The bell was answered by a girl of about sixteen. She stood in the doorway with the door wide open behind her and gazed at Hugh. He smiled at her.
“Do you know where I can find some whisky, Mary?”
“The master never took it, sir, and my name’s Daisy.”
“All right, Daisy. Send Crick up to me, will you, as soon as he gets back?”
“Mr. Crick go home, sir, at half-past eight, soon as that hev his supper.”
“Where’s his home?”
“By Cuddaford Bridge, sir. That live with his mother.”
“I see. Well, he’ll have to come back here to get his supper and put the car away, I suppose. Send him up as soon as he comes back.”
“That won’t listen to me.” There was no pertness here; merely a statement of fact.
“That must!” Her soft, singing accent with the rising inflection had irritated him. “If he doesn’t come at once, he’s sacked. Understand?”
Daisy looked scared, sketched an orphanage curtsey, and withdrew. Hugh began to whistle, a sign, with him, of a disturbed mind. He went to the sideboard and looked inside, but there was nothing but a bottle of orange-juice. He flung the cupboard to and took out another cigarette. Crick opened the door half an hour later and stood just inside it, leaving it open, as Daisy had done.
“Sir?”
“Have you been using the car?”
“Only as usual, for Mrs. B.”
“Have you put it away?”
“No, sir.”
“Bit of luck for you. I want you to go out and buy me a bottle of whisky. If you can get a siphon of soda and some small dry gingers, bring them back as well. Know where to go?”
“No, sir.”
“In that case, better go into Norwich. If you can’t get whisky, bring rum. You can always get that.”
“My work finishes at half-past eight, sir, and I haven’t had my supper. I had arrangements with the late master, sir.”
“We shall have to reconsider those arrangements, Crick. What happens if I want to go to an evening performance at the Maddermarket?”
“I couldn’t say, sir. The master never went out after dinner.” The chauffeur’s tone was carefully impersonal. Hugh read insolence into it. He spoke quietly.
“I see. Well, Crick, I suppose you’ve had no warning that I might have different ideas, so you can drive me to the local pub and I’ll see what I can charm out of the landlord. I’ll walk back, so you’ll be able to put the car away and get your supper.”
“Beg pardon, sir, but I reckon on the use of the car to get me home to Cuddaford Bridge, and back again here in the morning, sir. It’s always been understood.”
“Not any longer,” said Hugh flatly. “The car is for my use, not yours.”
The pub sold nothing but beer and Norfolk cider. Hugh ordered a pint of beer and carried it to a bench beside a table. He took a very long time to drink it. The pub was neutral territory, he decided, and neutral territory, as no friendly territory seemed to be at hand, was desirable if he was to think out his position.
He stayed for the best part of an hour, then, having come to no conclusion except that the servants had got out of hand, a conclusion he had reached when the housekeeper left, he pushed his pint pot towards the middle of the table and got up. Before he reached the door a man who was seated on a bench near it got up, too, brushing his moustache, and they approached the door together. Hugh stood back for the other to go first, and was surprised to find the moustached man waiting for him outside.
“Evening, Mr. Camber.”
“Good evening, Mr.…?”
“Beresford. Bill Beresford. I farm over at Broadlands. One of your tenants, Mr. Camber.”
“Glad to hear it. But how do you know who I am?”
“I saw your car as I come in here tonight and I said to myself as it must be the new Mr. Camber, seeing, too, that Maurice Crick was driving.”
“Tell me, Mr. Beresford,” said Hugh, seizing, as he thought, an opportunity, “what I’ve done to get myself disliked down here.”
“You, sir? Nothing that I know of. For why?”
“There are no indoor servants left at Camber Abbey except a half-baked tweeny and the outdoor staff. What’s eaten them? Do you know?”
“Not to say that I know. I can give a pretty good guess, but it isn’t my way to make trouble in families, no matter what trouble’s been made for me.”
Light dawned on Hugh. Beresford was the father of the girl who had gone to London for the week-end with the tutor.
“I wish you’d give me the benefit of your guess, Mr. Beresford,” he said. “I’m entirely in the dark. I haven’t been to Camber since young Stephen was a small child, yet, before my arrival, nearly all the women servants had left and the housekeeper only stayed to give me a couple of meals before she also took herself off. If you can shed any light I’d be very grateful indeed.”
“I’m not bursting to help anybody of your house, Mr. Camber. I’ve nothing against you personally, but there are matters connected with that house that I don’t and can’t forgive.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Are you walking home, sir?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll step along with you, if I may. I dare say,” he went on, as they left the lights of the inn behind them, “you feel I should explain my words.”
“No,” said Hugh, who had taken a slight dislike to the farmer, “I don’t see why you should. Mrs. Bruton told me about the man Verith.”
“She did?”
“But it’s a little unreasonable, isn’t it, to hold my cousin responsible for what a tutor in his household chose to do?”
“If it was the tutor!” said Beresford. “My girl swears it wasn’t, and she ought to know. Trouble is, she won’t name who it was and, to put it plain, Mr. Camber, I suspected Mr. Paul himself.”
