by Nina Bawden
“When’s he going?” I asked. Conversation seemed to have developed an almost social tone.
“He’s to go tomorrow;” said Brigid. “We sent a wire to Ethel just before lunch. We asked her to meet him at Crewe.”
I said slowly, “Does Walker think it would be better for him mentally … to be out of the way? Or does he think it might be safer?”
Brigid didn’t look as shocked as I had expected. Her eyes were strained, and very bright.
She said, “I don’t know. He was funny about it. Wasn’t he, Henry? He said he thought perhaps the atmosphere was bad for the child, but you couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Not really.”
Henry said in a voice that was much too hearty, “Of course he meant exactly what he said, old girl. You mustn’t go reading too much into what people say. Or you’ll get like old Paul, here. It’s a frightful strain for the kid to be in a house where this sort of thing has happened … especially after what he’s been through himself. Do him the world of good to get with Ethel’s boys. Take him out of himself. He’ll he a different child when he gets back, you see.”
“I hope so,” said Brigid. “Oh, I do hope so.”
“There’s just one thing, old man,” said Henry. “Walker said that if one of us has to take the boy to Crewe he’d like it to be you. Rather than Biddy or me, I mean.” He laughed over-loudly. “It looks as if he wants to keep us where he can see us, doesn’t it?”
“Henry,” said Brigid reproachfully, and he laughed again.
“Just my little joke, old thing,” he said.
He didn’t convince her; I could see her watching him while he pottered about making up the fire. There was love in her face and a great many other things besides. Most of all, it seemed to me, there was fear.
Chapter Nine
I took Sebastian to Crewe. We left the house early in the morning. Brigid had wanted to come to the station with us; to my relief, Henry persuaded her not to. She made up for it by weeping copiously on the steps of the house as we departed, Henry patting her on the arm and saying “there, there,” in an embarrassed way. She acted as though Sebastian was leaving her for ever.
Sebastian was unmoved by it all. He kissed his mother dutifully, hugged Dorry, and got into the car, where he sat like a little, stone image all the way to Shrewsbury.
It was a long, dull journey. I bought Sebastian some magazines from the bookstall, but most of the time he sat in a corner seat, his legs dangling, and his hands tucked underneath his thighs. He answered me quite politely when I spoke to him, but for the most part he seemed to have withdrawn into some inner shell in the way that children do. It was quite impossible to tell whether he was glad or sorry to be leaving.
Once I said to him, with an attempt at jocularity, “It will be nice for you to have someone to play with, won’t it?”
He shot me a glance of faint contempt, and said, “Yes. Uncle Henry says they are an awfully jolly lot.” It might have been sarcasm in his voice; I wasn’t sure.
“Do you like Uncle Henry?” I said.
“Oh, yes,” he said, like a good child, without enthusiasm. “I expect Mummy will marry him now Aunt Venetia’s dead.”
I think I was a little shocked; I’d never had much to do with children and I hadn’t realised how much they knew.
I said, “Shall you mind that?”
“I expect it’ll be all right,” he said. “I shall go to school, I expect.”
“Do you want to go to school?” I asked.
He smiled and his whole face glowed. “Yes, I’d like that,” he said, and for a moment he looked like a normal child.
I spoiled it, though, because I said, “You didn’t like staying with Uncle Henry, did you?”
It was clumsy of me; immediately he looked frightened, and instead of feeling sorry for him, I was irritated.
“What made you frightened?” I said, and I added, “or are you always frightened of things?”
He gave me a hurt look, and said, “I didn’t like it, that’s all.” His mouth set in a sullen, obstinate line.
“Was anyone beastly to you?” I said. He shook his head. “Was it because of something someone said?” He didn’t make any answer; he hung his head so that I couldn’t see his face properly.
I said, “You didn’t like Aunt Venetia, did you?”
He said “No” in a strangled little voice, and knelt up on the seat, pressing his nose against the window.
“Was it because of something she did?” I said. He shook his head, and then nodded it violently.
“What did she do?” I asked.
