‘Ah, so we’ve got visitors. I’m so pleased you could come, my dear, so pleased.’ She patted Tuppence upon the shoulder. ‘Yes, Janet, thank you very much. Yes. This way. Yes. None of you need wait unless you like, you know.’
‘Oh I think the boys will be very disappointed if they didn’t wait to hear a little about what all this is about,’ said Janet.
‘Well, I think, you know, there are not so very many of us here. Perhaps it would be better for Mrs Beresford, not so worrying if there weren’t too many of us. I wonder, Janet, if you would just go into the kitchen and tell Mollie that we are quite ready for tea to be brought in now.’
Tuppence had not really come for tea, but she could hardly say so. Tea appeared rather rapidly. It was excessively weak, it was served with some biscuits and some sandwiches with a rather nasty type of paste in between them with an extra fishy taste. Then they sat around and seemed slightly at a loss.
An old man with a beard who looked to Tuppence as though he was about a hundred came and sat firmly by her.
‘I’d best have a word with you first, I think, my lady,’ he said, elevating Tuppence to the peerage. ‘Seeing as I’m about the oldest here and have heard more of the stories of the old days than anyone else. A lot of history about this place, you know. Oh, a lot of things has happened here, not that we can go into everything at once, can we? But we’ve all–oh, we’ve all heard something about the things that went on.’
‘I gather,’ said Tuppence, hastily rushing in before she could be introduced to some topic in which she had no interest whatever, ‘I understand that quite a lot of interesting things went on here, not so much in the last war, but in the war before that, or even earlier. Not that any of your memories would go back as far as that. But one wonders perhaps if you could have heard things, you know, from your elderly relations.’
‘Ah, that’s right,’ said the old man, ‘that’s right. Heard a lot, I did, from my Uncle Len. Yes, ah, he was a great chap, was Uncle Len. He knew about a lot of things. He knew what went on. It was like what went on down in the house on the quay before the last war. Yes, a bad show, that. What you call one of those fakists–’
‘Fascists,’ said one of the elderly ladies, a rather prim one with grey hair and a lace fichu rather the worse for wear round her neck.
‘Well, fascist if you like to say it that way, what does it matter? Ah yes, one of those he was. Yes. Same sort of thing as that chap in Italy. Mussolini or something, wasn’t it? Anyway, some sort of fishy name like that. Mussels or cockles. Oh yes, he did a lot of harm here. Had meetings, you know. All sorts of things like that. Someone called Mosley started it all.’
‘But in the first war there was a girl called Mary Jordan, wasn’t there?’ said Tuppence, wondering if this was a wise thing to say or not.
‘Ah yes. Said to be quite a good-looker, you know. Yes. Got hold of secrets out of the sailors and the soldiers.’
A very old lady piped up in a thin voice.
‘He’s not in the Navy and he’s not in the Army,
But he’s just the man for me.
Not in the Navy, not in the Army, he’s in the
Royal Ar-till-er-rie!’
The old man took up his personal chant when she had got thus far:
‘It’s a long way to Tipperary,
It’s a long way to go,
It’s a long way to Tipperary
And the rest of it I don’t know.’
‘Now that’s enough, Benny, that’s quite enough,’ said a firm-looking woman who seemed to be either his wife or his daughter.
Another old lady sang in a quavering voice:
‘All the nice girls love a sailor,
All the nice girls love a tar,
All the nice girls love a sailor,
And you know what sailors are.’
‘Oh, shut up, Maudie, we’re tired of that one. Now let the lady hear something,’ said Uncle Ben. ‘Let the lady hear something. She’s come to hear something. She wants to hear where that thing there was all the fuss about was hidden, don’t you? And all about it.’
‘That sounds very interesting,’ said Tuppence, cheering up. ‘Something was hidden?’
‘Ah yes, long before my time it was but I heard all about it. Yes. Before 1914. Word was handed down, you know, from one to another. Nobody knew exactly what it was and why there was all this excitement.’
‘Something to do with the boat race it had,’ said an old lady. ‘You know, Oxford and Cambridge. I was taken once. I was taken to see the boat race in London under the bridges and everything. Oh, it was a wonderful day. Oxford won by a length.’
