Down Under

by Patricia Wentworth

  CHAPTER XXVI

  The music stopped. It was Philip Rennard who stopped it with a clap of the hands and a word in the pianist’s ear. The dancers stood about irresolute. Philip came across with Violette on his arm.

  “Well, Rose?” he said. “Have you said good-bye to the old love and told him you’re on with the new? You know, you’ve come here in the nick of time, Loddon. You missed your own wedding, but you won’t miss mine. I hope Rose has given you an invitation.”

  Oliver said nothing. Anything he said would probably gratify Philip. There was nothing to say. Nothing to do either, since if he were to knock Philip down he would most certainly be relegated to a cell and locked in. His present measure of liberty might not be worth very much, but it was better than nothing at all. He thought, “If I kill him, they’ll kill me, and God knows what will happen to Rose Anne.” No—not until the last desperate moment should he cease to play a waiting, watching game.

  “Well, Rose?” said Philip. “You’re very silent. Have you nothing to say to Captain Loddon either?”

  Rose Anne lifted her eyes.

  “What am I to say?”

  “Say, ‘My dear Oliver.’”

  She repeated the words like a child—“My dear Oliver,” and stopped there, watching his face.

  “Go on, Rose. Say, ‘I am going to be married.’”

  She echoed this too—“I am going to be married—Am I going to be married, Philip?”

  Philip Rennard smiled.

  “You are, my dear. Aren’t you the lucky girl? Go on—tell Captain Loddon how lucky you are. Say, ‘Please come to my wedding.’”

  She spoke like a docile child—“Please come to my wedding, Oliver.” Her eyes met his sweetly, blankly.

  “But you haven’t told him that I’m the lucky man. You must do that, you know. He would like to hear it from your own lips, I feel sure. Say, ‘I am going to marry Philip Rennard whom I love very much.’”

  A small frown drew her brows together.

  “But I don’t want to be married, Philip.”

  He dropped a hand on her shoulder and let it lie there carelessly.

  “Do what you’re told, Rose.”

  She stood silent.

  “Come—I’m waiting.”

  “Take your hand off her shoulder!” said Oliver.

  “Or you’ll make me? I don’t think I should, you know—not if I were you—not until you’ve asked, let us say Fanny, to tell you what happened to Gregory Ledowski. He thought he had a grievance. He is dead. Very unpleasant for him. I am none the worse, as you see. I think I am probably stronger than you, and I am almost certainly a better boxer. You had better accept the situation. I don’t suppose Rose would like any unpleasantness over her wedding. You ask someone to tell you about Ledowski.”

  Mademoiselle Violette laughed.

  “Why do you not tell him yourself, Philippe? This Ledowski was a big fool. I told him so, but he would not believe me. He was in love with me, and he tried to kill Philippe—quick. And Philippe killed him—slow—oh, so very, very slow. But he did not make me watch, as he will make your Miss Rose watch when he kills you.”

  A tremor passed over Rose Anne. She turned on Philip the eyes of a frightened child.

  “Please make her stop.”

  “Tais-toi, Violette!” said Philip, smiling. “And now dance again.”

  He called over his shoulder, “My dance, Jack,” and the next moment he had swept Rose Anne into the rhythm of the Rosenkavalier waltz.

  Violette turned her eyes on Oliver. She said,

  “Do you like to stand there whilst they dance? It does not amuse me at all.”

  Oliver managed a smile.

  “Does that mean that you would take pity on me? I hope it does.”

  “Pity?” She shrugged her shoulders. “I have none for you, my brave Captain—I need it all for myself. But I will dance with you. You would not be, too bad if I were to teach you a little.” They were out upon the floor before she added, “I could teach you—how to dance—and perhaps other things too.”

  Oliver said quite low, “Tell me how to find the shaft, Violette.”

  She threw back her head and laughed with her lips and eyes, but not with any sound.

  “So that you may go away and never see me again—hein?”

