‘In the main church, yes,’ the foxy-faced man said. ‘Nothing a day earlier than fifteenth century; but in the Lady Chapel there is some of the very best that ever was done.’
‘It’s a pretty mouldy thing, English glass, if you ask me,’ Maria said.
‘Well, I think you will find that this isn’t English glass,’ the foxy-faced man said.
‘Well, my dear,’ Mrs Brown said, ‘before we start would you like to run back to Seekings and get some thick wraps?’
‘No, I’ll come as I am,’ Maria said, ‘thanks.’
‘Would you like to leave word,’ Mrs Brown said, ‘that you will be out until teatime?’
‘Oh no,’ Maria said, ‘thanks. They know that I can look after myself. They won’t bother about me. I’ve generally got a pistol or two on me and I’m a dead shot with both hands.’
‘How you must enjoy the quiet atmosphere of school,’ Abner said.
‘School!’ Maria said. ‘They know better than to try that game on me. I’ve been expelled from three and the headmistresses still swoon when they hear my name breathed. I’m Maria Jones, I am: somewhat talked of in school circles, if you take the trouble to enquire.’
‘I count it a great honour,’ Abner said, ‘to entertain so distinguished an ornament of her sex. Then, we will start, shall we? We will have a look at the glass in the morning light. We will get to the Bear’s Paw at Tatchester for lunch: the place still famous for duck patty. Then we will glance at the western window while it has the light behind it and bring you safely back to Seekings in good time for tea.’
They moved out from the room, Mrs Brown with her hand on Maria’s shoulder. Kay, crouched at the spyhole, tried to cry out, ‘Don’t go with them, Maria: they’re up to no good. They are the gang,’ but being tiny as he was his voice made a little reedy squeak, like the buzzing of a fly.
‘Back now,’ he said to the Mouse, ‘back now to Seekings as fast as ever we can go.’
At this instant round the corner of the corridor in which they were, came a party of the Wolves of the Gulf. They had been drinking more rum since Kay had passed them and there they were, pot-valiant, swinging lighted lanterns in their left hands and brandishing cutlasses in their right. Kay heard one of them say, ‘There are their footsteps in the dust – two of them: a mouse and another – and we’ll grind their bones to make our bread.’
‘Yes,’ another said, ‘it’s the cold-blooded cheek of it: coming past us when we were taking our ease round the bowl. We’ll cut ’em into little collops. There they are!’
‘Where?’ said another. ‘I’ll eat their livers fried.’
‘Up there,’ the first one said, ‘up there, where they can’t escape.’
‘Come on now,’ they cried to Kay, ‘come on. We’ll mince you into collops and we’ll eat your livers fried.’
Kay saw their gleaming teeth, their red eyes and their flashing cutlass edges. ‘Give me your hand, Mouse,’ he said. Quickly he caught the Mouse’s hand and with his other hand twiddled the knob on the magic box that he might go swiftly, and, instantly, the two of them were plucked up into the air and whirled past the Wolves of the Gulf back to Seekings. He dropped his weapons in the Mouse’s armoury, went back into his room and resumed his shape.
‘Kay,’ Susan was saying from the other side of the door, ‘d’you know where Jemima is?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘What d’you want Jemima for?’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I was out in the street buying Christmas presents and Maria went into a car with some total strangers at the Rupert’s Arms, and she has gone off with them, and she knows she is absolutely forbidden to go into cars with total strangers.’
‘What sort of a car was it?’ Peter asked.
‘Oh, it was a big, rather old, dark car. I didn’t like the look of the strangers at all, though two of them were dressed like curates.’
‘I expect it will be all right,’ Kay said. He didn’t think that it would be all right: he was very much worried.
Kay did not know what to do; he wished that Caroline Louisa was there. As he went downstairs, Ellen met him.
‘Oh, Master Kay,’ she said, ‘I didn’t hear you come in. There has been a message from your guardian. She’ll be here tonight by the eight-seven, she says, while you’re all at Tatchester at the Punch and Judy show.’
‘Oh, good; I am glad,’ he said. ‘Is her brother well, then?’
‘Much better, she said, Master Kay.’
‘Oh splendid.’
