‘I hope you’re right,’ said Cleeve soberly. ‘It’s getting dark already. We’re in for some rain.’
In fact, rain was falling as they went out to the car.
II
Earlier that afternoon Liz walked up to the far end of Brimberley to call on Jim Hedges.
The garage and motor repair shop lay beyond the bridge over Brimber brook which circled the churchyard at that point.
Liz had never before penetrated beyond the penthouse in front where she paid for the oil and petrol and bought an occasional spare part for her motor-cycle. She had not realised the full depth of the interior building.
A car, stripped to its chassis, and tilted at an uncomfortable angle on props and jacks, waited patiently for the hand of the surgeon. Jim was beyond the car, busy at a bench. He was using a bright pair of long-nosed pliers to tiddle a copper wire along a steel channel. His huge, oil-blacked hands worked with curious delicacy and precision.
It has taken three generations to do it, thought Liz, but we’ve bred him at last, the natural mechanical countryman. Spanners now, not scythes; horse-power instead of horses. But just as patient and just as instinctively clever with the new toys as he had been with the old.
‘Sorry to disturb you, Jim,’ she said.
The noise of the charging-plant must have killed the noise of her approach, but when she spoke the big hand did not jump a fraction of an inch.
‘Well now, Mrs. Artside,’ said Jim. ‘Motor-cycle trouble or choir trouble?’
‘Choir trouble,’ said Liz. ‘Treble trouble.’
‘That makes it five to one it’s something to do with my lot.’
‘That’s it. It’s one of yours. Has anyone said anything to you?’
Jim put down the pliers and wiped his hand on a piece of rag. He looked worried.
‘I heard something,’ he said. ‘You know how it is in a village.’
‘I know how it is in a village,’ agreed Liz. ‘And that’s why I came round. What’s the strength of it, Jim?’
‘I haven’t spoke to Morry yet,’ said Jim. ‘He’s at school, see. I was going to talk to him this evening. What do you think, Mrs. Artside?’
‘I don’t think he took it.’
‘It didn’t sound like our Morry,’ agreed Jim. ‘Nor I couldn’t quite see how he was supposed to have done it. He’s not what you’d call a pick-lock. Not like his old man.’
‘Can you pick locks, Jim?’
‘Most of ‘em,’ said Jim, suddenly grinning. ‘But it’s not a thing I’ve taught the kids yet. You never know with a parlour trick like that. What I did wonder’—Jim looked serious again—’if it’s right he had a ten shilling note, he can’t have come by it honest. Sixpence a week and their lunch money. That’s all they get, unless it’s a birthday or Christmas. But I did wonder if he might have got hold of it here. Those kids are all in and out, and I don’t lock the money up, which I ought to, I know—’
‘It sounds a much more likely explanation,’ said Liz. ‘I always found Maurice truthful myself. When I asked him straight out, had he taken it, he said, “I never took any money from the box in the church.” Straight out. Just like that. It did occur to me to wonder, afterwards, if he wasn’t being a little too truthful – if you see. Just telling the literal truth and hiding behind that.’
‘I’ll talk to him this evening when he gets home,’ said Jim. ‘I’d rather it turned out to be my money he took. Keeps it in the family. Not that it’ll save him from a walloping he’ll remember, if so he did do it.’
When Liz got outside she stood for a moment wondering what she wanted to do next.
The afternoon had been growing steadily darker. There was rain, and plenty of it, piled up in the dirty, over-blown clouds to windward.
On Fridays she usually spent the evening with the General. And if Tim had anything to keep him in London he would arrange it for that evening. Today, however, the General had gone up to Staines, to look at some papers. To rustle about, amongst matters long dead.
Long dying, but now dead.
The rising wind was whipping the trees, stripping off their last leaves, baring their branches for the stark severity of winter.
‘Stop brooding,’ said Liz to herself. ‘Life isn’t really like that at all. It’s the weather, and the uncertainty. You want a cup of tea, and a good gossip.’
She set out briskly, back over the bridge, across the churchyard, down the small strip of High Street, keeping along it until she was past the speed limit signs, and saw the poplars that marked the turning into Melliker Lane.