  He said, bending closer, “Do you want to stay here all your life? You are young, you are very pretty, you had Paris at your feet. Do you want to stay down here where Philip neglects and insults you? There are lots of good fish in the sea, you know. You are wasting your time.”

  He heard her catch in her breath.

  “Do you think I stay because I want to, or because I am so much in love with Philippe that I do not care that time passes—that one is not young for ever—that Paris forgets? Je te dis que non, non, non, non, non—and no, no, on, no, no! I am not one of those who will stay in the empty theatre when the curtain is fallen and the play is over. There are other plays—I ask no better than to find one. With Philippe it is at an end. He has your Miss Rose, and after her there will be someone else. But for me—I ask you who is there for me? If there were—” Her eyes said, “If there were you!”

  Oliver looked over the top of her head and saw Philip and Rose Anne go by. He saw Rose Anne’s lips move, and wondered what she said. He answered Violette urgently.

  “Of course there’s no one—down here. But you could have Paris at your feet again. Help me now, and I will help you. Tell me how to get out, and I will get you out of this trap.”

  She said, “Wait! Don’t talk—he is watching you. I must think.”

  They danced the length of the room and back again before she said,

  “It is true what I told you about the chimney, but I went there with Philippe—I do not know the way. And that chimney, I think they will have built it up, but even if it is still there, I do not think it could be climbed.”

  “You said it could.”

  She laughed, aloud this time.

  “O mon ami, I say a great many things that I do not mean—you are not to take notice of everything that I say. But this I know, when Philippe took me into the old galleries we went first down those steps which are over there—near the gate through which you came. There—you see there is an arch a little to the left, and first there are three steps down, and a passage with lights, and then many steps, and after a little no more lights. But Philippe had a torch—”

  “Yes—go on.”

  Her eyebrows went up high.

  “But that is all. We turned this way, that way—how do I know what way? I did not think about it—oh, not at all. And then suddenly I look up and I see a star, but I do not say that I have seen it, I hold my tongue, and Philippe he makes his torch flash into my eyes, and he says we have come wrong, this is a very dangerous place, and we must go back quick. And that is all I know, and it is no use that you ask me to remember more, because there is no more that I can say.”

  Ernie came up beside them and touched Oliver on the arm.

  “Uncle wants you,” he said. “What about me for a partner, Miss Violet?”

  She looked at him sideways.

  “Oh, la, la, la—and what will Fanny say?”

  Oliver made his way to the chair that had been set by the Old Fox’s throne. He received a hearty greeting.

  “Come along, Captain Loddon—come along! I’m your host, you know, and I’d like a bit of a talk with you myself if you’re not too busy running after the girls. And look here, you take my advise and don’t you do too much running after that Ma’mselle Violet. For one thing, she won’t do you any good, and for another you don’t need to get Philip any more worked up with you than he is already. She’s his property, and he don’t like having his property meddled with, so you just sit right down here and talk to me.”

  The talk was mostly on his side. He was immensely proud of his kingdom, and perfectly willing to impart floods of information about it. Oliver desired nothing better than to listen. The more copious the fl
oods, the more chances of driftwood.

  The Old Fox blew out his red cheeks and talked pridefully of his cleverness in securing such an impregnable retreat.

  “I’d been thinking about it a long time, you know. I’d seen one or two things happen that made me think a bit. A man I’d dined with regular for ten years and stayed week-ends with in his country place with swimming baths, and tennis-courts, and fisheries, and vineries, and conservatories, and what not—he came crash and got fourteen years. And there was another fellow that I didn’t know so well, but I knew him, and one week he was dining with lords and earls and dukes, and the next, so to speak, he was taking poison in the dock, and headlines about him in all the evening papers. Well, it makes a man sit up and think. You can see that—can’t you?”

  Oliver said, “Yes—very stimulating to thought,” and got a sharp look out of the little piggy eyes.