He called the others into the study and told them how Maria had gone with Abner and the gangsters.
‘She’ll be all right,’ Peter said. ‘Maria can look after herself.’
‘It is like Maria,’ Jemima said, ‘to go plunging off with any scoundrels who come along with a suggestion.’
‘I say, it’s rather sport,’ Susan said. ‘Supposing they say “Miss Maria Jones, you will either join our gang or go down the oubliette for ever.”’
‘I pity any gangster who talks like that to Maria,’ Peter said.
‘Supposing she joins the gang,’ Susan said. ‘We might not see her again for years. Then, presently, when we are all old and frightfully hard up, suddenly a mysterious lady, covered with diamonds, will drive up in a Rolls, and say, “I’m your long-lost sister, Maria, came back. I’m the Queen of the Gang now and all your troubles are at an end.”’
‘She’ll be Queen of the Gang, all right,’ Kay said; but he felt uneasy, and wished that he knew what to do.
He went round to the Rupert’s Arms to speak to the proprietress, Mrs Calamine.
‘Could you tell me, please, who the clergymen were who were here this morning?’
‘Those, Master Kay?’ she said. ‘That was the Reverend Doctor Boddledale, with his wife and chaplain and private secretaries. He is the Head of the Missionary and Theological Training College at Chesters, in the Chester Hills.’
‘I thought he was named Mr Brown.’
‘Oh, no, Master Kay, he’s well-known, and a very holy man, and his lady, Mrs Boddledale; oh, she does wear lovely jewels. And she reminds me of someone whom I’ve seen somewhere: it’s always on the tip of my tongue who.’
Kay knew who, but did not say.
By this time, a steady warm rain had set in from the west. Under it, the snow was falling apart into water: all spouts and gutters streamed and gurgled. The snow heaped at the sides of the roads had turned to a dirty grey. As it was very wet, the children stayed indoors after lunch. First, they played Work, then they played Murder. Kay thought, ‘If Maria doesn’t come back by dark I’ll go to the Police about her. We shall have to start for Tatchester at half-past four. Somehow, I don’t think the Inspector will be much help in the business.’
The darkness came before four o’clock that evening. Little Maria had not returned. Kay slipped round to the Inspector of Police and told his story with his suspicions.
‘Have no fears, Master Kay,’ the Inspector said. ‘The Reverend Doctor Boddledale is a pillar of the Church and respectability. I’ve sung in the Glee Club with him time and time again. A very sweet tenor, Master Kay. Now, depend upon it, Master Kay, you have come home, if I may say so, a little faint from the strain of learning. Your nerves want food. I often notice it in young fellows just back from school. Your young friend is in good hands, believe me, and as to her not being back in quite the time they said she’d be back, consider, Master Kay, the state of the roads, all swimming with sludge and filth, and the rain coming down on your windscreen so that you can’t see a thing. She’ll be back, you may be sure. Or, wait one moment, Master Kay, wasn’t you to be tonight at the Punch and Judy show at Tatchester Palace?’
‘Yes,’ Kay said, ‘I was. We were just going to start.’
‘And wasn’t Miss Maria to be there?’ the Inspector asked. ‘Well then, you say she’s been to St Griswold’s to look at that old glass: why should she come back all the way to Seekings if she’s got to be in Tatchester again at half-past five? She�
�s a young lady who knows what’s what. She’ll have stopped in Tatchester, depend upon it, Master Kay; had tea there, and gone on direct to the Palace. You’ll find her there when you get there.’
‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ Kay said. ‘Of course, that’s very likely to have happened.’
‘Ah,’ the Inspector said, ‘we in the Law, Master Kay, we’ve got a maxim, “It’s the easy explanation that never occurs”. You think all battle, murder and sudden death, and all the time it’s only a tyre getting a puncture, or something equally simple. And we in the Law, Master Kay, have another proverb: “Never cross the water until you come to it.” Time enough to think of making a bridge when you are at the water’s brink, but until then, don’t worry, Master Kay. And you get that good guardian of yours to see you take a strong posset every night. But you young folks in this generation, you don’t know what a posset is. Well, a posset,’ said the Inspector, ‘is a jorum of hot milk; and in that hot milk, Master Kay, you put a hegg, and you put a spoonful of treacle, and you put a grating of nutmeg, and you stir ’em well up, and you get into bed and then you take ’em down hot. And a posset like that, taken overnight, it will make a new man of you, Master Kay, while now you’re all worn down with learning.’
