The Treasure at Poldarrow Point (An Angela Marchmont Mystery)

by Benson, Clara

  Luxuriating in the warm water, she reflected on recent events. It had certainly been a day of surprises, starting with Barbara’s account of her nocturnal adventures and ending with the most astonishing visit from Harriet Dorsey. Although she could not explain why, Angela had begun to get the feeling that she held the key to the mystery in her hands, and that if only she could catch a glimpse of the whole thing from the right angle, then all would become clear. Little snatches of conversation kept drifting into her head and whirling around, seemingly at random, mingling with her own thoughts in an increasingly frantic dance. She lay back and tried to let her mind do its own work without conscious interference, for experience had taught her that if she tried to grasp her ideas too firmly they would disappear as quickly as they had come.

  Some time later, Angela sighed and sat up. The water had begun to get cold and she was still no nearer to the solution than before. Perhaps there was still a piece of the puzzle missing. Or perhaps the hot weather—or something else—had addled her brain. Well, there was no use in trying to chase after the answer. It would come in its own good time.

  She wandered into her bedroom, wrapped in a silk dressing-gown. Marthe was there, attacking Angela’s clothes with a brush.

  ‘Now, I know you’re going to be cross,’ said Angela, ‘but I somehow got a smudge of oil on my sailing-suit today. Can you do anything with it?’

  Marthe pursed her lips.

  ‘I dare say something can be done, madame,’ she said, ‘but you will not be able to wear it tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, no matter,’ said Angela. ‘The green frock will be quite suitable.’

  ‘You are not, then, going on the boat again?’

  ‘No,’ said Angela. ‘As a matter of fact, I had thought of going into Penzance. I should like to visit the library.’

  ‘Ah.’ Marthe was used to Angela’s ways and made no comment.

  ‘Have you seen Barbara today?’ Angela said.

  ‘No,’ replied the maid. ‘She went out shortly after you did, but I do not know where.’

  ‘I don’t suppose the wretched child really did set out to walk to Land’s End?’ said Angela. ‘I wouldn’t put it past her.’

  ‘It will be time to eat soon,’ said Marthe. ‘She will no doubt be back in time for dinner.’

  But dinner-time came and Barbara did not appear.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Barbara awoke with a start and had a second’s panic as she wondered where on earth she was. Then she remembered: she was in the cupboard at Poldarrow Point. She was annoyed at herself for falling asleep. Detectives were not supposed to sleep when they ought to be at work. But what was it that had awoken her? Had Clifford and his aunt returned, perhaps? She leaned forward and peered through the crack in the door, but could see nothing. She began to suspect that the cupboard was not as good a hiding place as she had imagined.

  ‘It’s no use my staying here,’ she said to herself. ‘How am I supposed to see what’s going on everywhere else in the house if I’m stuck in a cupboard? Especially when it makes me fall asleep!’

  So saying, she got to her feet and poked her head cautiously around the door. There was nobody about. She emerged quietly from the cupboard then nearly jumped out of her skin when the quiet of the entrance-hall was suddenly shattered by a great clicking and a whirring. Barbara’s heart beat fast in her chest and she almost darted back into the cupboard, but then the whirring was shortly followed by the chimes of a clock striking five and she allowed herself to breathe again.

  The clock fell silent and Barbara cocked an ear, but still heard no signs of life. She approached the drawing-room, trying to make no noise. The door was slightly ajar, and she pushed it slowly, then could have kicked herself as the hinges squealed loudly. What a fool she was! She ought to have remembered about the squeaky drawing-room door—after all, Clifford had mentioned it himself the day after he had supposedly been attacked.

  She stood still, but nobody came and there was no sound. Growing bolder, she pushed the door wide open. As she had thought, the room was empty. She took a quick look into all the other downstairs rooms but found no-one. They must be still out, then.

