The Incredible Crime

by Lois Austen-Leigh

  “Tell me what he said about my face.”

  “Ah, that’s better,” said Mrs. Skipwith, “but as a punishment to you for adopting that ridiculous superior pose, I shall not tell you any more than that he said he admired you, and he did not say it vulgarly, Prudence.”

  The two friends sat down and pulled their chairs up to the fire, and Prudence took off her hat. They did not speak for some time. Then Mrs. Skipwith said: “Has it really never occurred to you that the man is in love with you?”

  “No, never until to-day,” said Prudence with perfect sincerity.

  “Specialists are apt not to make love like ordinary men, you must remember,” said Mrs. Skipwith.

  “I am not quite so sure about that.” Prudence hesitated, thinking of Temple’s conduct that morning.

  “They have a confiding way of taking it for granted,” went on Mrs. Skipwith, “that you are bound to be interested in their own special line. So great, so wise, they are in some ways, and such simple children in others.”

  “Yes, to a very great extent I must admit that is true. Do you remember old Dr. Hasgood? I think he was Regius Professor of Divinity?”

  “I remember him all right.”

  “He once came to me, and said in his hesitating way that he felt sure I should ‘be able to elucidate a phrase for him which he had long been at a loss to attribute a meaning,’ and what on earth do you suppose it was?”

  Mrs. Skipwith merely shook her head.

  “He wanted to know what a ‘glad-eye’ was!”

  Both ladies laughed.

  “Doesn’t that just illustrate what I was saying to you about them, Prue? And I suppose old Hasgood was vastly learned on some subject or other?”

  “Yes, he had done invaluable work, I believe, on the Pentateuch.”

  “The what?”

  “The Pentateuch—the first five books of the Old Testament.”

  “I always thought the Pentateuch was something in Euclid.”

  “In Euclid!”

  “Now I come to think of it, it is the pons asinorum I had in mind.”

  “Really, Susan, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!”

  “Yes,” replied she tranquilly, “and yet how much wiser I am than you, in other ways.”

  There was a pause, the fire crackled cosily, and the two friends lit cigarettes.

  “Professor Temple was showing me some extraordinarily interesting drugs and poisons this afternoon, and explaining their miraculous powers.”

  “Yes,” assented Susan maliciously, “I remember when the larvae of flies seemed the most absorbing topic on earth.”

  Miss Pinsent saw the insinuation, for her colour rose slightly, but she took no further notice.

  “You know Mr. Edgehill, the engineer?” continued Mrs. Skipwith. “Well, just before he became engaged to his wife, I overheard him say to her: ‘The differential equation which represents this state of oscillation…’ I can’t remember any more, that’s mathematics, which you may or may not recognize, and Edgehill is a mathematician.”

  “What an awful thought,” said Prudence solemnly.

  “Yes, but I don’t know that I wouldn’t just as soon struggle with differential equations as with anthroposophy! The next stage will be that he may ask you to go for a walk with him!”

  Prudence started to speak, but checked herself. “I really don’t think there is much of the simple child about Francis Temple.”

  “Oh, isn’t there…you should just have heard him the other day!”

  “What day?” asked Prudence quickly.

  “Never mind,” said Susan.

  “Anyway, he was clever enough to make love to me in this hall under father’s very nose.”

  “Oh, Prue, tell me about it.”

  “I think he’s—somehow or other he’s very masterful, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, that’s what makes them so attractive,” replied Susan.

  But, whatever Miss Pinsent was beginning to think, she was not yet prepared to admit that. At night, when she went up to bed she took the “Treatise” with her, and after trying for some time to read it, put it down again. The Professor, though he did not know it, was distinctly up on their bargain.

  Chapter XXIII

  Prudence returned to Suffolk soon after. There she found things going on just as usual. Mary had nothing further to report. Ben had had two good days’ hunting; a ringing fox both days; but scent very good, and they had hunted one for five hours and killed at the end. There! What did Prudence think of that? Snap had killed three rats, and the last of the sugar-beet had been lifted, and a very good crop, too. Did Ben think there was going to be bad trouble between China and Russia? Ask him another. He had more serious things to think about. A puppy had started what looked uncommonly like distemper, in the kennels, too.

  But under all this peaceful, everyday, bucolic atmosphere there lurked something sinister. Ben had lied to her once, if not twice, about what he was doing; and what—what did that extraordinary remark of Professor Temple’s mean that Mary reported? It all tended to one explanation, and one only. Prudence had had no opportunity of asking her father what the cause of the old quarrel between the Temple cousins had been. She couldn’t suddenly ask without producing a reason, unless the subject had been under discussion, and she had had no opportunity of making it so.

  The days passed pleasantly enough, until the time arrived when Thomas Skipwith and his friends were expected. Then something occurred to worry Prudence once again. They were out hunting. Hounds were drawing a large covert, and Prudence, seeing the solitary figure of Dr. Heale watching a distant side, went towards him. He looked up and smiled when she came, but neither spoke. Both their horses were intelligent old hunters, and were listening to the sounds inside the covert as keenly as their riders. In the far distance the huntsman’s voice could be heard speaking to his hounds, and an occasional whimper; hounds were some way off, but drawing up wind to where Prudence and Dr. Heale waited. The latter was half whistling, half hissing a tune between his teeth, while his eyes were glued to the long side of the wood. In the distance, a pheasant got up noisily and flew off, another looked out of the undergrowth and then drew back again, a hare broke covert and scuttled away.

  “If I swore I saw a fox break, and you didn’t, would you ‘holloa’ to it on my word?” asked Prudence softly.

  Dr. Heale shook his head with a smile. “Not if the King of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury swore to me, I wouldn’t,” said he. Silence again.

  A blackbird burst out of the covert, chattering noisily.

  “Just whistle that tune very softly,” said Prudence, and very softly and very accurately Dr. Heale whistled the air from the G Minor Mozart quintet. Prudence felt quite bewildered. Dr. Heale in it, too…but the next moment, and she had forgotten all about her worries. A slim, brown, four-footed figure slipped quietly out of the covert, and away down a furrow. Heale stood up in his stirrups and gave a rousing “Holloa!” The huntsman responded with a long note on his horn, the crackle of hounds in the undergrowth came nearer, and in a few moments with a crash of music the whole pack was pouring out on the line of the fox.

  “Steady, Prudence, steady,” said Heale. “Give them a chance.”

  From the far side of the covert could be heard the thud, thud of the galloping horses of the rest of the “field.” It was all Prudence could do to hold her horse—and, oh! She wanted to get off before the others had time to come up. With hounds running hard half a field away, Dr. Heale and Prudence started; and for the next hour and ten minutes they neither of them would have changed places with the angels in heaven.

  After a very fast run, the fox had been brought down in the open, and Prudence, with a brush that had been really earned hanging from her saddle, turned for home. Now, for the first time her thoughts went back to what she had just discovered. It
was Dr. Heale in that boat she heard whistling. He was very fond of good music, and there were not many who could whistle that intricate air. That made four people in the business—Temple, Ben, Woodcock, and now Dr. Heale. She got back to her room to find everything ready as usual; a tea equipage laid and a burnished copper kettle singing pleasantly on the hob. She rang for Mary.

  “You’re back early, miss,” said she, coming into the room.

  “Yes. Shut the door, Mary. I want to talk to you.”

  Mary did as she was told.

  “I mean to go down the oubliette, or pipe, or whatever you call it,” said Prudence. “It’s a good time, we shan’t be interrupted. His lordship is still out, so he won’t be asking for me, and Woodcock is at the great wood still. I know, as I passed him coming home, so he won’t be in the cellars.”

  “Well, let me make you a cup of tea first, miss.”

  “Yes,” said Prudence, “that would be very nice, and then while I am drinking it, you can get the screwdriver and lift the seat.”