  “Well then, there I was. I’d fifteen companies running just then, and it’s like a game of musical chairs, if you get my meaning. You’ve got to keep the money moving and pray the music won’t stop in the wrong place. Great times, but a bit on the nervous side. So I thought I’d have a bolt-hole handy. There was a man I met in an air raid—we took shelter together in a tube station and you couldn’t get near the trains, so there he was drinking neat whisky out of a flask he’d got on him and telling me the story of his life, and I put him down for the best liar I’d ever run across, but it seemed I was wrong. By the time he was three parts drunk he was telling me about how his family used to smuggle the best French brandy and never pay a penn’orth of duty on it, and lace and silk and anything else they fancied, right back for a couple of hundred years. I wasn’t really interested, and I expect that’s why he was so set on telling me all about it. He got hold of me by my coat, and every time he had a sip of whisky he told me some more. He told me it all began with the mine-workings, because someone had the bright idea of making a way into the mine and using the mine shaft at night to let the stuff down. The first way through was made between the cellars of a pub called the Angel and the mine behind it. He said the hill rose up steep at the back of the house and they’d only a little way to tunnel before they got into the mine. He said that was at a place called Hillick St Agnes, and there used to be a shaft there, but it was filled up now. Well, his family used the Angel for a long time, and then they found that the mine-workings ran out into a lot of caves. The lode finished there, so the mine was given up. The caves interested his family very much. He said they ran for the best part of ten miles and joined up with another mine which was under a village called Oakham. All that part of the country belonged to his people then—it must have been a long time ago. Oakham Place belonged to them, so all they had to do was to copy the way into the mines they’d got at the Angel, and that’s what they did.”

  “It’s ten miles from Hillick St Agnes to Oakham,” said Oliver.

  Amos Rennard blew out his cheeks.

  “Here—who’s telling this—you or me? It may be ten miles by road and rail, but it’s five the way the water runs.”

  “Oh, there’s water?”

  “There wouldn’t be caves if there wasn’t. It’s the water makes the caves. We’ve covered it in here, but it runs all along that wall. It took a lot of labour, but we paved it over. It made me feel giddy to see it running all the time, so I had it done.”

  Water.… Oliver felt a secret excitement. Water gave you something to follow. Water generally meant a way out sooner or later—not always.…

  “… so I thought he was a liar”—Oliver had missed something there—“and I told him so, and the more I told him the more he told me—how to work the stone and open the secret door, and the whole bag of tricks. He’d finished his flask and he was as drunk as a lord, and I couldn’t get away from him, there was such a crowd, and there he stood telling me things I didn’t want to hear and shoving his card into my hand. I put it in my pocket and forgot all about it except that I remembered his name, which was Henry Oakham. And there was another raid next day, and I saw in the paper he’d been killed, and then I’d got my hands too full to think of him again. But when I wanted to make sure of having a bolt-hole, something said ‘Henry Oakham,’ and I thought I’d find out how much of a liar he’d been. Oakham Place was empty, and I got an order to view, and when I got there, every single word that Henry had said came back. I give you my word, Captain Loddon, I could feel him hanging on my coat, and I could smell the whisky, and what’s more, I remembered how to open the door, and I opened it same as you must have done—Ernie swears you didn’t slip in behind him and Fan.”

  “No, I opened it.”

  The Old Fox slapped his knee.

  “So did I. And when I saw the steps and all I took off my hat to Henry Oakham and begged his pardon for having called him a liar for the best part of six years. ‘And here’s my bolt-hole,’ I said, and I went back home and bought Oakham Place and the Angel at Hillick St Agnes. Not in my own name of course—that would have been a mug’s game. No, I was pretty clever over the deal and covered up my tracks middling well, and when it was all fixed I put my brother-in-law Matthew Garstnet into the Angel, and I told my brother Joseph’s widow there was a housekeeper’s job waiting for her up at Oakham Place any time she liked, only she’d have to take it under another name. And she said what did she want with housekeeper’s jobs when she’d got Ernie to do for? But she took it fast enough, and glad to get it, when Ernie came down under. He’s a good boy, Ernie.”