He gave in then. He sat down on the seat and looked straight at me and said, “She was bad. I didn’t like, her.”
“She was very pretty,” I said.
There was a faint look of awe on his face. “Oh, yes,” he said. “She was like a princess. But she was bad, just the same.”
“Did someone tell you she was bad?” I asked.
“Oh, no.” He looked shocked. “Mummy did say I wasn’t to bother her because she didn’t like boys, but I found out she was bad on my own.”
“How?” I asked.
He kicked at the seat with his shoes. “She was mean to Uncle Henry,” he said. “I know, because I heard her shouting at him, once. They were in the drawing-room. Mummy had gone to do the shopping and I was playing on the stairs. I didn’t mean to listen, really I didn’t, but I couldn’t help being there, and I didn’t want to make a noise going away because I thought they would hear me.”
“Did you hear what they were saying?” I asked.
“Some of it. Not very much. But Aunt Venetia was calling Uncle Henry names, and then she called Mummy names, and then Uncle Henry came out and I was afraid he’d see me sitting on the stairs, but he didn’t. He was making a funny noise, and he came up the stairs, past me, as if I wasn’t there at all. And he was crying. I didn’t know grown-ups cried. I mean, Mummy does, but that’s different. And then Aunt Venetia came out and she stood at the bottom of the stairs and watched. Uncle Henry going up. She looked like a witch. And I knew she’d been beastly to Uncle Henry because she looked like it. Sort of angry, and pleased at the same time. As though she liked seeing Uncle Henry cry.”
“Did she see you?” I said.
He shrank a little. “Yes, she did. I did hope she wouldn’t, but she couldn’t help seeing me. I had all my bricks on the stairs, and Childe Roland too, and she said to me, ‘So you listen at doors, do you?’ and I said I hadn’t meant to, and she laughed as though she didn’t believe me. And then she said, ‘Get that beastly animal out of the house. You know your mother doesn’t like you playing with him because he’s dirty.’ I said he wasn’t dirty, and that Mummy didn’t really mind, she was only being fussy. And then Aunt Venetia laughed, and said that Mummy wouldn’t tell me, but that she’d asked Uncle Henry for some white powder that was a poison to kill Childe Roland, and it would hurt him dreadfully, and she looked as if she was glad about it. I said it wasn’t true, and that she shouldn’t tell lies, and she smiled at me and said I could go and see for myself in one of Uncle Henry’s drawers.”
I said, “Did you go and look?”
“No,” he said. “I didn’t look, because it was a fib. And I knew Aunt Venetia was bad, because she wouldn’t have told me that if she hadn’t been bad. But then …”
“Then you started to think someone was putting the white powder in the things you were eating,” I said, “so you were afraid to say anything about it?”
He nodded. There was misery in his eyes. I wondered how sure he had been that Venetia had lied to him. Perhaps he had half-believed her, and that half-belief had grown into a shadowy terror in his mind so that even his mother had become someone who threatened him. I remembered how he had seemed frightened of her for no reason at all.
“Was it Aunt Venetia who told you that someone was trying to poison you?” I said.
He looked more miserable still. “No,” he said. “It wasn’t her. But I mustn’t tell
you who it was. Really I mustn’t.”
His eyes were imploring, and I said, “All right, old chap. If you can’t, you can’t.”
I didn’t really want to know any more. After that we went to the dining-car. Sebastian liked that; I imagine he usually ate sandwiches in the carriage. He drank a lot of ginger pop, and took a long time over his lunch. The dining-car was almost empty; there was one other table occupied on our side of the coach by a man in an overcoat. He seemed to be eating a great deal with considerable fervour, and, although the tables between us were empty and we had a clear view of each other, he didn’t look at us once, or, if he did, he looked as if he didn’t see us. I paid the bill, and we left, and shortly afterwards the man in the overcoat passed our carriage and glanced in. Then he stood in the corridor, although the train was practically empty, and stared out at the passing countryside with great interest. Whenever we stopped at a station, which we did frequently because it was a slow train, he got out and walked slowly up and down the platform, never going far away from our carriage, and always getting back again just as the train started to leave.