  She returned to the entrance-hall and debated with herself as to what to do next. There didn’t seem much use in hanging about here if the house were empty. Ah—but was it empty? What was that sudden noise? She lifted her head, and a thrill ran through her as she recognized the familiar sound. There it was again! The same moaning, whimpering noise she had heard before, when she saw the ghostly figure floating about on the top floor! She stood, frozen to the spot, hardly daring to breathe, and wondering whether she should make a bolt for the front door. Then she grimaced and shook herself.

  ‘Why, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, Barbara Wells,’ she thought. ‘What sort of a coward are you? You know perfectly well that there are no such things as ghosts. You might have got into a funk last time you were here, but you jolly well shan’t do it again this time.’

  She went to the foot of the stairs and listened, and this time she heard quite a different sound. It was a voice she recognized: a voice which was usually soft and polite, but which now sounded quite different. It was harder, angrier—dangerous, even. Whoever it was seemed to be berating someone at length.

  ‘Why, that’s Clifford,’ said Barbara to herself. ‘Is he bullying his aunt? I may be forced to hit him over the head with something, if so.’

  The whimpering noise started again, and she hurried up the stairs. It sounded as though she were just in time to rescue Miss Trout from whatever dastardly fate Clifford had in store for her. She passed the first landing and stopped to listen again, her foot on the bottom stair of the next flight.

  ‘No, no, no,’ pleaded a voice she recognized as that of the phantom-like figure she had seen the other day.

  ‘You old horror,’ said Clifford’s voice. ‘Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to. You can pretend all you like but you won’t fool me. You know very well where it is—I don’t know why you bother denying it.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ said the voice again.

  Barbara crept up the next flight of stairs, holding her breath, and peeped through the balustrade, ready to run for her life if necessary. Her eyes grew wide at the scene before her, for there was the very figure she had seen the other day, and now she saw that it was not a ghost at all, but a wizened old man dressed in a shabby nightgown. He was struggling feebly to free himself from the grip of Clifford Maynard, who held him firmly by the arm and was pulling him along towards an open door at the end of the passage.

  The old man somehow managed to tug himself free and turned as though to try and escape. Clifford grabbed him, his other hand raised as though to strike, and the man shrank back in fear, whimpering. Clifford lowered his hand slowly and made an expression of disgust.

  ‘You try another trick like that and I’ll show you I mean business,’ he said.

  ‘Please sir,’ begged the old man, ‘I don’t know nothing. Please take me back home. I want to go home.’

  ‘This is your home, you old villain,’ snapped Clifford. ‘Don’t you remember? No—of course you don’t. Not that you’ll admit to it, anyway. You’ve lost your mind, forgotten everything, haven’t you? Well, don’t think I can’t tell you’re putting it on. One day you’ll slip up, and then I’ll have you, so I will. Now, get back to your room. I’ve told you before about wandering about up here where someone might see you.’

  The change in his manner was quite extraordinary: he seemed wholly unlike the courteous and affable Mr. Maynard of before. At that moment Barbara felt afraid. For the first time it struck her that perhaps this whole thing was too much for one young girl to tackle alone. She had thrown herself into the treasure-hunt with enthusiasm—after all, what could be more harmless than searching for a missing antique necklace to help a dear old lady? But now it had become something more—something that she did not quite understand. That Clifford Maynard was up to no good was now certain, but who
was this old man? And why was he being held here in the house, presumably against his will? Did he know where the necklace was? Clifford’s words seemed to imply it.

  Barbara watched as Clifford pulled his captive roughly along to the end of the passage and through the open door. She expected him to push the old man into the room then come out again immediately and go downstairs, and was preparing to make her escape, but to her surprise, the minutes passed and no Clifford appeared. She waited a little longer then, mustering her courage, emerged from behind the banister and ran silently along to the end of the corridor. The door was still open, and she approached it cautiously and peered in.

  As these were presumably the old servants’ quarters, she had half-expected to see a bare room with a bed and a chamber-pot, but what she saw in fact was another narrow passage, about ten feet long, with a tiny window at the end. In the left-hand wall, next to the window, was another door, which had also been left open.