“Oh, come, now, Beresford! That won’t do at all! It seems to me your girl didn’t want to marry Verith and that’s why she wouldn’t agree he was the man. If it really was my cousin, why wouldn’t she name him?”
“With me holding my farm from him? She’s made a bad mistake, Mr. Camber, but she’s got her head screwed on tight. She could never have proved it, once she’d been fool enough to spend that week-end in London with young Verith. Who would have believed her?”
“You did, apparently.”
They walked on in silence for a bit; then Hugh, who felt the constraint of the silence, repeated, in a different form, the question he had asked in the beginning.
“Look, Beresford, whatever has happened is neither my fault nor my responsibility, so why is everyone fighting shy of me?”
There was a long silence, as though Beresford was rehearsing his answer.
“I only know what my wife tells me. All the women say it around here, it seems. They think Mrs. Hal Camber is coming to run the Hall for you, and it’s her the women-servants fight shy of; it isn’t you.”
“Mrs. Hal? My brother’s widow? Good heavens, man, the suggestion’s preposterous! I don’t need her help. I shall engage another housekeeper in place of Mrs. Brunton, that’s all! I don’t propose to do much entertaining, anyway. I certainly shouldn’t invite Mrs. Hal Camber to run my house for me.”
“She might not wait for an invitation, Mr. Camber. She’s a very managing woman.”
“Well, she won’t manage me, and you can tell people so. Wherever did such a notion come from?”
“Likely from the lady herself, Mr. Camber. Anyway, that’s how the land lies. Mrs. Brunton, who visits at our place every now and then, couldn’t make her arrangements quick enough when she got wind of the situation, I can tell you!”
“Well, thanks very much for tipping me off, Beresford. Why, I don’t even know Mrs. Hal. The only times I ever met her were here at Camber one Christmas, and at my brother’s funeral. I didn’t even go to the wedding.”
“I’ll see the wife spreads the news, then. Good night, Mr. Camber.” He strode off into the darkness
. Hugh walked briskly in through the great double gates (permanently open, since the people in the lodge were rent-paying tenants) and made sure that Crick had put the car away. Then he went into the house and rang the bell again. Daisy presented herself.
“Are you and I the only occupants of the house, Daisy?”
“Oh, no, sir. I get my mother and sister to come here to sleep.”
“Very sensible of you. Ask your mother and sister to come here for a few minutes, will you?”
He offered the three of them chairs when Daisy returned with her relatives, but they remained standing in a row, the mother wearing a respectable black straw hat of uncertain vintage, the sister inclined to simper, and Daisy herself to giggle nervously.
“I hope Daisy didn’t take a liberty, sir, asking us up to sleep along of her?” the mother tentatively enquired.
“No, no, not at all. But I am curious about the circumstances which seem to have made it necessary. Why on earth, Mrs.…?”
“Norgate, sir.”
“Mrs. Norgate, have the other servants walked out on me like this?—without, mind you, even stopping long enough to find out what sort of employer I should make.”
Mrs. Norgate gazed at him and Hugh experienced the same feeling as that which he had had at one point during his conversation with Beresford. She seemed to be preparing what she was going to say before she said it.
“Well, it might be for one reason and it might be for two,” she admitted at last.
“What’s the second reason, Mrs. Norgate?”
But Mrs. Norgate was not prepared to be hustled. She studied him with her far-seeing Norfolk eyes, the eyes of those accustomed to wide distances both of earth and sky, and then replied:
“It get about up here that you have no wife.”
“Well, there were plenty of servants to chaperone each other, weren’t there?”
As an effort of lighthearted speech it was a complete failure. Daisy giggled in an anguished sort of way; her sister said, “Oo, fancy!” Her mother remained unruffled but contrived to indicate clearly that Hugh had been guilty of a breach of taste. He felt a fool.
“It get about that Mrs. Hal Camber come and keep house for you, that’s all, sir.”
“Well, I don’t see why that should frighten them all away!” Hugh was annoyed with himself and spoke sharply. “What’s the real reason, Mrs. Norgate?”
“That go to be the real reason, one of the two you hear me speak of, Mr. Camber. The other—that seem the girls think this might be a very unlucky house.”
“Because of the deaths of my cousin and his son? I thought as much. Sheer superstition, Mrs. Norgate. Anyway, I’m very glad Daisy isn’t so silly.”
“You go to promote Daisy, I take it, if that stay.”
It was not a request, but an instruction. Hugh said he would consider it favourably. In the morning Crick gave notice. Hugh thought it was because he had been refused the use of the car. He said cheerfully:
“That’s all right, Crick. Did Mr. Paul ever write you a character?”
“No, I don’t need none. I got me a job in a garage.”
“That’s good. Well, good-bye, Crick.” He felt a sense of relief when the young man had gone, but the feeling looked like being short-lived. The gardeners sent word by Daisy that they would like to see him. He told her, curtly, to send them up.
“They have dirty boots, sir.”
“All right. I’ll see them in the gun-room.”