I was flattered that Walker should think me worth watching; I wondered whether he thought I shouldn’t go back, or whether he thought I should throw Sebastian off the train on the way.
When we got to Crewe, Ethel was on the platform. I never knew her other name. She was a vast woman in thick tweeds with a red, veined face and Eton-cropped, grey hair. She couldn’t have been much older than Henry, but she looked old enough to be his mother. Her voice had a booming, resonant quality. I was relieved to see that she didn’t clasp Sebastian to her tweedy chest. She simply shook hands with him in a manly way while she looked me up and down with considerable disfavour. I saw them to her car; it was a shooting brake of incredible age, and the back of it was occupied by four or five bull-mastiffs.
“You’ll have to go in the back with the dogs, Seb,” she shouted. “Can’t call you Sebastian. There isn’t time in this life. You can’t sit by me, I’ve got the dog meat here.”
Sebastian clambered into the back and disappeared among the dogs with every appearance of enjoyment.
He said, “Aunt Ethel? Have you got a lot of dogs?”
“Bless you, yes,” she boomed back. “Kennels. They’re a dead loss, of course.”
“C’n I have one?” he said, his face crimson, and emerging behind her shoulder. “C’n I have one on my bed at night?”
“If you like,” she said, beaming. “I expect you’ll get’em whether you like it or not. I encourage it. Keeps guests away.”
She pulled the starter with vigour. I shouted goodbye to Sebastian, but I don’t think he heard me, and the brake departed down the road at an astonishing pace.
I walked back into the station to wait for my train with a feeling of relief. Ethel wasn’t the sort of woman I would have chosen to look after a child like Sebastian, but I had been wrong about a number of things lately.
I found my shadow in the refreshment bar. He was looking a bit worried, I thought, as though he’d been afraid I had given him the slip. But as soon as he saw me come in, his face went quite blank. He turned his back on me and went to the counter for another cup of tea.
I bought some tea myself, and a sandwich, and sat down at the opposite end of the bar. I watched him steadily until the train came in, hoping to catch him in some show of embarrassment, but he must have been used to his job because he didn’t show the slightest sign of being aware of me at all. When the train came in, he followed me on to it, but he must have been pretty sure of me by then because when I passed his carriage on my way to the lavatory, he was fast asleep in the corner. He was snoring gently, and his mouth had dropped open.
It was dark when we got to Shrewsbury, and raining in a steady, dismal way. The rain splashed through holes in the high, dark roof, and ran off the sides of the standing trains. I wondered whether I should offer my man a lift back to the village, but I couldn’t see him. Instead, I saw Walker waiting at the barrier. He looked tired, and half asleep with the cold.
“Hallo,” I said, “nice of you to meet me. Do you want a lift?” I couldn’t imagine why he had come, and he didn’t tell me. He just looked pleased, and said he would be delighted. It was all very matey.
We found the car, and drove out of the town in the swishing rain. I remembered that other drive, with Brigid, and it seemed very remote. It was comparatively warm inside the car.
Walker said, “I’ve seen the analyst. You were right about the dog. He was poisoned.”
“Arsenic?” I said idly, and I could feel Walker looking at me.
“Why do you say that?” he said.
I was thinking of the white powder that Sebastian had talked about. But I said, “Oh, it’s the sort of thing that’s always hanging about a farm, isn’t it? I know Henry’s a very scientific farmer. He’s even got a kind of laboratory at one end of the granary. Wouldn’t he use arsenic for sheep dips and that sort of thing?”
“Oh, I see.” Walker sounded disappointed. “No, that wouldn’t be the stuff. He’d use a soluble sodium arsenite for that. This was arsenious acid.”
“That’s the powdered kind, isn’t it?” I said.
“Yes,” said Walker, “it’s a gritty powder. It’s not very soluble except in boiling liquids. What kind of pudding was it that the dog was supposed to have eaten?”
