"A pit in Dothan."
"What?"
"I'm sorry. My mind has stopped working. Have you a drink of any kind?"
The Rector had meant to put the whisky in the tea, as a toddy, but he poured a stiff one now and Brat drank it.
"Thank you. I am sorry to come and worry you like this, but I had to talk to you. I hope you don't mind."
"I am here to be talked to. Some more whisky?"
"No, thanks."
"Then let me give you some dry shoes."
"Oh, no, thank you. I'm used to being wet, you know. Rector, I want your advice about something very important, but can I talk to you as if-as if it were confessional? I mean, without your feeling that you must do something about it."
"Whatever you say I shall treat as confession, certainly."
"Well, first I have to tell you something. I am not Patrick Ashby."
"No," agreed the Rector. And Brat stared.
"You mean-you mean, you knew I wasn't Patrick?"
"I rather thought that you weren't."
"Why?"
"There is more to any person than a physical presence; there is an aura, a personality, a being. And I was almost sure the first time I met you that I had never met you before. There was nothing in you that I recognised, although you have many things in common with Patrick as well as your appearance."
"And you did nothing about it!"
"What do you suggest that I should have done? Your lawyer, your family, and your friends had all accepted and welcomed you. I had no evidence to show that you were not Patrick. Nothing but my own belief that you weren't. What good would it have done to express my disbelief? It did not seem to me that it would be long before the situation resolved itself without my interference."
"You mean: that I should be found out."
"No. I mean that you did not seem to me someone who would be happy in the life you had chosen. Judging by your visit to-night, I was right."
"But I didn't come here to-night just to confess to not being Patrick."
"No?"
"No, that is only-I had to tell you that because it was the only way you could understand what has-I wish my mind was clearer. I've been walking about trying to get things straight."
"Perhaps if you told me first how you came to Latchetts at all, it would at least clear my mind."
"I–I met someone in America who had lived in Clare. They-she thought I looked like an Ashby, and suggested that I should pretend to be Patrick."
"And you were to pay her a share of the proceeds of the deception."
"Yes."
"I can only say that she earned her percentage whatever it was. As a tutor she must be remarkable. I have never seen a better piece of coaching. Are you American, then?"
"No," said Brat, and the Rector smiled faintly at the emphasis. "I was brought up in an orphanage. I was left on its doorstep."
And he sketched for the Rector the story of his life.
"I have heard of your orphanage," the Rector said, when he had finished. "It explains one thing that puzzled me: your good upbringing." He poured tea, and added whisky. "Would you like something more substantial than biscuits, by the way? No? Then have the oatmeal ones; they are very filling."
"I had to tell you all this because of something I found out. Patrick didn't commit suicide. He was murdered."
The Rector set down the cup he was holding. For the first time he looked startled.
"Murdered? By whom?"
"His brother."
"Simon?"
"Yes."
"But, Patrick! That — What is your name, by the way?"
"You forget. I haven't got one. I've always been called Brat. It was a corruption of Bartholomew."
"But my dear fellow, that is absurd. What evidence have you of anything so incredible?"
"I have Simon's word for it."
"Simon told you?"
"He boasted about it. He said that I could never do anything about it because it would mean giving myself away. He knew as soon as he saw me that I wasn't Patrick, you see."
"When did this extraordinary conversation take place?"
"Last night, at the Bures ball. It wasn't as sudden as it sounds. I began to wonder about Simon long before that, and I challenged him about it because of something he said about knowing I wasn't Patrick, and he laughed and boasted about it."
"I think that the setting of this scene does a lot to explain it."
"You mean you think we were drunk?"
"Not exactly. Elated, shall we say. And you challenged Simon on the subject, and Simon with his perverted sense of mischief provided you with what you expected from him."
"Do you really believe I have as little intelligence as that?" Brat asked quietly.
"It surprises me, I must admit. I have always considered you to be highly intelligent."
"Then believe me, I am not here because of a piece of fooling on Simon's part. Patrick didn't commit suicide. Simon killed him. Deliberately. And what is more, I know how he did it."
And he told him.
"But Brat, you have no evidence even now. That is theory, what you have just told me. An ingenious and likely theory, I admit. It has the merit of simplicity. But you have no evidence whatsoever."
"We can get the evidence, if the police once know the truth. But that isn't what I want to know. What I want advice about is-well, whether to let sleeping dogs lie."
And he explained his dilemma.
But the Rector, rather surprisingly in view of his silence about his doubts of Brat's identity, had no doubts on the subject at all. If murder had been done, then the law must be invoked. Anything else was anarchy.
His point was that Brat had no case against Simon. His mind had run on murder, he had taunted Simon with it, Simon had one of his well-known impish moments and confessed, and Brat after long thought had found a theory to fit the alleged confession.
"And you think that I've been walking about in the rain since four o'clock because of a little joke of Simon's? You think that I came here to-night and confessed to not being Patrick because of a little joke of Simon's?" The Rector was silent. "Tell me, Rector, were you surprised when Pat committed suicide?"