Sue was at home. Liz heard her start downstairs as soon as she rang. Then, rather to her surprise, the click of the key being turned back. The Pallings’ front door usually stood on the latch.
‘Am I glad to see you,’ said Sue. ‘I’ve been sitting here having the willies.’
‘Me too,’ said Liz. ‘It’s something to do with the weather. Can I help you get tea? I pine for tea. Tea and toast.’
‘For goodness sake, yes,’ said Sue.
They went along to the kitchen. Liz put the kettle on and Sue cut some bread.
‘If I’d known what it was going to be like this afternoon,’ she said, ‘I’d never have allowed grandfather to go. It started getting dim soon after lunch. If I’d had any sense I’d have cleared right out, and taken a bus over to Bramshott and gone to the cinema or something. But instead I sat in my room and tried to catch up with jobs. I thought I would sustain myself with virtue.’
‘Fatal,’ said Liz. ‘When you feel the blues coming on you’ve got to go out and do something violent and silly.’
‘It wasn’t too bad until I heard the ticking.’
‘You heard what?’
‘Ticking. When I sat quite still I could hear it distinctly.’
‘But—’
‘It’s all right. I ran it to earth. It was the gas meter under the stairs. After that I started hearing little men. Sometimes they were upstairs, sometimes down.’
‘They get about,’ agreed Liz. ‘Was that when you locked the front door?’
‘That’s right. Let’s take it upstairs. I’ve got a good fire.’
They went to Sue’s room. She had, for her own, the big front room, on the first floor, with the bow windows. It was a nice room, with just that shade of uncertainty in the decorative arrangements that reminded Liz of her own youth.
Over a cup of tea Sue looked levelly at Liz and said, ‘And just what’s wrong with Tim these days?’
Liz tried to consider the matter dispassionately, whilst half of her mind was weighing up the form of the question, to see if she ought to read something into the fact that it had been asked at all.
‘He was always a difficult boy,’ she said. ‘Nice, but difficult. I don’t think it was only because he never had a father. Something to do with it, but not much. Then, the ‘thirties were a bad time for a boy to grow up in: I don’t imagine, when we’re far enough away to look back at them, that we’re going to be awfully proud of the ‘thirties. Then again, he was too good at games. And that made everything a bit too easy for him at school. He didn’t have to work his way to the top. He got there by divine right, because of some knack of co-ordinating wrist and eye, which meant that he could score runs at cricket or points at racquets, or whatever it was the school needed at that moment to make them happy. He must have got all that from his father. I never had any eye for that sort of thing. I was a promising boxer, though, at the age of ten.’
‘Have some more tea,’ said Sue. ‘I suppose the war didn’t help.’
‘Yes and no. He got straight into Special Service – almost as soon as they invented it. Games again. He’d played football with someone who was starting a special unit—’
‘I know,’ said Sue. ‘Awfully good chap, Artside. Played scrum half for the ‘Quins. We must have him.’
Both women suddenly giggled.
‘Anyway,’ said Liz, ‘it saved him from life in a wartime officers’ mess. And I thi
nk it democratised him. I don’t believe that what he did was any more dangerous or uncomfortable than a front line soldier’s job, but the point of it was that it was mostly solo stuff – at the most he might have a sergeant or a couple of men with him. One of the men he worked with most was a private in the Middlesex Regiment.’
‘Does he still keep in touch?’
Tm afraid he’s too grand,’ said Liz sadly. ‘He owns a whole chain of second-hand car shops. He still sends Tim a box of cigars at Christmas.’
There was silence for a bit. The rain was thickening now, coming down in a solid, heavy curtain.
‘He’s bit wrapped up in himself,’ said Sue at last, as if she was answering some thought of her own.
‘Before the war,’ said Liz, ‘I thought I understood him as well as any woman of my age could understand a boy. Now I hardly know a thing about him. He might do anything in the wide world.’
‘Just what does he do?’ said Sue. ‘I suppose I oughtn’t to ask really.’