‘A lot of nonsense you’re all talking,’ said a grim-looking woman with iron-grey hair. ‘You don’t know anything about it, you don’t. I know more than most of you although it happened a long time before I was born. It was my Great-Aunt Mathilda who told me and she were told by her Aunty Lou. And that was a good forty years before them. Great talk about it, it was, and people went around looking for it. Some people thought as it was a gold-mine, you know. Yes, a gold ingot brought back from Australia. Somewhere like that.’
‘Damn silly,’ said an old man, who was smoking a pipe with an air of general dislike of his fellow members. ‘Mixed it up with goldfish, they did. Was as ignorant as that.’
‘It was worth a lot of money, whatever it was, or it wouldn’t have been hidden,’ said someone else. ‘Yes, lots of people come down from the government, and yes, police too. They looked around but they couldn’t find anything.’
‘Ah well, they didn’t have the right clues. There are clues, you know, if you know where to look for them.’ Another old lady nodded her head wisely. ‘There’s always clues.’
‘How interesting,’ said Tuppence. ‘Where? Where are these clues, I mean? In the village or somewhere outside it or–’
This was a rather unfortunate remark as it brought down at least six different replies, all uttered at once.
‘On the moor, beyond Tower West,’ one was saying.
‘Oh no, it’s past Little Kenny, it was. Yes, quite near Little Kenny.’
‘No, it was the cave. The cave by the sea front. Over as far as Baldy’s Head. You know, where the red rocks are. That’s it. There’s an old smugglers’ tunnel. Wonderful, it must be. Some people say as it’s there still.’
‘I saw a story once of an old Spanish main or something. Right back to the time of the Armada, it was. A Spanish boat as went down there. Full of doubloons.’
Chapter 10
Attack on Tuppence
‘Good gracious!’ said Tommy, as he returned that evening. ‘You look terribly tired, Tuppence. What have you been doing? You look worn out.’
‘I am worn out,’ said Tuppence. ‘I don’t know that I shall ever recover again. Oh dear.’
‘What have you been doing? Not climbing up and finding more books or anything?’
‘No, no,’ said Tuppence, ‘I don’t want to look at books again. I’m off books.’
‘Well, what is it? What have you been doing?’
‘Do you know what a PPC is?’
‘No,’ said Tommy, ‘at least, well, yes. It’s something–’ He paused.
‘Yes, Albert knows,’ said Tuppence, ‘but it’s not that kind of one. Now then, I’ll just tell you in a minute, but you’d better have something first. A cocktail or a whisky or something. And I’ll have something too.’
She more or less put Tommy wise to the events of the afternoon. Tommy said ‘good gracious’ again and added: ‘The things you get yourself into, Tuppence. Was any of it interesting?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Tuppence. ‘When six people are talking at once, and most of them can’t talk properly and they all say different things–you see, you don’t really know what they’re saying. But yes, I think I’ve got a few ideas for dealing with things.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, there is a lot of legend, I think, going on about something that was once hidden
here and was a secret connected with the 1914 war, or even before it.’
‘Well, we know that already, don’t we?’ said Tommy. ‘I mean, we’ve been briefed to know that.’
‘Yes. Well, there are a few old tales still going around the village here. And everybody has got ideas about it put into their heads by their Aunt Marias or their Uncle Bens and it’s been put into their Aunt Marias by their Uncle Stephens or Aunty Ruth or Grandmother Something else. It’s been handed down for years and years. Well, one of the things might be the right one, of course.’
‘What, lost among all the others?’
‘Yes,’ said Tuppence, ‘like a needle in the haystack?
‘I’m going to select a few what I call likely possibilities. People who might tell one something that they really did hear. I shall have to isolate them from everybody else, at any rate for a short period of time, and get them to tell me exactly what their Aunt Agatha or Aunt Betty or old Uncle James told them. Then I shall have to go on to the next one and possibly one of them might give me a further inkling. There must be something, you know, somewhere.’