Kay thanked him and hurried back to Seekings, where all the children were clamouring for him to hurry up or they would be late for the Punch and Judy.
‘It’s all right,’ Kay said. ‘We shall be in lots of time. It’s not much of a run to Tatchester. On a Roman road most of the way.’
They got into the car, and, in spite of the slush upon the roads, they were soon at Tatchester Palace, where the Bishop and his sister gave them a royal tea.
Chapter VI
‘Please,’ Kay said to the Bishop, ‘can I talk to the Punch and Judy man?’
‘I am afraid not,’ the Bishop said. ‘He asked specially that the children should not talk to him either before or after the performance. He is giving two performances. He is an old man, and is suffering rather from his throat and doesn’t want to talk in addition to having the strain of the two performances.’
‘But, it is Cole Hawlings, isn’t it?’ Kay asked: ‘the old man who was at Seekings last night?’
‘Oh, yes,’ the Bishop said, ‘it’s Cole Hawlings.’
‘Well, could you tell him from me,’ Kay said, ‘that I am so very glad that it’s all, all right?’
‘Certainly, I will tell him that,’ the Bishop said. In spite of the Bishop’s words, Kay hoped very much to talk to Cole Hawlings.
Presently, they were all taken to the room in which the performance was to be given. Kay thought, ‘Now I’ll be able to speak to him,’ but in this he was disappointed. The room was a long room, once the guest room of the pilgrims; at the end of it there was a stage covered with a curtain. Kay realised that the performance would take place on the other side of the curtain and that there would probably be no chance whatever for him to speak to old Cole. The Bishop made a little speech and welcomed them all. Then the curtain was partly drawn aside. On the stage was the theatre for Punch and Judy. It seemed to be exactly the theatre that Cole had used and the Toby dog was an Irish terrier, but at the end of the play when Kay called, ‘Barney, Barney,’ the dog did not answer to his name. Kay wondered several times during the performance whether the performer’s voice was quite that of Cole. He couldn’t be sure. After all, the shrill of one Punch is very like another.
‘And now,’ the Bishop said, ‘Mr Hawlings will give you a much older version of the Punch and Judy play, which his grandfather used to play upon the roads.’ It was a very interesting performance and the children hugely enjoyed it, but not so much as they had enjoyed those magical tricks which he had played at Seekings.
Presently, the curtain fell and that was the end of Kay’s hopes of speaking to the old man, for the Bishop at once said, ‘And now, everybody, I want you to move into the next room, there behind you, to dance round our Christmas Tree and receive the gifts allotted to you.’
The door opened behind the company. Beyond the room in which they had seen the show was another room, also a part of the hostel. Pilgrims had come to that place in hundreds in the Middle Ages, for the Cathedral had then held the Shrine of the great Saint Cosric, Saxon King and Martyr, who had worked such famous miracles in the cure of Leprosy, and Broken Hearts.
In the midst of this room was the biggest and most glorious Christmas Tree that had ever been seen in Tatchester. It stood in a monstrous half-barrel full of what looked like real snow stuck about with holly and mistletoe. Its bigger boughs were decked with the glittering coloured glass globes which Kay so much admired. The lesser boughs were lit with countless coloured electric lights like tropical fruits: ever so much better, Kay thought, than those coloured candles which drip wax everywhere and so often set fire to the tree and to the presents. At the top of this great green fir tree was a globe of red light set about with fiery white rays for the Christmas Star.
