by M C Beaton
She broke off, as a loud masculine voice could be heard from the garden next door. “Damn and blast this dead—alive hole,” it said.
Both girls giggled nervously. “Let’s go see,” whispered Molly. “Sounds like a fellow spirit.”
They got up and walked quietly through the trees, over a springy carpeting of moss. A crumbling fern-covered stone wall marked the boundary between the Holdens’ property and next door. A screen of trees blocked the view of the neighboring garden. Mary tugged at Molly’s sleeve in a kind of pleading way but Molly was determined to have a look at this angry neighbor.
Pulling Mary behind her, she edged her way along the wall until she came to a gap in the trees. She found herself looking along a sort of narrow green tunnel of briars and bushes to a vista of cool lawns and garden chairs. One of the chairs suddenly went flying and there, in the gap, was the angry neighbor. He was a tall, swarthy, harsh-featured young man. His black slanting eyebrows under hair as thick and black as Molly’s own gave him a Satanic look. He was wearing an old pair of riding breeches and an open-necked white shirt that accentuated his tan.
He was slashing at the bushes with a riding crop in a moody, vicious way.
Molly responded this time to Mary’s tugging. Both turned and scampered back through the wood.
“Isn’t he terrible,” gasped Molly when they felt it safe to speak. “He looks like the devil!”
“Gels! Gels!” summoned an imperative voice from the house. Feeling as if they were back in school, the two sisters trudged toward the mansion.
Lady Fanny was dressed in a long velvet dinner gown, showing exactly the correct expanse of bosom in front and the correct amount of vertebrae behind.
“You are no longer schoolgirls,” was her opening remark. “You are covered in bits of leaves. Retire to your rooms and change for dinner immediately. On second thought, perhaps you have nothing to change into. Get yourselves brushed up and don’t be long. We dine in twenty minutes.”
In less than the twenty minutes, the Maguires were timidly seated at an expanse of dining table and the nightmare began. “You must learn to take a little wine,” ordered Lady Fanny. “Fill their glasses, James,” she ordered a footman.
Mary rebelled. “I don’t gotta take wine if’n I don’t wanna.”
Lady Fanny closed her eyes as if in pain. “This is going to be worse than I thought. You must have elocution lessons as soon as possible. Do not use double negatives, Mary. A little wine will do you no harm. No, Molly, one does not eat asparagus with a knife and fork. With the fingers, girl. The fingers.”
Both girls occasionally looked toward Lord Toby. Several times he made a few deep rumblings as if indicating that he was about to erupt into speech, but each time Fanny quelled whatever it was he was about to say with one pale, cold eye.
Molly and Mary labored through exotic course after course, praying that each one might be the last. “Are you enjoying your first English dinner?” queried Lady Fanny.
“Sure. Swell,” said Mary dreamily. The wine was going to her head.
“There will be ready-made clothes arriving for you on the morrow,” said Lady Fanny. “These will have to do until your other clothes are ready. You must be prepared to change at least six times a day.”
Molly choked on her food. “Six times!” she exclaimed in dismay. “That doesn’t leave us time to do anything else.”
“There will be plenty of time,” retorted Lady Fanny. “You will be busy at first with your lessons. You must have elocution lessons. Not so much you, Molly. There is no harm in an American accent, in fact some gentlemen find it piquant, but Mary’s grammar needs attention. Then you must have dancing lessons and lessons in deportment.”
Molly made a bid for freedom. “I honestly don’t think we’re going to make it, Lady Fanny,” she pleaded. “Why don’t you just let us catch the next boat to Brooklyn?”
“Nonsense! You will like it well enough when you start going to balls and parties and see all the handsomest men in England falling at your feet.”
It may have been the effect of the wine or it may just have been Molly’s very feminine soul, but the thought of handsome Englishmen falling at her feet was suddenly infinitely appealing.
Anything further, however, that she might have wished to say was cut short by an appalled squawk from Lady Fanny. Mary had been eyeing a bowl of cool water in front of her plate. It looked very tempting, with little slivers of lemon floating in it. She raised it in both hands and took a deep drink.
“Good Heavens!” shrieked the appalled Lady Fanny. “Toby, do look! She drank from the finger bowl.”
“So what!” muttered Mary dismally. “What a mazuma.”
Lord Toby suddenly found his voice. “Leave ’em alone, Fanny. Give ’em time to run about a bit. Not much more than little gels, ain’t they? Plenty of time for lessons.”
“I don’t know what you’re butting in for,” snapped Lady Fanny, but her husband held her glare without flinching. “Oh, very well. You may have a little holiday for the next few days. Get to know the place. Your parents are allowing you a very generous allowance. You will receive it from me each Monday morning.”
Things began to look definitely brighter. Molly felt almost happy. Then she remembered the man next door and decided that it would be a useful way of turning the conversation away from themselves.
That’s a very angry-looking neighbor you have,” she remarked.
“Which side?” asked Lord Toby, showing a spark of interest.
“The left.”
“Oh, that must be poor Lord David Manley,” sighed Fanny. “Nobody has seen him but he is supposed to be a very handsome man. And so rich! He contracted consumption, you know, and everyone thought he would die. But his doctor sent him to a sanatorium in Switzerland and he has been miraculously cured, they say. Poor boy. He bought the villa next door and is said to be convalescing.”
“I don’t think it could possibly have been Lord David,” said Molly. “This man was very healthy and muscular and too harsh-featured to be called handsome.”
“I believe his parents presented him with some sort of male nurse,” said Lady Fanny. “That’s probably who it was. Poor Lord David. He must still be very sickly.”
A gentle snore and a small thump interrupted their conversation. Mary, overcome by the unaccustomed wine and masses of exotic food, had slowly slipped under the table and gone to sleep.
The following Sunday morning found the Maguire sisters to be the first members of the household awake. Breakfast, they remembered, was not until eleven o’clock. They would stroll down to the town and take a look around. Mary was complaining of a headache and Molly pointed out that fresh air would be just the thing to blow it away.
It was a pure, clear sunny morning. They walked down the drive, pushed open the great iron gates, and marched out into the road with a feeling of having escaped from prison.
They hesitated a little and then decided Hadsea must be on their left.
“Goddamnit, man,” roared the well-remembered voice of the man who must be Lord David’s nurse. “What the hell do you call this filth? I want coffee, good, strong dark coffee. Take this pap away and feed it to the cat.” There was a sound of breaking china.
“Poor Lord David,” murmured Molly. “Can you imagine how he must be bullied by that dreadful nurse?” She pictured a frail and beautiful aristocrat lying weakly on his sickbed, one blue-veined hand plucking restlessly at the covers, fair hair falling over a marble brow, as that angry voice ranted and raved.
The road led past the gardens of more enormous villas. All of them looked quite new. The air was heavy with the scent of roses and newly cut grass. Somewhere someone was frying bacon and the smell made the girls’ stomachs rumble.
They turned a bend in the road and there was Hadsea. The little town was situated at the far end of a beautiful curve of sandy beach. With one accord, they raced along it.
The whole expanse of sea was the color of blue watered
silk. Little pink shells studded the gleaming sand, bordered by golden clumps of broom. Lazy spirals of smoke rose from the chimneys of the town and in the distance they could faintly hear voices singing in the church. Lady Fanny had said nothing about going to church, which struck them as unusual. The fact was that Lady Fanny knew both girls to be Catholic and, being Anglican herself, had not known quite what to do with them. Hadsea did not boast a church that catered to such an unfashionable religion.
Soon they were walking along the deserted cobbled streets of the little town. All the shops were closed and shuttered.
“Well, at least we can find out where the post office is,” said Molly. “And then we can post that letter to Mother as soon as we get our allowance, if things look too bad.”
They wandered up one narrow lane and down another until Mary said, “Can that be it?”
Sure enough the sign above the door said clearly HADSEA GENERAL POST OFFICE. There was a small red stamp machine on a pedestal beside the door and on the pavement outside, a squat red pillar-box for posting letters, but there any resemblance to any sort of post office the girls had ever known ended. The window was full of buckets and spades, black sandshoes, jars of candy, balls of string, can openers, a picture of a lady in a diaphanous gown, who was staring disapprovingly at the Pyramids, a pair of whalebone corsets, and damp postcards showing sepia-tinted views of Hadsea.
“Do you think they’ll actually get a letter from here to America?” said Molly, giggling. “Maybe they’ll send it by bearer on a cleft stick.”
Mary was about to reply when both girls suddenly heard the stifled sound of sobbing coming from somewhere at the rear of the building. Now, two well-bred English ladies would have walked on and minded their own business. But not the Maguire sisters.
They found a little passage at the side of the shop and walked along it toward the sound of the sobbing. It was coming from a small kitchen at the back. The girls stopped and looked at one another awkwardly. This was spying on someone’s private grief. They were about to turn away when a rough voice stopped them in their tracks.
“Stop sniveling and hand over the money,” it growled.
Molly threw her scruples to the winds and peered in a small window. A thin, frail, middle-aged woman was sitting at a scrubbed kitchen table with a money box open in front of her.
“I can’t pay you any more,” she was crying. “I’ve hardly got enough to eat.”
“You’ll pay me and you know why,” growled her tormentor.
Molly squeezed her head around to bring him into view. He was a fat, pimply youth about her own age with brown greasy curls pasted to his low forehead. “How would you like the village to know you and your old man wasn’t married? How would you like His Majesty’s post office to know? Throw you out in the street, they would.”
Still crying, the woman drew some notes and silver from the box and slowly laid them out on the table, where they were immediately snatched up. “This all?” he growled. “See you make it more next time or it’ll be the worse for you.”
As they heard him coming to the kitchen door, the Maguire sisters ran along the narrow passage and then stood staring in apparent fascination at the whalebone corsets. The burly youth strode past them.
“Let’s follow him,” hissed Molly.
The youth was keeping up a good pace but not once did he stop and look behind him. They followed him up through the streets, past the railway station, and along a narrow country lane. They kept well behind him, making sure that they only kept him in sight. A faint breeze had sprung up, bringing with it all the summer scents of the fields and the sea. The idyllic landscape made the squat figure in front of them strangely menacing. He at last stopped outside a small brick cottage on a rise, pushed open the door, and went in.
“Now we know where he lives. Back to the post office,” said Molly.
Mary began to feel frightened. “Shouldn’t we go to the police, Molly?” she asked timidly.
“No,” said Molly. “Of course not. He would be arrested and then that poor woman’s story would come out in court and be all over the town newspaper.”
At the post office the woman was still sitting at the table. Molly rapped on the window.
The woman looked up, startled, and then went to the kitchen door. The girls walked around to the back.
Her eyes still red with weeping, the woman introduced herself. “I am Mrs. Pomfret, the postmistress. I am afraid the post office is closed today. But if there is anything you need urgently…”
“We need to talk to you,” said Molly firmly. “I reckon you could do with a little help. You see, we heard—”
Mrs. Pomfret blushed crimson, gasped, and then began to cry. Molly put an arm around the thin, shaking shoulders and drew her into the kitchen. “I’m going to make you a nice cup of tea and you’re going to tell me all about it,” she said firmly. “No one should have to keep that amount of trouble to themselves.”
Glad of something ordinary to do, Mary took over and bustled about the stove preparing the tea. Molly sat down at the table and took Mrs. Pomfret’s hand in her own. “Tell me about it,” she said, her voice warm with sympathy.
Without knowing why she did it, Mrs. Pomfret found herself telling this strange American girl all about her trouble. Mr. Pomfret was dead. He had died of diphtheria two years ago. They both came from another town. Mr. Pomfret had not been free to marry her. His wife was a devout Roman Catholic and divorce was too expensive in any case. They had both decided to move away and start a new life together. Then Billy Barnstable had appeared upon the scene. Somehow he had ferreted out her secret and had started to blackmail her. If she lost her job as postmistress, she would be ruined. Did he live with his father and mother? No. He lodged with old Mr. Wothers who was as deaf as a post.
While the postmistress had been talking, Molly had been looking vaguely around the dark little kitchen. Her eyes alighted on a game rifle lying in one corner.
“Is that yours?” she asked.
Mrs. Pomfret stared. “It was Mister Pomfret’s,” she said sadly. “Used it for shooting rabbits, he did. Not that I know anything about guns.”
“Have you any cartridges?”
“Well now,” said Mrs. Pomfret in surprise. “The things you ask! Yes, dear, there’s a box of them nasty things on the mantelshelf.”
Molly looked at them carefully. “If you would lend me this gun this evening after dark, I think… I just think… I could put an end to your troubles.”
“Here now!” exclaimed the postmistress in alarm. “This isn’t the wild West.”
“Trust me,” said Molly gently. “Just trust me.…”
CHAPTER THREE
Mary was shivering with fear. Molly was excited. The hour was eleven o’clock. They had managed to creep out of the Holden mansion without being observed.
As they hurried along the sandy beach to Hadsea, Molly reflected that this was surely much more exciting than a London Season. Even more exciting than meeting King Edward himself!
Mary felt that her adored sister was making some dreadful mistake. Both were huddled in long plaid capes over their school dresses. It was a bright moonlit night and the sea spread out to their left like a sheet of silver, the only sound in the quiet night being the soft sibilant whispering of the tiny waves on the beach.
The warm glow from an oil lamp lit up the kitchen at the back of the post office. The postmistress was nervously waiting for them.
“I must be mad,” she whispered, handing Molly the gun. She watched in amazement as Molly expertly snapped it open and began loading it with a practiced hand. “What if Constable Jenkins should see you?” Mr. Jenkins was the town policeman.
“Don’t worry,” said Molly with a grin. “There isn’t going to be anyone awake but us.”
Both girls whispered their good-byes. Molly hid the gun under her long cape and they sped silently along the narrow lanes that led out of the town. All too soon for Mary, Mr. Wothers’s small brick cottage ap
peared on the rise, silhouetted against the moon.
Molly felt Mary’s arm tremble against her own. She should have persuaded her young sister to stay behind. But it was too late now. May as well get on with it. Mrs. Pomfret had said that Mr. Wothers was stone-deaf. Molly fervently hoped this was the case and that the repulsive Billy Barnstable would answer the door himself. Suddenly feeling as nervous as Mary and hoping that Barnstable did not keep a dog, Molly raised her hand and rapped firmly on the kitchen door at the back of the house. The front door looked as if it hadn’t been opened in years.
There was a long silence. Molly rapped again. The yellow light of a candle flame sprang up in one of the upstairs rooms and shortly afterward the light disappeared and reappeared in the kitchen downstairs. There was the sound of bolts being drawn back. The door opened, and Billy Barnstable stood looking at them, his nightshirt stuffed into his trousers. “What you want?” he demanded, and then gave a cavernous yawn.
“We want you to stop blackmailing Mrs. Pomfret,” said Molly.
Billy Barnstable held up the candle and looked at the girls in its flickering light. An unlovely smile creased his fat features. “You’re nuthin’ but a couple o’ kids,” he laughed. “Get back to your ma and stop pokin’ your noses in where they don’t belong.”
“All right,” said Molly angrily. “I am no longer asking you to stop blackmailing Mrs. Pomfret. I’m telling you.”
Molly backed away from the kitchen door into the garden as she spoke, with Mary hiding behind her. Billy’s smile grew even broader. He thought Molly was frightened and strolled after her into the garden.
“An’ who’s going to stop me? You?” And he gave a great fat laugh.
“Yes, me. Me and this,” said Molly. She took out the rifle from under her coat and leveled it straight at Billy. “No one knows we’re here,” she said in a voice like ice. “I can put a bullet through your fat heart and no one would be any the wiser. And if you do not leave Mrs. Pomfret alone, that is exactly what I shall do.”