  Her astonishment growing by the minute, Barbara ran to this second door and saw that it opened onto a steep and narrow flight of stairs which ran parallel to the second-floor passage and led downwards into the darkness. She listened, and thought she could just hear Clifford’s voice as he continued to harangue the old man somewhere ahead. Once again, she hesitated. Should she follow? What if Clifford came back this way? There would be nowhere for her to hide and then she would be caught.

  At that moment, her courage almost failed her and she very nearly turned around and ran out of the house, but then she thought of the fear on the old man’s face as Clifford had raised his hand to him, and she set her jaw in determination.

  ‘They shan’t write “Coward” on my headstone, at any rate,’ she said to herself as she stepped with trepidation into the darkness.

  She felt her way down carefully, relying on the dim light that emanated from some unknown source below, since she dared not switch on her torch lest the beam alert Clifford to her presence. The stairs ended in another door, which had been left open, and Barbara saw that beyond it was a tiny chamber with panelled walls but no windows, containing only a large armchair and a table. This room was gloomy, but benefited from a small amount of light which filtered through yet another door in the far wall. It had been left slightly ajar, so she could quite clearly hear the voices of the two men—Clifford’s loud and commanding, and the old man’s soft and whining.

  ‘I know you think you can wait us out,’ Clifford was saying, ‘but that won’t wash, d’you hear me?’

  ‘Oh, dear Lord, dear Lord, forgive us our sins, for we who dwell on the earth are not worthy to enter the Kingdom of Heaven,’ muttered the old man.

  ‘That’s enough of that! Don’t tell me you’ve had an attack of religion in your old age, for I won’t believe it.’

  ‘Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,’ said the old man, his voice rising to a whine. ‘Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst—’

  ‘Stop it, I tell you! Stop it!’

  There was a pause, and Clifford began again, in a calmer tone of voice.

  ‘Now, listen,’ he said. ‘Just listen to reason. We’ve only got a few more days until we have to leave this place altogether—all of us, including you. And once we’re out there’s no saying whether we’ll be able to get back in again. Now, I know it’s here, and I know you know where it is but won’t say, but where’s the sense in that, eh? You’ve had it for thirty years, and what good has it ever done you? Why, none at all. You’ve buried yourself down here all this time, and let the place go to rack and ruin, and for what? Just for the sake of diddling your own family out of what’s rightfully theirs. Well, you couldn’t hide forever, and it was just your bad luck that we found you after all this time. Now you’re caught, so you might as well come clean, or we’ll all lose.’

  ‘I never let the place go to rack and ruin,’ muttered the old man. ‘Leastways, not till you stuck me in here. I had the garden looking a treat, I did.’

  ‘Oho, so you can talk sense when it suits you,’ said Clifford. ‘So, are you going to tell me where it is or not?’

  ‘Rosie’s got it,’ said the old man, and gave a sudden cackle.

  Clifford clicked his tongue impatiently.

  ‘Why do you keep saying that?’ he said. ‘You know full well she hasn’t got it. She has no more idea of where it is than I do—I’m certain of that.’

  The old man cackled again and began singing ‘Mistress Mary Quite Contrary’ in a thin, quavering voice. Clifford gave an exclamation of disgust and gave it up.

  ‘There’s no use in talking to you, is there? I’m off, and this time I won’t forget to lock the door, so don’t think you’ll get out again.’

  The sound of footsteps could be heard approaching. Quick as lightning, Barbara ducked down behind the armchair and hid, heart beating rapidly in her chest, fearful of discovery. Clifford strode through the chamber angrily without glancing to either side. She heard his heavy tread on the narrow stairs and the bang of the door at the top, then the ominous sound of a key turning.

  She was trapped.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Barbara emerged cautiously from behind the chair and debated what to do next. As far as she could see, she had two choices: 1) remain hidden behind the chair in this room until Clifford turned up with food for the captive, as he would presumably do sooner or later; or 2) go into the next room and perhaps frighten the old man to death by her sudden appearance—or, at the very least, risk having him betray her to Clifford when he returned. Neither alternative was particularly enticing.