The boughs were laden with the most exquisite gifts. For the little ones there were whistles, drums, tops of different kinds, whips, trumpets, swords, popguns, pistols that fired caps and others which fired corks. There were also many dolls and teddy-bears. For the older boys there were railways with signals and switches and passenger trains and goods trains, some of which went by steam and others by clockwork. There were goods yards with real goods: little boxes, bales and sacks, real cranes by which these could be hoisted, and pumps by which the engines could get water. There were aeroplanes which you could wind up so that they would fly about the room. There were others which you made to fly by pulling a trigger. There were farmyards with cocks and hens which really pecked and cows which waggled their heads. There were Zoos with all sorts of animals, and Aquariums with all sorts of fish (in real water which could not splash out). Then there were all sorts of mechanical toys, of men boxing, or wrestling, or sawing wood, or beating on anvils. When you wound up these they would box or wrestle or saw or hammer for three or four minutes. Then there were squirts of all kinds and boxes of soldiers with cavalry and cannons, boxes of bricks and of ‘Meccano,’ and all sorts of adventure books and fairy books. Then for the girls there were needle-boxes with silver thimbles and cases of needles. There were acting sets with costumes of different colours, so that they could dress up to act charades. For each girl there were necklaces, bangles and brooches, and each brooch had the girl’s name done in brilliants. There were also boxes of chocolates and candied fruits and great glass bottles of barley-sugar, raspberry drops, peppermint drops and acid drops. Then for both girls and boys there were toy boats, some with sails, some with clockwork engines, some with steam engines that would make real steam with methylated spirit furnaces. Hanging from the boughs here and there were white and scarlet stockings all bulging with chocolate creams done up in silver paper.
All round this marvellous tree were wonderful crackers, eighteen inches long. The Bishop made all the children stand in a double rank round the tree, each with one end of a cracker in each hand. The musicians struck up a tune and they danced in the double rank three times round the Christmas Tree. Then the Bishop gave the word: they pulled the crackers, which went off with a bang together, like cannons. And then, inside the crackers there were the most lovely decorations – real little tiny coats of coloured paper that you could put on, with the most splendid hats and necklets like real gold. Then the Bishop’s sister and her friends gave each child two presents. Then they all played ‘Hunt the Slipper’ and other merry games and then, suddenly, Kay remembered that he had not thought about little Maria since he left the Police Inspector and that she wasn’t there.
‘Good heavens!’ he thought, ‘Maria isn’t here. What shall I do?’ He went up to the Bishop’s sister and asked her if little Maria had been there.
‘No,’ she said. ‘No. And the Bishop said just now to me, “I’m sorry not to see little Maria here. She may think that I bear malice for the smashing up of my car that time, but, indeed, that isn’t so.
I should have loved to have had her here.”’
‘D’you mind if I telephone?’ Kay said. He went down and telephoned to Ellen.
‘No,’ Ellen said, ‘Miss Maria hasn’t come back.’
‘By the way,’ Kay called, ‘we shall be a little late in getting away from here. Will you ask the Rupert’s Arms to send a car to meet the eight-seven?’
Ellen said that she would do that. Then, presently, the evening came to an end and all the happy children got ready to go away.
Just as they were crowding into the hall, going off in instalments as the cars came for them, the butler came to the Bishop with a look of great gravity on his face. Kay was standing close beside the Bishop at the moment. The Bishop said, ‘What is it, Rogers?’ and the butler said, ‘I am sorry to tell Your Grace, but during the performances the burglars have been in every room of the Palace. They have turned the place just topsy-turvy, Your Grace.’
‘Indeed,’ the Bishop said. ‘Warn the Police, Rogers. I will be with you in a moment as soon as my young friends have gone.’
‘If you please, Your Grace,’ Kay said, ‘d’you think I might say goodbye to the Punch and Judy man?’
‘I am afraid he has gone,’ the Bishop said. ‘Somebody in an old car came for him as soon as the performance was over.’
‘D’you know where he went to?’ Kay said.
‘I seem to know. I really can’t quite recollect. He did say, but I have forgotten,’ the Bishop said. ‘I shall think of it when I go to bed tonight. Somewhere not very far from here.’
Kay thanked the Bishop for their glorious treat. Presently, they were in the car driving home in the slush.
‘The Palace has been burgled,’ Peter said, ‘while we were at the Punch and Judy. A gang got in. They got every single thing that there was worth taking.’
‘How d’you know?’ Kay said.
‘I was up there talking to Rogers,’ Peter said. ‘The Palace is full of guests – seven old dowagers at least – and they have all brought their family jewels, and they’re gone. A cool forty thousand wouldn’t pay the insurance.’
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