The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris
Page 16
Mrs. Alexander shrugged her ample shoulders and muttered something in her native tongue. Then her eye fell upon her firebrand son, Adam. She smiled sadly at him, and he, touched, laid his arm about her shoulders. Who knows, she wondered to herself in German, perhaps, in time, I might make something of him?
Mrs. Bunnion alone still had a good word to say for Mr. Brett, and whenever her husband recalled his treachery, she always defended him warmly and declared she couldn’t believe it of him. Then Dr. Bunnion would smile and say, “What a heart you have, my love. Generous to a fault.”
And as for the headmaster himself, now that all his fears had proved groundless and nothing disagreeable had happened, he was more convinced than ever that nothing was to be gained by facing an unpleasantness but a nasty shock.
Mr. Raven did not have lunch with the Harrises on that memorable Saturday, even though they pressed him to stay. He had sworn that he’d not break bread with them even if they begged him on bended knees. He did not want their lunch and he scorned their hospitality. He suspected he’d have been asked to eat in the kitchen. Besides, his work there was done. The return of Adelaide he took as a matter of course. He was pleased but not surprised. According to his plan, it had been bound to happen, and happen it had. The greater triumph was what had not happened. There had been no murder. This was indeed a feather in his cap, but alas, not the one he really wanted. Brett had escaped him. At the last minute he must have decided that the inquiry agent had come too close. So Mr. Raven was on his way to Southampton to track his adversary down. He and his boot would be the eternal pursuers, and Mr. Brett and his paramour would be the eternal pursued. To the ends of the earth he’d follow them, with his terrible tap-thump . . . tap-thump . . .
Had Tizzy and James been aware of this, they might indeed have been chilled. But the ship that took them to the crisp New World was too full of dreaming to let so lame a nightmare in, and the raven had no wings.
But back to that tremendous Saturday once more. One small mishap marred the general rejoicing in the homes of the Bostocks and the Harrises. Mrs. Bostock, returning unexpectedly from the Harrises, came upon her son attempting to dry out her quilt that had vanished mysteriously on the previous day and now appeared even more mysteriously. Despite Bostock’s protests, she snatched it from him, and then she recoiled. It stank of fish, gin, babies, and a very powerful odor that seemed to be compounded of brandy and burnt cake. And so, Mrs. Bostock remembered, did the infant Adelaide.
She communicated this interesting fact to her husband, who at once passed it on to Dr. Harris. The two fathers stared at each other. They grew very pale. Then, basely acting on suspicion alone, Captain Bostock thrashed Bostock with an old belaying pin he kept as a souvenir. But Dr. Harris, who was a more cultured man altogether, smote Harris with a volume of Harvey’s Circulation of the Blood.
“Violence,” said Harris the younger, bitterly. “Personal violence. And only on suspicion, too.”
“My pa said it was natural justice,” mumbled Bostock, whose thicker feelings had not been so outraged.
“Justice? What’s that? There ain’t no such thing as justice, Bosty. It—it’s just the calling card of brute force. Mark my words, Bosty—beware of the man who says he’s just. He’s the one who’s out to get you if he can!”
Deeply impressed, Bostock nodded, and the two friends thereupon made a solemn pact to steer clear of justice in all its forms.
At the school, Adam Alexander filled the vacancy created by the elopement of Mr. Brett, so Major Alexander’s schemes at last bore a somewhat mottled fruit. Whether there was any justice in this or not is neither here nor there. It happened in accordance with the way of the world which is chiefly concerned with convenience.
Ralph Bunnion, in the fullness of time, married Maud Sorley, so Sir Walter was able to extend his pleasures by being overbearing in yet another household to a son-in-law of inferior birth. But all in all they got on very well together and often dined at the expense of Frederick, to whom Ralph had given one of his waistcoats on the occasion of his wedding.
Last of all there was the Gypsy baby with hair as black as sin. His miraculous appearance among the foundlings in the place of the flowery Adelaide, though remarked on by the wet nurse who thought she was going mad, was resolutely ignored by Mrs. Bonney, who had been present all the time. No exchange could possibly have taken place under the vigilant eye of the matron, and anyone who dared to suggest that it had—here she glared at the trembling wet nurse—was either malicious, unchristian or drunk.
So the infant grew and grew in all his darkly passionate mystery. He grew until he was between five and six years old when, early one summer, he ran away from Mrs. Bonney’s care. By degrees he made his way northward, until one day he was found in the streets of Liverpool by a kindly old gentleman by the name of Earnshaw. This old gentleman took him home and brought him up, and after an early disappointment in love, he ended his days in prosperous circumstances in a remote part of Yorkshire. Considering his unfavorable beginnings, he ended up rather well.
But back once more to Dr. Bunnion’s Academy for the sons of merchants and gentlefolk. In the front parlor, words drone, but no one seems to heed them. Most of the boys are asleep and Adam Alexander lowers his voice as he does not want to wake them up. His fiery nature has been quite quenched and he gazes with fear and hatred at the pupils who have done this to him. He gazes particularly hard at Bostock and Harris and his voice falls to a whisper.
He is reading from The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus. He does not much care for it, but there is something about children in it that attracts him powerfully. “Why, there they are both,” he murmurs dreamily, “baked in that pie.”
Harris leans forward and cups a hand to his ear. “Could I have that last item again, sir?” he asks, and Adam Alexander shudders to observe an unwholesome light in his eyes. He hopes that it is a fever, as he does not care to think of its being an idea.
About the Author
Leon Garfield was born in Brighton in 1921. He was the acclaimed author of more than thirty novels for children and adults including Devil in the Fog, winner of the inaugural Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize in 1967, The God Beneath the Sea, winner of the 1970 Carnegie Medal, and John Diamond, winner of the 1980 Whitbread literary award. He was also elected a member of the Royal Society of Literature. He died in 1996.
Also by Leon Garfield:
The Apprentices
Black Jack
Blewcoat Boy
Bostock and Harris
The Boy and The Monkey
The Confidence Man
The December Rose
Devil-In-The-Fog
The Drummer Boy
The Empty Sleeve
The Ghost Downstairs
The God Beneath The Sea
The Golden Shadow
Guilt and Gingerbread
The House of Cards
John Diamond
Mr Corbett’s Ghost
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
The Pleasure Garden
The Prisoners of September
Sabre-Tooth Sandwich
The Saracen Maid
The Sound of Coaches
The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris
THE STRANGE AFFAIR OF ADELAIDE HARRIS
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 17389 1
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Copyright © Leon Garfield, 1971
First Published in Great Britain by Longhams, 1971
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