“A milky sort of thing,” I said. “With lumps of cake in it. Trifle, I suppose. Would the stuff dissolve in that?”
“If it was hot. If it had got cold it would have curdled and the arsenic would have sedimented.”
I said, “Surely you make the soluble stuff that you use for weedkillers and things from the powdered kind? Couldn’t Henry have had some in his lab?”
“He might have done,” he said in a non-committal voice. “It’s soluble in an alkaline solution. He may have been making up his own sprays and dips from scratch.”
“It’s the sort of thing he might do,” I said. “And if the stuff is in his laboratory, then anyone could have got it.”
“Isn’t it kept locked?”
“Oh, yes,” I said hastily, not wanting to get Henry into trouble. “But the keys are usually hanging up on the kitchen dresser. I know, because Dorry was grumbling about it. She said Sebastian could get at them if he wanted to, and that it wasn’t safe.”
“Do you think he did?” said Walker, and there seemed to be a trace of amusement in his voice. I shrugged my shoulders and said nothing.
He said, “Well, I expect we shall know soon,” rather smugly. I said “Why?” because he seemed to expect me to, but he didn’t answer me.
It seemed to me that he was concentrating all his energies on Sebastian, and I nearly said so, but I thought better of it in time and held my tongue.
He didn’t say anything for the rest of the drive; the first feeling of warmth I had had when I got in the car had disappeared, and I was wretchedly cold. We drew up at the front of the house, and Walker got out. There was a uniformed policeman waiting for him on the steps of the house; the front door was open, and I could see him silhouetted against the light. I drove the car round to the garage, and put it away.
When I came back the front door was still open, and I could hear voices in the study. I shut the front door, and went into the drawing-room. Brigid was sitting by the fire, not doing anything.
“Hallo, Paul,” she said, and her face lit up as though she was glad I had come back. I told her about Sebastian, and that he had seemed quite happy with the dogs, but she didn’t seem to listen. As soon as I had finished, she burst out, “Paul, something frightful has happened. They … the police … they searched the house this morning. All the bedrooms, and everything. And they found something in Henry’s room. I don’t know what it was, but I was on the landing when one of the men came out of his room with a little box in his hand. A cardboard box, the sort of thing you get aspirins in from the chemist. He asked to see Henry, and then they took him away down to the station. They’ve
only just come back, he must have been there for hours. They’re in the study now; I haven’t been able to speak to him yet. Henry looked so dreadful, Paul … sort of miserable and white as though he didn’t quite know what was happening. Paul, do you think there was something in that little box? Do you think they’ll arrest him?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I felt very tired. I sat down and spread out my hands to the fire.
Across the hall, the study door opened. I could hear someone talking, and then Henry’s voice, infinitely tired, saying something in reply. Then the front door was closed and we heard Henry’s footsteps coming back across the hall very slowly and heavily. He came in without looking at either of us; he went up to the fire, and stood, looking down at it.
After a long while, Brigid said in a small voice:
“Henry dear, what’s happened?”
He looked at her like a sleepwalker. Then he said: “Sorry I didn’t get back for dinner. They kept me at the station.”
“Were they asking you questions,” she said. “All that time?”
“Not all the time,” he said. His voice was quiet and even. “Mostly I just sat about and waited. I didn’t mind awfully … there isn’t anything to do on the farm in this weather, and it was warm in the station. Saw quite a lot of the super. I think you’ve met him, Biddy. Plays quite a decent game of golf. He was damn’nice to me. Made them bring me something to eat on a tray. Fussed over me like an old hen. He was so anxious about me that I thought they must be going to arrest me, or something. But they didn’t do that.” He gave a tired ghost of a grin. “Almost wish they had. I should know where I stood, anyway.”
“Henry, don’t talk like that,” said Brigid, in a kind of shriek. He smiled at her apologetically.
“Sorry, old thing,” he said. “I’m so damn’tired.”
He looked tired, his round face was sagging queerly like an old man’s face. His eyes were harassed and vague. I thought Brigid would fuss over him, but she didn’t. She said:
