Corpse Path Cottage

by Margaret Scutt

  ‘Oh yeah? Him an’ who else?’

  The door closed behind him. Mrs Cossett shook her head.

  ‘Five wicks!’ she murmured.

  Putting on her coat, she set off for Killarney and her morning’s work.

  * * *

  Johnny proceeded through the serene streets of the joint he proposed to enliven. At the bus stop on the corner, two figures were waiting, those of Jimmy Fairfax and his housekeeper. The housekeeper was carrying a small case and wore a black coat and hat. Mr Fairfax was in his everyday clothes, topped by a greasy and aged cap. As Johnny came up, the bus, punctual to the minute, arrived. He observed Mrs Shergold and her case board the vehicle, leaving Mr Fairfax behind. The bus clattered away and disappeared on its journey to Lake. A moment later the figure of Mrs Hale, hot and breathless, hove into view. Mr Fairfax turned to regard her with benevolent interest as she galloped up.

  ‘Mornin’, Missale,’ he said.

  The lady was in no mood for greetings.

  ‘That weren’t never the bus, for God’s sake?’ she demanded passionately.

  ‘Ah, ’twere. Missed un, have ’ee?’ asked Mr Fairfax with a pleased smile.

  ‘Well, may I go a sojer!’ exploded Mrs Hale. ‘Never have I knowed this bus less nor ten minutes late, and more often than not twenty. And this ’ere blessed morning he must needs go and be on time!’

  ‘Punctual to the minute,’ agreed Mr Fairfax. ‘My housekeeper, she had to go off at short notice, and we only got it by the skin of our teeth. Must ha’ got out o’ bed afore they went anywhere this morning.’

  ‘Ah, so they must. And now I shall have to wait till 10.30. I s’pose he’ll be half an hour late, just to balance it up. Enough to make a saint swear.’ She paused to mop her face and disposed herself for conversation. For want of anything better to do, on the opposite side of the road, Johnny Cossett lingered too.

  ‘Be Mrs Shergold gone for good?’ she enquired casually.

  ‘Oh, no, nothing o’ that kind, I’m glad to say,’ said Mr Fairfax, chuckling. ‘Hopes to be back in a wick or so, at the latest.’

  ‘No bad news, I hope?’

  ‘Well, in a way,’ conceded Mr Fairfax, smiling.

  ‘Illness?’

  ‘Her sister is an invalid. Chronic. Bedridden, poor soul, and has been for years. The young person who keeps care of her has just gone and got married.’ Mr Fairfax became waggish. ‘They will do it, won’t ’em,’ he said.

  ‘Bad job if they didn’t,’ said Mrs Hale absently. ‘Won’t the sister be needing your lady for good, then?’

  ‘Now, now, Missale,’ said Mr Fairfax, wagging a fat reproachful finger at her, ‘don’t you suggest nothing of that kind. A pretty quadrant I should find myself in wi’ no good ’ooman to do for me — and me a poor widder man, too.’

  ‘There be as good fish in the sea,’ said Mrs Hale, darting him a glance of surprising coyness. ‘But I wasn’t making no suggestion, Mr Fairfax.’

  ‘I know, I know. Jus’ my joc’lar little way,’ said Mr Fairfax soothingly. ‘Truth to tell, it’s all arranged. Another ’ooman be engaged by the sister, and should be starting now, but she be held up for the time being on some personal matter. What it mid be I do not know, but be that as it may, Mrs Shergold is to hold the fort until such time as she comes.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mrs Hale, digesting this budget. She said, with womanly sympathy, ‘’Tis rather hard on you, Mr Fairfax, to be left at such short notice. Anything, in a neighbourly way, as I could do . . .’

  ‘Well,’ said Mr Fairfax hastily, ‘’tis far from convenient, that I ’oon’t deny, but don’t you trouble yourself. I shall manage — I shall manage.’

  ‘Oh, well, if you want me you know where I’m to be found.’

  ‘I do, Mrs Hale,’ agreed Mr Fairfax, rather uneasily. Apparently feeling that the conversation had lasted long enough, he glanced across the road to the spot where Johnny Cossett leaned upon a gate, his features twisted in a Bogart-like sneer.

  ‘That Johnny Cossett? Well, Johnny, how many races did ’ee win up at the fête?’

  ‘None,’ said Johnny briefly.

  ‘Tck tck. Spry young chap like you, too. And now you be on holiday, for how long?’

  ‘Five wicks,’ grunted Johnny.

  ‘Too long. Far too long,’ said Mr Fairfax severely. ‘Never like it in my young days.’

  ‘Nor in mine, neither,’ said Mrs Hale, shaking her head.

  ‘Taint my fault,’ said the goaded youth. ‘I never asked for it.’

  ‘I bet yer ma didn’t, neither,’ said Mrs Hale, laughing heartily. ‘Be she home now, Johnny?’

  ‘No,’ said Johnny.

  ‘Oh, of course. Thursday be her day for Mrs Marlowe. I forgot for the moment. Well, I s’pose I mid so well look in at shop while I be here waiting for that dratted bus.’

  ‘I must be getting along, too,’ said Mr Fairfax. ‘If you want to earn a copper, my lad, you can come and help me lift my early taters. I could do wit some help.’

  Johnny grunted noncommittally. He watched the two figures out of sight with scorn and disgust depicted on his countenance.

  ‘Wold apple women,’ he muttered, and slouched off in the opposite direction.

  Ken Marsh lived in what might be termed the Civic Centre of God’s Blessing — that is to say, midway between the church and the school, and two doors from the Ring and Book. His father was the village policeman, and Ken had not only won a scholarship to the Grammar School at Lake, but also sang in the choir, looking like a species of angel. Angelic choirboys in private life fall oft from grace, hence Ken’s pleasure in the lawless society of Johnny Cossett.

  Johnny found him leaning over his front gate with a disgruntled expression on his face. In the middle of the path behind him stood an empty pram. He glanced up on hearing Johnny’s footsteps, and his brow cleared.

  ‘Hiya, big boy,’ he observed chattily.

  ‘Hiya, kid,’ replied Johnny.

  Leaning comfortably against the gate, he disposed himself for conversation.

  ‘Coming out?’

  ‘Can’t,’ said Ken, gloomily. ‘Got to see to our babe.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Indoors. Having a bath. Then I’m supposed to push her out.’

  ‘What? In holiday time?’

  ‘There you are. That’s what I told her. As if I hadn’t — oh, a hundred better things to do with my time. All she says is, five weeks is too long.’

  ‘My gosh!’ said Johnny fervently. ‘Is all the cock-eyed world saying that? We only got five weeks, and I already heard it from my old woman, Jimmy Fairfax, and old Mother Hale.’

  ‘Makes you sick,’ said Ken.

  ‘You said a mouthful,’ agreed Johnny.

  For a space they brooded silently over their wrongs. Inside, a baby’s voice was heard upraised in passionate indignation.

  ‘There you are,’ said Ken, with a wan smile. ‘Hollers when she’s put in her bath, and hollers when she’s taken out of it. What people have babies for I don’t know.’

  ‘Ken,’ said Johnny, following his own line of thought, ‘what be a quadrant?’

  ‘Something to do with a ship, far as I know. Why?’

  ‘Jimmy Fairfax said he’d be in one if his housekeeper didn’t come back. Or summat like that.’

  ‘That old goat ’ud say anything.’

  ‘Offered me to come and help lift his early taters. Said I mid earn a copper. Farthen, I ’low.’

  Ken laughed heartily but sobered as his mother came from the house bearing a plump and pleasing baby.

  ‘Mum,’ he said earnestly, ‘Johnny wants me to go out. Do I have to push that?’

  ‘Now, Ken,’ his mother reproved him, ‘you’ve got five weeks’ holiday . . .’

  The eyes of the two boys met.

  ‘. . . and I should think you could give up a few minutes to your little sister,’ she added fondly.

  A look of martyrdom crept over the face of her son.
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  ‘Oh, all right then. I dunno why babies were invented,’ he said bitterly.

  His mother relented. It was his holiday, after all.

  ‘She’ll be off to sleep in no time. Once she’s sound, you can bring her back and have your walk with Johnny. No getting into mischief, mind.’

  ‘You bet your life,’ said Ken, instantly restored to cheerfulness.

  He gave his mother a smile so angelic that her heart melted within her. Such a contrast to that loutish Johnny Cossett, who was always scowling and making horrible faces. She wished he would leave Ken alone. Look at him now, in that turtle-necked bottle green sweater, riddled with holes, and with the seat of his trousers half out. Ken looks such a little gentleman up against him, thought Mrs Marsh, as the pram and its attendant cavaliers disappeared from sight.

  The baby, true daughter of Eve, was charmed to have two swains instead of one. Johnny’s saturnine countenance captivated her, and she cooed and gurgled at him without shame.

  ‘Go to sleep, can’t you?’ muttered her brother.

  The baby crowed delightedly, kicked off her coverings, and waved two fat legs in the air.

  ‘You better go on, Johnny,’ said Ken, with manly resignation. ‘The young toad isn’t going to sleep. Keep awake all day she will, just to spite me.’

  ‘I’ll hang around,’ said the magnanimous Johnny, adding amazingly, ‘she’s kinda cute when she smiles.’

  Ken looked up in surprise to see Master Cossett, his scowl forgotten, leering at the lady in an imbecile manner, to which she responded by again brandishing her legs in the air.

  ‘Don’t make her worse than what she is,’ said the shocked brother reprovingly.

  Johnny, realizing to what depths of weakness he had been betrayed by feminine wiles, scowled again. The baby cooed drowsily, and her lids gradually hid her blue eyes.

  ‘Shh!’ breathed Ken, walking delicately like Agag.

  ‘She’s off,’ said Johnny.

  Five minutes later, Miss Angela Marsh, still peacefully slumbering, was installed on the patch of lawn, whilst the two boys, free of their shameful burden, lounged away.

  ‘Where we going?’ asked Ken.

  ‘Where is there to go in this lousy hole?’ asked Johnny, gazing at the smiling countryside around them.

  ‘What about the green? We might get a game of cricket.’

  ‘Naw. Kid’s stuff,’ said Johnny with disdain. The memory of his overthrow at the fête rankled in his manly breast, and he had no desire to be reminded of it by a meeting with his fellows. Ken had not attended the fête. ‘I know,’ he said suddenly. ‘Corpse Path copse. I got a cattypult.’

  ‘Attaboy!’ said the policeman’s son. He added, struck by a sudden thought, ‘Be pretty muddy, won’t it, after last night?’

  ‘Mud? Who cares for mud? Course, if you’re afraid o’ spoiling your sissy clothes . . .’

  ‘Who’s got sissy clothes?’ demanded Ken, flushing.

  Johnny observed that his fist was clenching and thought discretion the better part of valour.

  ‘I never said you had sissy clothes.’

  ‘Yes, you did.’

  ‘You got me wrong. I never meant you. What I meant was if anyone had sissy clothes, then they mid be afraid of a bit of dirt. If. That’s what I meant. See?’

  ‘That’s OK then,’ said Ken loftily. ‘But no-one calls me a sissy without getting a dot on the nose.’

  ‘Sure, sure,’ said Johnny hastily. ‘Anyway, I got to be on the corner by eleven.’

  ‘What’s on?’

  ‘Ice cream. Shows what sort o’ hole this is that you can only get ice cream once a wick.’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ said Ken cheerfully, ‘not this week, anyway. Spent all my pocket money.’

  ‘My wold ’ooman coughs up,’ said Johnny with a diabolical leer. ‘She knows she better. Well, where are we going, anyway?’

  ‘Corpse Path copse, of course. I thought we’d settled that.’

  They went on fairly amicably through the village and along the lane. The field track was a quagmire, but Ken, with whom Johnny’s remark still rankled, took no heed, and they squelched along, both becoming equally coated with mud.

  ‘Wonder if that crazy guy be in?’ said Johnny, pausing to look down on Corpse Path Cottage.

  ‘He is. Can’t you hear?’ asked Ken.

  The rattle of a typewriter was borne clearly to their ears. They listened earnestly.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Johnny.

  ‘Typewriter. He’s an author, isn’t he?’

  ‘Not he,’ said Johnny, with conviction. ‘He’s a tough guy come there to hide. Or else he’s bughouse, one or t’other.’ he added, fingering his catapult. ‘I could put a stone through that winder easy as kiss me hand. Bet that ’ud make un hop.’

  Ken was somewhat enamoured of the notion, but recollections of the weight of his father’s hand spelt prudence.

  ‘Better not,’ he said, ‘We’d have a job to get out of sight before he copped us.’

  ‘I don’t care for he, nor for a dozen like un,’ said Johnny loftily. But he put his catapult away.

  They were turning towards the wood when a black spaniel shot up the slope from the cottage, barking excitedly.

  ‘Look out,’ cried Johnny, turning to run. ‘That be his dog.’

  ‘It’s all right — he only wants to play,’ said Ken, who was fond of dogs. ‘Hi, good boy, come here. All right, old man. You don’t mind me, do you?’

  The spaniel approached warily, sniffed him, approved, and courteously saluted him. The typewriter still sounded from the cottage below.

  ‘Look, he likes me,’ said Ken, delightedly fondling the silky head, while Johnny, still at a respectful distance, looked on. ‘He can come with us, can’t you, old man?’

  The spaniel wagged his agreement. Johnny looked doubtful.

  ‘S’pose wold feller comes to look for un?’

  ‘We aren’t doing any harm, if he does. This is a right of way, and ’tisn’t as if we had bunged a stone through his window. We shall bring the dog back, anyway. I didn’t mean to pinch him, did I?’

  ‘OK, OK,’ said Johnny resignedly, ‘you win. Anyway, he can bring in the game.’

  ‘Rabbits aren’t game.’

  ‘Who said anythin’ about rabbits?’ Johnny patted the pebbles in his pocket. He lowered his voice. ‘There mid be a cock pheasant in wood. I’ve ’eared un.’

  ‘Oh, boy!’ said Ken, with shining eyes. He felt himself one with the old-time desperadoes of the highway as they squelched on towards the woods. The thought of his father, and his father’s hand, he pushed into the background. Policeman’s son or no policeman’s son, the thrill of the forbidden lured him on.

  He said suddenly, ‘Look at the dog! He’s found something already.’

  The spaniel, bounding ahead, had pulled up sharply. He was uttering queer little sounds, half yelp, half whine. The fur on the back of his neck had risen slightly.

  ‘Don’t make a noise,’ whispered Johnny, excitedly taking the lead. ‘He got summat there, no doubt o’ that. You’d say he were scared to look at un. He be all of a shake.’

  He crept forward with the stealth of a red Indian, Ken following him with his heart thumping. This was something like. Whatever it was had not moved for the dog was still rigid, still making those strange sounds.

  ‘Stay where you be,’ whispered Johnny, drawing the lethal weapon from his pocket. ‘I can see over un. A-ah!’

  Ken was electrified to see his friend spring backwards, turning on him a face from which the healthy colour had been wiped. From the dirty mottled pallor, Johnny’s eyes gazed at him with an expression of utter terror which would have made their owner’s fortune on the screen.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, with a shiver of apprehension.

  The wood was no longer a place for gay adventure. The look on Johnny’s face had made him feel small, and suddenly afraid. He wanted to step forward and see for himself, but a strange fascinati
on held him rigid, as the dog was rigid, and as Johnny stood rigidly gazing at him with his back turned to whatever he had seen. So they stood in a strange tableau, until a woodpecker laughed crazily from the wood, and seemed to break the spell.

  Ken stepped forward and clutched Johnny’s arm. He could feel that it was trembling.

  He said, speaking angrily, because of his fear, ‘What’s the matter with you? Why can’t you tell me what you saw?’

  Johnny shivered violently and rubbed the sleeve of the bottle green sweater across his eyes. He swallowed rapidly, in an obvious effort for speech. He said in a small voice, quite unlike his own, ‘’Tis a woman lying in there. I think she be dead.’

  CHAPTER XV

  JUST BEFORE THE MOMENT when Ken and Johnny had moved forward to stare down at the still figure amongst the crushed bracken, Ralph Grey stopped his car at the field gate, stepped out hastily and limped with all the speed he could muster towards Corpse Path Cottage. He was unshaven and his clothing soiled and crumpled. His eyes were red-rimmed and burning with anger. He looked as if he had not slept that night. Mark, strolling thoughtfully up the path, met him with surprise.

  ‘Morning. Looking for me?’ he asked, as Ralph halted.

  The other man swallowed. He said thickly, ‘Where is she?’

  Mark blinked. ‘She?’

  ‘Yes, blast you!’ Ralph pushed a distorted face close to his. ‘Don’t stand there and pretend you don’t know what I mean. My wife. Where is she?’

  ‘How the devil should I know?’

  He stared at the older man, saw his trembling hands and the sweat standing out on his forehead, and felt an unwilling twinge of pity mingling with his anger and surprise. The poor fool was suffering torment, there could be no doubt of that. So Laura was at her tricks again, was she? Lovely Laura, who could so lightly take a man’s life and tear it into shreds.

  ‘She has been here before,’ said Ralph. ‘I know that, and I know there’s something between you, so you needn’t trouble to deny it.’

  ‘I didn’t intend to,’ said Mark shortly.

  He saw the swift movement, and involuntarily braced himself. His anger was now almost swamped by a kind of sick pity. Ralph had asked for trouble when he married Laura — had acted like a fool and was now paying for it. But he was not the only one.