"Exceedingly."
"Do you know anyone who wasn't surprised?"
"No. But suicide is a surprising thing."
"I give up," Brat said.
In the contemplative silence that followed, the Rector said: "I see what you meant by the pit in Dothan. That was an excellent upbringing at the orphanage."
"It was a very thoroughly Biblical one, if that is what you mean. Simon knows that story, too, by the way."
"I expect so, but how do you happen to know?"
"When he heard that Patrick had come back he couldn't help, in spite of his denials, a fear that it might be true. There had been that other case, you see. That time the victim had survived by a miracle. He was afraid that by some miracle Patrick had survived. I know, because he came into that room, the first day I was there, strung up to face something dreadful. And his relief when he saw me was almost funny."
He drank down the rest of his tea and looked quizzically at the Rector. In spite of himself he was beginning to feel better.
"Another of Simon's little jokes was to send me out that first day on Timber, without telling me he was a rogue. But I suppose that was just his 'perverted sense of mischief. And still another of his little jokes was to loosen my girth yesterday before I started a race on Chevron. But I suppose that was just one of his 'well-known impish moments'."
The Rector's deep eyes considered Brat.
"I am not defending Simon-he has never been an admirable character-but tricks played on an interloper, a pretender-even dangerous tricks, are one thing, and the murder of a well-loved brother is quite another. Why, by the way, did Simon not denounce you at once if he did not believe you were his brother?"
"For the same reason that you didn't."
"I see. He would merely be held to be-difficult."
> "And of course, having got rid of one Patrick with impunity, he looked forward with confidence to getting rid of another."
"Brat, I wish I could convince you that this is a figment of your imagination."
"You must have a great respect for my imaginative powers."
"If you look back, critically and honestly, you must see how the thing grew in your mind from quite small beginnings. An edifice of your own making."
And that, when Brat took his leave towards two o'clock in the morning, was still the Rector's opinion.
He offered Brat a bed, but Brat compromised on the loan of a waterproof and a torch, and found his way back to Latchetts by the soaking field-path with the rain still pouring hopelessly down.
"Come and see me again before you decide anything," the Rector had said; but he had at least been helpful in one direction. He had answered Brat's main question. If it was a choice between love and justice, the choice had to be justice.
He found the front door of Latchetts unlocked, a note from Bee on the hall table, saying: "Soup on the ring in the pantry," and a silver cup on an ebony stand bearing a card in Eleanor's writing which said: "You forgot this, you blase rodeo hound!"
He put out the lights and crept up through the silent house to his bed in the old night nursery. Someone had put a hot-water bottle in his bed. He was asleep almost before his head touched the pillow.
29
On Friday morning Simon came bright and cheerful to breakfast and greeted Brat with pleasure. He commented on the process of the «trunk» murder investigations, the character of Tattie Thacker (whose value had been estimated by the court at one half-penny) and the iniquity of poisoning as a means of ridding oneself of a human encumbrance. Except for an occasional gleam in his eye he showed no awareness of their changed relationship. He was taking their "spiritual twinship" for granted.
Eleanor too seemed to be back on the old footing, although she seemed shy, like someone who has made a social gaffe. She suggested that in the afternoon they should take the four silver cups into Westover and give instructions for their engraving.
"It will be nice to have 'Patrick Ashby' on a cup again," she said.
"Yes, won't it!" Simon said.
Simon evidently looked forward to years of baiting his spiritual twin. But when Brat said, in answer to Bee, that he had talked late with the Rector, Simon's head came up as if he had heard a warning. And after that Brat caught Simon's glance at him every now and then.
When Eleanor and Brat were setting off for Westover in the afternoon, he appeared and insisted on making a third in the bug's scanty space. One of the cups was his own unaided work, he said, and he had a right to say what was to go on it, and whether it should be in Roman, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek or Cyrillic script, or mere shorthand.
So powerful was Simon's indifferent charm that even Brat found himself on the verge of wondering whether the Rector had been right and he had built his story out of whole cloth. But he remembered the horse that Farmer Gates had bought for his daughter Peggy, and concluded that that was a more reliable guide to Simon than anything Simon himself might provide.
When they had decided on the lettering for the names on the cups, Simon and Eleanor went to tea, but Brat said that he had some shopping to do. Brat had decided what he had to do in the present impasse. He could not go to the police with his story in its present form with any more hope of being believed than he had been by the Rector. If the Rector, who knew Simon's weaknesses, refused to believe without concrete evidence, how much more would the police refuse to believe, when Simon to them was not a wayward boy but Mr. Ashby of Latchetts?
Brat therefore proposed to provide them with the evidence.
He went down to the harbour and sought a chandler's, and there, after some consultation and a deal of choosing, bought two hundred feet of rope. The rope was so thin that it was not much thicker than stout string, but its breaking-point under tension was very much that of steel. He asked them to pack it in a cardboard box and deliver it to the Angel garage, where the bug was. He received it at the garage and packed it away in the luggage compartment.