‘Yes,’ said Tommy, ‘I think there’s something, but we don’t know what it is.’
‘Well, that’s what we’re trying to do, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but I mean you’ve got to have some idea what a thing actually is before you go looking for it.’
‘I don’t think it’s gold ingots on a Spanish Armada ship,’ said Tuppence, ‘and I don’t think it’s anything hidden in the smugglers’ cave.’
‘Might be some super brandy from France,’ said Tommy hopefully.
‘It might,’ said Tuppence, ‘but that wouldn’t be really what we’re looking for, would it?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Tommy. ‘I think it might be what I’m looking for sooner or later. Anyway, it’s something I should enjoy finding. Of course it might be a sort of letter or something. A sexy letter that you could blackmail someone about, about sixty years ago. But I don’t think it would cut much ice nowadays, do you?’
‘No, I don’t. But we’ve got to get some idea sooner or later. Do you think we’ll ever get anywhere, Tommy?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Tommy. ‘I got a little bit of help today.’
‘Oh. What about?’
‘Oh, about the census.’
‘The what?’
‘The census. There seems to have been a census in one particular year–I’ve got the year written down–and there were a good many people staying in this house with the Parkinsons.’
‘How on earth did you find all that out?’
‘Oh, by various methods of research by my Miss Collodon.’
‘I’m getting jealous of Miss Collodon.’
‘Well, you needn’t be. She’s very fierce and she ticks me off a good deal, and she is no ravishing beauty.’
‘Well, that’s just as well,’ said Tuppence. ‘But what has the census got to do with it?’
‘Well, when Alexander said it must be one of us it could have meant, you see, someone who was in the house at that time and therefore you had to enter up their names on the census register. Anyone who spent the night under your roof, and I think probably there are records of these things in the census files. And if you know the right people–I don’t mean I know them now, but I can get to know them through people I do know–then I think I could perhaps get a short list.’
‘Well, I admit,’ said Tuppence, ‘you have ideas all right. For goodness’ sake let’s have something to eat and perhaps I shall feel better and not so faint from trying to listen to sixteen very ugly voices all at once.’
II
Albert produced a very passable meal. His cooking was erratic. It had its moments of brilliance which tonight was exemplified by what he called cheese pudding, and Tuppence and Tommy preferred to call cheese soufflé. Albert reproved them slightly for the wrong nomenclature.
‘Cheese soufflé is different,’ he said, ‘got more beaten up white of egg in it than this has.’
‘Never mind,’ said Tuppence, ‘it’s very good whether it’s cheese pudding or cheese soufflé.’
Both Tommy and Tuppence were entirely absorbed with the eating of food and did not compare any more notes as to their procedure. When, however, they had both drunk two cups of strong coffee, Tuppence leaned back in her chair, uttered a deep sigh and said:
‘Now I feel almost myself again. You didn’t do much washing before dinner, did you, Tommy?’
‘I couldn’t be bothered to wait and wash,’ said Tommy. ‘Besides, I never know with you. You might have made me go upstairs to the book-room and stand on a dusty ladder and poke about on the shelves.’
‘I wouldn’t be so unkind,’ said Tuppence. ‘Now wait a minute. Let’s see where we are.’
‘Where we are or where you are?’
‘Well, where I am, really,’ said Tuppence. ‘After all, that’s the only thing I know about, isn’t it? You know where you are and I know where I am. Perhaps, that is.’
‘May be a bit of perhaps about it,’ said Tommy.
‘Pass me over my bag, will you, unless I’ve left it in the dining-room?’
‘You usually do but you haven’t this time. It’s under the foot of your chair. No–the other side.’
Tuppence picked up her handbag.
‘Very nice present, this was,’ she said. ‘Real crocodile, I think. Bit difficult to stuff things in sometimes.’
‘And apparently to take them out again,’ said Tommy.
Tuppence was wrestling.
‘Expensive bags are always very difficult for getting things out of,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Those basketwork ones are the most comfortable. They bulge to any extent and you can stir them up like you stir up a pudding. Ah! I think I’ve got it.’
‘What is it? It looks like a washing bill.’