  Cold through Oliver’s mind went the thought, cold as the bleakest north-east wind, “He’s giving the whole show away. Why?” And in the same breath the answer, “Dead men tell no tales. I’m as good as dead.”

  The little piggy eyes looked sharply at him under the red thatch of Amos Rennard’s brows.

  “You’re thinking I talk a lot. Well, young man, and why not? There’s not so much else I can do nowadays—I’m too fat. And there’s no need for secrets amongst us down under.” He planted a coarse hairy hand on either knee and wagged his beard. “Perhaps I like talking, and perhaps I talk too much, and perhaps I’d like you to get it into your head that you’re here for keeps. There isn’t any way out. Would I talk the way I’ve been talking if there was? You sit back and think that over. And mind you, there’s nothing to be down-hearted about. Philip’s got your girl—granted. But you’re not the first, and you won’t be the last by a long chalk that’s had to look for another and been all the better off in the end. That French girl’s no good to you, but there’s Marie—she’s a nice girl. And Fanny’s got a sister—or if there’s anyone you fancied, we’d see what could be done, I’m sure. Young men ought to be married—it steadies them down. I married young myself, and I’m pleased to see Philip setting his mind that way. Mark’s married—he’s been married for years—but he keeps her on a little place in Devonshire, and all she knows is he has to travel a lot. They’ve two children I’ve never seen. That’s hard—isn’t it? But it was all on account of the children I let Mark marry the way he did. The women down here don’t have ’em—or didn’t. Fan has brought it off all right. She’s the first, and we’ll hope she won’t be the last. There’ll be Mrs Philip now. I want to see Philip’s children.”

  Oliver got to his feet.

  “You can’t expect me to listen to this!”

  “Well, well,” said the Old Fox equably. “There’s no need for you to listen to what you don’t want to hear. There’s just one thing I’d like you to bear in mind. You might get ideas in your head about having a smack at Philip and getting him out of the way. Well, he goes armed, Philip does, and pretty well able to look after himself, but—” here the Old Fox leaned forward, his gross weight upon his hands, his ruddy face contorted suddenly into a snarling mask—“if you were to touch him, if you were to lay a finger on him, I’d have you skinned alive, but not till you’d seen what I could do to that girl of yours—what I’d do to anyone who got in Philip’s way! There—don’t say I didn’t warn you!” He sat back. His fa
ce relaxed. The thick lip came down and hid the ugly yellow teeth. He pulled at his beard and said affably, “Well, that’s where we are. You run along and talk to the Doctor. He’ll show you round. You shouldn’t have made me lose my temper. I’m too fat, and it makes me sweat.”

  CHAPTER XXVII

  Oliver had no more chance of talking to Rose Anne. He was carefully shepherded, and so was she. He danced again with Fanny, and thought her nervous and unhappy.

  “Whatever did you say to put Uncle out like that?”

  “I don’t think I said anything. He was warning me what I might expect if, as he put it, I had a smack at Philip.”

  Fear looked at him out of Fanny’s eyes.

  “Oh, Captain Loddon, you wouldn’t!”

  “I would if it was going to do any good.”

  “You mustn’t, you mustn’t! You don’t know what they’d do to you, or to Miss Rose Anne—you don’t know—”

  “Well, he was doing his best to tell me.”

  Fanny shuddered.

  “And it’s true—they would. There’ve been people before—Ernie told me. Oh, you won’t! If you don’t care for yourself, you’ve got to think about her.”

  What a nightmare—to dance, and talk of one’s chances of escaping torture. He remembered Rose Anne saying, “We’ll wake up soon,” and wondered whether they would ever wake again.…

  Fanny was speaking.

  “They’ve fetched your things away from our place. You’re to be with the Doctor.” She leaned towards him and said quick and low, “Don’t trust him—too much.”

  He said, “Thank you, Fanny,” and felt a real regret. He liked her, and he liked Ernie. They were a break in the nightmare. If he ever got out … Amos Rennard’s words echoed in his mind—“Do you think I’d talk like this if there was any way out?”