‘There’s no harm in asking,’ said Liz, ‘because all I can tell you won’t make you much wiser. After he came back from Palestine—and was I glad to see him get clear of that!—worse than the war – and so unnecessary – as I say when he got back he had a shot at a lot of things. Forestry estate management. I’m not sure he didn’t even try bee-keeping. But they all seemed to want capital or experience which were the two things he was short of. Then, quite suddenly, one day, he announced that he’d got a job. That was that. Every day he puts on a dark suit and a clean collar and trots off with all the other commuters to this job, whatever it may be. It brings in money every week. Not much, I think, but enough. He doesn’t seem to have to be at the office terribly early, and he usually gets home in good time. I don’t suppose he stays away for the night more than two or three times in a year. And that’s really all I know about it!’
‘Does his job take him into Essex, by any chance?’
‘Not that I know of. Why?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Something he said. Listen, isn’t that Bob’s car?’
Both women went over to the window. Sue’s hearing must have been extraordinarily acute. The car had only just turned into Melliker Lane. Its headlights cut out a path through the dancing rain.
As they watched the car swung out to make the turn into the drive.
Liz felt Sue gripping her arm.
Then she saw it, too.
She wrenched at the window and started to shout abruptly.
Out of the very corner of his eye, Bob Cleeve noticed the window swing open and, with the reflex of a good driver who sees something he cannot at once account for, he braked lightly. The noise of the engine drowned any shout.
Too late, he saw it too and stood on everything.
There was a twang like a bowstring as the taut rope across the gate hit the car. A crack as the windscreen buckled. A sharper crack as one of the gate-posts heeled and snapped, and the car, skidding wildly, thrashed the gravel and turned broadside on across the width of the drive.
Then, for a long moment, no sound but the drumming of the rain.
Chapter Eleven
SECOND INTERVAL: CLAMBOYS
Armado: ‘Why tough signior? Why tough signior?
Moth; Why tender juvenal? Why tender juvenal.’
‘Easy does it now,’ said Cleeve. He was bleeding freely from the face, but seemed otherwise intact. ‘Easy again. I’ll shift the seat.’
There was a bruise, already puffy, on the General’s forehead, a bruise from which blood was beginning to ooze dark and slow. His eyes were shut.
Sue’s face was as white as her grandfather’s.
‘Ring the doctor,’ said Liz. ‘Bob and I can manage now. And stop looking like a frightened duck. He’s survived worse bumps than that.’
Cleeve got one arm under the General and, Liz helping, they lifted him, curiously light, she thought, as though under the outer husk of his clothes, age had been stealthily eating up her friend.
During the slow passage from the car to the front door the fresh air and rain must have achieved something, for the General opened his eyes, shook his head, winced and shut them again.
They propped him on a chair in the hall.
‘The fire’s upstairs, in my room,’ said Sue over her shoulder. ‘Oh, is that you, doctor? Sue Palling here. Yes. Could you come across right away. Only be careful when you get to the gate. It’s blocked. A sort of car smash. Yes, it’s the General. Right away, if you would.’
‘We’d better carry him up,’ said Liz. ‘Warmth’s the thing.’
‘If you say so,’ said Cleeve. ‘Disturb as little as possible would be my diagnosis.’
‘Walk,’ said the General, faintly but firmly.
And walk he did, helped on either side.
They put him on the sofa, in front of the fire, with a rug over him.
‘Hot sweet tea,’ suggested Liz.
‘Nonsense,’ said the General. ‘That’s the treatment for shock. This is concussion.’
They were still arguing when the doctor arrived. He was young and brisk and confident.
‘Slight concussion,’ he announced, when he had finished cleaning up. ‘You’d be better in bed. I’ll put you up a sedative.’
‘I’ve had concussion more times than you’ve had birthdays,’ said the General. ‘Never been to bed for it yet. Always found a glass of red wine useful.’
‘The great thing is not to worry,’ said the doctor. The General eyed him malevolently out of his bloodshot right eye. His left one was so puffed as to be temporarily useless. ‘And you’d all be better for dry clothes. We don’t want three more patients.’