He was prepared to give the gardeners short shrift, although he badly wanted to keep them. Gardening was not his hobby, and, in any case, he supposed there would be too much to do for one amateur, even if it were. It was true that there was no garden at the front of the house, but it was flanked by flowerbeds on either side and there were greenhouses, a couple of lawn-tennis courts, and a water-lily pond to be looked after. He shook his head. The gardeners came in.
“Right, you chaps,” he said. “Let me make one thing clear, as there seems to be some misunderstanding. I hear there’s a rumour going about that my younger brother’s widow, Mrs. Hal Camber, is to run this house. It isn’t true, and I’d rather like to know how the talk began. Can either of you enlighten me?”
The gardeners were father and son, a stocky, grizzled, slow-moving, quiet-eyed man and a six-foot sprig of eighteen. They exchanged glances.
“Suit us to be here,” said the father.
“That suit us,” said the son.
“Then what do you want to see me about?”
They exchanged glances again.
“That do seem strange, Mr. Paul and Master Stephen both being drowned,” said the father.
“That seem strange. Make a lot of talk,” said the son.
“There’s always talk about a coincidence like that,” said Hugh. “You two are going to stay, then?”
“That suit us,” said the father.
“I can get that Ethel King to come back,” volunteered the son. “That’s simple.”
“Who’s Ethel King?”
“Housemaid.”
“We could do with a cook.”
“A cook?” Both men shook their heads.
“Mrs. Grant was fond of Master Stephen,” said the son. “Could have had the top brick off her chimney any time he like to ask for it.”
“I see. Where do you chaps reckon to get your dinner?”
“At home. We don’t feed in the house.”
“Good thing, under these circumstances. What are your names?”
“I’m Abel Adams. This is my boy Tom.”
“All right, then, Adams.”
They clumped off into the garden, but Tom came back almost immediately.
“I see the agent coming up the drive, sir.”
“The agent?”
“Ah. That look after the estate and see to the tenants.”
“What’s his name?”
“Bembridge.”
“Oh, yes, of course. Thanks, Tom.” He could not help wondering whether the agent also intended handing in his resignation on account of Mrs. Hal—or, of course, because of what appeared to be local superstition concerning the death of young Stephen and, so very little later, of his father.
Tom hesitated before departing.
“Mr. Bembridge, that have taken over the old parsonage. That suit him, and parson, that’s glad of the rent.”
“The parson? Oh, Lord, yes! I shall have to make his acquaintance, I suppose. Did Mr. Paul Camber go to church?”
“That did. Churchwarden, and read the lessons regular. I wonder to myself they didn’t stick in his throat.”
“Well, they won’t stick in mine because I’ve no intention of reading them,” said Hugh, who, realising what was behind this outburst, was unprepared to challenge it. “Where does the parson live, now that he’s let the vicarage?”
“In a cottage next but one to the church. Mr. Paul let him have it rent-free. Parson’s a bachelor and have his sister to look after him. That often visit with Mrs. Bembridge.”
Abel put his head in at the door.
“Come you away, Tom. Mr. Camber want to talk to Mr. Bembridge, not to you. Do you hold your tongue, now. Like a nattering old mawther you are!” Abel jerked his head authoritatively and took his son away.
CHAPTER TWO
Rumours
“Ashamed and fearful to appear,
They screen their horrid shapes with the black hemisphere.”
Abraham Cowley
Hugh waited a moment or two after the departure of the gardeners, before he went round the side of the house and on to the terrace. The agent, a long-legged man of about his own age, got out of an old Ford and came up the steps.
“Mr. Camber? I’m Bembridge. Thought I’d better look you up as soon as possible.”
“Thanks,” said Hugh. “Come on up to the library.” When they were seated, he added, “What can I do for you?”
“It’s rather the other way about. What can I do for you, Mr. Camber? I expect you’d like to
know how the estate has been managed and run.”
“Well, that can wait for a bit, perhaps. I’ve had excellent reports of you from the lawyers, so I’m more than willing to take things on trust at present. There are other ways in which you can help me. Who are my neighbours, and what are my social obligations towards them? I play golf and I fish, and I can ride a horse. Is there a local hunt, and ought I to join? Where can I get another cook and a housekeeper and some maids?”
“Oh, dear!” Bembridge crossed one leg over the other and lit a cigarette. “It’s—there’s some prejudice, you know.”
“I’ve been told. My younger brother’s widow—Mrs. Hal Camber.”
“Oh, you do know.” Bembridge looked relieved. “Ethel King could be persuaded. She’s dimly related to the Adams, your gardeners. They’re staying, I suppose?”
“On condition that Mrs. Hal doesn’t take over the management of this house. Why should she, anyway?”
“She was always trying it on with Mr. Paul Camber. He engaged Mrs. Brunton to keep her out. (I’m speaking frankly. You don’t mind?) Even so, she used to invite herself and the child for lengthy visits. Her excuse was that Paul must be lonely and that Peter made a companion for Stephen. He didn’t, of course, because not only was there four years’ difference in their ages, but they were temperamentally incompatible.”
“Hm! Anyway, what I need at the moment is a cook.”
The Man Who Grew Tomatoes Page 2