‘Oh, it’s a little notebook. Yes, I used to write washing things in it, you know, what I had to complain about–torn pillowcase or something like that. But I thought it would come in useful, you see, because only three or four pages of it had been used. I put down here, you see, things we’ve heard. A great many of them don’t seem to have any point but there it is. I added census, by the way, when you first mentioned it. I didn’t know what it meant at that time or what you meant by it. But anyway I did add it.’
‘Fine,’ said Tommy.
‘And I put down Mrs Henderson and someone called Dodo.’
‘Who was Mrs Henderson?’
‘Well, I don’t suppose you’ll remember and I needn’t go back to it now but those were two of the names I put down that Mrs What’s-her-name, you know, the old one, Mrs Griffin mentioned. And then there was a message or a notice. Something about Oxford and Cambridge. And I’ve come across another thing in one of the old books.’
‘What about–Oxford and Cambridge? Do you mean an undergraduate?’
‘I’m not sure whether there was an undergraduate or not, I think really it was a bet on the boat race.’
‘Much more likely,’ said Tommy. ‘Not awfully apt to be useful to us.’
‘Well, one never knows. So there’s Mrs Henderson and there’s somebody who lives in a house called Apple Tree Lodge and there’s something I found on a dirty bit of paper shoved into one of the books upstairs. I don’t know if it was Catriona or whether it was in a book called Shadow of the Throne.’
‘That’s about the French Revolution. I read it when I was a boy,’ said Tommy.
‘Well, I don’t see how that comes in. At any rate, I put it down.’
‘Well, what is it?’
‘It seems to be three pencil words. Grin, g-r-i-n, then hen, h-e-n and then Lo, capital L-o.’
‘Let me guess,’ said Tommy. ‘Cheshire cat–that’s a grin–Henny-Penny, that’s another fairy story, isn’t it, for the hen, and Lo–’
‘Ah,’ said Tuppence, ‘Lo does you in, does it?’
‘Lo and behold,’ said Tommy, ‘but it doesn’t seem to make sense.’
/> Tuppence spoke rapidly. ‘Mrs Henley, Apple Tree Lodge–I haven’t done her yet, she’s in Meadowside.’ Tuppence recited quickly: ‘Now, where are we? Mrs Griffin, Oxford and Cambridge, bet on a boat race, census, Cheshire cat, Henny-Penny, the story where the Hen went to the Dovrefell–Hans Andersen or something like that–and Lo. I suppose Lo means when they got there. Got to the Dovrefell, I mean.
‘I don’t think there’s much else,’ said Tuppence. ‘There’s the Oxford and Cambridge boat race or the bet.’
‘I should think the odds are on our being rather silly. But I think if we go on being silly long enough, some gem of great price might come out of it, concealed among the rubbish, as you might say. Just as we found one significant book on the bookshelves upstairs.’
‘Oxford and Cambridge,’ said Tuppence thoughtfully. ‘That makes me think of something. It makes me remember something. Now what could it be?’
‘Mathilde?’
‘No, it wasn’t Mathilde, but–’
‘Truelove,’ suggested Tommy. He grinned from ear to ear. ‘True love. Where can I my true love find?’
‘Stop grinning, you ape,’ said Tuppence. ‘You’ve got that last thing on your brain. Grin-hen-lo. Doesn’t make sense. And yet–I have a kind of feeling–Oh!’
‘What’s the Oh about?’
‘Oh! Tommy, I’ve got an idea. Of course.’
‘What’s of course?’
‘Lo,’ said Tuppence. ‘Lo. Grin is what made me think of it. You grinning like a Cheshire cat. Grin. Hen and then Lo. Of course. That must be it somehow.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘Oxford and Cambridge boat race.’
‘Why does grin hen Lo make you think of Oxford and Cambridge boat race?’
‘I’ll give you three guesses,’ said Tuppence.
‘Well, I give up at once because I don’t think it could possibly make sense.’
‘It does really.’
‘What, the boat race?’
‘No, nothing to do with the boat race. The colour. Colours, I mean.’
The Complete Tommy and Tuppence Page 109