He clattered off down the stairs. Sue went down to let him out, and came back again.
‘He’s absolutely right,’ said Liz. ‘I’m soaking. That was real rain. Is your car still functioning?’
‘What? Yes, I think so,’ said Cleeve absently. ‘Just the windscreen. It’ll be a bit draughty.’
‘If you could run me back to my house, I’ll get changed and arrange for someone—’
‘I don’t like it,’ said Cleeve suddenly and sharply.
‘Sue’ll be all right for a bit. We can arrange for a nurse later.’
‘Of course I shall be all right.’
‘Nurse,’ said the General. ‘Who for?’
‘Curiously enough,’ said Cleeve, ‘it’s not you or Sue that I’m worrying about at all.’
This achieved its object. There was a moment of silence.
‘What do you mean?’ said Liz.
‘Look here. You’re all assuming that rope was put there by the same—the same madman who destroyed MacMorris. Aren’t you?’
The General started to nod but thought better of it. Liz and Sue said ‘Yes’.
‘All right. But doesn’t it strike you as a chancy and inefficient way of knocking us off?’
Liz said, the puzzled look still on her face, ‘Do you mean that he wasn’t to know you’d both gone up to town. Because if so, it’s only fair to say that I mentioned it to half a dozen people, in Brimberley alone.’
‘That’s one aspect of it,’ said Bob. ‘But it wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. Granted that anyone might know that we were due back after dark, why set about it that way?’
‘It seems to have worked reasonably well,’ said Sue. She sounded cross.
‘Slight concussion,’ said the General defiantly.
‘By a series of flukes, he got some results,’ agreed Bob. ‘But tell me this, General. If it hadn’t been pelting with rain, would you have allowed me to bring you to your front door?’
‘Certainly not,’ said the General. ‘If anyone’s kind enough to give me a lift I invariably jump off at the end of the lane.’
‘Right,’ said Cleeve. ‘And if it hadn’t been for the same rain, I don’t believe I’d ever have hit the rope at all. I’d have seen it in plenty of time and stopped. Or been going so slowly it wouldn’t have mattered. And why a rope? It couldn’t b
e strong enough to wreck the car. A steel hawser, now—’
‘For goodness sake,’ said Sue. ‘Perhaps he hadn’t got a steel hawser.’
‘What are you getting at, Bob?’ said Liz.
‘I’m getting at this,’ said Bob. ‘Every Friday, after dark, throughout the winter, Liz comes to this house on that motor-bicycle of hers, which she rides to the public danger. Just imagine her pelting round that corner and getting the rope under her chin.’
‘Good God,’ said the General, sitting up.
‘And that’s why I don’t particularly want Liz out of our sight. At least, not until Tim’s back, and can keep an eye on her.’
‘Where is Tim?’
Liz said, ‘I can usually get hold of him when he stays up on a Friday. There’s a number I can ring. It’s a friend’s flat.’
‘All right,’ said Cleeve. ‘Give it a try. But if you can’t get hold of him, I’m going to take you all home with me. I’ve got plenty of beds – and hot baths,’ he added as Sue sneezed. ‘I’m going out now to extract the car.’
The friend was in his flat when Liz rang, but knew nothing of Tim’s movements. Which was not surprising, as Tim was, at that moment, conversing with Mr. Smith of Holborn.
‘All aboard, then,’ said Cleeve. ‘Bring your toothbrushes and pyjamas. The house can supply the rest. We’ll prop the General up in the back seats with cushions and a rug, and Liz to hold his hand. You sit in front with me, Sue. Mind the upholstery. There’s glass everywhere. All set? Then tally ho!’
Three hours later a warm, well-fed, reasonably easy-minded and very sleepy trio were sitting in front of the big open hearth in the drawing-room at Clamboys Hall.
The leaping firelight threw the rest of the big room into shadows. Sue was half sitting, half lying in a box-like brocaded sofa so wide and deep that she seemed to be trapped in its folds. Liz squarely filled a chair on one side of the fire, opposite her host on the other. The General was in bed and was thought to be asleep.
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