  This was duly done, and a little later Prudence stood ready, dressed in riding-breeches, jumper, and thick stockings. She had stuck her electric torch inside her waist.

  “Now, Mary,” she said, “when I am down, cover up the seat and stay in the room, and if anyone did happen to come in, it would all look quite natural, but when you hear me come back, lock the door till I am through.”

  It was with more excitement than misgivings that Prudence let herself down the pipe. It was easier than she had expected. There were notches in the stone on one side, and the pipe was small enough to allow of her leaning against the opposite side for support. When she got to the end of the notches, she got out her light to see where she was. The ground was between three and four feet below her; so she let go and jumped, and then crawled out of what looked for all the world like a fire-place, and as if she had come down the chimney. She found herself in a smallish room, in which she certainly had never been before. There was a door, which from its position she calculated must have led into cellars still farther under the old house.

  She looked round by the aid of her torch, but there was nothing, just nothing at all but bare stone walls and bare stone floor. Surely there might be a scrap of paper, or something that would furnish a “clue,” but there was just nothing at all. The only suggestion the place did make to her mind was, that it ought perhaps to have been dustier or dirtier; it seemed too empty and too clean. She was considering this point when she heard a scuffle, much the same as the rats she had heard under the smoking-room floor. Miss Pinsent was back in the chimney in two twos, only to find she could not make the first start up without something to hold on to.

  “Mary, Mary,” she called up the pipe, and was relieved to see Mary’s respectful face looking down almost at once.

  “Get a sheet and hang it down; I want something to hold on to to make a start.”

  This was soon done, and Prudence, rather breathless, was back in her room again. She had discovered nothing, just nothing at all, by her adventure. But she was particular in seeing that the window-seat was well screwed down again behind her. Then, upon reflection, she made up her mind to go and see Laura Heale. She must talk to someone if possible, and it would not be hard to discover whether Laura knew anything about this mysterious business or not. She was a simple soul and quite incapable of hiding her feelings. If she had a secret to keep she looked worried and slightly self-important, and it was obvious to the meanest intellect that Mrs. Heale was uneasy about something.

  So it came about that next day Prudence borrowed a hack of Ben’s, and jogged over to “the Doctor’s.” There she found her friend busily engaged in bandaging her horse’s forelegs. “They always fill up a bit after a hard day,” she said to Prudence; “the old mare’s getting on now, you know.”

  “I’ve come for a gossip. No, I don’t want to go for a ride. Come down the garden.”

  “Right you are. That was a toppin’ run yesterday, Prue, and John came home full of your praises and how straight you rode.”

  “I followed him all through,” said Prudence. “You know I can’t take a line of my own.”

  “Yes,” said Laura. “I guessed you had.”

  Prudence laughed.

  “Have you heard this last ghastly bit of news?” said Laura, slipping her arm through Prudence’s.

  “No,” said the latter, suddenly startled, her mind jumping from visions of Ben being taken into custody for smuggling to a ghastly paragraph she had seen in the papers about a cinema full of children being burned.

  “There’s a case of suspected foot-and-mouth reported from the other side of the county, and, if it’s true, it’ll cut us out of all our Friday country.”

  “Oh!” said Prudence in relief. “Yes, of course it is bad, but perhaps they are wrong; it may not be foot-and-mouth at all. Look here, Laura, I want to talk to you about something serious.”

  “Serious?” said Mrs. Heale, “serious? I don’t know what can be more serious than foot-and-mouth in the country!”

  “Well, perhaps it isn’t; but listen to me. There’s something mysterious going on in the cellars at the Hall.”

  Prudence watched her friend’s face carefully as she spoke. Mrs. Heale’s expression remained pleasantly unchanged. She knows nothing about it, thought Prudence. I had better say no more.

  “What do you mean—have the ghosts been heard again?”

  “Yes,” said Prudence, “and perhaps it’s only that. Do you believe in them, Laura?”

