthe Jerrold subsequently moved on from pure whodunits to write novels ranging from romantic fiction to psychological thrillers. She continued writing and publishing her fiction into the 1970’s. She died in 1977, twelve years after her husband George Menges. Their Elizabethan farmhouse Cwmmau was left to the National Trust.
Also by Ianthe Jerrold
The Studio Crime
Dead Man’s Quarry
There May Be Danger
Ianthe Jerrold
There May Be Danger
A GOLDEN AGE MYSTERY
Amid the danger of World War Two’s London, Kate Mayhew is returning from another hopeless round of the theatrical agents. She is about to take a job in munitions when a poster about a missing child prompts her to help the war effort in a very different way. Obsessed with finding out what has happened to young Sidney Brentwood, Kate journeys to rural Wales where the boy was last seen.
Aided by land-girl Aminta and the dashing young archaeologist Colin Kemp, Kate stumbles upon clandestine activities unknown to the War Office. The mystery of Sidney’s disappearance is the key to a plot that may vitally endanger the security of Great Britain itself. Kate must both solve the conundrum, and act before it’s too late.
There May Be Danger was first published in 1948, and was the last mystery novel by Ianthe Jerrold. This edition features a new introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.
Chapter One
On a sunny October morning, the stucco-fronted houses of London are a symphony in off-white tones, the brick cliff-sides of the new blocks of flats discover charming shades of pink and apricot, and even in the smoke-grimed brick of mid-Victorian warehouses, the yellow under the encrusted black responds to the long soft rays of the low sun.
Even the Edgware Road, on such a day, looks charming.
Even Kate Mayhew, though she was out of a job and saw but small hope of getting into another one, felt the powerful charm of the autumn sun as she left her bus at the corner of Chapel Street and strolled along towards Maida Vale. The sky was blue, and almost cloudless. True, an arabesque pattern of thin white vapour trails hung, slowly dispersing, over the Metropolitan Music Hall. But this was not caused by a disturbance in the weather, but by a recent encounter high in the heavens between eight Dornier bombers and seven Spitfires.
Kate was returning, for the second time this week, from a hopeless round of the theatrical agents. Business in her suburban theatre had been pretty poor since the beginning of the war. And when the first bombs dropped on London, and the West-end theatre rocked to its financial foundations, even a little theatre in a northern suburb had felt the jar. There had been a great rushing about and making of adjustments, but it did not help matters for long. The West-end theatre shut down. And a few weeks later, after a brave struggle by a company which had waived first its salaries in favour of shares, and then its meals in favour of cups of coffee, the Northern Heights Repertory Theatre also closed its doors.
Kate had not at first been able to believe that the receding tide of theatre-going might well have swept stage-management out of her reach, until, some day, the tide came in again. But she believed it now. For the last month she had been trying to find herself a job, and it had been a grim business. She had determined, if she failed this morning to get on the track of a job, to abandon the vain struggle and wait for the tide to come in again.
What she would do instead, she was not yet quite sure. She had a friend, Aminta Hughes, working on a farm in Radnorshire, who was continually writing and exhorting her to join the Women’s Land Army. There was, in fact, a letter from Aminta in Kate’s handbag now, all about the threshing of oats, a cow with a sore udder, sunrise over the mountains, and foot-and-mouth disease. Skimming it over her toast and apple at breakfast, Kate had practically decided to go in for munitions.
She paused outside a modest café to reflect on her situation, and to consider whether she would have a sandwich first and go to the Lab
our Exchange afterwards, or the other way round, when a handbill pasted to the window of the small modiste’s shop next door caught her eye. “PLEASE HELP! PLEASE HELP!” Below these words, which were in inch-high letters and stood out with a quite painful urgency at the top of the folio sheet, was the photograph of a boy.
“Missing,” ran the smaller letterpress below, “since October 1st, from his billet in Hastry, Radnorshire, Sidney Brentwood, aged 12½, height five feet four inches, well-built, fair hair, blue eyes, fresh complexion. Wearing grey flannel shorts, brown corduroy wind-sheeter, green stockings and brown shoes. It is thought he may be trying to make his way to London. Anybody who is able to give any information, or to help IN ANY WAY to trace this boy, PLEASE communicate immediately with his aunt, Miss Brentwood, at 105 Tranchester Terrace, W.2.”
“October the 1st!” thought Kate mournfully, studying the photograph. “Nearly three weeks ago! Some hopes, poor kid!”
She looked carefully at the boy’s photograph, with the usual remote hope that she might recognise him as someone she had seen. It was a round, candid face, still infantile in shape, with eyes wider apart than they would appear later after the full development of the jaw, a good broad forehead, hair tending to curl, short, straight nose and easily smiling mouth. It was the face of a nice, candid, not very clever, adventurous boy, decided Kate. Whether he ever returned to his aunt or not, Kate hoped very much that his adventurous spirit had caused his disappearance, and not some miserable accident. Poor aunt, responsible for the boy, and now helpless, distracted, dependent upon the machine-like, slow, impersonal help of the police. She wondered whether he had been happy, or unhappy, in his billet in far-off Hastry, Radnorshire. Queer that it should be Radnorshire, where Aminta dwelt among the sunsets and udders. Perhaps Aminta knew Hastry?
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