When the others arrived to go home he was waiting innocently in the car with an evening paper.
They had packed themselves into the bug and were preparing to go when Simon said: "Whoa! We've forgotten to leave that old tire with them," and he got out and opened the rear compartment to get the tire.
"What is in the box, Nell?"
"I didn't put any box there," Eleanor said, not moving. "It can't be for us."
"It's mine," Brat said.
"What is it?"
"Secret."
"James Fryer and Son, Ship Chandlers," said Simon's voice.
Oh, God! There was a label on the box that he had not noticed.
Simon shut the luggage compartment with a bang and came back to his seat. "What have you been buying, Brat? One of those ships in a bottle? No, it is a little too large for that. One of those ships not in a bottle. One of those full-sailed galleons that sit on suburban sideboards to delight the heart of our Island Race and comfort it for being sick on the trip to Margate."
"Don't be a fool, Simon. What is it, Brat? Is it really a secret?"
If Simon wanted to find out what was in the box he most certainly would, by one method or another. And to make a mystery of it was to call attention to it. Far better to be apparently frank about it.
"If you must know, I'm afraid I'll lose the knack of spinning a rope, so I've bought some to practise on."
Eleanor was delighted. Brat must show them some spinning that very evening.
"No. Not till I've tried it out in camera first."
"You'll teach me how, won't you?"
Yes, he would teach her how to throw a rope. She was going to hate him one day soon, if that rope did what it was bought for.
When they arrived back at Latchetts he took the rope out and left it openly in the hall. Bee asked about it, and accepted the explanation of its presence, and no one took any more notice of it. He wished that his last short time at Latchetts did not have to be spent in lying. It was odd that, having spent his whole time at Latchetts lying like a Levantine, he should mind so much about this smaller deception.
There was still time to do nothing about it. To leave the rope there, and not ask it to answer any question. It was the wrong kind of rope for throwing, but he could change it for the right kind.
But when night came, and he was alone in his room, he knew that he had no choice. This was what he had come half across a world to do, and he was going to do it.
The household went early to bed, still tired from their excitements at Bures, and he gave them till half-past twelve, and then prospected. There seemed to be no light anywhere. There was certainly no sound. He went downstairs and took the rope from its corner. He unlatched the dining-room window, stepped over the sill into the night, and drew it gently down again behind him. He waited for any reaction, but there was none.
He made his way softly over the gravel to the grass, sat down in the shelter of the first paddock trees, out of the range of the windows, and without need of any light, deftly knotted footholds at intervals down the length of rope. It was a pleasant reassuring thing to feel the familiar touch of rope after so long. It was a well-bred rope and answered sweetly to his demands. He felt grateful to James Fryer and Son.
He wound the rope and put the coil of it over his shoulder. In half an hour the moon would be up. It was a young moon, and not much of a lamp, but he had two good torches in his pocket and he did not very much desire a full moon's frankness to-night.
Every five minutes he stopped and waited to see if he had been followed. But nothing at all moved in the night. Not even a cat.
The grey light of the coming moon greeted him as he came towards the foot of Tanbitches, and he found the path to Westover without having to flick a torch. He followed it up a little and then, when he could see the beech-crown of the hill against the sky, he struck off it until he reached
the thicket on the upper side of the old quarry. There he sat down and waited. But again there was no sound in all the sleeping countryside except the sudden cry of a sheep on the hill. He tied the rope round the bole of the largest of the young beeches that had seeded themselves there, and let it uncoil itself until it fell over the edge of the quarry into the green thickness below. This was the steep side of the quarry. The lower side had had a narrow entrance, but it had long ago fallen together and become overgrown with an impenetrable denseness of briars. Old Abel had told him all about it the day they had sat there and talked of Patrick. Abel knew all about the quarry because he had once rescued a sheep from it. It was much easier to go down the sheer face, Abel said, than in at the lower side. In fact, to go in at the lower side, or any other side, was plumb impossible. No, there was no water in it; at least there wasn't any twenty years ago, which was when last he went down after a sheep; the water all drained away under the hill to the sea.
Brat tested the rope several times, and felt for it fraying. But the bole of the tree was smooth, and where it went over the lip of the quarry he had padded it. He slid over the edge and felt for his first toe-hold. Now that he was level with the ground he was more aware of the brightness of the sky. He could see the dark shape of the low thicket against it, and the larger darkness of the tree above him.
He had found his first foothold in the rope now, but his hands were still on the rope where it lay taut on the turf.
"I should hate," said Simon's voice in its most «Simon» drawl, "to let you go without an appropriate farewell. I mean, I could just cut the rope and let you think, if you had time to think at all, that it had broken. But that wouldn't be any fun, would it?"
Brat could see his bulk against the sky. From the shape of it, he was half-kneeling on the edge, by the rope. Brat could touch him by putting out a hand.
Fool that he had been to underrate Simon. Simon had taken no chances. He hadn't even taken the chance of following him. He had come first and waited.
Brat Farrar Page 24