  Mrs. Heale didn’t answer for a moment, then she said: “Have you seen or heard somethin’ unusual, Prue?”

  “Yes, if you will have it. I saw a boat come out from under the house late at night, and I thought I recognized someone in it that surprised me very much.”

  “I wondered how long it would take you to discover somethin’,” said Mrs. Heale.

  “What do you mean?” exclaimed Prudence. “What is there to discover, and what do you know about it?”

  Mrs. Heale walked on a bit without speaking, then she said: “I know very little about it, if it comes to that; I am not supposed to know anythin’; but they are smugglin’, if you want it plain, that’s what they are doin’.”

  “Do you really believe that Ben, Ben and Dr. Heale are smuggling?” exclaimed Prudence.

  “Yes,” said Laura imperturbably, “and why not? Very sportin’, I think, I only wish I was in it too. I tumbled on to it by chance, but I think John knows I’ve guessed all about it, though we still pretend that I don’t know anythin’.”

  “How long do you suppose it’s been going on?” asked Prudence.

  “I don’t know. Two or three years ago John suddenly took the line that it wasn’t professional etiquette for me to know too much about his patients, and when he went out at night it wasn’t my business to know where he went, so I guess it started about then.”

  “But, Laura,” said Prudence, “I think it’s dreadful; it’s shocking that men like Ben and John should smuggle!”

  “Now don’t you be such a prig, my girl; that’s the bad influence of a place like Cambridge. If you lived here all the year round, you’d take a healthier point of view.”

  “But smuggling is swindling,” said Prudence.

  “Nonsense,” replied her friend, “it’s sportin’ and quite natural…Why, the Temples have smuggled for hundreds of years, and so have several other families that live here; and it’s quite right they should go on. Why, Prue, you’re half a Temple yourself—”

  “That’s all very well,” interrupted Prudence, “but sentimental reasons won’t persuade me into admitting that black is white.”

  Laura laughed. “And I’ve been wonderin’ all this time if you weren’t in it too, and helpin’. I gave you credit for more sense than it seems you’ve got.”

  “Look here, Laura, how would you like to see John up at
the Assizes for smuggling?”

  “He won’t be. Do you suppose there’s a man, woman, or child for miles around that would give Lord Wellende away, even if they knew? Ben and John, though I says it as shouldn’t, haven’t an enemy about the place.” There was a long pause. “But, you see, no one knows who isn’t in it themselves. At the most a fisherman may suspect, or just wonder, but at heart he’s all for the smuggler, quite apart from the fact that he’d never do ‘his lordship’ a bad turn, not if he knew it.”

  “No,” said Prudence slowly, “but it might be found out from outside, so to speak.” She was thinking of Harry Studde and what he’d said to her. If the authorities were on the watch—Suddenly she remembered something else.

  “Did you hear them say on the wireless the other night that there was smuggling along the East Coast, and how many people had been convicted?”

  “Yes,” laughed Mrs. Heale. “It was funny. John and I were sittin’ together and I looked at him and he looked at me, and we both laughed, but even then he never spoke—I hoped he would.”

  “Well, I don’t like it,” said Prudence.

  “No one here will give them away. I don’t suppose you realize quite how strong Ben’s hold on the country-side is. Talk about Socialism and Communism in England, faugh! Why, you know when Mrs. Woodcock was dyin’. I went to see her, and the thing that was worryin’ her most was, who was goin’ ‘to see to his lordship’s shootin’ lunch? I’ve got it as he liked it for five-and-fifty years, ma’am.’ That was what that woman was thinkin’ of, as she lay dyin’, not herself! Socialism! Faugh!”

  “Yes,” said Prudence soberly, “that spirit is wonderful.” A pause. “But you know if people like them are smuggling, it’s something like drugs, and if they are smuggling drugs, aren’t they bound to be doing harm to someone, putting the stuff into the hands of people who oughtn’t to have it?”