  She drummed her fingers on her chin, deep in thought, then looked up and suppressed a shriek, for there was the old man, peeping round the door at her with the greatest curiosity. He saw that she had seen him and stepped fully into the room.

  ‘Did they send you?’ he said suspiciously.

  ‘Nobody sent me,’ replied Barbara. ‘I found my way in here by myself.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘To be perfectly truthful,’ said Barbara, ‘what I really want is something to eat. It’s ages since I had lunch and I didn’t bring any other food. Rather silly of me, now I come to think about it.’

  The old man grinned impishly and beckoned to her to follow him next door. She did so with the greatest curiosity.

  ‘Good gracious!’ she exclaimed. ‘Where are we?’

  She glanced about her. The room was of medium size, and looked not unpleasant to live in, being furnished with a bed, a chair or two, a small table and a shelf stacked with books. There was a threadbare rug on the floor and an old-fashioned washstand in the corner. A small window looked out over the garden and the cliff top. Its panes were covered in finger-prints, as though someone had spent a lot of time with his hands against it, gazing out. But while the room looked reasonably comfortable, there was something queer about it, which Barbara struggled to define. She gazed around for a moment in puzzlement, then it struck her: apart from the one she had just come through, the room had no door. That was strange: she had come down a flight of stairs, so surely she must be on the first floor now. But why was there no door out onto the landing? She suddenly remembered something Angela had said the day they had searched Preacher Dick’s bedchamber: she had observed that the room was smaller than one might have expected, given that the door to the next bedroom along was at the end of the passage. Was this, then, a secret room sandwiched between two others?

  ‘No door here,’ said the old man, as though reading her thoughts. He waved at the wall behind the bed to indicate the absence of any means of egress.

  ‘No,’ agreed Barbara. ‘I wonder why they built it this way?’

  The man shrugged. ‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘They were smugglers, weren’t they? They liked their little hidey-places, ’case the Customs men come. Here.’

  He went to the bookshelf, on which stood a bowl of fruit that was rather past its best, and handed her an apple.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Barbara, and took a bite out of it
politely. ‘I’m Barbara Wells,’ she said, unable to think of anything else to say.

  ‘Barbara Wells, eh?’ said the old man. ‘And what are you doing here?’

  ‘I came here because I was suspicious of Clifford—Mr. Maynard,’ she said boldly. ‘I thought he was trying to steal something that didn’t belong to him. And from what I heard just now, when he was talking to you, I think my suspicions were correct.’

  ‘Oh you do, do you?’ said the man, glancing at her shrewdly. ‘And what might this “something” be that you think he’s trying to steal?’

  ‘I think you know very well what it is,’ said Barbara.

  ‘Sometimes I do,’ said the old man sadly, ‘but my mind’s not what it was. I forget things, you know. I’m not young any more, and my thoughts wander.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Barbara. ‘Should you say that they wander especially far when Clifford is shouting at you?’

  The old man darted another glance at her.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said, and gave a cackle.

  ‘I’m trying to find the necklace before Clifford does,’ said Barbara. ‘I don’t want him to get it. I think he’s a horrid man.’

  ‘Ah! The necklace,’ he said. ‘Rosie’s got it.’

  ‘You said that before. Who is Rosie?’

  He raised his hands to heaven.

  ‘“The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose,”’ he said.

  Barbara sighed. The old man was evidently nearly ga-ga, despite occasional moments of lucidity. He was being held here because he knew the whereabouts of the necklace, and Clifford presumably hoped that one day he would remember where it was and reveal all. From what Barbara had seen of him, however, it seemed clear that there was no use in trying to bully him into telling the secret: in his senile moments he could not tell, and when he was himself he would not tell. Perhaps if she could befriend him then he would become more amenable.